Father Frost (fairy tale)

Russian fairy tale

Father Frost (Морозко, Morozko) is a Russian fairy tale collected by Alexander Afanasyev in Narodnye russkie skazki (1855–63). Andrew Lang included it, as "The Story of King Frost", in The Yellow Fairy Book (1894). It is Aarne–Thompson type 480, The Kind and the Unkind Girls. Others of this type include Shita kiri Suzume, Diamonds and Toads, Mother Hulda, The Three Heads in the Well, The Three Little Men in the Wood, The Enchanted Wreath, The Old Witch, and The Two Caskets. Literary variants include The Three Fairies and Aurore and Aimée. The film Morozko was based on the fairy tale.

A woman has a daughter, whom she loves, and a step daughter, whom she hates. One day, the woman orders her husband to take her stepdaughter out into the winter wilderness and to leave her there to die, and he obeys, leaving her at the foot of a tree in the forest. Father Frost finds her there, and because the girl is polite and kind to him, he gives her a chest full of beautiful jewels and fine garments. Some time later, the stepmother sends the girl's father to retrieve her body for burial, and is enraged when he instead brings the girl back alive and happy and dressed in finery. Consumed by greed and envy, the woman orders her husband to take her own daughter to the same place, but when found by Father Frost the woman's daughter is rude and unkind to him, and he is inclined to punish rather than reward her. The father finds her frozen to death at the foot of the tree and carries her body back to her grief stricken mother. In the Grimm version, the girl is covered with gold and silver coins while the rude child is covered with cement, mud, flour, and pitch.