This strange man was no uncle of Aladdin, nor was he related at all to him; but he was a wicked magician, who wanted to make use of the lad's services.
Koschei the Deathless seized Marya Morevna and carried her off, and Prince Ivan sat down on a stone and wept. He wept and wept and started off in search of Marya Morevna.
‘You must take great pains to make my bed well, and shake it up thoroughly, so that the feathers fly about, and then in the world it snows, for I am Mother Hulda.’
The uncle could not help thinking that he wished the little boy and girl would die, for then he should have all their money for himself.
These people take our flowers home. Some of us they put in baskets and call basket flowers. Some they put in the maidens’ hair and they call us maiden flowers.
Jack ran away crying as loud as he could, ‘A Shilling! a penny! a halfpenny! and a plumcake! Huzza!’ till he came to his father's cottage.
The young Prince continued to fall and fall for ever so long until instead of descending with a bump at the bottom, he stepped gently onto dry land, and found himself in what the Macedonians call the Nether World.
Then, as Bebeck rounded the crag, he beheld a dark opening, within which he could hear a dreadful snarling and barking going on.
It was not long before some one knocked at the house-door and cried, ‘Open the door, dear children; your mother is here, and has brought something back with her for each of you.’