in their hair. The czar's son chooses the youngest as his wife and marries her. When she is pregnant for the first time, the czar's son looks for a midwife, and finds a woman named Vedyava by the river and hires her. Vedyava takes the first son, hides him elsewhere, and replaces him with a kitten. This happens with the next ten pregnancies, until the czar's son, fed up with the apparently false promises, orders his wife to be locked up in an iron barrel with her last son and cast in the sea. His order is carried out, and the pair sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Fifteen years pass, and son and mother pray to God for the barrel to wash ashore on any island. This happens, and they find themselves on land. The boy finds three men quarreling about an ax, a cloth, and a magic cudgel and steals them to build a house for him and his mother. Later, some fishermen come to the island and depart to visit the czar's son, now the czar himself and married to Vedyava. The boy turns into a little mosquito and flies incognito to his father's court. Vedyava mocks the fishermen's report, and tells of other miraculous sights: first, a boar-pig that plows fields with its paws and sows with its snout; second, a mare that foals with each step; third, a tree with silver bells that ring with the wind, and a singing bird perched on it; lastly, about eleven boys that live somewhere, each with a sun on the front, a moon on the back of the head, and stars in their hair. After each visit, the boy finds the boar-pig, the mare and its foals, the bell-tree and the bird. As for the last sight, the boy recognizes it is about his brothers and asks his mother to bake eleven loaves of bread for the road, then goes on a quest for them. With the help of a magic bird, the boy is carried to the brothers' hut and takes them back to their mother. Other regions Zaonezh'ya In a tale from with the title "Про Ивана-царевича" ("About Ivan-Tsarevich"), recorded in 1982, three sisters in a bath house talk among themselves, the youngest says she will bear nine sons with golden legs, silver arms and pearls in their hair. She marries Ivan-Tsarevich. A local witch