The Story of Ivan and the Daughter of the Sun

When they got there, she said to him, “Now go to the nobleman who owns the land here, and beg him for a place where we may build us a hut.” So he went right up to the nobleman’s castle and entered his reception-room, and said, “Glory be to God!”––“For ever and ever!” replied the nobleman. “What dost thou want here, Ivan?”––“I have come, sir, to beg of thee a place where I may build me a hut.”––“A place for a hut, eh? Good, very good. Go home, and I’ll speak to my overseer, and he shall appoint thee a place.”––So he returned from the nobleman’s castle, and his wife said to him, “Go now into the forest and cut down an oak, a young oak, that thou canst span round with both arms.” So he cut down such an oak as his wife had told him of, and she built a hut of the oak, for the overseer had come and shown them a place where they might build their hut. But when the overseer returned home he praised loudly to his master the wife of this Ivan. “She is such and such,” said he. “Fair she may be,” replied the nobleman, “but she is another’s.”––“She need not be another’s for long,” replied the overseer. “This Ivan is in our hands; let us send him to see why it is the sun grows so red when he sets.”––“That’s just the same as if you sent him to a place whence he can never return.”––“All the better.”––Then they sent for Ivan, and gave him this errand, and he returned home to his wife, weeping bitterly. Then his wife asked him all about it, and said, “Well, I can tell thee all about the ways of the sun, for I am the sun’s own daughter. So now I’ll tell thee the whole matter. Go back to this nobleman and say to him that the reason why the sun turns so red as he sets is this: Just as the sun is going down into the sea, three fair ladies rise out of it, and it is the sight of them which makes him turn so red all over!” So he went back and told them. “Oh-ho!” cried they, “if you can go as far as that, you may now go a little farther”; so they told him to go to hell and see how it was there.