A prince intended to marry a very beautiful girl. She did not need to be from a rich family, just to be beautiful and clever.
So he went to see the countries to find a beautiful girl. As soon as they heard that the young king was travelling, they all went out to honour him. In one village he found a beautiful girl, the poorest in the village. She happened to be the daughter of the gulyas (the cattle keeper). The girl said:
- How can I marry you when I am so poor?
- "Think not of it," says the king, "but come to me on condition that you will never speak against me.
Everything has been done. He never spoke to the king, except when a couple of peasants were passing by.
This is how it happened. One peasant travelled with an ox, the other with a horse. The horse had a foal one night at the first stop and the foal left in the morning after the ox. The man with the ox refused to give it back. So the other man went to complain to the king.
The king said that the colt belonged to the one he followed. So the man on horseback had to leave immediately. But the queen, who was then swinging in the garden, immediately went after him and said to him:
- You poor man, the king will go hunting in the forest, and you take a net with you and put it on a stump. And he told him something else.
The man did it. The king, as he went hunting, saw him and asked him what he was doing.
- I fish," says the poor man.
- How can a stump have fish? - asks the king.
To this the man replies:
- A stump can have a fish like an ox has a little colt.
The king immediately thought that his wife had encouraged the man. So he went and told his wife, who was sitting on the porch, to leave his house and go back to her father, the goulash cook.
The Queen says:
- What then, my sweet king, will you give me to remember that I have lived with you?
- "Whatever you want, whatever you like best, I will give you," says the king.
The queen put something in her husband's drink that made him fall asleep. Then she ordered the coachman to shut up. The king was also put in the carriage and taken to the goulash to the queen's father.
When the king woke up, he asked where he was, why he had been brought here.
His wife replied:
- I have brought you here because you yourself told me to bring what is most dear to me; that is why I have brought you here.
The king was very pleased, so he took his wife back and lived with her until she died.
(Vilmos Radó: Hungarian Children's and Folk Tales, First Collection - Singer and Wolfner Publishing; Budapest, Andrássy út 10, VI.)
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