ABSTRACT
There lived this tsar. And he had neither son nor daughter. He began to pray to God that perhaps even the cook would bear him a son. So she got pregnant and soon she gave birth to a son and the tsar recognized him as his own. But then the tsaritsa suddenly got pregnant. And she gave birth to a son. She gave birth and he immediately bellowed out, he shouted such that the palace chambers all swayed from comer to comer, and from the middle poppy seeds came pouring down all over. The tsar took his three-pood mace and quieted him down: “Bye, bye, baby bye, Ivan Tsarevich! You shall grown up to be strong and take as your bride Rusa-Rusa with her black braid, the sister of thirty brothers, the granddaughter of forty grandmothers, the daughter of three mothers.”
