There are countless fairy tales, they lived for many years, far away, completely in the wilderness, where there were thick reeds, where there were animals, birds, blue-winged tits, and a handsome man with a strong beak, the red-feathered kyrgaul*. The gray wolf-bakaul**, he was in charge of the khan’s kitchen, and the fox-yasaul*** ran on errands; crow-prophecy, healer-witch, sparrow-adviser, sneaker and gossip...
This is just a saying, a joke, if you want to listen, wait, the fairy tale will come.
Once upon a time there lived a shepherd in a distant country. His wife died, leaving him with one and only daughter.
Soon the shepherd married the widow. The new wife brought her daughter into the house.
The evil stepmother abused her stepdaughter. She fed her daughter every day with sweet flatbreads, and gave her stepdaughter a piece of stale bread and forced her to do all the hard work in the house.
The girl still has a cow and a rooster and chicken from her mother.
Every day the stepmother drove the girl into the field and, giving her a whole armful of cotton fiber, punished her: “Grain the cow and spin some thread.”
Somewhere in a field, placing a spinning wheel in front of her, the girl got to work. She spun threads day after day, at noon she quickly ate a piece of stale bread, soaked it in water, and spun again until sunset. But she never had time to spin even half the yarn.
[Kyrgaul - pheasant.
Bakaul is the person in charge of the kitchen in the Khan's palace.
Yasaul is the executor of orders.]
The stepmother beat the poor thing, pulled her hair, pinched her until she had bruises.
The shepherd indulged his wife in everything and was afraid to stand up for his own daughter.
One day a girl was sitting in a field spinning, looking after a cow. Suddenly a strong wind came, picked up the cotton and carried it away.
The girl ran after the cotton.
She runs after. As soon as he wants to grab the cotton, the wind picks him up again and drives him further and further.
The poor thing ran and ran, and the wind blew stronger and stronger, carrying the cotton towards the high hills, and finally drove it into a cave.
The girl ran into the cave, looked, and there was a gray-haired old woman sitting there with a friendly smile on her face. She was a good sorceress.
Placing her hands to her chest, the girl said:
- Hello, grandma!
- Hello, hello, daughter, come here! “What trouble has befallen you?” the sorceress asked sympathetically.
The girl told everything. The sorceress says:
“And you, child, don’t be sad, feed your cow the cotton that your stepmother gave you, and then pull threads from her udder and wind them into a ball.”
The sorceress stroked the girl’s head and added:
“If another difficult matter comes your way, come to me.” I will make the difficult become easy.
Unable to feel her feet from joy, the girl ran to the cow and fed her all the cotton. Then she began to pull threads from the udder, as if she was milking a cow. The threads stretched thin and even.
In an instant, the girl produced many, many threads, wound them up and brought them to her stepmother. The stepmother angrily attacked her:
- Why did you come late? Go clean out the barn, sweep the yard!
From then on, the girl coped with her work every day. No matter how much cotton the stepmother gives, the girl will spin it all, wind the straight threads into balls and bring it home.
Now there was nothing to scold or beat the girl for. The stepmother began to inquire why she was spinning threads so quickly and finally lay in wait.
He looks at what a miracle it is - a girl is pulling threads from a cow’s udder. Some kind of witchcraft.
“I knew it, it’s all about the cow,” said the stepmother. She began to persuade her husband:
“I really want to eat beef, I’m dying... If possible, slaughter a cow for me.”
And the shepherd says:
- Okay.
He slaughtered a cow, skinned and butchered the carcass - he separated the head and legs, chopped the bones, and cut the meat.
The poor orphan, crying, went to the good sorceress and told her everything.
The sorceress stroked the girl’s head and said:
“Don’t cry, baby, go home and collect the bones and legs, skin and blood of a cow and bury it somewhere in a secluded place.” The day will come when all this will be useful to you.
The girl went home and did as the good sorceress taught her.
One day, the stepmother dressed up her daughter, put on rouge, lipstick, and gathered with her for a festive feast in the Shah's palace. Before leaving, the stepmother poured a sieve of rice and a sieve of small peas, mixed everything and, placing it in front of the girl, said:
“When I arrive, you should select everything grain by grain, rice separately in one sieve, and peas in another.” She gave the girl a slap on the head, closed the door and left. The girl had a rooster and a hen left over from her mother. When the poor thing was sitting over the sieve and crying, the rooster and hen came up to her and began to peck. But they did not swallow the grain, but with their beaks they transferred the rice into one sieve, and the peas into another, and so, grain by grain, they quickly separated the peas from the rice.
The girl was delighted and ran to the good sorceress. After listening to her story, the sorceress patted the girl on the head and said:
- Wait a little, baby, now my daughters will come, four beauties - peri. Go with them to a feast in the Shah's palace, I will let them go with you. But first, go and dig up the cow's legs, head and skin that you buried, see what kind of secret there is...
Here, out of nowhere, four beautiful peris approach and respectfully greet the sorceress.
The shepherd's daughter went home with them, dug a hole, looked, and there, instead of a cow skin, there was a gold-woven fur coat. The hooves turned into boots as beautiful as boats, and the blood became a silk dress, and the bones became corals, diamonds and pearls.
Four peri dressed the girl and threw a gold-woven fur coat over her shoulders. The girl's face shone like the moon on a full moon, which happens on the fourteenth night. Well, in a word, she became such a beauty that it would be impossible to say in a fairy tale or describe with a pen.
The girl went to the feast, accompanied by the daughters of the sorceress.
The managers of the feast thought that a princess had arrived from some country, received her with respect, grabbed her by the arms, led her into the main hall and seated her in a place of honor. But no one invited the stepmother and her daughter; they remained standing at the threshold.
They began to offer the girl the best foods: candies and all sorts of sweets, instead of bread - sweet cookies, instead of water - cool sherbet.
When the treat ended, the girl left the table and, handing the rest to her stepmother, said:
- Take it and eat it!
The mother did not recognize her stepdaughter, happily grabbed the handout, gave some to her daughter, and they began to eat.
The girl was escorted away from the feast with great honor.
She ran home, but was in such a hurry that she lost one of her boots.
While the stepmother was getting ready and leaving, the girl had already returned and was sitting in the yard as if nothing had happened.
But then the stepmother came with her daughter and let’s show off:
- Oh, how many interesting things we saw! What fun! What a treat! And what we ate! There was one princess there, a beauty! Well, how to describe it? Face like a moon. And speech is like sugar, what is sugar, sweeter than honey! And there are so many delicious things on the table. She ate and gave us what was left. We ate with pleasure! Are you sitting and idle? Where are the peas? Where's the rice? What did you do with them?
The girl brought out and placed in front of her stepmother a sieve with peas and a sieve with rice. The stepmother's breath was taken away from anger. She couldn't say a word.
The next day, in the morning, one woman found a beautiful boot on the road.
- What a boot! I have never seen such beautiful boots in my life! - the woman was surprised. She went to the palace, went straight to the Shah and placed the boot she found in front of him.
Shah said:
— The owner of this boot is probably very beautiful.
Then he ordered his courtiers:
- Search the whole country, the whole world and find me the beauty - the owner of this boot.
Two old women went from house to house and tried on the boot for all the girls, but it didn’t fit any of them. They began to ask:
-Where haven't we been yet? Whose house is still left?
They are told:
“There is still a shepherd’s house left.”
“Let’s go to the shepherd’s house,” said the old women.
Having learned that the old women were going to come to them, the stepmother pushed her stepdaughter into the oven for flat cakes and covered the hole with a sieve. And she dressed up her daughter, put on lipstick and showed it to the old ladies.
The old women began to try on the boot, they looked, but their toes didn’t even fit into the sock. The stepmother fidgets, fusses, tells her daughter to put it on this way and try it on that way, but nothing comes of it.
The old women stood up and said:
- Well, that's enough, let's go.
They were about to leave, and at that time the rooster and hen flew up onto the stove and started talking vying with each other:
- Where, where, where, where? Look here, here, here. One of the old women said in surprise:
- Can a chicken really talk? Looks like there's someone in the tandoor!
She opened the tandoor and looked and saw a girl sitting there, as beautiful as the moon. Having admired its beauty, the old woman began to try on the boot and put it on her foot, exactly as if it had been sewn on it.
The old women ran to the Shah and hastened to please him with good news.
“Sir, give us gifts, we have found a beauty, so slender and graceful, her cheeks are like a rosy apple, her lips are scarlet, her mouth is small, the size of a thimble, and her eyes, like clear stars in the dark sky, are burning and flaring up, what a beauty!” they praised the girl.
The Shah gave both old ladies expensive new clothes, ordered them to dress them from head to toe, and he himself began to prepare for the wedding.
Anger raged in the stepmother’s soul, choking her, rising to her throat. She rushed to catch the rooster and hen:
- I'll teach you a lesson!
Having caught the poor birds, she tore off their heads.
The day of the wedding celebration has arrived. The stepmother dressed her daughter in a luxurious dress, whitened her face, rouged her cheeks, furrowed her eyebrows, lined her eyes, in a word, she did everything so that the Shah would like only her daughter. Having finished getting ready for the journey, the stepmother quietly crept up to her stepdaughter, grabbed her, gouged out both eyes, took the girl to a swamp overgrown with thick reeds, and abandoned her there, and escorted her daughter to the palace.
The Shah saw his bride and gasped. She was so ugly and disgusting that he didn’t even want to look at her.
“It seems I am destined to have such an ugly wife,” thought the Shah.
But the wedding could no longer be postponed.
The daughter of the stepmother became the wife of the Shah.
In that area, not far from the shepherd’s house, there lived an old weaver.
One day the old man went to cut reeds for winding thread.
He approaches the reeds and sees a girl lying face down and crying bitterly. The old man approached her and asked:
- Why are you crying, girl?
The girl told him about everything that happened to her.
The old man said:
- I have no son or daughter. We were left alone with the old woman. She spins threads for me on a spinning wheel, and I weave fabric. This is what we live for. Be our daughter.
He took the girl to his house. The old lady was very happy. The girl was affectionate and obedient, but the old woman could not have wished for a better daughter. Sometimes the girl would laugh with such a ringing laugh, well, her soul just rejoiced, and lush roses and bright spring flowers would fall from her lips. And if she cries, then not tears flow, but beautiful sparkling pearls fall in a noisy spring rain.
The sorceress found out that the girl was living with the weaver and came to visit her. The girl laughed loudly and roses fell from her lips. The sorceress, turning to the weaver, said:
- Put the roses in a basket, walk with them past the Shah’s palace and shout: “Flowers, flowers, I’m selling flowers!” If the Shah’s wife comes out and asks if you sell flowers and how much they cost, you answer: “I’m not selling for money, but for a pair of eyes.”
The old man did as the sorceress said. Approaching the gates of the palace, he began to shout:
- Flowers, flowers, selling flowers! The Shah's wife came out onto the porch and asked:
— How much do your flowers cost?
The old man replied:
— Flowers are sold for a pair of eyes.
The Shah's wife remembered that the girl's gouged out eyes were in the chest, ordered them to be brought, and gave them to the old man.
The old man returned home. In the evening, the sorceress replaced the girl’s eyes, smearing them with healing ointment.
In the morning the girl woke up and felt her eyes open, flare up and sparkle with a bright fire. The girl cried with joy, and precious pearls fell from her eyes, sparkling with wonderful lights. The girl laughed with a ringing, joyful laugh, and lush roses and bright spring flowers fell from her lips.
Every day the old man filled a basket with flowers and precious pearls and carried it to sell. He soon became rich, built many beautiful houses, dug large canals, brought water to the desert and steppe, sowed and improved new lands, and the steppes came to life. He drained the swamps and planted beautiful gardens in them.
One day, the Shah, traveling around his country, saw that the steppes and deserts had become populated and well-maintained, and beautiful, durable houses were built on high hills. In gardens everywhere, nightingales sing, turtle doves coo, elegant parrots flash through the green foliage, various birds flutter from branch to branch, filling the air with joyful twittering.
“Who landscaped these places?” asked the Shah.
“All this was done by a beautiful girl, the daughter of an old weaver,” the people answered.
Day and night the Shah thought about the weaver's daughter. “If only I could look at her at least once, and then whatever happens, even if I die, I won’t regret it” -
One day a girl went hunting. She was accompanied by forty friends. They all rode horses, they all had black horses. The girl was hunting on one bank of the river, and on the other the Shah was hunting.
The Shah saw the girl.
Struck by her beauty, he fainted and fell from his horse.
The girl drove up, brought the Shah to his senses and helped him return to the palace. On the way, she turned to the Shah with a request:
“Oh, sir, if you deem it appropriate for yourself, then welcome your whole household with your viziers, with a thousand of the best horsemen, to visit us.”
“Okay,” said the Shah.
On the day of the Shah’s arrival, by order of the girls, forty sheep were slaughtered and various delicious dishes began to be prepared. The Shah was received in a luxuriously decorated living room and began to be treated.
At midnight the girl came out to the guests, hiding her face under a white veil. Taking the dutar in her hands, she began to play and began to tell in order about what happened to her. Having finished the story, she threw the veil off her face. Her eyes flashed and sparkled brighter than the stars.
The shepherd rushed to his daughter, hugged her and said with tears:
- Forgive me, dear, I, like a blind man, saw nothing.
In anger, the Shah ordered the heads of his wife and mother-in-law to be cut off. But the shepherd’s daughter began to beg the Shah:
- Leave them, don’t kill them! Rather than execute them, it is better to drive them away, let them walk around and live alone in the world.
The Shah agreed and drove away his wife and mother-in-law.
Thus the shepherd's daughter achieved her desire.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru