Afanasyev — The Betrothed Children · The Birch and the Three Falcons · The Blind Men
Three tales of cleverness from Alexander Afanasyev's collection. First, The Betrothed Children: two merchants pledge their infant son and daughter with twenty thousand roubles, and eighteen years later the grown bride — promised meanwhile to a colonel — finds her true bridegroom by his answers to three riddles: the sea has fallen, the moon is on the wane, and one star has fallen from the sky. Then The Birch and the Three Falcons: a retired soldier, hired to guard three falcons, reads a priest's book three nights at a speaking birch, and frees the enchanted tsarevna hidden in its trunk — and her three brothers with her. Last, The Blind Men: a labourer cheated of his change by a blind beggar who sings of poverty follows him home, and finds a barrel of five hundred roubles — and a second beggar richer still, with his fortune sewn into his cap.
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
The tales «Сосватанные дети» (№ 331), «Берёза и три сокола» (№ 275) and «Слепцы» (№ 382) — from «Народные русские сказки» (Folk Russian Tales) collected by Alexander Afanasyev (Nauka academic edition, 1984–85), in fresh in-house English translations made for this series; no published translation was used. Read aloud with an opening and closing theme.
Chapters:
0:30 Introduction
1:00 The Betrothed Children
7:15 The Birch and the Three Falcons
10:15 The Blind Men
Narrated by Lulu. Opening and closing theme: "January Lament" — instrumental.
Held for the owner's ruling, and not read in this episode: «Медведь, лиса, слепень и мужик» (№ 48), The Bear, the Fox, the Gadfly and the Peasant — its telling turns on cruelty that is the tale's very engine (a bear branded with a red-hot axe, a fox's leg broken, a gadfly tormented), so it is held by name rather than softened or silently dropped.
Afanasyev.
KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.
