“Here is the riddle for you,” said the fair princess: “I am the home-made casket, and the golden key is my faithful husband.”
The wooers had to turn their wagon-shafts around. They all drove home, and the princess began to live with her husband, to live and win wealth.
VASSILISSA THE CUNNING AND THE TSAR OF THE SEA.
A PEASANT sowed rye, and the Lord gave him a wonderful harvest. He could barely bring it in from the field. He drew the bundles home, threshed the grain, and poured it into bins; his granary was full to the brim. When he was pouring it in, he thought, “Now I shall live without trouble.”
A mouse and a sparrow used to visit that peasant’s barn; every one of God’s days they came about five times, ate all they could, and then went out. The mouse would spring into her hole, and the sparrow fly away to his nest. They lived together in this way in friendship for three whole years, ate up all the grain; there remained only a mere trifle, about eight bushels, not more.
The mouse saw that the supply was drawing to an end, and began to contrive how to deceive the sparrow and get possession of all that was left. And the mouse succeeded. She came in the dark night-time, gnawed a great hole in a plank, and let all the rye down through the floor to the last grain. Next morning the sparrow came to the granary to have breakfast; looked, there was nothing! The poor fellow flew out hungry, and thought to himself, “Oh, the cursed creature, she has deceived me! I will fly now to her sovereign, the lion, and present a petition against the mouse; let the lion pass judgment on us in justice.”
So he started and flew to the lion. “Lion, Tsar of beasts,” said the sparrow, beating to him with the forehead, “I lived with one of thy beasts, the strong-toothed mouse. We lived for three years in one barn and had no dispute. But when the supply began to come to an end, she went to playing tricks, gnawed a hole through the floor, and let all the grain down to herself,—left me, poor fellow, to be hungry. Judge us in truth; if not, I will fly to seek justice and reparation from my own Tsar, the eagle.”
“Well, fly off, with God!” said the lion.