Category: Fairy Tale - Page 8

The Duckling with Golden Feathers

A Latvian tale, this version is taken from the 1938 anthology Wonder Tales from Baltic Wizards by Frances Jenkins Olcott.

Once on a time two King’s children, a brother and a sister, lived with a hateful woman. She ill-treated the two children, though she loved her own daughter who was both dirty and ugly.

One day the two children said to each other, “Let us go away.”

So they went and went, till they reached a crossroad, and there they parted with many tears. The brother took with him a portrait of his sister to remember her by, and started on his way.

Little White Dog

Fairy Tale | Latvia | 3 minute read

A Latvian tale, this version is taken from the 1938 anthology Wonder Tales from Baltic Wizards by Frances Jenkins Olcott.

Once on a time there was a girl who lived with a bad-tempered woman. The woman treated her meanly. The girl tried to do everything she was told to do, but could never satisfy the woman.

One day she had to go to the well to fetch water without wetting the bucket. The poor girl shed hot tears. Just then a Little White Dog, as if called by magic, came running up out of the ground.

“If you will take me for your bridegroom,”, said he, “I will provide water in your dry bucket.”

The girl promised.

The Headless Dwarfs

Fairy Tale | Estonia | 12 minute read

An Estonian fairy tale, this version was published in the Violet Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, in 1901.

There was once a minister who spent his whole time in trying to find a servant who would undertake to ring the church bells at midnight, in addition to all his other duties.

Of course it was not everyone who cared to get up in the middle of the night, when he had been working hard all day; still, a good many had agreed to do it. But the strange thing was that no sooner had the servant set forth to perform his task than he disappeared, as if the earth had swallowed him up. No bells were rung, and no ringer ever came back. The minister did his best to keep the matter secret, but it leaked out for all that, and the end of it was that no one would enter his service. Indeed, there were even those who whispered that the minister himself had murdered the missing men!

The Mosquito and the Horse

Fairy Tale | Estonia | 3 minute read

An Estonian fairy tale, this version is from Tales of The Amber Sea, compiled and translated by Irina Zheleznova in 1974.

One day a horse was out grazing in the field when a mosquito flew up to him.

Said the mosquito, seeing that the horse did not notice him: “Don’t you see me, Horse?”

“I see you now,” the horse replied.

The mosquito looked over the horse – he looked at his tail, his back, his hoofs, his neck and at both his ears, one after the other. He looked and he shook his head.

“You’re terribly big , friend, aren’t you!” said he.

What Witches Tell

Fairy Tale | Latvia | 5 minute read

A Latvian tale, this version is taken from the 1938 anthology Wonder Tales from Baltic Wizards by Frances Jenkins Olcott.

In the Land where on Midsummer Night, the St. John’s Fires blaze up, and the girls dance at the Flower Feast, adorned with garlands of wheat-ears and blue cornflowers, in that Land, I say, Witches fly about at the midnight hour.

There were once two brothers, who wished to go out into the world to try their luck. They thrust the blades of their knives into the trunk of a mighty fir tree, and made this compact: Whichever one of them should return first, he was to look at the blade of the other’s knife. If bright, then his brother was alive.

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