The story starts out by introducing you to a woman that did not pay her due reverence to Mother Friday. It says that instead she set to work on a distaff-ful of flax. I am not sure exactly what that means and tried to look it up but found nothing. I am hoping it will fall into place as I read on.
The woman worked until dinner-time when she fell into a deep sleep. When she fell asleep, Mother Friday paid her a visit. She was clothed in a white dress and was angry. She went straight up to the woman who had been working, picked up a handful of the dust that had fallen out of the flax, and began stuffing the woman's eyes full of it.
I found that to be quite harsh. I was expecting her to just throw the dust at her, but it quickly escalated past that as she stuffed it into the woman's eyeballs. Somehow, as she did this, the woman did not wake up. I found that to be quite strange as well.
When the woman woke up, she began to yell at the top of her lungs as she did not know what was wrong with her eyes. Finally, someone in the room that was watching told her that she brought this upon herself for upsetting Mother Friday. They filled her in on all that happened while the woman was off in her dreams taking a little nap.
Once she found out what happened to her, she cried out apologies to Mother Friday and promises to never dishonor her again. So, during the night, Mother Friday came back and was able to remove the dust from the woman's eyes.
(Photo from WikiMedia.)
Russian Folktales unit. Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S Ralston: Friday.
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