Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/380

 304 a variant, "Madon limia" ("The Snake's Castle"), collected in Russian Karelia, where the hero is the only son of an old couple, the mother when dying tells her son not to be downhearted, as he still has his father to help him; soon after the father fell sick. "What shall I do, dear father, when you die?" asked the lad. "Go to the forest," replied the father, "and there you will find three traps, bring home alive whatever you find." Soon the father died, and the lad was left alone in his sorrow; after many days he suddenly remembered what his father had said, and set off to the forest, where he found the traps. In the first and second there was nothing, but in the third was a brown fox, which he brought home alive, thinking to himself, "There's not much to be got out of this beast; I shall soon die of hunger." When he got home, he put the fox on a bench and sat down, when, lo! the fox said, "Look here, Jussi Juholainen, wouldn't you like to get married?" The lad replied, "Why should I marry, poor fox? I couldn't live with a poor woman, and a rich one wouldn't have me." "Marry one of the royal family, and then you'll be rich." The lad said that it was all nonsense; but the fox declared he could do it, and then the story goes on very much like Prince Csihan, shewing the king how rich the suitor for his daughter's hand was, and frightening the dependents of the snake into declaring that they belonged to Jussi Juholainen. At last they reach the snake's castle, "the like of which is not in the whole country, .nay, not in the wide world. An oak was growing by the wayside, and a holly tree in the courtyard, all the leaves were golden coloured, and golden feathered birds sang among the branches; and in the park was a magnificent elk with gold and silver hairs."

The fox frightens the snake by telling of the coming of a great king, saying, "O poor snake, the king is coming to destroy your house, and kill you." The snake at once hurried off to the storehouse where the linen was kept, and hid there, and in due course