The Russian Grandmother's Wonder TalesHoughton, Louise Seymour
General
The Russian Grandmother's Wonder Tales
Houghton, Louise Seymour
Slavs -- Folklore
He again lifted himself up, lay down upon his bed, and felt no harm. In
the morning the three ladies came, all in white up to their girdles,
and escorted him, to the sound of music, into the other room, where,
after breakfast, he again fell asleep.
At night they again escorted him to his chamber to sleep. When they
were gone he did not go to bed as usual, but began to consider how
he might avoid the fearful torment in store for him. First he looked
out at a window, but his gaze fell upon a frightful abyss enclosed
by rocky precipices. He went to the second window, but there it was
no better, but seemed to be even more fearful.
So nothing was left him but to heap all the furniture of the room
before the door, in hope thus to escape his tormentors. But he soon
gave up this hope, for about midnight the knocking began. He made
no answer, but at the third knock the door flew open and all the
furniture returned to its own place.
The ghost who had before questioned him now began to repeat his
questions, commanding him to tell who he was and how he came there;
but the young man was not to be made to speak. Then the spokesman
ordered one of his comrades to go below and bring up an anvil and four
hammers, and when these had been brought, one of the ghosts blew up
a fire and threw the young man upon it. When he was heated to a glow
they laid him upon the anvil and beat him with hammers until he was
as flat as paper. But with all this he was not to be forced to speak.
The time was up and the ghosts must go. Before they went they told
him that he and all around him were blessed; and then the door flew
open and they vanished. He again arose, laid himself upon the bed,
and sank at once into slumber.
Next morning the three ladies, all in white from head to foot, came,
with the sound of music, to thank him for ransoming them, and they gave
him leave to choose among them for a wife. Now the youngest of them
had grown nearest his heart, and he declared himself ready to marry
her, not at once, but later, for first he wished to see something of
the world.
This being the case, they gave him a ham, a wooden flask of wine,
a loaf of bread, three dogs, and a pipe which hung by a golden chain,
and they told him that these dogs would come to his aid in every time
of need; he had only to call them by means of his pipe. And should
he be tired, he had only to seat himself upon one of them. So he took
all these things and went forth to see the world.
One day when he was travelling through a forest he arrived at a castle
and turned aside to enter. But the steps which led up were of such
a kind that he could not climb them; so he seated himself upon one
of his dogs and the animal carried him up. As he passed through the
entrance he peeped through a window and saw a Tiger and his wife,
who was combing his hair.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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