Episode Details

A Hungarian wonder tale from Elek Benedek's great collection of Hungarian folk tales and legends. A widowed king remarries, and his little son — kept in rags by his stepmother while her own boy wears gold — is sent out to herd the golden-fleeced sheep on dry, mouldy bread. In a great forest he finds an old hermit in a house in a tree, who sends him to herd the Black King's hundred scatter-winged geese with a magic pipe — and gives him three golden rings, each to be traded for a glimpse of the marks the Black King's daughter keeps hidden: a shining star behind one ear, a moon behind the other, and the sun itself on her veiled forehead. He wins her at last by the riddle her father proclaimed to all the world — but the fairies who guard her secret steal her out of the wedding chamber, and he must win her back twice over: once from a glass coffin on a river, and once at the golden bridge of Fairyland, past two guardian dragons and a seven-day crawl upon his knees.

From Benedek Elek, Magyar mese- és mondavilág (Athenaeum, 1894–96), public domain; told in a fresh in-house rendering.

KacheliTV — world classics, read aloud.