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The She-Wolf
There was an enchanted mill, so that no
one could stay there, because a she-wolf always haunted it. A
soldier went once into the mill to sleep. He made a fire in the
parlor, went up into the garret above, bored a hole with an auger
in the floor, and peeped down into the parlor.
A she-wolf came in and looked about
the mill to see whether she could find anything to eat. She
found nothing, and then went to the fire, and said, "Skin down! Skin down! Skin
down!" She raised herself upon her hind-legs, and her
skin fell down. She took the skin, and hung it on a peg, and
out of the wolf came a damsel. The damsel went to the fire,
and fell asleep there.
He came down from the garret, took the
skin, nailed it fast to the mill-wheel, then came into the
mill, shouted over her, and said, "Good morning, damsel!
How do you do?
She began to scream, "Skin on me! Skin on me! Skin on
me!" But the skin could not come down, for it was fast
nailed.
The pair married and had two children.
As soon as the elder son got to know
that his mother was a wolf, he said to her, "Mamma!
Mamma! I have heard that you are a wolf."
His mother replied, "What nonsense
are you talking! How can you say that I am a wolf?"
The father of the two children went
one day into the field to plow, and his son said, "Papa,
let me, too, go with you."
His father said, "Come."
When they had come to the field, the
son asked his father, "Papa,
is it true that our mother is a wolf?"
The father said, "It is."
The son inquired, "And where is
her skin?"
His father said, "There it is,
on the mill-wheel."
No sooner had the son got home, than
he said at once to his mother, "Mamma! Mamma! You are
a wolf! I know where your skin is."
His mother asked him, "Where is
my skin?"
He said, "There, on the mill-wheel."
His mother said to him, "Thank you, sonny, for rescuing
me." Then she went away, and was never heard of more.
Source: A. H.
Wratislaw, Sixty Folk-Tales from Exclusively Slavonic
Sources (London: Elliot Stock, 1889), pp. 290-291.
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