ry one they met to
find trace of the owner of the golden hair; so the messengers set out
on both banks of the stream and followed it to its source but their
search was vain and they returned without news; then holy mendicants
were sent out to search and they also returned unsuccessful. Then the
princess said "If you cannot find the owner of the golden hair I will
hang myself!" At this a tame crow and a parrot which were chained to
a perch, said "You will never be able to find the man with the golden
hair; he is in the depths of the forest; if he had lived in a village
you would have found him, but as it is we alone can fetch him; unfasten
our chains and we will go in search of him." So the Raja ordered them
to be unfastened and gave them a good meal before starting, for they
could not carry a bag of provisions with them like a man. Then the
crow and the parrot mounted into the air and flew away up the river,
and after long search they spied the Goala in the jungle resting his
cattle under the peepul tree; so they flew down and perched on the
peepul tree and consulted how they could lure him away. The parrot
said that he was afraid to go near the cattle and proposed that the
crow should fly down and carry off the Goala's flute, from where it
was lying with his stick and wrapper at the foot of the tree. So the
crow went flitting from one cow to another till it suddenly pounced
on the flute and carried it off in its beak; when the Goala saw this
he ran after the crow to recover his flute and the crow tempted him
on by just fluttering from tree to tree and the Goala kept following;
and when the crow was tired the parrot took the flute from him and
so between them they drew the Goala on right to the Raja's city,
and they flew into the palace and the Goala followed them in, and
they flew to the room in which the princess was and dropped the
flute into the hand of the princess and the Goala followed and the
door was shut upon him. The Goala asked the princess to give him the
flute and she said that she would give it to him if he promised to
marry her and not otherwise. He asked how he could marry her all of
a sudden when they had never been betrothed; but the princess said
"We have been betrothed for a long time; do you remember one day
tying a hair up in a leaf and setting it to float downstream; well
that hair has been the go-between which arranged our betrothal." Then
the Goala remembered how the snake had told him that his