From time immemorial, fairies lived in the Catalan Pyrenees - guardians of waters and stones.
Caves provided them with shelter and lodging, they grazed chamois in mountain pastures, and in the mornings they went out to lakes and rivers to wash their magical clothes. These clothes were the envy of all the peasant women - whiter than snow, thinner than cobwebs and so fragrant, as if all the Pyrenean gorse had given them its flowers. It seemed as if snow was lying on the grass when tablecloths, capes, fairy dresses and bedspreads were drying in the green meadows. Shiny snow, pure snow, so white that it hurts your eyes.
Who hasn’t tried to take possession of these magical clothes! After all, they bring happiness! And who doesn’t want happiness? So they thought: while the fairies were washing their long, wonderful hair in the river, while they were combing it and talking about the magical mountain city of Miranda, which no mortal had ever seen, they could quietly come up and take the blanket. What do they, fairies, need one more blanket, one less...
But that was not the case! As soon as they heard human steps, fairies rose into the air in a flock of birds, magical clothes disappeared from the grass, and above the head of the offender there was a ringing, noise and hubbub, as if from thousands of bird voices, as from thousands of bird wings. Old people know: other people's things, and even those taken without asking, do not bring good luck and happiness. You need the fairies themselves to give you something, then you will have good luck for the rest of your life, otherwise something bad will happen.
So it was in the family of the first of four thousand and four great-great-grandfathers of the Catalan Dolores Arro.
And the name of the grandfather - the first of four thousand and four great-great-grandfathers of Dolores Arro - Philip Zherd. He was very thin, and he had accumulated wealth in the house - just poles to fence off a pasture for sheep. There is nothing else: no sheep, no wool, no milk, no money.
And so it happened that his daughter and grandson got lost in the forest. Old Perch was waiting for them, and he waited and went to the Ruy-Banis cave, where fairies lived - the guardians of waters and stones.
He approaches the cave, walks quietly, but the fairies hear his steps, turn into birds, rise up in a flock and let him hit him in the face with their wings, cling to his hands, throw himself at his feet, and do not allow him to enter their home.
- I don’t need anything from you! - Philip Zherd shouts. - Just tell me where my daughter and grandson are.
The fairies calmed down. They brought the daughter out to the old man, and gave him a basket in his hands, where the swaddled grandson slept in a quiet sleep. The old man was happy, but did not say “thank you.” True, I didn’t think anything bad.
Perch carefully carries the basket, hears: ringing and noise in the air - fairies are flying, they are being seen off. At this point the old man would have realized that, apparently, the fairies had taken his family under protection, that his misfortunes were ending, but he, on the contrary, remembered that if he took possession of the magic clothes, then...
Perch’s heart trembled, the words of the old spell came to his tongue by themselves. But then old Zherd appeared with his daughter and grandson on the threshold of his house.
The baby woke up and cried. The mother turned her son around and wanted to take the blanket in which he was wrapped to wash, but Philip Zherd stood on the threshold and blocked the way.
“Don’t you see,” he shouts, “what kind of diapers your son has?!”
“The fairies wrapped him in their blanket so that he wouldn’t freeze,” the mother answers.
“And are you going to leave it to your baby to get dirty?”
“The fairies gave him their blanket,” says the mother, “and it should serve him.”
-You have no mind at all! - Old Perch shouted.
He snatched the blanket from his daughter, wrapped it in a black rag and hid it in the closet. He sat down in front of the closet and waited for the bell on the bell tower to strike three times.
I waited. He stood three steps from the closet, facing the magic blanket, with his back to the door.
The bell in the bell tower rings three times. Old Perch says the words of the spell three times:
Bedspread, do this, So that I am fat, So that I become younger, So that I get rich!
Three days passed, and Perch discovered that he was getting fat. His cheeks became rounder, his step became elastic, and his hand became strong. Now you can’t even call the old man a pole.
The harvest also promised to be rich. Philip Zherd forgot about only one thing: that someone else’s thing, and even taken without asking, does not bring happiness.
And so it happened. The fairies were offended. They turned all the clothes, tablecloths and bedspreads that were drying on the slope of Mount Cambrai d'Az in the Aine Valley into white stone. The magical clothes lay in white blocks on the green slopes, as if snow lay on the green velvet clothes of the mountains and forgot to melt. Until now, travelers mistake these white stones from afar for the clothes of fairies. And the fairies themselves went high into the mountains, to their magical city of Miranda, where no mortal has any way and never will. At parting, the fairies took revenge on the old man for his ingratitude. They brought so many troubles to the village where Philip Zherd lived with his daughter and grandson, as many ears of corn were in the old man’s field. The peasants kicked the old man out of the village for this. He was left with nothing. He settled in Ur, his daughter and grandson came to visit him there.
It’s okay, we endured the troubles. The grandson grew, and happiness grew with him. Either the fairies forgave the old man, or they took care of the baby, everyone in the Dolores Arro family talked about it differently.
The old man brought the magic blanket with him to Ur, but no one ever cast spells before him. Once a year, when the gorse blooms on the Pyrenees slopes, he took the blanket out of the closet and the whole village came to admire it.
Flowers embroidered by fairies still bloomed on the bedspread, the aroma of magical flowers swirled around people's heads, and they then remembered fairy tales and legends, and there are a great many of them in the Pyrenees. Yes, you already understood this yourself, you’ve read so many fairy tales.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru