At that time, when there were Fairies and Elves in the waters and in the longa,  Ioannina had not yet been built  There was no state by that name at all. But there was an old state, under the Castle of the Hellenes, which is today called Kastritsa.This state was called Erovia. It was ruled by a beautiful king,

. This king, while he had all his good things did not know a good day. Bitterness consumed the heart day and night. He didn’t laugh, he didn’t sing, he didn’t enjoy his youth and he didn’t marry, because he couldn’t find a woman he liked, the woman he saw every night in his sleep. 

An old servant of his palace, a hundred years old, seeing the king’s child wither day by day, his heart ached and asked him: 

-Why don’t you laugh and be happy, but always stand gloomy and wither? Tell me your sorrow, for I am an old man of a hundred years old, and my eyes have seen many things in my life, and I know many things... Perhaps I can give you some interpretation...

-I love a beautiful girl, more beautiful than the dawn, and the asperite, more beautiful than the golden dawn... A girl, whom I see every night in my sleep, and I have travelled all over the world, East and West, and I could not, nor can I find her! 

Then the old man answered him:

-Since you don’t like any woman in the world, then try and be able to take any Fairy as your wife. This is a difficult thing, but there is no other way to find and get the woman of your dreams. To accomplish this, you must go one night, before midnight, to a shore of our Lake, before the Fairies come out to set up their dance, and hide yourself in a reed, so that no eye can see you and waiting there for them to come out of the Lake, according to their custom, to throw their veils over the reeds and begin to they dance, and if you hear them sing, fly from your hiding-place  like a falcon and seize a veil, whatever it may be, from the ones spread out on the reeds and flee to your palace[...]  Upon reaching the palace, immediately throw the veil into the fire to turn to ashes...Then that Fairy will become your wife!

Hearing these words, the prince went that same night to a lakeside at the time when the fairies came out of the lake and spread out their veils. He jumped up, grabbed a veil and made his way, like a hare, to his palace. When, he entered the courtyard of his palace, he found the bakers kneading bread and the ovens burning, and he threw the fairy’s veil into one of the burning ovens, and it turned to ashes.Then the fairy fell on his knees, and announced that she would be his wife. The prince then looked at the Fairy in her face, recognised her as the one he had been seeing in his dreams for so long, and, announced throughout his kingdom that he had found the woman he was looking for. He invited all the nobility, men, women, and children, to the wedding, and the wedding became joy that lasted for weeks...

One day the King caught his wifegazing at the Lake, crying -her tears running like fountains down her white cheeks.

-You don’t love me, my Queen wife, he told her. You don’t love me...

- I love you, my husband she replied, I love you and adore you, but I am also consumed by the pain of my thirty-nine siblings, whom I separated from and lost so suddenly and unexpectedly... I could be consoled a little if you would build a palace on this big rock, which is high above the lake and opposite the Island. That way I could see and hear my sisters at midnight by the moon, or by the starlight, and at noon in the summer, under the sunbeam.

   -As you please, my Queen wife! Your will be done...

The king immediately announced to all the craftsmen’ gathered in Erovia to  build the Castle of the Fairy Queen which survives to this day. They also built her a magnificent palace with a glass balcony, so that she could sit inside, with forty maids, to gaze at her thirty-nine sisters at the hours when they emerge, night and day, from the water...