The moment the priest heard this he became pleasant and talkative, and invited the old man to pass the night in his house. Then, leaving his plough in the field, he drove the oxen back to the village. Just before reaching his house, however, he said to the old man, “Go yourself into the house whilst I tie up my oxen.”
No sooner, however, had the old man entered the yard than the wife of the priest rushed at him with a big stick, crying out, “We have not bread enough for our hundred daughters, and we want neither beggars nor visitors,” and with these words she drove him away.
Shortly afterwards the priest came out of the barn, and, finding the old man sitting on the road before the gate, asked him why he had not gone into the house as he had told him to do. Whereupon the old man replied, “I went in, but your wife drove me away!”
Then the priest said, “Only wait here a moment till I come back to fetch you.” He then went quickly into his house and scolded his wife right well, saying, “What have you done? What a fine chance you have spoiled! The man who came in was going to be our friend, for he has a hundred sons who would gladly have married our hundred daughters!”
When the wife heard this she changed her dress hastily, and arranged her hair and head-dress in a different fashion. Then she smiled very sweetly, and welcomed with the greatest possible politeness the old man, when her husband led him into the house. In fact, she pretended that she knew nothing at all of anyone having been driven away from their door. And as the old man wanted much to find wives for his sons, he also pretended that he did not know that the smiling house-mistress and the woman who drove him away with a stick were one and the selfsame person.
So the old man passed the night in the house, and next morning asked the priest formally to give him his hundred daughters for wives for his hundred sons. Thereupon the priest answered that he was quite willing, and had already spoken to his daughters about the matter, and that they, too, were all quite willing. Then the old man took out his “engagement-cakes,” and put them on the table beside him, and gave each of the girls a piece of money to mark. Then each of the engaged girls sent a small present by him to that one of his sons to whom she was thus betrothed. These gifts the old man put in the bag wherein he had carried the “engagement-cakes.” He then mounted his horse, and rode off merrily homewards. There were great rejoicings in his household when he told how successful he had been in his search, and that he really had found a hundred girls ready and willing to be married; and these hundred, too, a priest’s daughters.
The sons insisted that they should begin to make the wedding preparations without delay, and commenced at once to invite the guests who were to form part of the wedding procession to go to the priest’s house and bring home the brides.
Here, however, another difficulty occurred. The old father must find two hundred bride-leaders (two for each bride); one hundred kooms; one hundred starisvats; one hundred chaious (running footmen who go before the processions); and three hundred vojvodes (standard-bearers); and, besides these, a respectable number of other non-official guests. To find all these persons the father had to hunt throughout the neighbourhood for three years; at last, however, they were all found, and a day was appointed when they were to meet at his house, and go thence in procession to the house of the priest.
The Wedding Procession
On the appointed day all the invited guests gathered at the old man’s house. With great noise and confusion, after a fair amount of feasting, the wedding procession was formed properly, and set out for the house of the priest, where the hundred brides were already prepared for their departure for their new home.