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Overview
At a spinning gathering a girl boasts of her courage, retrieves a church image as a dare and later returns it. Passing the moonlit cemetery, she sees a corpse seated on a tomb in a white shroud. She strips away the cloth and carries it home. The initially silent dead figure later taps at her window and repeatedly demands its shroud, refusing the girl’s offer to hand it through the opening: she must restore it where she took it.
The first visit ends when the cocks crow, and the following night the same demand confronts her parents. They seek a priest’s assistance, but during the next church service a tremendous whirlwind throws the girl down and she disappears, leaving only her hair. The text does not explicitly name that whirlwind as a transformed body of the corpse. The account links an unrestituted grave garment to a fatal conclusion while preserving the difference between the visible visitor and the unexplained force at the ending. The narrator’s insults about the girl’s laziness belong to the historical moral framing, not a modern diagnosis.
Origins & earliest records
Ralston, Russian Fairy Tales, hosted Hurst edition: The Shroud, pp. 311–313; note 404; source note: Afanasief V, 30a, pp. 140–142, Voroneje Government.
Records & interpretation
Complete English narrative with an explicit source and regional attribution in the numbered note. Narrator commentary is distinguished from actions actually stated in the tale.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Russian Fairy Tales: The Shroud, pp. 311–313; note 404
Source note: Afanasief V, 30a, pp. 140–142, Voroneje Government. Original Russian not independently collated.
Family & connections
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References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary historical translationRalston: The Shroud, pp. 311–313; note 404Research access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
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