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“Oh, you old fatty!” he exclaimed, “shivers and shakes, quivers and quakes! Be off! this has nothing to do with you!” Then he went on a little way and thought, “Why did I bid her remove?” So he approached her again and said, “Bábushka,^[8] little dove, forgive me: this is my trouble. Prince Vladímir has given me eighty score of sable skins, of which I am to make a shúba in the morning. If only the buttons had been moulded and the silken buttonholes sewn! But there are to be lions moulded on to the buttons, and there are to be shepherds embroidered on to the buttonholes that should have sung and warbled. How am I to set about it? It would be better for me to drink vódka behind the counter.”

Then the old woman, with her patched skirt, said, “Oh, I am now ‘Bábushka’ and your ‘little dove’! Do you go to the border of the blue sea, and stand in front of the grey oak: at the hour of midnight the blue sea will boil over and Chúdo-Yúda, the Old Man of the Sea, will come out to you: he has no hands, no feet, and he has a grey beard. Take hold of him by his beard and beat him until he asks you, ‘Why do you beat me, Danílo the Unfortunate?’ Then you are to answer, ‘I am beating you for this reason: let me see the Swan,^[9] the fair maiden; let her body glint through her wings, and through her body let her bones appear, and from bone to bone let the marrow run like a flowing string of pearls.’”