Once upon a time there lived a beautiful girl in the tundra - the daughter of a raven. The grooms gave the father large herds of deer in exchange for his daughter, or were ready to become shepherds themselves for three years.
The father intended the eldest neighbor's son to be his son-in-law. The daughter wanted a striped whale; she had loved it for a long time. And the beauty was so fed up with her suitors that she threw herself off a cliff into the sea...
Before the girl could reach the seabed, a striped whale swallowed her. The girl woke up in the dark, gained fat, made a torch and lit it. She lived peacefully, and the whale swallowed everything the bride needed.
The raven's neighbor became angry after losing his son's bride, and sent his sons to kill the striped whale.
The sons - the eldest and the youngest - both wanted to marry the girl and willingly went after the whale.
The girl heard that her suitors had gone out to sea, and she told the whale about it.
The whale raised waves like hills and drove them to the shore. Before the guys had time to go out to sea, the waves hit them, picked up the canoe and threw it far out onto the sand...
Another time, the raven sends his sons out to sea at night. A striped whale sleeps on the waves, and the bride sleeps too - they don’t hear that a canoe with two guys is sneaking towards them. We came close. They killed a whale. We drove to the shore.
The whole crow family rushed to remove the fat from the whale. The younger son rushed into the whale's belly, but the eldest was ahead of his brother, grabbed the beauty in his arms and carried her out.
- Father, marry me, here is my bride! The younger brother got angry and went to the tundra to
north On the way, he came across a camp where they make yukola from whale, and not from red fish. He began to teach the residents how to make yukola, and there he saw a girl no worse than the bride of a whale.
Wooed, the girl’s parents demanded a year’s work for the bride. The groom-raven went to the sea, got several whales and seals there, and gave everything for the girl. He took the bride and took her home.
The brothers lived together amicably, only the older brother did not have children with his beautiful wife. One day, an old neighbor sent his daughter to her older brother for whale meat and said:
- You will be his wife!
The girl was ugly and dirty. She burst into tears; she really didn’t want to marry a guy who had a beautiful wife. But since the father commanded, the Girl came to the elder raven and asked for whale meat.
“I don’t have it, ask others,” says the raven.
The neighbors gave me meat, the girl’s father cooked it and called the elder raven, and said to his daughter:
- Go and sit with him in the canopy to eat meat!
The girl had barely sat down when the raven kicked her out:
- Get out of here, you dirty girl!
Then the father quietly said to his daughter:
- Go to the cold yaranga. You'll still be his.
In the evening, the father again sent his daughter to the elder raven for meat. The raven got angry and drove the girl away:
- I don’t have meat, don’t ask for it!
The old man took the meat from the neighbors, cooked it, called the older raven again, put him in the canopy, served him a large wooden tray with meat, brought his daughter, sat him down next to the raven, and he himself came out of the canopy and secured the cavity of the yaranga with a long stick and did not let the raven out for a long time. After this, the girl gave birth to ten sons at once, and he left his beautiful wife.
A sick woman lived in a nearby camp. In the evening it became so difficult for her to breathe that she asked her husband to take her on a dog ride across the tundra. The older children were asleep, and she took the youngest with her.
They rode for a long time, and when they returned, it turned out that they had lost the child.
“Let’s go quickly and look for the child!” the wife asked her husband.
- No, it’s late, the night is dark, we won’t find him anyway, better tomorrow!
- Maybe he’s very close here!
“Well, that means we’ll find him sooner rather than later!”
In the morning, the elder brother’s first wife went with her niece into the tundra to pick berries and found a sleeping child in a hole.
- Look what a boy I gave birth to! - she said to her niece. “Take me quickly to the abandoned dugout, I’ll rest there.”
They hid in a dugout, and a dog team, in which the mother and father of the missing child were sitting, drove past them.
The younger brother became worried about his daughter and daughter-in-law and went to look for them. When they were all returning from the tundra in the evening, the elder brother saw from his yaranga that his brother was carrying a child, and his niece was leading his first wife. The older brother ran and wanted to take the child away from his brother. But then his father shouted:
- Don't you dare come closer! Go to your slutty wife! Look at him, he has become as dirty as his wife!
- Let me wash up quickly! - said the elder brother, but no one helped him. Then he heated it himself
water and washed himself, and no longer wanted to leave his first wife.
That same evening, ten of his sons from his second wife came for him, but he did not go. Then the father of the second wife came, he drove him away, his wife came and drove her away.
Once the brothers went to the tundra to hunt wild deer, the hunt was successful. They returned with the spoils, the elder brother raised the curtain, and his wife had two newborns: a boy and a girl. He was delighted.
The second wife comes in the evening, asks for meat and calls him. Then he ordered his younger brother to send her meat every day.
The time came to hunt seals, and the eldest heard while hunting that his wife had given birth to five sons. He gave up hunting and ran home, and the father of his second wife was waiting for him in the yaranga and said:
- Why don’t you bring us meat? Why don't you come eat?
“No,” says the elder brother, “I won’t come to you to eat meat, - I know you’ll lock me up with your daughter again!”
One winter, the elder brother returns from the tundra, where he set traps for animals, and again they say to him:
- Your wife gave birth to two sons today! He went into the yaranga, and then his second wife came calling
eat his meat. He drove her away, and said to his wife:
- Let's go to your camp. The old man and his daughter are not letting me live. The younger brother will take care of the children! - And they migrated to the wife’s camp.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru