In this Romanian folktale, a rich man thinks how terrible it would be to die and have to leave all of his money behind. He sets out to find a land where people do not die. Finally, he comes across a country where the word death is unknown. Instead of dying, people simply follow a strange voice and never return. The rich man is sure that he is strong enough to resist the voice. He moves there with his wife and family, only to learn the truth of the English idiom: Nothing is certain in life but death and taxes.
Original Text / PDF (1,199 words)
General Comments
Our source for the story was The Red Fairy Book, one of a series of twelve collections of folk and fairy tales for children edited by Andrew Lang. This is the second book in the series, and was first published in 1890. Lang’s source was a folktale of the same name in the book Roumanian Fairy Tales collected by German writer Marie von Bardeleben (aka Mite Kremnitz), published in 1885.