The Seven Ravens

By Božena Nemcová, 2-B VOSON A SPSO

A kind and gentle girl named Bohdanka finds seven children’s shirts hidden away in a trunk. Her nanny tells her about her seven brothers, who were cursed by their mother into ravens, because they were disrupting her while she was making bread. Bohdanka decides to save them. During her search she receives help from the Wind, the Moon and the Sun. The Wind is a wild young man with sweet-smelling breath, the Moon has beauteous silver hair and the Sun has golden.

Bohdanka can only save her brothers if she grows a flix, makes a yarn and then she uses it to make a cloth. Out of the cloth she must make seven shirts without uttering a single word during the whole process. The girl lives deep in the woods in an old willow. She’s discovered by a handsome prince, who falls in love with her and makes her his wife. Bohdanka gives birth to a boy, but the prince’s evil sister throws the child out of the window and lays a black kitten in its place telling the prince Bohdanka’s a witch.

The miserable girl can’t defend herself and mute continues to sew the shirts. The day she’s about to be burned to death the shirts are almost done. Finally the ravens arrive. Bohdanka throws them the shirts and they turn back into boys. One of them has a few black feathers on his shoulder, because his shirt wasn’t finished. The brothers give Bohdanka her son and she can tell her husband about everything. The evil sister is burned to death by villagers.