Bilingual fairy tales to accompany your child's sweet dreams
Long ago, a poor soldier with nowhere to go made a seven-year pact with the Devil: no washing, no combing, no cutting, no prayer, in exchange for endless gold. Wrapped in a bearskin, he wandered the world — feared by all, yet kind at heart, giving to the poor wherever he went. On the seventh year he found his faithful bride with a broken ring, while her two vain sisters were undone by their own envy.
Three women are turned into flowers that look exactly alike. How does a husband pick out his own wife? The answer hides in a single drop of dew.
For three days a hare steals the cabbages, then tricks the maiden onto its tail and carries her home to be its bride. The maiden turns the trick around, leaves a straw double in her place, and slips home unnoticed.
A golden-haired princess flees her father's wrong plan in a cloak of a thousand furs and hides as a kitchen girl in another land; three secret feasts and three golden treasures finally give her away, for gold buried in ashes cannot stay hidden.
A boy called the Simpleton shares his plain food with a little grey man and is given a golden goose. Greedy people stick to it one by one and form a funny line that makes the sad princess laugh. Thanks to his kind heart, he passes the king's three tasks, marries the princess, and good deeds are rewarded with good luck.
Long ago twin brothers ate the heart and liver of a golden bird, and gold began to appear under their pillows every morning — until a wicked uncle drove them from home; a kindly huntsman raised them as skilled hunters, and grateful animals repaid their kindness, so the younger brother slew the dragon and saved the princess, and when a lying marshal stole the deed, the animals brought him back to life, and he returned with the dragon's tongues as proof and won back everything that was his.