Once upon a time there lived a beautiful girl and a frog. They lived very poorly. Then one day the girl had a son, and the frog had a daughter. They had nothing to eat. The frog says to the beauty:
- Let's go, sister, to collect bird cherry trees!
- Where can we find bird cherry?
— On the other side, on the island, there are a lot of bird cherry trees. And so the beauty and the frog put their children in the boat and set off.
The frog rows the oars, and the beautiful maiden sits at the helm.
They drove and drove, and finally arrived at an island on the Amur.
They landed on the shore, left their children in the boat and went into the forest to collect bird cherry. They collected and collected, suddenly the beautiful girl said to the frog:
- Go see the children!
The frog went down to the shore, approached the boat, and then threw its child on the ground, and took the beauty’s child, pushed the boat away and left.
The frog returned home and began to raise the beauty's child.
Here the beautiful girl is waiting and waiting for the frog, calling, calling, calling her, but she’s still not there.
Then the alarmed beauty maiden went to the shore. I got to the place where I was staying and looked - there was no boat, no child. Only the frog child lies on the ground and cries.
Then the beautiful girl made a house out of grass and began to live on the shore of the island and raise the frog’s daughter. They had absolutely nothing to eat and often went hungry.
When summer came, they ate bird cherry, picked other berries, dried them and then ate them, and made cakes from bird cherry. That's how we lived.
And the son of the beautiful maiden, whom the frog took, became very big. He began to go hunting, kill various animals, they did not need anything. They ate the meat of the animals the boy caught.
One day a boy was walking along his hunting path and killed a very fat elk. I took a lot of fat off of him. When I finished skinning the beast, I heard a bird like a crow screaming:
Kaye-kaye, hok! I found a frog in my mother! And your mother with her frog child is on the other side, on the island! Your mother is starving, hon!
When the boy heard this, his heart sank. He hid his elk unnoticed in one place and went.
He walked and walked and reached his house. Enters the house. The frog is sitting at home. The boy sat down on the canal and said:
- Mom, warm the water, I don’t feel well! The frog heated the water in the cauldron and said:
- Warmed it up a little. And the boy asks:
- No, boil the water!
The frog boiled water. The boy says:
- Give me water in the cauldron!
The frog took the cauldron and brought it to the boy. The boy took the frog's hands and put them in the cauldron so that the stripes could be clearly visible. Frog says:
- Oh, it's hot, it's hot!
And turning to the side, she said:
- Someone else's child, his father is a thief! The boy asks:
- What are you saying, mom?
“What am I going to say, son, you need to sew high boots, that’s why I’m worried!”
The boy asks again:
- Mom, why are your legs so crooked? The frog answers:
- They will be crooked! When your father went to trade, I constantly sat on the desk, so I made a face!
“Ah-ah!” said the boy. “Why is your belly with a pattern?”
Frog says:
“I sewed your father’s equipment by the fire and got burned!”
“Ah-ah!” the boy said again. - Mom, why is your face yellow? Frog says:
— I wore large Chinese metal earrings in the cold, because of them my face froze,
- Mom, why are your eyes bulging?
-They will be bulging: when your father went to trade, I kept looking at the leading dog!
The boy finished the conversation. The frog went to the fire, sat down and said:
- Someone else’s child, he’s someone else’s! The boy asks again:
- Mom, what are you saying there?
“Tomorrow morning we’ll have to walk through firewood and water, so I’m thinking.”
The next day the boy got up very early and went to the other side of the Amur to look for an island. He got out of the boat onto the island and walked along the shore. He walked and walked and saw a small, skinny house standing. He sees that a beautiful girl and a little frog are the only two living in this house.
The boy threw a piece of fat to the frog. The frog took a piece of fat, brought it to his mother and said:
- Mom, look - meat, meat!
- Your mother is on the other side. There's meat and butter there! And you make fun of yourself by calling fat meat! You don’t know the taste of meat and fat!
The beautiful girl looked at the boy and asked:
- And you, boy, whose son?
- Whose son am I? A frog lives on the other side, so I am her son!
The beautiful maiden asks:
-What's your name?
- My name is Kaye.
“Oh, if Kaye, then you are my son,” the beauty said, crying with joy.
She hugged him and was glad that she had found her son. And the boy says:
- I’ll go and drive out the frog!
He kicked out the frog, came for his mother and said:
- Mom, kick out the frog’s daughter too!
And the mother answers:
“I fed her with my breast, raised her with such difficulty, is it possible to kick her out?”
Everyone got into the boat and set off. We moved to Amur and began to live in our own house. Frog's daughter brings water and firewood. The boy kills different animals. This is how we lived.
One day the frog's daughter walked on water on a moonlit evening. She scooped up water into her buckets, put the bucket on the rocker, and walked from the shore. Rising from the shore to the house, I stopped halfway along the road to rest. Suddenly she sees that the moon is shining, and on the moon there are shadows from buckets, rockers and her own shadow. Frog's daughter thinks: “How I wish I could be on the moon!”
And the frog’s daughter sang:
The moon, the moon has fallen,
The moon has stretched, the moon has stretched.
Suddenly the moon stretched out like a long, long ribbon and lifted the frog’s daughter. And so the frog’s daughter ended up on the moon with buckets and a rocker.
Mother and son were in the house, talking. Then the mother says:
- Why has she been gone for so long, go and see what’s wrong with her? The boy got up and went to look. On the shore - no, not anywhere. Only the boy sees that the moon has darkened. He looked at the moon, and it turns out that the frog’s daughter with buckets and a rocker was on the moon. The boy shouted to his mother:
- Mom, the frog is on the moon!
The mother came out to see, and indeed she saw the frog’s daughter on the moon.
So the two of them began to live together. They began to live well and lived for a long time.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru