Mighty Mikko: A Book of Finnish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales. Fillmore Parker

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СКАЧАТЬ passed the room she stopped a moment and stared at the door. It looked just exactly like the doors that led into all the other rooms.

      “I wonder why he doesn’t want me to open just that door?” she kept asking herself.

      Finally one day when old Wetehinen was away she thought:

      “I don’t believe it would matter if I opened that door just a little crack and peeped in once! No one would know the difference!”

      For a few moments she hesitated, then mustered up courage enough to turn the key in the forbidden lock and throw open the door.

      The room was a storeroom with boxes and chests and old jars piled up around the wall. That was unexciting enough, but in the middle of the floor was something that made her start when she saw what it was. It was blood – that’s what it was, a pool of dark red blood! She was about to slam the door shut when she saw something else that made her pause. This was a lovely shining ring that lay in the midst of the pool.

      “Oh!” she thought to herself, “what a beautiful ring! If I had it I’d wear it on my finger!”

      The longer she looked at it, the more she wanted it.

      “If I’m very careful,” she said, “I know I could reach over and pick it up without touching the blood.”

      She tiptoed cautiously into the room, wrapped her skirts tightly about her legs, knelt down on the floor, and stretched her arm over the pool. She picked up the ring very carefully but even so she got a few drops of blood on her fingers.

      “No matter!” she thought, “I can wash that off! And see the lovely ring!”

      But later, after she had the door again locked, when she tried to wash the blood off, she found she couldn’t. She tried soap, she tried sand, she tried everything she could think of, but without success.

      “I don’t care!” she thought to herself. “If Wetehinen sees the blood, I’ll just tell him I cut my finger by accident.”

      So when Wetehinen came home, she hid the ring and pretended nothing was the matter.

      After supper Wetehinen put his head in her lap and said:

      “Now, my dear, scratch my head and make me drowsy for bed.”

      She began scratching his head as she had many nights before but, at the first touch of her fingers, he cried out:

      “Stop! You’re burning my ear! There must be some blood on your fingers! Let me see!”

      He reached up and caught her hand and, when he saw the blood stains, he flew into a towering rage.

      “I thought so! You’ve been in the forbidden room!”

      He jumped up and without allowing her time to say a word he just cut off her head then and there with no more concern than if she had been a mosquito! After that he took the body and the severed head and threw them into the forbidden room and locked the door.

      “Now then,” he growled, “she won’t disobey me again!”

      This was all very well but now he had no one to keep house for him and cook and scratch his head in the evening and soon he decided he’d have to get another wife. He remembered that the farmer had two more daughters, so he thought to himself that now he’d marry the second sister.

      He waited his chance and one day when the farmer was out in his boat fishing, old Wetehinen came up from the bottom of the lake and clutched the boat. When the poor old farmer tried to row back to shore he couldn’t make the boat move an inch. He worked and worked at the oars and wicked old Wetehinen let him struggle until he was exhausted. Then he put his head up out of the water and over the side of the boat and as though nothing were the matter he said:

      “Hullo!”

      “Oh!” the farmer cried, wishing he were safe on shore, “it’s you, is it? I wondered what was holding my boat.”

      “Yes,” wicked old Wetehinen said, “it’s me and I’m going to hold your boat right here on this spot until you promise to give me another of your daughters.”

      What could the farmer do? He pleaded with Wetehinen but Wetehinen was firm and the upshot was that before the farmer again walked dry land he had promised Wetehinen his second daughter.

      Well, when he got home, he pretended he had forgotten his ax in the boat and sent his second daughter down to the lake to get it. Wicked old Wetehinen caught her as he had caught her sister and carried her home with him to his house at the bottom of the lake.

      Wetehinen treated the second sister just exactly as he had the first, making her mistress of the house and telling her she might use every key but one. Like her sister she, too, after a time gave way to the temptation of looking into the forbidden room and when she saw the shining ring lying in the pool of blood of course she wanted it and of course when she reached to get it she dabbled her fingers in the blood. So that was the end of her, too, for wicked old Wetehinen when he saw the blood stains just cut her head right off and threw her body and the severed head into the forbidden room beside the body and head of her sister and locked the door.

      Time went by and the farmer was living happily with his youngest daughter when one day while he was out chopping wood he found a pair of fine birch bark brogues. He put them on and instantly found himself walking away from the woods and down to the lake. He tried to stop but he couldn’t. He tried to walk in another direction but the brogues carried him straight down to the water’s edge and out into the lake until he was in waist deep.

      Then he heard a gruff voice saying:

      “Hullo, there! What are you doing with my brogues?”

      Of course it was wicked old Wetehinen who had played that trick to get the farmer into his power again.

      “What do you want this time?” the poor farmer cried.

      “I want your youngest daughter,” Wetehinen said.

      “What! My youngest daughter!”

      “Yes.”

      “I won’t give her up!” the farmer declared. “I don’t care what you do to me. I won’t give her up!”

      “Oh, very well!” Wetehinen said, and immediately the brogues which had been standing still while they talked started walking again. They carried the farmer out into the lake farther and farther until the water was up to his chin.

      “Wait – wait a minute!” he cried.

      The brogues stopped walking and Wetehinen said:

      “Well, do you promise to give her to me?”

      “No!” the farmer began. “She’s my last daughter and – ”

      Before he could say more, the brogues walked on and the water rose to his nose. In desperation he threw up his hands and shouted:

      “I promise! I promise!”

      So when he got home that day he said to his youngest daughter whose name was Lisa:

      “Lisa, my dear, I forgot my brogues at the lake. Like a good girl won’t you run and get them for me?”

      So СКАЧАТЬ