Episode Details

Afanasyev — The Feather of Finist, Part One

An old man has three daughters, and when he rides to town the elder two ask for dresses, kerchiefs, golden earrings — but the youngest asks, three times over, for one thing only: a feather of Finist the Bright Falcon. When at last a stranger beyond the city gate sells him the feather for a thousand roubles, it strikes the floor of her chamber and becomes a beautiful tsarevich — until her sisters set sharp knives and needles in her window, and the wounded falcon flies away beyond the thrice-nine lands, leaving her his hard price: three pairs of iron shoes worn out, three cast-iron staffs broken, three stone communion loaves gnawed through. She pays it — past three old women's huts, with their gifts of a golden spindle, a golden egg, and a self-sewing needle — and buys three nights beside her sleeping love with those very treasures. And when the first telling ends, a second begins, recorded in Vologda province, in which what she asks her father for is a little scarlet flower — and at the fair a stranger will part with it only on one condition. Part One ends there, at the stranger's condition.

The Feather of Finist the Bright Falcon (Перышко Финиста ясна сокола) — from the collection of Alexander Afanasyev, in a new English translation made for this show, read aloud over a gentle instrumental bed.

Afanasyev.

Intermission: "2-22" — instrumental.

KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.