Prevod

There was once a very rich man who had a wicked and cruel wife, whom he had married after the death of his first. By his first wife he had only one daughter, gentle as an angel and good as bread, with no other girl in that place to equal her. She was also as lovely as a woodland fairy, tall as a fir, slender as a willow wand, rosy as an apple, and white of face as a mountain lily. But the devil, who is forever bent on evil, stirred up such hatred in the stepmother that she could no more bear the sight of her stepdaughter than of blood in her own eyes, and many a time she would have killed her or done away with her somewhere, had she dared defy her husband. One day an order came from the emperor that every man who could bear a gun must go to war, and this man went too. Just before setting out, he called his wife to him and bound her by every solemn oath to care for his daughter, so that no harm should come to her before he returned from the war; and the wretch swore and promised to love and guard her as the two eyes in her head. Yet the very moment her husband had gone, she summoned the servants and ordered them to take the poor girl into a nearby forest at dawn the next morning, as though for a stroll. Once they had brought her into the forest, they were to lead her astray along bypaths and, well away from the road, kill her and bring back her two hands, cut off just above the wrists, and her heart. If they failed to bring these, she threatened, she would do to them what she had ordered them to do to her stepdaughter. At daybreak the servants rose and made ready to leave, then went to wake the girl, telling her that their mistress, her stepmother, had ordered them to take her for a stroll. The poor girl, knowing nothing of what was in store for her, willingly agreed and set off with them. When they reached a dense wood, they led her astray as that heartless woman had commanded, tied her to a tree, and were about to kill her. But she began to scream, and seeing that she had been deceived, she pleaded and wept and begged them not to kill her. When they told her what their mistress had ordered, and that they dared not disobey or both would pay with their lives, she said again, “Oh, do not kill me! You may take my hands—here, cut them off—and I would give you my heart as well, if I knew I could live without it.” The servants took pity on her and only cut off her hands. As for the heart, they agreed to tell their mistress that they had lost it on the way. Then they turned back, leaving the unfortunate girl alone in the wilderness, without hands or any help at all. When they reached home, they told their mistress what they had agreed to say, and she rewarded them. But God, being God—thanks and glory be to Him!—at the very moment her hands were cut off, caused a man to appear to her father in a dream and say, “Return home this instant, for your daughter has lost her life by order of your godless wife. Seek among the army’s horses a black horse without a mark, a white mare without a mark, a raven-black stallion that has never been ridden, and a mare in foal. Take three hairs from the tail of each, burn them in the fire, and sprinkle the ashes on your daughter’s wounds, and she will at once be as she was before.” When the unhappy father awoke, bewildered, he found everything just as he had dreamed and hurried home as fast as he could. Once there, he asked his wife about his daughter, and she answered that the girl had run away somewhere and she did not know where she was. But he sprang at her and the servants, saying that unless they told him where his daughter was, he would cut them all to pieces with his sabre. His wife kept denying everything, but the servants took fright and told him, one thing after another, all that had happened and how it had come about. With his drawn sabre in his hand, he drove the two servants before him, and they led the way into the forest. There they found the girl more dead than alive, partly from the agony of losing her hands, partly from hunger and loneliness, and partly from fear. When her father saw her, he burst into tears and threw himself over her. Seeing her without hands, he sprinkled her wounds with the ashes of the horses’ tail hairs, and at that very instant she revived, and new hands grew in place of the old—not of flesh, but of pure gold. Then he took his golden-handed daughter home, tied his wife to the horses’ tails, and ordered his servants to have her dragged to the place where his daughter’s hands had been cut off. There the horses tore her apart, and she gave up her dog’s soul.