Selected Polish Tales

Within half an hour the priest's round ponies stood at Slimak's gate. The priest walked towards the stable with a lantern in one hand and a basket in the other, pushed open the...

Autumn came with drab, melancholy stubble fields; the bushes in the ravines turned red; the storks hastily left the barns and flew south; in the few woods that remained, the bir...

The announcement that the railway was to be built in the spring caused a great stir in the village. The strangers who went about buying land from the peasants were the sole topi...

The loss of his horses had almost driven Slimak crazy. Beating Maciek and kicking him out had not exhausted his anger. He felt the room oppressive, walked out into the yard and...

The squire and his wife left for Warsaw a week after the ball. Their place was taken by Hirschgold's agent, a freckle-faced Jew, who installed himself in a small room in the bai...

Slimak had never been so well off as he was that spring; money was flowing into his chest while he took his leisure and looked around him at all the new things.

It was April. After their dinner Slimak's household dispersed to their different occupations. The gospodyni, tying a red handkerchief round her head and a white linen one round...

It was the height of summer. The squire and his wife had gone away, and the villagers had forgotten all about them. New wool had begun to grow on the shorn sheep.

'Just look at him,' jeered his wife: 'his sukmana is dirty and wet, he hasn't taken off his boots all night, and he scowls like a brigand. You are more fit for a scarecrow in a...

Returning to the courtyard, Slimak let Maciek take the horses. He looked at the cow, which was tied to the fence. Despite the falling darkness he could see that she was a beauti...

The river Bialka springs from under a hill no bigger than a cottage; the water murmurs in its little hollow like a swarm of bees getting ready for their flight.