Russian Fairy Tales From the Skazki of Polevoi by R. Nisbet Bain

Author:R. Nisbet Bain [Bain, R. Nisbet (Robert Nisbet)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-12-20T05:00:00+00:00

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1

Four hundred pounds.

The Woman-Accuser.

There was once upon a time an old man and an old woman. The old woman was not a bad old woman, but there was this one bad thing about her—she did not know how to hold her tongue. Whatever she might hear from her husband, or whatever might happen at home, she was sure to spread it over the whole village; she even doubled everything in the telling, and so things were told which never happened at all. Not unfrequently the old man had to chastise the old woman, and her back paid for the faults of her tongue.

One day the old man went into the forest for wood. He had just got to the border of the forest, when his foot, in treading on a certain place, sank right into the ground. “Why, what’s this?” thought the old man. “Come, now, I’ll dig a bit here; maybe I shall be lucky enough to dig out something.” He dug several times, and saw, buried in the ground, a little cauldron quite full of silver and gold. “Look, now, what good luck has befallen me! But what am I to do with it? I cannot hide it from that good wife of mine at home, and she will be sure to blab to all the world about my lucky find, and thou wilt repent the day thou didst ever see it.”

For a long time the old man sat brooding over his treasure, and at last he made up his mind what to do. He buried the treasure, threw a lot of wood over it, and went to town. There he bought at the bazaar a live pike and a live hare, returned to the wood, and hung the pike upon a tree, at the very top of it, and carried the hare to the stream, where he had a fish-basket, and he put the hare into it in a shallow place.

Then he went off home, whipped up his little nag for pure lightness of heart, and so entered his hut. “Wife, wife,” he cried, “such a piece of luck has befallen me that I cannot describe it!”—“What is it, what is it, hubby darling? Why dost thou not tell me?”—“What’s the good, when thou wilt only blab it all about?”—“On my word, I’ll say nothing to anybody. I swear it. I’ll take the holy image from the wall and kiss it if thou dost not believe me.”—“Well, well, all right. Listen, old woman!” and he bent down towards her ear and whispered, “I have found in the wood a cauldron full of silver and gold.”—“Then why didst thou not bring it hither?”—“Because we had both better go together, and so bring it home.” And the old man went with his old woman to the forest.

They went along the road, and the peasant said to his wife, “From what I hear, old woman, and from what people told me the other day, it would seem that fish are now to be found growing on trees, while the beasts of the forest live in the water.

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