The Crows and the Soldier

Three Crows

The Tale:

There was once a soldier who managed to save up most his money by not spending all of it on food and drink like the others did. He had two comrades who wanted to rob him of his hard earned money, but acted as though they were his friends. They finally manged to convince him to leave the town with them and find a home of his own. Halfway through the journey, they use a disagreement as an excuse and jumped on him, beating him until he was blind. They then take his money and tie him to a gallows tree and leave him there, presumably to die. The blind soldier feels the beam of wood he is tied to and believes it is a cross. Thankful that they left him this small mercy for now “Heaven will guard me”, he begins to pray.

When night comes, the soldier hears a fluttering sound which turned out to be three crows that then land on the tree. They begin to talk and share with each other (and unknowingly, with the soldier as well) three important tidbits of information:

1. The princess is ill, the king has vowed to marry her to anyone who finds a cure, but the only cure is to burn a nearby (yonder) flower to ashes and give it to her to swallow.
2. That night, healing dew will fall from the heavens that if a blind man washed his eyes with it, he would be able to see again.
3. "The flower is wanted by for one, the dew is wanted but for few,” but there is a drought in the land, and no one knows that if you take away a large stone from the market place, there will be a spring with plenty water for all.

Overjoyed at what he had just heard, the blind soldier fights against his bonds until he is free. He then washes his eyes with dew from the grass and regains his sight. After that he finds the nearby flower, burns it, gathers up the ashes, and heads off towards the castle.

After he cures the princess, the king tries to stop the shabby looking man from marrying his daughter by declaring that “whoever wants to have the princess for a wife, must find enough water for the use of the town, where there is this summer a great dearth”. Luckily for the soldier, this problem could also be solved using the crows' convenient information, and he immediately moves the stone and marries the princess.

But a happy ending isn't a happy ending until the villains of the story are punished, so next we hear of the day when the soldier meets his wicked comrades again. They do not recognize him so he introduces himself and explains all that had transpired, and that “Heaven has defeated your wicked wishes, and turned all the mischief which you brought upon me into good luck.”

They fall at his feet, begging for forgiveness, and of course our kindhearted protagonist not only forgives them, but also brings them to the palace and gives them food and clothes.

The comrades remember what he said about the crows and decide to try their luck, so they steal away and sit by the gallows. The crows indeed to come and share information with each other- but the information is the realization that someone must have overheard them speaking. They plan to search to see if they can find someone nearby to punish him for overhearing. They find the comrades and attack them until they are blind and dying. The soldier wonders where his comrades have gotten to, and sets out to search for them. He “found them where they lay, dreadfully repaid for all their folly and baseness.

*Read the original tale here

Discussion points:

There are a few points of interest in this tale:

*The comrades were planning on stealing his money all along. If so, why did they feel the need to wait for the right excuse to jump on him? Why did they wait for a disagreement on the roads instead of attacking him the moment they were far enough away from town? Could they perhaps have been hoping they could get what they wanted without attacking him but the disagreement made them realize there was no chance of that? Maybe they were unwilling to hurt him so they pushed it off for as long as they could, but then why did they beat him until he was blind after? If he became blind from the beating, they obviously beat him far more than they had to. Could this be a small attempt of the story to see a different side to its villains? Or perhaps they had simply been waiting for the opportune moment?

*Now for the question of the power of faith. The soldier prayed because he thought he was tied to a cross. He attributes his escape and good fortune to those prayers. But the story also points out that he was not actually tied to a cross, but to a gallows tree. So in a way his fortune truly attributed to his prayers (or his hope for escape, for the less religious between us) and not to any holy item. I wonder if he would have been so lucky if he had not made the mistake of thinking he was by a cross and praying. Perhaps he would not have heard the crows at all, or he might have heard them, but not thought he had any chance of succeeding so he would not have listened. I feel as though without his faith, his belief that if he prayed hard enough, something would protect him,

the tale would not have had such a happy ending. I think that is something everyone can learn from. You must have some faith in the impossible in order to have the courage to make the impossible happen.

*This fairy tale chooses to keep the soldier as the perfectly good, pious man. He wonderful traits are described throughout the story. We are told of the good way he handles his money, his great faith and most importantly, the way he treats those who harmed him. He not only forgives his comrades who betrayed him entirely, he even takes them into his home and feeds and clothes them. But of course the story itself can't let the bad ones go unpunished, just as it can't let any act of vengeance dirty the purity of the protagonist. So it finds a way to make the comrade's own greed, the cause of their evil act, the cause of their undoing as well. The punishment is fitting, and the soldier remains innocent, so in this story at least it is quite clear who is bad and who is good. 

(I couldn't find any images again. That's the problem with dealing with less known fairy tales, isn't it?)