Pavel Bazhov (1879-1950) was a Ural-born writer and journalist. He grew up in a small Urals town where almost everyone, including his father, worked in a local metallurgical plant. Later, he lived in other Ural towns and villages, while working as a teacher. While working as a teacher he began writing down local legends and describing the pagan spirits which people still believed lived in the mountains and influenced local life. In the 1930s he started publishing these oral legends (which he called “skazy”). Some of these he clearly made up from whole cloth, as they employed communist images and values. But others (as the one published here) were based on folklore and became famous.