Read on line
Listen on line
Main > Slavic Folktale > Fairy tale "Lord and Master - The Story of the Man Who Understood the Language of the Animals"

Lord and Master - The Story of the Man Who Understood the Language of the Animals

He will try to give you something else but don't you accept anything else."

The Tsar of the Snakes was a huge creature clothed in a gorgeous skin of red and yellow and black. They found him reclining on a golden table with a crown of precious jewels on his head.

"My son!" he cried, when he saw the snake that was still wound about the shepherd's neck, "where have you been? We have been grieving for you thinking you had met some misfortune."

"But for this shepherd, my father," the snake said, "I should have been burned to death. He rescued me."

Then he told the Tsar of the Snakes the whole story. The Tsar of the Snakes listened carefully and when the Snake Prince was finished he turned to the shepherd and said:

"Sir, I am deeply indebted to you for saving my son's life. Ask of me anything I can grant and it is yours."

"Give me then," the shepherd said, "the gift of understanding the language of the animals."

"Not that!" the Tsar of the Snakes cried. "It is too dangerous a gift! If ever you confessed to some other human being that you had this gift and repeated what some animal said you would die that instant. Ask something else—anything else!"

"No," the shepherd insisted. "Give me that or nothing!"

When the Tsar of the Snakes saw that the shepherd was not to be dissuaded, he said:

"Very well, then. What must be, must be. Come now very close to me and put your mouth against my mouth. Do you breathe three times into my mouth and I shall breathe three times into your mouth. Then you will understand the language of the animals."

So the shepherd put his mouth close to the mouth of the Tsar of the Snakes and breathed into it three times. Then the Tsar of the Snakes breathed into the shepherd's mouth three times.

"Now you will understand the language of all animals," the Tsar of the Snakes said. "It is a dangerous gift but if you remember my warning it may bring you great prosperity. Farewell."

So the shepherd went back to his flocks and lay down under a fir tree to rest.

Also read
Read
Read
Read