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They followed the stag up hills and down hills,
across wide plains and meandering rivers, from early
morning until sunset.
Yet they were unable to close in on him.
At dusk the stag vanished, and the brothers were
too tired to do anything but set up camp for the night.
Next
morning the stag was there again, as if waiting for
the chase to begin. Hunor and Magor could not resist. They followed him once more across deep valleys,
high mountains, bottomless marshes, and nightmarish
swamps into hitherto unseen and unexplored lands.
And this was repeated day after day.
Thus the wondrous stag lured the sons of Nimrod
farther and farther away from their father’s kingdom,
but without their ever being able to capture him.
Finally,
on the seventh day, they reached a land so wondrous
that it outshone all others they had seen before.
It was filled with lush meadows, rich forests,
silvery lakes, and sparkling streams teeming with game
and fish. It
turned out to be the land of Meotis on the borders of
Persia, which is surrounded by the sea on virtually
all sides and thus protected from invaders. At this point the white stag disappeared and the tired hunters bedded
down for the night.
In the
middle of the night they awoke to enchanting music. They soon discovered that the wondrous stag
had lured them to the hiding place of the lovely daughters
of King Dul. Along with their two hundred ladies-in-waiting,
they were singing and dancing in a clearing in the middle
of the forest. To Hunor and Magor they seemed like fairy princesses
surrounded by other fairies.
The brothers immediately fell in love with the
two princesses and took them as their wives.
Each of their warriors took a wife from among
the other maidens.
After
this happy event Hunor and Magor decided never to return
to the lands of their father, but to make Meotis their
new home. And
so they did. They
settled down, prospered, and grew in numbers and in
power. It was thus that Hunor and Magor and their two hundred warriors
became the progenitors of two great sister nations,
the Huns and the Magyars, also called Hungarians.
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