A pious couple in the Gaster manuscripts had been childless for many years. The husband, desperate, went to the cemetery and prayed at the tombs of the righteous through a long night. Toward dawn, demons emerged from the graves. They promised him a son — but on a condition. The boy had to be circumcised by them, in that place, on the eighth day.
The man, desperate, agreed.
On the road home he lost his way. The same demons appeared. "We will lead you home," they said, "if you promise to leave the child with us for seven years so we can educate him." He agreed. At the end of seven years, just before he came to collect his son, they asked for one more year — so that the boy might learn the language of the birds and the animals. Reluctantly, he agreed again.
When the father finally brought his son home at the age of eight, they passed a brook where two birds were calling back and forth. The boy suddenly laughed out loud, and then wept. His father demanded to know why. The boy answered quietly: "The birds are saying that one day I will be a king, and you will kneel and wash my hands and feet before a meal."
The father, furious at what sounded like arrogance, threw his son into the river.
The boy did not drown. A fuller — a clothes-washer — found him downstream and raised him. Time passed. At that time, in the capital of that country, two birds covered in dust began throwing themselves every day into the food of the King. No one could explain it. Under penalty of death, the Jews of the kingdom were given seven days to find someone who could. The fuller brought forward his adopted son. The boy listened to the birds and said, "They are the souls of two Jews murdered by the King's servants. Their wives still do not know what happened to them." He named the murderers. The birds flew and landed on the heads of the guilty men. The murderers were punished.
The boy was kept at court for his wisdom, and in time, he became king. His reputation for justice spread. Meanwhile, back in his village, his mother kept asking her husband where the child was. He finally said the boy was dead. She asked to see the tomb. They argued. They went to the wise king to settle it. He sent the whole court away and kept only his parents in the room. A basin and pitcher were brought for the meal. The father bent down to wash the king's hands. The king looked at him and said, "Father, I am your son."
The reunion, preserved as exemplum no. 352 in Moses Gaster's 1924 The Exempla of the Rabbis (drawn from Codex Gaster 66), has all the shape of a folktale, but the Rabbis kept it because it carried a hard Jewish lesson. The parents had tried to force a son out of dark sources. The dark sources gave them one, on conditions. The story's cascade of near-catastrophes — the river, the fuller, the dusty birds, the trial — is what it took to redeem a decision made in desperation at a grave. The river did not drown the boy. His father's rage at his son's gift did not stop the gift. The truth kept rising to the top. One way or another, the birds told the story, and the murderers fell.