The major themes of this fairy-tale by Howard Pyle are that money and status don’t necessarily reflect the inner man, and loyalty can sometimes bring great rewards. A princess vows to marry whoever brings her a cup of water from the “Fountain of Life”. A young king sends a servant on the long and dangerous journey to collect some, and falsely claims the prize. The doubtful princess sets him two more tasks, one of which requires cutting off the faithful servant’s hand. Thanks to the Water of Life, things end happily for the servant but not so for the king.
For English learners, the first paragraph of this story includes an example of what is known as an ambiguous pronoun:
Once upon a time there was an old king who had a faithful servant. There was nobody in the whole world like him, and this was why….
From the context, it is unclear who the pronoun “him” refers to (the king or the servant), and this important point does not come out until later in the story. In such cases, it is important to replace the pronoun with the antecedent noun it refers to. In this case, replacing “him” with “the servant” would have made things clearer.
Original Text / PDF / Audio (2,700 words)