Thanks - and another skazka question

[Robert Chandler]

Many thanks, Sasha, Natasha, and Hugh, for answers about the bull hide.

I have another question.  A girl has married a bear.  She is asking the bear
to take a basket of pancakes to her parents' home.  (She is, in fact, doing
this to smuggle her sister, the bear's previous wife, out of the house of
this murderous Bluebeard-like bear).  She has told the bear that the
pancakes are in order to "pomyanut' mamu".

Then she says to the bear, 'Ну неси.  Подай милостыню.  Вот она (т.е.
корзинка) полная.  Да смотри: не ешь.

Мy question is about the words Подай милостыню.  Is she telling the bear to
give alms to any beggar he happens to meet (unlikely since they are deep in
the forest).  Or is it that the pancakes are themselves a form of milostynya
that she is giving to her family back home?

The latter reading, if possible, seems to make much better sense.

Robert

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