Prevod

There was once an emperor named Emperor Dukljan. One day, while hunting through deep woods and dense thickets, he caught sight of a lake and crept quietly towards it in the hope of finding some game. Leaning a little over the water, he saw a winged horse emerging from the lake, with a winged man upon its back whose golden hair reached down to his heels. At the sight of them, the emperor hid and peered out to see where the man would go and what he would do. As soon as he reached dry land, the man dismounted and took up a long, curved pipe, patterned like some enormous snake, and began to play it so fearfully that, dear God, there was no bearing the sound. At its voice, all the stones and trees began to sway. The emperor took fright, drew his bow, and shot the man, wounding him grievously through both wings. The man fell from the horse and gave a cry of pain and sorrow that could have been heard in heaven, then shouted, “Thank God, man, that you saw me before I saw you!” When the emperor saw that he had wounded the man, he rushed towards him with his sword drawn, but the man, wounded as he was, darted into the lake. Then the emperor caught the horse, mounted it, and fled homewards. Yet scarcely had he mounted when wings sprouted on the king as well. Terrified, the king dismounted, took the horse by the bridle, and led it along. After he had walked a little way, his wings vanished, and so he reached home. Once there, he told all that had happened, and the horse was led into the stable among the other horses. Hearing of the lake, the emperor’s son set out one morning without his father’s knowledge and, following his father’s account, found his way there. But he did not approach quietly; he came with an arrow drawn. Before he reached the lake, he saw a middle-aged woman beside it, her hair hanging loose, weeping and gazing at him, and he fell senseless on the spot, as though dead. At the very instant he collapsed, the winged horse in the emperor’s stable began to neigh and beat its wings, making such a din and clatter that the whole imperial palace shook. The emperor sprang up to see what was wrong, and the horse said to him, “If you wish to see your son alive, take me back to the place you brought me from.” In alarm, the emperor mounted the horse bareback, and as soon as it reached the open fields, it flew like lightning to the lake. There the emperor saw his son lying stretched out as though dead, with the woman bending over him, weeping and plucking out his eyes with a single hair from her head. The emperor began to lament for his son, and the horse to neigh for the woman, until at last the horse cried, “Now let us exchange son for son, and let his father be forgiven.” Then the woman restored the emperor’s son’s eyes and breathed upon him. When he came to life, she gave him back to the emperor, and he gave her the horse.