These notes are based off The Treasure which is a Russian Folktale from Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S Ralston (1887).
- This story is so crazy!
- I know it's like a moral tale, and seems to fit the normal "fairy tale" vibe, but it gets so creeepy!
- I definitely add a version of this to my portfolio
- It starts out like a normal story
- There is an old poor couple that lives in an a far away kingdom
- When a harsh winter hits, the old woman dies, leaving the old man alone
- Since he is poor, he is unable to give his wife a proper burial.
- He begs friends and neighbors, but no one will help him. Everyone is greedy
- So where does he go? To the pope! Popes are usually helpful, right??
- Nooo
- For some reason, the pope demands that he pay
- The man is too poor, but he does tell the pope that he will be able to pay him back eventually
- The pope still refuses, and kicks the man out of the church :(
- So the man has no choice. He tries to bury his wife by himself
- If I was writing this story for class, I could just start the scene here, with the poor man trying to bury his wife
- It's winter, so the ground is hard and cold, but he keeps trying to dig
- Eventually, he strikes on a metal pot! The pot is filled with ducats (gold)
- He stops digging the grave and goes back home
- With the money, he his able to give his wife a proper funeral, filled with meat and a nice coffin
- Here comes the pope, being a big jerk
- He tells the man to leave, since he doesn't believe that he has the money to pay for the funeral
- But, the man gives him gold, and everything is fine!
- UNTIL
- The pope notices that the old (formally poor) man had plenty of money. The guests had a nice meal, and he fed a lot of people
- The pope asks the man how he got the money
- So, the man tells the story.
- The pope is greedy and jealous, so he comes up with a way to trick the old man out of the money
- He kills and skins a goat (this is wear the story gets creepy!)
- He puts on the goat skin and wears it like a costume:
- Late in the evening the pope dragged the goat indoors, killed it, and took off its skin—horns, beard, and all complete. Then he pulled the goat’s skin over himself and said to his wife:
- That's a good description without being to grotesque
- Anyway, the pope is pretending to be the devil. He goes to the man's house and tells him to get rid of the money
- The man is scared, and he listens! He throws the gold outside, and the pope is able to steal it!
- When he tries to get out of the goat skin costume, his own skin is cut!
- The goat skin has fused with the pope
- He will be stuck in the costume forever!!!
- That's how god punished him for his greediness.
- Such a wild story!
- I loved it, and I bet it would be fun to write my own version!
- “Bring a needle and thread, mother, and fasten up the skin all round, so that it mayn’t slip off.”
So she took a strong needle, and some tough thread, and sewed him up in the goatskin. Well, at the dead of night, the pope went straight to the old man’s cottage, got under the window, and began knocking and scratching.
Image Information:
Goat on a stump
Photo By Kuebi = Armin Kübelbeck - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10972619
Found on: Wikimedia
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