Once upon a time there lived an old man and an old woman, and they had three sons. They did not live poorly. And so the sons decided to get married. They dressed smartly, hung flints over their shoulders, mounted their horses and rode off to look for brides.
The brothers wandered for a long time, but did not find suitable brides and turned back. Not far from their house they stopped to compete in shooting.
They fixed a target on the top of a huge tree and began shooting at it. The older brother fired first. Suddenly, to the surprise of all of them, a girl came out of the tree and stood next to her older brother. The middle one fired - another girl came out and stood next to him. The younger one shot in the hope that he too would have a beautiful bride, but, to the surprise of the brothers, a frog unharnessed the girl from the tree trunk and sat down next to the younger brother.
The brothers laughed at the younger loser and went home, taking their brides with them. The saddened younger brother followed them. And the frog jumped on the back of his horse and sat down behind the saddle. He didn't throw her to the ground, but she jumped back to her original place. Seeing that he couldn’t get rid of her, he left the frog alone.
Having entered the yard, the brothers dismounted from their horses and entered the house with their brides, while the younger one remained in the yard with the frog.
The older sons told their parents about the failure of their younger brother. The parents did not accept their son and told him to leave the house and live wherever he wanted.
The youngest son left his family and decided to build himself a small wicker-patsha. He walked up to the edge of the forest, took off his cherkeska and began to chop the twigs. And the frog was cooling off, sitting on the Circassian coat. Having chopped a fair amount of twigs, he went to the neighbors to smoke.
When he returned, to his surprise, he saw that everything needed to build the paskha was already ready. He racked his brains for a long time, but could not guess who did him such a favor.
When night came, he went to spend the night with his neighbors. The frog also jumped after him. The hosts fed the guest and put him to bed. The frog sat down by the fireplace. The younger brother could not sleep for a long time - he kept thinking about the frog, which disgraced him in front of people.
In the morning, having chosen a place for the patskha, he drove stakes into the ground and began to braid them. At noon I went to my neighbors again to smoke.
He returned and saw that the patsha had already been lined up. The younger brother was happy, but wondered who was helping him.
In the new patskha, the younger brother settled with a frog. When he went hunting in the morning, a frog remained in his pack. In the evening, he always found a cleanly harvested patskha and deliciously cooked game, which he had brought the day before. Finally he began to suspect that it was a frog doing all this, and involuntarily exclaimed:
- Oh, if only I knew what kind of creature this is!
Suddenly the frog shed its skin - and a beautiful woman appeared before him.
- Why did you express such a desire? “I had to shed my skin in three days,” she replied, a little sad.
But the younger brother, grabbing her skin, immediately threw it into the fire and burned it.
The younger brother's wife was more beautiful than the older brothers' wives, and they began to envy him. Soon they decided to destroy him and take possession of his wife. One of them went to the sovereign prince and said:
“My younger brother boasts that he can bring a live boar to the prince’s court from your protected forest.”
The prince summoned his younger brother and ordered him to deliver a live boar.
“If you bring it, I’ll shower it with gold,” he said. “If you don’t bring it, I’ll put you in a stable for bragging.”
The younger brother returned home, sat saddened by the fireplace and thought. Seeing that the husband was upset about something, the wife began to find out what happened to him. He shared his grief.
– Don’t be sad, it’s easy to help! – she consoled him. – Go to the forest lake, stand on the shore and knock these nuts. A boar will come running when you knock. Give him one nut, and lure him with the rest until you reach the prince's court. The boar will follow you. You will bring him to the prince and lock him up where he points.
The husband did just that: he went to the lake, lured a boar and brought it to the prince’s house, and he presented him with gold.
Now the younger brother has become richer than the elders. This aroused even greater envy in them. The two of them came to the prince and told him that there was a huge deer in the mountains, and his brother boasted that he could catch it.
The prince again called his younger brother and ordered him to deliver the deer.
- Look! If you don't please, it will be bad for you. And if you do it, a reward awaits you.
The younger brother returned home and sadly sat down by the fireplace.
His wife began to ask him what he was grieving about. He told her about the deer that he must deliver to the owner. And again his wife encouraged him and said that this grief was easy to help. She explained to her husband how to find the gorge where this deer roamed, and advised him to do this: take a bag of corn cobs, scatter them along the gorge, and put the last cob near a large stone behind which to hide. When the deer bends its head to pick up the corn, he must jump on its head, sit between the antlers, and the animal will submit to him in everything.
The husband did as his wife told him and drove the deer to the palace. As he began to approach the gate, the deer screamed shrilly. The prince and his wife went out onto the balcony and began to listen. The deer jumped over the fence and ran to the balcony. The younger brother jumped off the deer and tied it to a post.
The prince gave him land and the best cattle.
His luck made his older brothers even more embittered. After some time, they again came to the prince and reported: his brother boasts that he can do anything he wants, he can even build a bridge across the sea.
The prince called his younger brother to him and said:
“If you really have such power, I will make you a co-ruler, and if this is just boasting, I will order you to be drowned in the sea.”
The brothers, rejoicing at their invention, returned home, confident that this time their younger brother would not be able to fulfill the ruler’s demands and would die, and they would receive an inheritance after him.
The younger brother returned home and sat down by the fireplace in heavy thought. His wife asked him what he was grieving about. The husband told about the prince's order.
“You see,” she turned to him reproachfully, “I told you that you shouldn’t have burned the frog’s skin.”
The younger brother's mother-in-law was a witch and at one time taught magic to her younger daughter. One day she became angry with her for her disrespect and punished her by forcing her daughter to take the form of a frog for thirteen days. Three days were short of the deadline when the younger brother burned this skin.
To help her husband out of a difficult situation, the wife told him to go to the tree from which she came and knock on it. The tree will open and he will see his mother-in-law, to whom he will tell about his grief.
The younger brother did just that. Seeing the sorceress, he told her who he was and why he had come.
The witch-mother-in-law gave him three rings and told him to go to the sea. There he must throw the first ring further into the waves, and the bridge will stretch to the middle of the sea. Then he must walk along the bridge and, having reached the end, throw the second ring - it will support the bridge with a pillar. Then he must throw the third ring as far as possible, and the bridge will span the entire sea.
He did just that.
A bridge sparkling with all the colors of the rainbow spans the sea.
The younger brother went to the prince and invited him to look at the sea from the balcony. The amazed prince was silent for some time, and then said:
– You deserve to be the ruler of the country, not me! But the younger brother replied:
- Own it yourself, but do not demand from your subjects what you cannot do yourself.
That’s how the matter ended - the humiliated brothers came to the younger one with a guilty head.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru