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Overview
An abandoned girl finds a hut where a speaking bear requires her to spin flax, weave cloth and make him a shirt within a day. Tools and food appear as she works. When she succeeds, he offers to have his bears tear her abusive stepmother and stepsister apart; she refuses revenge. He next brings stones and wood onto the stove and orders her to jingle keys all night. A mouse she fed substitutes for her, enabling her to hide while the bear throws missiles towards the sound.
At dawn he identifies himself as a monarch enchanted into a bear until a living soul spends two nights in the hut. Looking into his ears reveals his kingdom and palace to the girl, and a carriage she selects appears without a driver. He sends her home with jewels, promising restoration and marriage within days. The later sequence complicates the promise: her stepsister comes seeking riches, neglects the shirt and refuses the mouse food. A stone strikes and kills her during the night.
The following morning the bear stamps three times at the threshold. Thunder and lightning accompany his visible change into a king with sceptre and crown. He later collects the surviving girl and her father and marries her. The father reports that wolves devoured his stepdaughter, accounting for the remains he found; the directly narrated lethal action was the bear’s thrown stone. The first girl’s survival does not immediately produce the visible restoration.
Origins & earliest records
Polish Fairy Tales, translated from A. J. Gliński by Maude Ashurst Biggs (1920), The Bear in the Forest Hut, pp. 79–93.
Records & interpretation
The selected English tale supplies the transformation, actions and ending. Biggs’s preface explicitly acknowledges considerable shortening of her source.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Polish Fairy Tales: The Bear in the Forest Hut, pp. 79–93
Complete selected English narrative and translator’s preface. No individually named oral contributor provided; original Polish text not collated.
Family, evolution & connections
The old man’s unnamed daughter
The restored king marries the old man’s daughter at the ending, making her father his father-in-law. The stepmother’s expectation that her own daughter will become queen is unfulfilled; that daughter dies.
The restored human monarch
The bear identifies himself as a monarch under enchantment and later returns to human form. His household bears are not identified as relatives, and the helpful mouse is not a child or sibling.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary historical shortened literary translationGliński/Biggs 1920: The Bear in the Forest HutResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.