One young widow was haunted by an evil spirit. And this way and that way the poor woman tried to free herself from him, she was exhausted, and the evil spirit did not lag behind - and that’s all. She told her neighbor about her trouble, and she said:
- And you hang the door with a shirt made of linen - it won’t let an evil spirit into the hut.
The widow listened to her neighbor, sewed a long shirt from the timber and hung it on the door to the hut. At night an evil spirit came, and the shirt said to him:
- Wait a minute, listen to what I had to see and experience in my lifetime.
“Well, speak,” answered the evil spirit.
“Even before I was born,” the shirt began its story, “there was so much trouble with me.” In the spring, the land was plowed, harrowed, and only after that, hemp was sown. Some time passed and I was blocked again. Only then did I ascend and appear into the world. Well, when I appeared, I grow, I reach for the sun...
“Well, that’s enough, I guess,” says the evil spirit. - Let me go!
“If you started listening, let me finish,” the shirt answers. - When I grow up and mature, they pull me out of the ground...
“I understand,” the evil spirit interrupts again. - Let me go!
“No, I haven’t understood anything yet,” his shirt won’t let him in. - Listen to the end... Then they thresh me, separate the seeds...
- Enough! - the evil spirit loses patience. - Let me go!
But at this time a rooster crows in the yard and the evil spirit disappears without ever visiting the widow.
The next night he flies again. And again the shirt won’t let him in.
- So where did I stop? - she says. - Oh, yes, on the seeds. My seeds are peeled, winnowed, stored, and what the seeds grew on - hemp - is first put in stacks, and then soaked in water for a long time, three whole weeks.
- Well, that’s all, or what? - asks the evil spirit. - Let it go!
“No, not everything,” the shirt answers. - I’m still lying in the water. After three weeks they pull me out of the water and put me out to dry.
- Enough! - The evil spirit begins to get angry again. - Let me go!
“You haven’t heard the most important thing yet,” the shirt answers. “You don’t know how they crush and break my bones... So they break and crush me until my whole body is cleared of bones.” Not only that: they also put it in a mortar and let three or four of us pound it with pestles.
- Let me go! — the evil spirit begins to lose patience again.
“They knock all the dust out of me,” the shirt continues, “they leave only a clean body.” Then they hang me on a comb, separate me into thin hairs and spin them. The strained threads are wound on a reel and then dipped into the liquor. Then it’s difficult for me, my eyes are filled with ash, I can’t see anything...
- And I don’t want to listen to you anymore! - says the evil spirit and already wants to go into the hut, but at this time the rooster crows and he disappears.
And on the third night an evil spirit appeared.
“Then they wash me, dry me, make skeins out of me and pass me through the reed, weave it and it turns out to be canvas,” the shirt continues its story.
- That's it now! - says the evil spirit. - Let me go!
“There’s still quite a bit left,” the shirt answers. - Listen to the end... The canvas is boiled in alkaline water, laid on green grass and washed so that all the ash comes out. And again, for the second time, three or four of them push me so that I become soft. And only after that they cut off as much as necessary from the piece and sew it. Only then does the seed placed in the ground become a shirt, which is now hung over the door...
Here again the rooster crowed in the yard, and again the evil spirit, having had no salty slurp, had to go away.
In the end, he got tired of standing in front of the door and listening to the shirts' stories, from then on he stopped flying to this house and left the young widow alone.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru