To Your Good Health! is a Russian fairy tale

Fairy tale

A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

. Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang

Andrew Lang was a Scots poet, novelist, literary critic, and contributor to the field of anthropology. He is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales. The Andrew Lang lectures at the University of St Andrews are named after him.- Biography :Lang was born in Selkirk...

 included it in The Crimson Fairy Book.

Synopsis

Everyone in a king's country had to say "To your good health!" whenever he sneezed, but a shepherd with the staring eyes would not say it. The king summoned him and demanded it, but the shepherd would only say, "To my good health." The chamberlain told him he would be killed if he did not, and the shepherd said that he would say it only if he married the princess. The princess thought him handsome enough to marry, but the king was enraged. He had the shepherd thrown in the white bear's pit, but the shepherd's eyes scared it off. Then he had him thrown into a pit of wild boars, but the shepherd played a pipe and made them dance, so they did not harm him. Then he was to have him thrown into a well of scythes, but the shepherd told the guard to give him a minute to look down the well, he might decide to say it after all, and in that minute, he whipped up a dummy that the soldier threw down instead of him.

Then the king offered him a silver wood, a golden castle, and a diamond lake to say it, but the shepherd still said he would say it only he had the princess to wife. The king married him to the princess. At the wedding feast, he sneezed, and the shepherd said, first of all, "To your good health!" which so delighted the king that he did not mind the marriage.

In time, the shepherd succeeded the king. He did not order his people to wish him well against their wills, but everyone did wish him well because he was a good king.