The Scarlet Flower

The Russian writer Sergey Timofeevich Aksakov heard this fairy tale in his childhood, during an illness. The keykeeper Pelageya, a great master of storytelling, whom the writer's late grandfather loved to listen to, told him about the Scarlet Flower, about a rich merchant and his three beautiful daughters, about a terrible monster that turned out to be a cursed prince.
Here she sits by the stove and begins to sing: "In a certain kingdom, in a certain state..."