The Voice of Death
"The Voice of Death" is a Romanian folktale collected in Rumänische Märchen ("Romanian Fairy-Tales"), 1882 by Mite Kremnitz, the pen name of author Marie von Bardeleben, .[1] Andrew Lang included it in The Red Fairy Book.[2]
Synopsis[edit]
A man prays for riches and when he receives them, realizes it would be a shame to die and lose them all.
He sets out in search of a land where death is unknown and finds it.
Instead of dying, here people hear a voice calling to them. They follow the voice and are never seen again.
The man decides that this is ideal, as he and his family will never heed the voice should it call.
He returns home to fetch his wife and children and with their wealth they move to the land without death. They live in peace for sometime, but one evening his wife hears the voice and leaves to follow it, never to be seen again. Years later, the man is at a barber getting shaved when he hears the voice calling him. He becomes so angry that the voice will not stop that he takes the barber's razor and goes out to find the voice. Not wanting to lose his razor, the barber follows and watches as the man chases the voice only he can hear and falls over a cliff. The Barber returns to tell the townsfolk and they follow him to see if this is where all the people following the voice go. Instead of finding the man's body, or any bodies, they instead see only an empty plain. From that day forth, the people die as they would in any other land.
References[edit]
- ↑ http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20552/20552-h/20552-h.htm#The_Voice_of_Death
- ↑ Andrew Lang, The Red Fairy Book, "The Voice of Death"
External links[edit]
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