A Question Every Married Man Asks Himself

From "The Tale of Three Storks" in the collection Tales of Yukaghir, Lamut, and Russianized Natives of Eastern Siberia, collected by Waldemar Bogoras.   The story was told by a Yukaghir man named Innokenty Karyakin in 1895.

There lived a man who did not know where he was born.  We think, however that we were born of this man.  He was rich in everything.  One time a She-Monster came to him and wanted to be his wife.  The She-Monster said, "You must take me for your wife.  Otherwise, I shall devour you."   So he married her, and they lived together.  After some time he felt sorrowful and thought to himself,  "Is it fair, that I being a man, so strong and rich, must have for a wife this unclean monster?"