Forty Keys

Once upon a time, in ancient times there was a king who had seven sons. One day the sons went hunting. When they reach the hunting area, they determined among themselves that when they followed the prey and the animal escaped beside one of them, the same person should follow it. After this promise they began hunting. As they threw arrows and hit the poor animals, a beautiful deer appeared and the brothers were very glad by seeing it and swiftly surrounded it. The deer was looking here and there and finally escaped beside the youngest brother.
According to what they had determined, the six brothers went aside and the youngest brother moved his horse following the prey. The deer went and went up to a hill and there it disappeared. The boy reached up the hill and whatever he looked could not see any trace of the deer. As far as his eyes could see, there was only a dry desert.
It was close to sunset and in addition he was too far from his brothers and the hunting ground. But when he looked carefully around himself he notice an old man was sitting on a stone. He went ahead and said him that he had lost the way and had fallen far from his home and life, and requested him to be kind to him like a father to lodge him that night to stay until the morning.
The old man took the boy to his home. As the boy arrived there he saw a picture of a beautiful girl hung on the wall. By seeing it, he fell in her love deeply. The old man noticed that the young man did not take his eyes from the picture. He said nothing and when the boy asked him who she was answered that he should take the thought of this girl out of his head and anyway he could not get her. When the boy insisted, the old man told him the story of the girl. The old man said that she was the daughter of a king and had become bewitched and so many people followed her but getting her was very difficult, and to do so, he must go and kill seven demons in order to reach the garden. There, he would see a cat being hung over its neck was a bunch of forty keys. He must kill the cat too, and must take the bunch of keys. He would see in the garden a mansion having forty rooms. He should open their doors one by one by the keys of the bunch of keys. He would see the girl in the fortieth room he would open its door.
The prince slept that night and in the dawn he got going. He passed through the desert and mountains and rivers and at last reached the garden. He saw there were around the garden seven demons to guard there in order not to let any one pass there. He killed the demons one by one. He found beside the seventh demon a book and began to read it. According to the material ordered in the book, he broke all the bewitchments of the garden, and freed all the men who had come to take the girl but had been captured. He went and reached the wall of the garden and saw the cat up the wall. He threw an arrow toward it but the arrow didn't hit it. The second arrow didn't hit it either. But he could kill the cat by the third arrow. Then he took the bunch of keys and went into the mansion and opened the doors of the rooms one by one. In the fortieth room, he saw the girl had slept. She was herself one thousand times more beautiful than her picture. There was a nightingale singing above her head. As ordered in the book, the prince kissed the girl and put his ring round her finger, and returned back to the old man.
The old man said him that he had done the main work and now he should sit waiting, since the next they as the order of the king, it would be announce that the man who had put his ring round the finger of the daughter of the king could come to marry her. But now he should also fulfill the three conditions too. When it was the next day, when the prince heard the call of the announcers, he got going to the palace of the king and told them the signs of his ring. The king said that he must fulfill the three conditions of him if he wanted to marry his daughter, and if he could not do so, he would be killed.
The boy agreed. The king said that his first condition was that he put a lamp on the head of a cat and he should do something in order the lamp to be dropped. They put a lamp on the head of a cat. The young man searched and found a mouse and dropped it in front of the cat. The can jumped to catch the mouse and the lamp dropped from on its head. The second condition of the king was that the prince should make a fat-burning lamp during at most one hour and ignite it. The boy did this work too. The third condition of the king was that the boy should go in forty nights above the head of the king's daughter and kiss her in such a manner that she would not wake up. The young man fulfilled this condition too.
The king accepted the prince as his son in law and ordered to decorate the city and to celebrate during seven nights and seven days and at the seventh night the prince married the girl. The boy took the hand of his wife and got going toward his city until they arrived at the city. His father was so happy of coming of his son, so they celebrated seven days and seven nights in the same city too, and this couple happily began their common life.