Аннотация: английская весия сказки О гусе Василии и его гусыне
The Story About Vasili Gander and His Wife Goose.
It is well-known to anyone that geese can fly. There are certainly geese which live on poultry farms, their wings are likely to be trimmed by their keeper. Farm geese are looked after, and all they have to do is to forage on juicy green grass to make sure their fat is building up.
It is also well-known that geese can swim. On land they look rather clumsy as they waddle awkwardly, and so they stay proudly aloof in order not to overhear any mocking remarks. However, when in the water they puff up their white feather cushions, stretch up their long necks and make themselves look like proud swans.
To be fair, the goose is a beautiful bird as long as it stays the way it is. All birds are beautiful as long as they remember why their wings were given to them. Sadly, some birds sometimes forget what they were created for and why they have wings. This story is about exactly that.
Once there was a white lady goose who resembled a hen in many ways. It so happened that a farmer had put a goose egg into a mother-hen"s nest to be hatched - some people have them hatched like that - so the gosling-girl first saw the light of day in the hen"s house and she was brought up by hens; for this simple reason she grew up behaving like a hen.
Nevertheless the gosling was very well aware that she wasn"t in fact a hen and she was full of herself because of that. She wouldn"t forage on a rubbish heap with her little claws and wouldn"t fuss around the yard, although she would not miss a chance to cluck like her hen pals over trivial things. She never went to the river. Her hosts trimmed her wings, just in case, but soon they understood they needn"t have bothered - the gosling had no intention of leaving the yard.
This young lady goose with such a different character attracted a lot of suitors.
"There is something mysterious about her", they said.
At that time in the same yard there was an adolescent gander named Vasili; he was quite distinctive - tall and handsome, with a proudly-set neck and big wings. The local children liked to play with Vasili when he was a chick. They loved him a lot. The owner"s children persuaded their father not to trim Vasili"s wings, so beautiful were his feathers. There was some concern on the farm that the young handsome gander might take off and join one of the migrating flocks. They remembered that in autumn, when still young, he was looking up into the sky with yearning and sadness. The awareness of being a bird was strongly felt by him and he was dreaming of touching the fluffy clouds.
Vasili made friends with the white lady-goose. She was down-to-earth, she knew where to look for the best and fattest worms in the vegetable garden and understood how to bring up young chicks. Unlike the other geese she did not go to the river to swim - that was not good for putting on fat, she said. As for the clouds... she looked up into the sky to see whether it was going to rain, anticipating that after rain there would be lots of worms to eat.
"You have to pay attention to this young goose, she is so home-loving you will live peacefully with her", said mother-goose to Vasili.
They soon were engaged. The days turned to autumn; there were more and more flocks of migrating birds across the sky. The birds were drawn to go to wonderful faraway warm countries... As for Vasili, he stopped yearning for the sky and just like his darling goosy no longer listened to the calling voices up on high. No more was he seen among the group of friends at the river. He put on so much weight and became so fat that he could hardly move. "Now then, no worries, he won"t leave the yard - he"s such a great blob" - thought both the owners and his wife.
He would have been roasted for Christmas had he not been grabbed and carried off to his lair by a half-blinded old fox. Easy and lucky hunting that was for the fox...