The Violet Fairy Book

morning, when he was shaved, he asked if the man saw anything odd about him, and as each fresh b

or, and it came to be the turn of the Master of the Company of Barbers to go up to the palace. But, unluckily, at the very mo

d with the answer, and sat down, and let a sheet of fine linen be put round him. Directly the young barber began his work, he, like the rest, remarked the goat’s ears of the emperor, but when he had finished and the emperor asked his usual qu

eror, the young man answered, ‘Oh, very well, and he says I am to shave him every day, and h

which he had carefully kept, burnt within him, and he longed to tell it to somebody. His master saw there was something on his mind, and asked

ss it to your pastor, or go into some field outside the town and dig a hole, and, after you have dug i

, dug a deep hole, then knelt and whispered to it three times over, ‘The Emperor Trojan has goat’s ears.’ And as

there, and one of them cut down a stem to make flutes of; but, directly he began to play, the flute would do nothing but sing: ‘The Emperor Trojan has goat’s ears.’ Of course, it was no

n saying about me

een cut from it, which would only repeat the words he had said. Then the emperor commanded his coach to be made ready, and he took the youth with him, and they drove to the spot, for he wished to see for himself whether the young man’s confession was true; but when they reached the place only one stem was left. So the emperor desired his attendants to cut him a flute from the remaini

der Serben.]