LITTLE RUSSIAN STORIES Sixty folk-tales from exclusively Slavonic sources | ||
XXX.—TRANSFORMATION INTO A NIGHTINGALE
AND A CUCKOO.
A damsel fell in love with a snake, and was also beloved by
him. He took her to wife. His dwelling was of pure glass,
all crystal. This dwelling was situated underground, in a
kind of mound, or something of the sort. Well, it is said
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she help doing so? Well, when the time came, the snake's
wife became the mother of twins, a boy and a girl; they
looked, as they lay by their mother, as if they were made of
wax. And she was herself as beautiful as a flower. Well,
God having given her children, she said: `Now, then, since
they have been born as human beings, let us christen them
among human beings.' She took her seat in a golden
carriage, laid the children on her knees, and drove off to the
village to the pope.[3] The carriage had not got into the
open country, when sadness was brought to the mother.
The old woman had made an outcry in the whole village,
seized a sickle, and rushed into the country. She saw she had
manifest death before her, when she called to her children,
and went on to say: `Fly, my children, as birds about the
world: you, my little son, as a nightingale, and you, my
daughter, as a cuckoo.' Out flew a nightingale from the
carriage by the right-hand, and a cuckoo by the left-hand
window. What became of the carriage and horses and all
nobody knows. Nor did their mistress remain, only a dead
nettle sprang up by the roadside.
LITTLE RUSSIAN STORIES Sixty folk-tales from exclusively Slavonic sources | ||