Once upon a time there lived a man and his wife who were so poor that they did not have a friend in the world. ‘I go to church and they turn me out,’ cried his wife. ‘I enter a neighbour’s house, and they show me the door. We would be better off living somewhere in the mountains, away from all these heartless people.’
They took their few belongings and moved to a mountain cave.
‘All because of bad neighbours,’ sighed the husband.
‘Thank heaven, no more neighbours,’ said his wife.
‘But we still have to eat, you know. I have to go to the nearest town to find work.’
‘May the Lord be with you when you go,’ said his wife. ‘Remember, you have to please people to prosper. The flattering lamb can suck the milk of seven ewes.’
The husband was gone for a month, and came back with his bag full of foodstuffs. When he saw a giant lying before the cave, he was afraid to enter and wanted to turn back. The giant got up, muttered something, and disappeared. His wife came out of the cave to greet him.
‘Don’t be afraid, he is harmless,’ she said. ‘God sent him to protect our new home while you were away working.’
The man was very happy to be back with his wife. He opened his bag and said: ‘Look, enough food to last us a month! I am working for a kind master. He pays me good wages, and will let me come home once a month.’
They had a good supper together and went to bed. He was up at dawn, took his bag and went back to work, saying he would be back in a month, and not knowing his wife was with child.
When the time for the delivery came and she was in pain, she said to herself: ‘I am all alone here, what shall I do without a midwife?’
But somehow a midwife was in the cave when her child was born. And the midwife washed the baby, wrapped her up, and put her in bed beside the mother.
The mother said five or six days later: ‘Oh my goodness, how can I christen my baby with no parish priest and no godfather?’
Suddenly the parish priest entered the cave with the godfather. The midwife prepared the water, the godfather held the baby in his arms, the priest swung his censer over the baptismal basin, and put some holy ointment in the water before the child was immersed in it and named Rose-Maiden. After the ceremony they gave the child back to its mother.
‘Now that we have christened this baby, let each of us make a wish,’ said the midwife.
‘You make the first wish,’ said the priest.
‘May God turn the water to silver and gold each time Rose-Maiden takes her bath,’ the midwife wished.
‘And may God turn her tears to pearls when she cries,’ said the priest.
‘May God strew the ground with flowers of immortality wherever she walks,’ said the godfather.
They made these three wishes and disappeared.
Two days later when the mother was bathing the baby, it seemed to her that the water froze in the tub, and she dumped it in a far corner of the cave. When the baby cried, pearls dropped from her eyes, but the mother thought they were hailstones and swept them off, piling them up in the same corner.
Meanwhile her husband received his wages for the second month and came home with another bag of foodstuffs on his shoulder. He saw the same mysterious giant guarding the door of the cave, but he wasn’t afraid this time, and the giant let him pass. The man found his wife lying in bed with a baby beside her, and was overjoyed to learn he was a father. He took the baby in his arms and said: ‘Wife, who helped you deliver this bundle of light?’
She said: ‘I wasn’t alone, thank heaven. There was the midwife with me when I needed her, and later the priest and the godfather also came to christen our baby. They named her Rose-Maiden.’
They sat down and had a good meal together. They played with the baby, and then went to sleep.
He was up at dawn—may the morning light shine upon you!—and saw a pile of something white glistening in a corner. ‘Where did all this ice come from?’ he said, and began packing his bag with what he thought was ice. ‘I’ll take this ice to my master,’ he said. ‘In hot weather like this he enjoys sipping his wine with a little ice in it. He asked me if we have any snow left here in the mountains, and I was wondering where I could find some ice for him.’
‘I can’t understand it,’ said his wife. ‘I was giving the baby a bath when suddenly the water froze in the tub. And when the baby cried, the floor was covered with these hailstones.’
He swung his bag over his shoulder and went back to work.
His master was not at home and he kept his bag in the cool basement so that the ice in it would not melt. When his master came home, he opened his bag and took him a handful of what he reckoned to be ice.
‘Where did you get this? Do you have any more of this?’ the astonished master asked him.
‘I have plenty more in my bag.’
‘Let’s see it.’
They went to the basement and the man opened his bag.
‘Good heavens, man, you call this ice? What you’ve got here is gold and silver and pearls. Son, I have no right to this treasure. It is all lawfully yours. Let’s go to the bazaar and turn it into cash.’
When they came back from the bazaar the servant was a rich man.
‘You don’t have to work for me any more, go home and enjoy your wealth,’ said his master.
The man took his money and walked back to the cave. ‘Wife, that wasn’t frozen water and hailstones, but gold, silver, pearls!, he cried. ‘This bag is packed full of money and we don’t have to live in this cave any more. We can go back to town and live in a mansion. Friend and foe alike will go blind from envy when they see our mansion.’
‘We can build our mansion right here, over this cave,’ she said. ‘May God save us from neighbours. It has been so peaceful here without neighbours.’
The man hired master craftsmen and workers and built a mansion over the cave. Rose-Maiden grew up in this mansion, and she grew much faster than other girls, so that at fifteen she was a tall willowy maiden in full bloom. Flowers of immortality sprang at her feet when she walked, and wherever she went she left a train of roses and violets behind her. Her face glowed like the full moon, and she seemed to say to the moon: ‘Stand back and let me come out and shine in your stead.’ Her hair, shining like pure gold, reached down to her ankles. Her speech flowed like honey from her rose-red lips.
One day the king’s son happened to be hunting in the neighbourhood of the mansion with the chamberlain, and they found nothing to shoot all day. Then they spotted a deer and, spurring their horses, went after it as it bounded off and disappeared somewhere around the palatial house on the mountain. They rode up to the gate and wanted to search the grounds, hoping to find the deer that escaped. An old man sitting at the gate said: ‘I saw no deer.’ But he let them in, and wondered if it was a deer they were really after.
They searched for the deer all over the place and could not find it. But they saw Rose-Maiden, bunches of roses and violets blooming about her feet as she walked. The king’s son could not take his eyes off such a beauty.
‘There is my deer!’ he said.
The chamberlain’s blood froze in his veins. If you had stuck a dagger into his heart you couldn’t have drawn a drop of blood. He wanted the prince to marry his own daughter. But the prince lost no time in asking for Rose-Maiden’s hand, and the old man, her father, said: ‘You will have to ask her first.’
Rose-Maiden’s answer was ‘Yes.’
The prince was a headstrong youth and he wanted to take her to his father’s palace and marry her at once, but the chamberlain told him not to be so rash. ‘That wouldn’t be quite proper. We have to tell the king and seek his advice before you marry that girl.’
The king’s son bade Rose-Maiden farewell, mounted his horse and assured the girl he would soon be back. He and the chamberlain rode off at a fast trot.
‘I have found the maiden I want to marry,’ the prince said to his father. ‘There isn’t another girl like her. She is the only one for me.’
The king had a confidential talk with his chamberlain and questioned him about the girl his son was so enamoured with.
‘You will see her,’ the chamberlain said with a leer. ‘A wild mountain girl born in a cave.’
The king’s son was determined to marry the maiden of his choice, and rode back with the chamberlain and with an escort of mounted troops, with drums and bagpipes, to fetch her as his bride. The chamberlain’s daughter went along with the groom’s party, disguised in man’s clothes. Rose-Maiden’s father gave a big feast for them, and they left the next morning with the blessings of the old man. ‘May you grow grey together on the same pillow,’ he said, as he saw them off.
It was getting dark on their way back and the chamberlain said to his men: ‘No need to hurry. We can camp here tonight and make an entrance tomorrow morning to let our people see the royal bride and rejoice with us.’
The chamberlain got all of his men dead-drunk. He deceived Rose-Maiden and led her to a spring near the camp. ‘Sit down here, my dear, and wait for me,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back with a reliable person to guard you. Our men are a bit unruly tonight.’
The chamberlain returned with his own daughter. They overpowered Rose-Maiden, and while he held the poor girl by the arms he said to his daughter: ‘Take off her clothes and wear them yourself!’ His daughter cast off her male garb and put on Rose-Maiden’s bridal clothes. Then she drew her dagger and put out Rose-Maiden’s eyes, and thrust the eyeballs into her pocket. They left her naked and bleeding by the spring, and the chamberlain’s daughter crawled into the royal tent and lay down beside the king’s son. All the men lay around in drunken stupor, and nobody knew what had happened.
They got up in the morning and continued their journey. They entered the king’s city with drums and bagpipes playing lively wedding tunes. And by the king’s order the wedding was celebrated for seven days and seven nights.
A day or two later the king’s son said to his wife: ‘Walk around a little and let me see flowers springing from under your feet.’
She found excuses not to show her talent and he became suspicious. She displeased him so much that he struck her almost every day. Hearing his daughter’s screams, the chamberlain went to the king and said: ‘Didn’t I tell you she is a wild one? We should never have brought her here. But now that she is your son’s wife it’s a disgrace to beat her. People are talking about it. These beatings must stop.’
Let the king’s son beat the chamberlain’s daughter a thousand times a day for all we care, and let’s see what happened to Rose-Maiden meanwhile. A merchant happened to be travelling along the same road and sat down by the same spring to eat his lunch. He threw a piece of bread to his dog, and the dog picked it up and disappeared behind the bushes. When the dog came back the merchant threw it another piece of bread, and the dog trotted off with the bread between its teeth. The merchant asked one of his men to follow the dog as he threw it another piece of bread.
The man ran back crying, ‘Master, the dog has been taking the bread to an eyeless girl stripped of her clothing.’
The merchant was kind to her. ‘My poor child, where are you from?’ he asked.
‘I am from the king’s city,’ she said.
‘I am on my way to the king’s city. I’ll be glad to take you home.’
She travelled with the merchant’s caravan. ‘I can find my way home,’ she said, as they entered the city. She knocked on the door of a small house, and the merchant went on his way.
An old woman opened the door.
‘Who are you? What do you want?’
‘Nanny, will you let me stay with you?’
‘O my dear child, I am a poor old woman living alone, how can I keep you in my house?’
Rose-Maiden reached into her pocket, and when the old woman saw a handful of gold coins she said: ‘Come in, my dear, come in.’
‘Nanny dear, don’t be afraid of me. I won’t give you any trouble. I’ll make you rich, you’ll see. And now, may I have a bath?’
The old woman grabbed her pail and fetched the water for the girl’s bath. She kept fussing around her guest.
‘Nanny dear, you’d better leave me alone now while I take my bath,’ said Rose-Maiden.
When the old woman came back to empty the tub she was overjoyed to see it filled with gold and silver.
‘How did this happen?’ she exclaimed.
‘Nanny, all you need to get rich is a pair of strong arms to carry the water for my bath. I’ll keep turning it to gold and silver,’ Rose-Maiden told her.
From then on the old woman could hardly wait to fetch the water for Rose-Maiden’s bath. She was off to the fountain early every morning before daybreak, and the gold and silver piled up in her house.
One day Rose-Maiden said: ‘Is there an architect in this town?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘Then have him come over and draw the plans for your great new mansion, with the most splendid facade you ever saw. From now on you and I are going to live in a palace.’
The architect came and drew the plans, and the mansion was built in two months. It was the talk of the town. They furnished it with beautiful rugs and carpets and lived in high style.
‘Well, Nanny dear, I hope you are happy and nothing is missing now,’ said Rose-Maiden.
‘No, my dear child, I cannot say I am happy. Something very important is missing in this house, and I think about it day and night.’
‘What is it, dear? Tell me.’
‘Your being sightless grieves me no end and is more than I can bear. How can I ever be happy when you can’t see?’
‘Nanny dear, I had a strange dream last night. I saw myself at a spring with you and I heard two doves talking about restoring my eyesight, would you believe it? There must be, it seems to me, such a spring around here.’
‘I can take you to a wonderful spring where we shall sit in the shade of tall plane trees and enjoy the air and the view.’
They went to this spring the next morning, and Rose-Maiden dangled her feet in the water and laid her head in Nanny’s lap. The old woman was tired, and both fell asleep. Rose-Maiden saw the same two doves in her dream and again heard them talking about her eyes.
‘That’s Rose-Maiden, see?’ cooed one dove to another. ‘The girl who was born in a cave. The chamberlain’s daughter put out her eyes and married the king’s son herself. She still has Rose-Maiden’s eyeballs. Let’s drop a feather. The old woman will pick it up for her. Then she can go out and sell her flowers for a pair of eyes. Once Rose-Maiden rubs our feather over her eyes she will see again.’
The doves flew away, and Rose-Maiden woke up and shook the old woman. ‘Nanny, get up, you have slept enough. See if you can find a dove’s feather under these trees. I need it.’
The old woman got up and searched for the feather, found it, and gave it to Rose-Maiden. They went home.
‘Now watch me walk, and follow in my footsteps gathering the roses and violets you will see blooming at my feet. Tie them up in bunches and go out and sell them for a pair of eyes. That’s the price for these flowers,’ Rose-Maiden said to the old woman, ‘you must accept no other.’
The old woman filled her basket with roses and violets, tied them up in attractive bunches, and went out to sell them in the streets. They were flowers of the rarest beauty, flowers of immortality, and it was not the season for roses and violets, so she knew they would fetch a high price, but who had an extra pair of eyes to give her? People thought she was mad. Then a window opened in the king’s palace, and the royal bride leaned out and called: ‘I’ll buy your flowers!’
The old woman said: ‘I’ll sell them only for an extra pair of eyes.’
The royal bride fumbled for the two eyeballs she still had in her pocket and said: ‘Here, take these.’
The old woman was very glad to have the eyes and let her have the whole basket of flowers.
Rose-Maiden heard her footsteps and met her at the gate.
‘My dear child, I’ve got them, here they are!’
Rose-Maiden had her eyes back and replaced them in their sockets. ‘Now bring me some fresh water from the spring,’ she said.
The old woman fetched the water, and Rose-Maiden dipped the feather in it, and rubbed it on her eyes. And lo, she could see again! And as her eyes healed, so did the wound in the old woman’s heart.
Let them rejoice in their new mansion while we return to the king’s palace.
The king’s son was very pleased with these flowers in his wife’s chamber. She hung them in bunches on the walls and around their bed, hoping to win his love in this manner. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘these are the flowers I have been looking for. I am sorry I had to be so rude to you to get them. Now walk around and let me see how they bloom at your feet.’
This request always annoyed her and she said: ‘Oh please don’t rush me so!’ It led to another quarrel, and the king’s son moved out of her bedchamber and slept in another room.
‘Only my Rose-Maiden,’ he thought, ‘was able to raise such roses and violets.’ But if she were still alive, where was she? He was hopeful of finding his lost bride. These flowers were good omens. But for some months there were no further clues and all he could do was to hope and wait.
In that country, every May it was the custom to entrust the keeping of the king’s horses to his subjects, who kept them for a few months and then returned them to the king, grown fat and sleek in summer pastures. The old woman told Rose-Maiden about this custom, and Rose-Maiden said it would be a shame if they could not keep at least one horse for the king. By the time the old woman went to the royal stables the king had already distributed his horses and only an old scruffy horse that nobody wanted to keep was left. The king let her take this horse, thinking it would probably die on the road. It was so weak and scrawny that it could hardly stand on its legs.
‘Did you bring the horse?’ Rose-Maiden asked.
‘Yes, I got one, but it looks worthless. And we have no oats, no barley, no hay, nothing to feed it. It won’t be easy to keep this horse.’
‘You leave that to me,’ said Rose-Maiden. ‘God is merciful. We’ll manage.’
The horse grazed at her feet, followed her around, and in a few months became a fiery steed. When the time came to return it to the king’s stables the king’s son came to take it back.
‘Nanny, I believe you have been keeping one of our horses,’ said the king’s son.
‘Yes, it’s here, the mightiest horse you ever saw. It plays with the stars.’
The king’s son went into the yard, and what did he see? A fiery steed following Rose-Maiden and feeding on bunches of roses and violets growing at her feet as she led it by the bridle. The king’s son went mad with joy. They recognized each other, and embraced.
Rose-Maiden told him what the chamberlain and his daughter had done to her. And he went home and told it all to his father.
‘You scolded me for marrying a wild mountain girl born in a cave, and kept repeating, “Don’t blame us for it, you married her of your own free will, I wanted you to marry the chamberlain’s daughter.” Well, father, you will meet her now, my wild mountain girl, my own true bride. Now order that carpets be spread from here to the old woman’s house.’
The carpets were spread by the king’s order. The chamberlain was already half-dead on his feet. Rose-Maiden was led to the king’s castle with royal honours, with troops lining the streets, and everyone who saw her went wild over her. Crowds followed her, picking up the roses and violets she shed in immortal bunches behind her, and marvelling at her beauty and grace. The king kissed her on the brow, then kissed his son, and gave them his blessing.
Rose-Maiden and the king’s son attained their wish, and may you likewise attain your wish.
As for the chamberlain and his daughter, they were tied to the tails of wild mules by the king’s order.