page_title: Stan Bolovan
section_title: Synopsis
hierarchical_section_title: Stan Bolovan / Synopsis
caption_attribution_description: English: Identifier: violetfairybook00lang (find matches) Title: The violet fairy book Year: 1906 (1900s) Authors: Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912 Ford, H. J. (Henry Justice), 1860-1941, ill Subjects: Folklore Fairy tales Publisher: London New York&#160;: Longmans, Green Contributing Library: New York Public Library Digitizing Sponsor: MSN View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: ashing past. 1 Dear me! exclaimed the dragon, looking round. Who are you, and where do you come from&#160;? I am Stan Bolovan, who eats rocks all night, and inthe day feeds on the flowers of the mountain; and if youmeddle with those sheep I will carve a cross on yourback. When the dragon heard these words he stood quitestill in the middle of the road, for he knew he had metwith his match. But you will have to fight me first, he said in atrembling voice, for when you faced him properly he wasnot brave at all. I fight you&#160;? replied Stan, why I could slay youwith one breath! Then, stooping to pick up a largecheese which lay at his feet, he added, Go and get astone like this out of the river, so that we may lose notime in seeing who is the best man. The dragon did as Stan bade him, and brought back astone out of the brook. Can you get buttermilk out of your stone&#160;? asked Stan. 116 STAN BOLOVAN The dragon picked up his stone with one hand,and squeezed it till it fell into powder, but no butter- Text Appearing After Image: milk flowed from it. Of course I cant! he said, halfangrily. Well, if you cant, I can, answered Stan, and he STAN BOLOVAN 117 pressed the cheese till buttermilk flowed through hisfingers. When the dragon saw that, he thought it was time homade the best of his way home again, but Stan stood inhis path. 4 We have still some accounts to settle, said he, about what you have been doing here, and the poordragon was too frightened to stir, lest Stan should slayhim at one breath and bury him among the flowers in themountain pastures. Listen to me, he said at last. I see you are a veryuseful person, and my mother has need of a fellow likeyou. Suppose you enter her service for three days,which are as long as one of your years, and she will payyou each day seven sacks full of ducats. Three times seven sacks full of ducats! The offerwas very tempting, and Stan could not resist it. He didnot waste words, but nodded to the dragon, and theystarted along the road. It was a long, long way, but when th Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: Stan Bolovan is a Romanian fairy tale collected in Rumänische Märchen by Mite Kremnitz. Fairy tale collector Andrew Lang included it in his The Violet Fairy Book. Versions of the tale were later retold by Ruth Manning-Sanders in A Book of Dragons and A Choice of Magic, and by Christopher Rawson in The Usborne Book of Dragons.
context_section_description: Stan Bolovan's wife was sad, though they were prosperous.  Finally, she confessed that she was grieved that they had no children.  Stan visited a wise man and begged him for children, and ignored his warnings about feeding them all.  He returned to find his wife delighted:  they had a hundred children.  Soon, they found they could not feed them all, and Stan set out to find food. He found a flock of sheep and hoped to steal some, but a dragon stole animals and milk from the flock.  He asked, and the shepherds promised him a third of the flock if he rid them of the dragon.  He met up with the dragon and said he ate rocks by night and flowers by day and would fight.  He set a contest:  he squeezed buttermilk from cheese, and the dragon tried to squeeze it from a rock, and had to own he was better.  The dragon offered him service with his mother, who would pay him sacks of ducats. The mother set them two trials:  her son threw a staff as far as he could, and then it was Stan's turn.  First, he told the dragon he was afraid that he would kill him with the force; then he claimed to be waiting until the moon got out of the way. The mother then sent them to fetch water, and Stan could not have carried the skins she sent, but when he said it was too much bother and threatened to carry the stream instead, the dragon carried them for him.  The mother then sent them to gather wood, and Stan started to tie trees together, declaring he would carry back the entire wood, and the dragon brought back wood for him, before he uprooted the forest. The mother told her son to crack open his head in the night.  Stan hid under a pig's trough and was not harmed.  They gave him gold to go away, which he could not carry, but he said he wanted to stay in her service, because his friends would be ashamed of him, to carry so little; they urged him to go, and he went on the condition that the dragon carry back the gold for him. He did not want to go all the way home with the dragon, so that it would not know where he lived, but his hungry children came running, and were so hungry they shouted for the dragon's flesh. Terrified, the dragon dropped the gold and ran away, leaving Stan and his family to prosper with it.
caption: Illustration from Andrew Lang's Fairy Books
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