Some say three hundred years ago, and some say more than that, fifteen brave young men lived in the village of Colmel. They got together one day and said to each other like this:
“We’ve been living in this world for seventeen whole years, and what have we seen besides our village?.. Let’s go wander through the Blue Mountains, through the dense forests, and see what’s going on around us.” Afterwards we’ll return home and tell people everything.
Our brave men began to prepare for the journey: they took heavy axes with them, sharpened iron knives with two blades - so that they would have something to peel the skins of killed animals with, tied crooked daggers to their belts, put pieces of dried meat and barley flour into flatbreads into their travel bags, and filled wooden bottles with fresh water. Afterwards they bowed to their native village and hit the road.
They walked day and night, and by noon the next day they entered the dense forest of Vanya. A narrow winding path led through the forest. The young men from Colmel began to make their way through the thickets along this path and heard someone’s terrible roar - like the roar of a wild buffalo, having fallen into a quagmire. They walked faster, and the roar became duller, duller, and then died down completely... Finally, the forest thinned out, the young men got out into a wide clearing and saw: lying in that clearing was a huge snake - thirty cubits long, or even more, and half a man's height thick. The snake turned around to its full length, opened its mouth, wide as the door of a cow's pen, and in its mouth was a huge buffalo. The buffalo roars, rests its front legs on the ground, and the snake grabs it from behind and strives to swallow it whole, with hooves and skin. Only the head with horns sticks out of the snake’s mouth, a little more and the buffalo is finished.
And then one of the young men said:
- Brothers, who, if not the buffalo, feeds our tribe? If we don’t help him now, our gods will not forgive us for this. Are we really going to be afraid of this pathetic worm? For knives, cat people!..
Immediately, two brave men jumped up to the terrible snake and each stuck a sharp knife with two blades into the buffalo’s side - one in the right side, the other in the left, one blade is between the buffalo’s ribs, the other sticks out. The buffalo, feeling the pain, roared again, and the snake sighed, opened its mouth wider and swallowed once, twice, three times... The buffalo's head disappeared into the snake's mouth, but then the blades of knives protruding on both sides cut into the snake's skin and with each swallow they penetrated deeper and deeper into the snake's body. And as soon as the snake took its last sip, sharp knives cut it in two, like a ripe papaya fruit. The snake twitched once or twice and died.
Here the young men helped the buffalo get out of the snake’s belly, pulled out their knives, and sealed the wounds on his side with fresh clay. The buffalo got to his feet, brushed himself off and wandered off into the forest. And the young men from Colmel removed the skin from the dead snake, dried it, and measured it; This skin turned out to be so long that if a blanket had been made from it, it would have been enough for seven to cover themselves for the night... They took the snake skin with them and continued on their way.
They wandered through the forests for two days and by the end of the third they reached the mountain valley of Kinkor. It was already evening, the sun had set, and our travelers began to look for a place to sleep at night. They searched and searched and found a large cave among the granite cliffs - spacious, dry, with a high stone ceiling. They piled up their belongings in the cave, made comfortable beds from dry grass, brought firewood, lit a fire and were just about to cook dinner, but suddenly they heard someone’s heavy footsteps right next to the cave.
Before the young men from Colmel could even blink an eye, the branches began to crack, rubble fell down onto the road, and a terrible giant crawled into the cave. He was four times taller than the tallest man, and so thick that four men holding hands would not have been able to grasp him. The giant’s arms were like banyan tree trunks, his legs like rocks; His entire body was covered from head to toe with thick black fur, yellow crooked fangs protruded from his mouth, and a huge eye sparkled in the middle of his forehead.
The giant looked around the cave with his only eye, noticed that people were sitting by the fire, and rushed at them with a terrible roar.
The young men run away from him, and he chases them around the cave: whomever he catches, he grabs across the body with one hand, brings it closer to his eye, looks at it, and throws it to the ground again. Finally he caught one that was fatter than the others, took a good look and sat down by the fire, growling contentedly and licking his lips. The travelers huddled in the far corner of the cave and, afraid to move, watched what would happen next... The giant once again carefully examined his captive in the light of the fire, and then with one snap he broke his neck, stuck him in his mouth and chewed him with all the bones in three gulps - like a ripe radish or a piece of dried meat. The giant swallowed the poor young man, slapped himself on the belly, crawled out of the cave, with one hand broke off a huge stone from a nearby rock and with this stone sealed the entrance to the cave. And then he stretched out at the entrance to his full height and snored loudly.
When the young men heard the giant snoring, they carefully got out of their corner and sat down by the fire. One said:
- Our business is bad, brothers! This damn cannibal won't let us out of here alive. Are we really going to sit like pigs in a barn and wait until he devours us all one by one? We need a way to figure out how to get rid of this monster.
They thought and thought and came up with this: they put all the wood in the fire, put the largest logs in the middle, waited until the fire burned out, pulled out the big brands, and raked the coals into a pile. Then one of them took a burning brand in his hands and began to carefully creep up to the sleeping giant, while the rest hid behind the fire and began to wait. The young man with a burning log in his hands crawled to the giant’s head, stood up, stood up and with all his might poked the giant in the eye with the log! The eye hissed and burst with a loud crack, and the cannibal jumped in pain and roared so that it seemed that the rocks would fall down from his scream. He jumped to his feet and wanted to grab the daredevil, but realized that he was blind. Screaming and crying, he fell to the ground and began to roll around the cave, groping in all directions with his huge hands. The young men lay behind the fire, not only afraid to move, but afraid to breathe. And the cannibal rolled on the floor, rolled, and landed his head right in the hot coals. He roared louder than before and fell silent.
All night until dawn, the young men sat huddled in the corner of the cave and waited. Finally, they slowly got out of there and approached the giant. They looked and saw: the cannibal was dead. Then they chopped off his claws with their axes, pulled out his sharp fangs with daggers and put it all in their bags to show it to people in their native village - otherwise who would believe that they had encountered such a monster! Then they all fell together on the stone that blocked the entrance to the cave, somehow pushed it off, got out into freedom and went their way.
They wandered for many days through the Blue Mountains, and many different adventures befell them: on the slopes of the high Mount Durg they had to fight off a pack of ferocious red dogs; near the village of Porghar they fought with a mad elephant and cut off its trunk; Not far from the village of Kurgoj, on the sandy banks of the Pai-Karu River, they killed an evil crocodile - a child abductor, and in the Anar forest they exterminated a whole flock of cholgans - forest people covered with fur. The fame of the brave young men from Colmel spread everywhere, and people learned about them in the villages of Kota and Toda, in the villages of Badaga and Kurumba.
And then one day, in the Chigur Valley, they approached the village of Kurumba in the evening and saw: something strange was happening in the village - some houses were destroyed, others were abandoned, and there were hardly any people in the village. Only on the threshold of the last house sits one woman and weeps bitterly.
- What happened to you, mother? - they ask.
And she answered:
“The tiger got into the habit of coming into our village and stealing our cows. And this tiger is not ordinary, but special: the size of a young elephant, and the skin is not yellow but white. Our sorcerer says: he is magical, this tiger... A month ago he climbed into one house, and the owner woke up, and attacked this tiger with a spear... The tiger threw the cow, and killed the owner on the spot. Since then we have had no life: this tiger has become a cannibal, every night he eats someone. Because of him, half of our village fled... I would have left too, but my son got sick. The tiger killed my husband yesterday, and today he will come for my son, that’s what our sorcerer told me. And he also said that only brave cats from the village of Colmel can kill this magical tiger. Have you met them, good people?
“We are the cat from Colmel,” the young men answer. - Don’t be sad, mother, we will help your grief.
They consulted and decided this: let two with axes hide in the house, and let the rest hide in the bushes and keep their daggers ready. They did it as they planned. Exactly at midnight, as the moon rose, the forest thickets parted and a huge tiger came out into the clearing. He slowly walked towards the woman’s house, broke through the bamboo wall with a blow of his paw and stuck his mustachioed muzzle into the hole. But before he even had time to look around the house, heavy axes pierced his head from both sides. The tiger staggered and fell, and then twelve young men jumped out of the thicket and ripped open its belly with sharp daggers.
When dawn broke, the villagers gathered around this house. They marveled a lot, looking at the dead tiger - they had never seen anything like it - and praised the brave cat. The headman of this village, as a reward for their feat, gave each young man a cow and a calf.
The young men returned home with rewards and booty. There they all got married and since then, with their wives and Children, they ate, drank and lived happily.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru