The old man had a beautiful daughter, he lived with her quietly and peacefully until he married another woman, and that woman was an evil witch. She disliked her stepdaughter and pestered the old man:
- Drive her out of the house so that I don’t even see her.
The old man took it and gave his daughter in marriage. She lives with her husband and is happy, and they have a boy.
And the witch gets even more angry, envy gives her no peace; She seized the time, turned her stepdaughter into the beast Arys-Pole and drove her into the dense forest, and dressed her own daughter in her stepdaughter’s dress and substituted her in place of the old man’s daughter.
She did everything so cunningly that neither her husband nor the people noticed the deception. Only the old mother was the only one who realized it, but she’s afraid to say it.
From that very day, as soon as the child gets hungry, the mother will carry him to the forest and sing:
- Arys is a field! The child is screaming, the child is screaming, wants to eat and drink.
The arys will come running across the field, throw its skin under the log, take the boy, feed it, then put on the skin again and go into the forest.
“Where does this mother and child go?” - the father thinks. He began to look after her and saw Arys-Pole come running, throw off her skin, and begin to feed the baby.
The father crept up from behind the bushes, grabbed the skin and burned it.
- Oh, something smells like smoke; No way, my skin is on fire! - says Arys-field. - No, - the mother answers, - it’s probably the woodcutters who set the forest on fire.
The skin burned, Arys - the field took on its previous appearance and told everything to her husband.
People immediately gathered, grabbed the witch and drove her away along with her daughter.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru