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Afanasyev — Arys-Pole · At the Pike's Behest
Description
A wicked witch, eaten up with envy, turns her stepdaughter into a wild beast — Arys-Pole — and drives her into the dense forest, setting her own daughter in the true wife's place; only the old nurse knows, and carries the hungry child to the forest's edge, where his mother still comes running to feed him. Then comes the tale of the poor peasant who caught an enormous pike in his well on a feast-day morning — a pike that spoke with a human voice and gave him the words that make every wish come true: "At the pike's behest, by God's blessing." With those words he wins a laid table, and with them, in a moment of spite, he binds his fate to the tsar's daughter who forgot him in her alms-giving — through the tarred barrel on the open sea, to the finest palace in the world, with twelve ducks and a drake on its pond, every feather gold and silver. This episode reads Afanasyev's «Арысь-поле» (№ 266) whole, and then «По щучьему веленью» (№ 167) whole.
The tales «Арысь-поле» (№ 266) and «По щучьему веленью» (№ 167) — from the collection of Alexander Afanasyev, in new English translations made for this show, read aloud over a gentle instrumental bed.
Afanasyev.
Intermission: "The Spring Remembers" — instrumental.
KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.