Russian Folk-Tales

by A. N. Afanas'ev

One day the peasant went with his hay to the fair, and he asked his daughters, “What shall I bring you as your fairing?”

One daughter asked, “Buy me some red cloth for a sarafan.” The other asked, “Buy me some scarlet nankin.” But the Fool sat still and said nothing.

Well, after all, the Fool was his daughter, and her father felt sorry for her, so he asked her, “What would you like to have, Fool?”

So the Fool smiled and said, “Buy me, my own father, a silver saucer and a crystal apple.”

“What do you mean?” asked the sisters.

“I should then roll the apple on the saucer, and should speak words which an old woman taught me in return for my giving her a loaf of white bread.” So the peasant promised, and went away.

Whether he went far or near, whether he took long or short, anyhow he went to the fair, sold his hay, bought the fairings, gave his one daughter the scarlet nankin, the other the red cloth for a sarafan and the Fool a silver saucer and a crystal apple. He came back home and he showed them. Both sisters were overjoyed, sewed sarafans, and mocked the Fool, and waited to see what she would do with her silver saucer and crystal apple. But the Fool did not eat the apple, but sat in a corner and whispered, “Roll, roll, roll, little apple, on the silver saucer, and show me all the cities and the fields, all the woods and the seas, and the heights of the hills and the fairness of heaven.”

Then the apple rolled about on the saucer; a transparency came over the silver; and, on the saucer, all the cities, one after the other, became visible, all the ships on the seas, and the regiments in the fields, and the heights of the mountains, and the beauties of the sky. Sunset appeared after sunset and the stars gathered in their nocturnal dances: it was all so beautiful and so lovely as no tale can tell and no pen can write.

Then the sisters looked on and they became envious and wanted to take the saucer away from their sister, but she would not exchange her saucer for anything else in the world. So the evil sisters walked about, called out and began to talk. “Oh, my darling sisters, let us go into the wood and pick berries and look for wild strawberries!” So the Fool gave her saucer to her father and herself went into the wood. She wandered about with her sisters, plucked the strawberries, and saw a spade lying on the grass; then the other sisters took the spade and began beating the Fool with it, slew the Fool, buried her under a silver birch, and came back to their father late at night, saying, “The Little Fool ran away from us, we could not find her, we went all over the wood searching for her. We suppose the wolves must have eaten her up.” But the father was sorry. She was a Fool, but she was his daughter after all, and so the peasant wept for his daughter, took the silver saucer and the apple, put them into a coffer and locked them up. And the sisters also wept for her.

Soon a herd came by and the trumpet sounded at dawn. But the shepherd was taking his flock, and at dawn he sounded his trumpet and went into the wood to look for a little lamb. He saw a little hummock beside a silver birch, and on it all around ruby-red and azure flowers, and bulrushes standing above the flowers. So the young shepherd broke a bulrush, made a pipe of it, and a wonderful wonder happened, a marvellous marvel: the pipe began of itself to sing and to speak. “Play on, play on, my little pipe. Console my father, console my guiding light, my father, and tell my mother of me, and my sisters, the little doves. For they killed me, the poor one, and for a silver saucer have severed me from light, all for my enchanted apple.”