Clever Manka and the Judge

Award-winning storyteller Bill Gordh (Film Advisory Board Award of Excellence winner, National Association of Parenting Periodicals Gold Award winner) presents this folk tale live with no script, accompanied only by his own dynamic banjo playing.

Manka was a clever girl. Her father was a shepherd and did a job for a neighbor. The neighbor had promised him a calf for pay, but when the job was done the wealthy farmer refused to give him the young cow. They wound up in court. The young judge somehow got confused by all the testimony and rather than make a judgment gave them 3 riddles and the judge would decide in favor of the one with the best answers. The riddles: What is the fastest? What is the sweetest? What is the richest thing in the world? The wealthy farmer went home and his wife suggested: 1. Their horse. 2. Their honey. 3. Their box of gold. Manka suggested to her father 1. Thought is the fastest. 2 Sleep is the sweetest. 3. The earth is the richest. Manka's father won the case.

When the judge heard that they were Manka's ideas, he sent her another challenge. He gave the shepherd 10 eggs and told him to give them to his daughter and have her return with chicks the next day. The shepherd accepted the eggs but did not know what his daughter would do with them in one night. When she heard Manka gave her father a handful of millet and told him to take the millet to the judge and tell him that if he could sow and harvest the millet overnight, she would bring the chicks to eat it. The judge was delighted and offered another challenge. Have Manka come to court the next day, but not during the day or night and that she should come neither walking or riding and neither dressed nor undressed.