[1] In Georgian: Vakh ra cargi kharo!
[2] Cf. Lady Charlotte Guest’s Mabinogion (1877), p. 472. Taliesin.
II
The Three Sisters and their Stepmother
Once upon a time there was a peasant who had three daughters. This man’s wife was dead, so he took to himself another. The stepmother hated the girls like the plague. Every day she bothered her husband, saying: ‘Take away these daughters of thine, and get rid of them.’ Sometimes she yielded to their father’s entreaties, sometimes she gave way to her dislike. At last she could bear it no longer: she became ill, went to bed, took with her crisp, flat bread, and began to moan. She turned on one side, made the loaves crack, and cried out: ‘My sides are breaking. Oh! turn me on my other side!’ The cause of all this was her stepdaughters, so her husband, seeing that nothing was to be done, consented to get rid of them.
He went away into the forest. There he saw a large apple-tree bearing fruit; underneath it he dug a deep hole, took an apple for each, and went home. When he came in, he gave each her apple. The girls liked the taste of the apples, and said to their father: ‘Where didst thou find these? canst thou not bring some more?’ The father replied: ‘There are many of these apples in the forest, but I have not time to bring more. If you like, you can come with me; I will shake them down, you can gather them up and bring them away.’ The girls were delighted, and went with their father.
Their father had secretly covered up the hole, and said to the girls: ‘Here are the apples. I will shake them down, but until I tell you do not gather them up. Then, when I speak, you can all scramble for them, and whoever picks up an apple, it is hers.’ The father went up to the tree, and when he had shaken it well, called out to his daughters: ‘Now, catch who can!’ The girls suddenly rushed on to the covering, which could not bear their weight; it fell into the hole, taking with it the three girls. Their father threw them in a great many apples, left them, and went away.
The girls could not at first understand their father’s conduct, but then they saw that he had brought them into the wood on purpose, and said: ‘Our wicked stepmother is to blame for this!’ but there was no help for it, so these three little maidens sat down and wept. They wept and wept until their faces were pale; their tears shook heaven above and the earth beneath. At last the apples were finished. They thought and thought, and decided that each should let blood from her little finger, and that they should eat her whose blood tasted sweetest. They let blood, and it was agreed by all that the youngest sister’s was sweetest. She said: ‘O sisters! do not eat me. I have three apples hidden; eat them, and perhaps God will help us.’
Then she bent on her knees, and prayed to God: ‘O God, for Thy name’s sake, I beseech Thee, let one of my hands turn into a pickaxe, and the other into a shovel.’ God heard her prayer. One of her hands changed into a pickaxe, and the other into a shovel. With one hand she dug a hole, and with the other shovelled away the earth. She dug and dug until she came to a mouse’s hole. She took thence nuts, little nuts, and gave them to her sisters. She went on digging, and broke down a stable wall. This stable belonged to the king, and almonds and raisins were strewed about in it. The girls used to go to the stable; they stole the almonds and raisins, and ate them. The grooms were astonished, and said: ‘Who can it be that steals the almonds and raisins? The horses are dying of starvation.’