The story of the brothers who were so very “knowing” is common to most countries, with occasional local modifications.  It is not often we find the knowledge of the “quintessence of things” concentrated in a single individual, as in the case of the ex-king of our tale, but we have his exact counterpart—­and the circumstance is significant—­in No. 2 of the “Cento Novelle Antiche,” the first Italian collection of short stories, made in the 13th century, where a prisoner informs the king of Greece that a certain horse has been suckled by a she-ass, that a jewel contains a flaw, and that the king himself is a baker.  Mr. Tawney, in a note on the Vetala story, as above, refers also to the decisions of Hamlet in Saxo Grammaticus, 1839, p. 138, in Simrock’s “Quellen des Shakespeare,” I, 81-85; 5, 170; he lays down that some bread tastes of blood (the corn was grown on a battlefield); that some liquor tastes of iron (the malt was mixed with water taken from a well in which some rusty swords had lain); that some bacon tastes of corpses (the pig had eaten a corpse); lastly, that the king is a servant and his wife a serving-maid.  But in most versions of the story three brothers are the gifted heroes.

In “Melusine"[FN#501] for 5 Nov. 1885, M. Rene Basset cites an interesting variant (in which, as is often the case, the “Lost Camel” plays a part, but are not concerned about it at present) from Radloff’s “Proben der Volksliteratur der turkischen Stamme des Sud-Siberiens,” as follows: 

Siberianversion

Meat and bread were set before the three brothers, and the prince went out.  The eldest said, “The prince is a slave;” the second, “This is dog’s flesh;” the youngest, “This bread has grown over the legs of a dead body.”  The prince heard them.  He took a knife and ran to find his mother.  “Tell me the truth,” cried he--"were you unfaithful to my father during his absence?  A man who is here has called me a slave.”  “My son,” replied she, “If I don’t tell the truth, I shall die; if I tell it, I shall die.  When thy father was absent, I gave myself up to a slave.”  The prince left his mother and ran to the house of the shepherd:  “The meat which you have cooked to-day—­what is it?  Tell the truth, otherwise I’ll cut your head off.”  “Master, if I tell it, I shall die; if I don’t I shall die.  I will be truthful.  It was a lamb whose mother had no milk; on the day of its birth, it was suckled by a bitch:  that is to-day’s ewe.”  The prince left the shepherd and ran to the house of the husbandman:  “Tell the truth, or else I’ll cut off your head.  Three young men have come to my house, I have placed bread before them, and they say that the grain has grown over the limbs of a dead man.”  “I will be frank with you.  I ploughed with my plough in a place where were (buried) the limbs of a man; without knowing it, I sowed some wheat, which grew up.” the prince quitted his slave and returned to his house, where were seated the strangers.