A Czechoslovak fairy tale
There was once a king who took great delight in hunting. One day, he went out hunting by himself and saw a fine stag, but it ran off. He followed the stag a great distance into the forest. He went on and on and on until the stag disappeared and he realised that he had lost his way. Night fell and the king by happy chance came upon a clearing where a charcoal-burner had a cottage. The king asked the charcoal-burner to lead him out of the forest and offered to pay him handsomely.
“I’d be glad to go with you,” the charcoal-burner said, “but my wife is expecting the birth of a child and I cannot leave her. It is too late for you to start out alone. Won’t you spend the night here? Lie down on some hay in the garret and tomorrow I’ll be your guide.”
The king had to accept this arrangement. He climbed into the garret and lay down on the floor. Soon afterwards a son was born to the charcoalburner.
At midnight, the king was awakened by a strange, bright light coming from the room below him. He peeped through a crease in the boards and saw the charcoal-burner asleep, his wife lying in a dead faint, and three old women, all in white, standing over the baby, each holding a lighted taper in her hand.
The first old woman said: “My gift to this boy is that he shall encounter great dangers.”
The second said: “My gift to him is that he shall go safely through them all, and live long.”
The third one said: “And I give him for his wife the daughter born this night to the king who lies asleep upstairs on the straw.”
The three old women then blew out their tapers and all was quiet. They were the Fates.
The king felt as though a sword had been thrust into his heart. He lay awake till morning trying to think out some plan by which he could thwart the will of the three old Fates.
When day broke, the child began to cry and the charcoal-burner woke up and saw that his wife had died during the night.
“Ah, my poor motherless child,” he cried, “what shall I do with you now?”
“Give me the baby,” the king said. “I’ll see that he’s looked after properly and I’ll give you enough money to keep you the rest of your life.”
The charcoal-burner was delighted with this offer and the king went away promising to send for the baby.
A few days later when he reached his palace he was met with the joyful news that a beautiful daughter had been born to him. He asked the time of her birth, and of course it was on the very night when he saw the Fates. Instead of being pleased at the safe arrival of the baby princess, the king frowned.
Then he called one of his stewards and said to him: “Go into the forest in a direction that I shall tell you. You will find there a cottage where a charcoal-burner lives. Give him this money and get from him a little child. Take the child and on your way back drown it. Do as I say or I shall have you drowned.”
The steward went, found the charcoal-burner, and took the child. He put it into a basket and carried it away. As he was crossing a broad river he dropped the basket into the water.
“Goodnight to you, little son-in-law that nobody wanted!” the king said when he heard what the steward had done.
He supposed of course that the baby was drowned. But instead the little basket floated in the water like a cradle, and the baby slept as if the river were singing him a lullaby. The basket floated down with the current past a fisherman’s cottage. The fisherman saw it, got into his boat, and went after it. When he found what the basket contained he was overjoyed. At once he carried the baby to his wife and said:
“You have always wanted a little son and here you have one. The river has given him to us.”
The fisherman’s wife was delighted and brought up the child as her own. They named him Plavachek, which means a little boy who has come floating on the water.
The river flowed on and the days went by and Plavachek grew from a baby to a boy and then into a handsome youth, the handsomest by far in the whole countryside.
One day the king happened to ride that way unattended. It was hot and he was thirsty. He beckoned to the fisherman to get him a drink of fresh water. Plavachek brought it to him. The king looked at the handsome youth in astonishment.
“You have a fine lad,” he said to the fisherman. “Is he your son?”
“He is, yet he isn’t,” the fisherman answered. “Just twenty years ago a little baby in a basket floated down the river. We took him in and he has been ours ever since.”
A mist rose before the king’s eyes and he went deathly pale, for he knew at once that Plavachek was the child that he had ordered drowned.
Soon he recovered himself and jumping from his horse said: “I need a messenger to send to my palace and I have no one with me. Could this youth go for me?”
“Your majesty has but to command,” the fisherman said, “and Plavachek will go.”
The king sat down and wrote a letter to the queen. This is what he said:
“Have the young man who delivers this letter run through with a sword at once. He is a dangerous enemy. Let him be dispatched before I return. Such is my will.”
He folded the letter, made it secure, and sealed it with his own signet. To be continued…