The poor woodcutter went into the forest. I took with me the last crust of bread in a canvas bag. That's all the food for the whole day. He came, hung his bag on a branch and got to work. He chops down trees, splits stumps, knocks down thick oaks, and sweat pours from his forehead into three streams.
Out of nowhere I got to the devil's bag from the very underworld and stole the last handful of bread!
He returned to hell and boasts to his friends:
- Look, this bread should have been enough for the woodcutter all day, but I stole it!
-What is that there? - Satan intervened.
And when I figured it out, I became furious: how can you take away the last piece of bread from a poor man! He got angry and pronounced a sentence on the devil: immediately go back and serve the woodcutter for a whole year!
The next day, the poor woodcutter was getting ready to go into the forest again and was just about to heap a heavy ax onto his shoulder, when suddenly the door opened and a huge brute burst into the house.
- Good afternoon, master! - speaks. - Maybe you can take me into the service?
- Oh, son, what do you need me for? - the woodcutter answers. “There’s nothing to eat on my own, and there’s a bunch of hungry kids in the shops shedding tears.”
- Take it! You won't regret it! I don’t want anything for my service, but you will feel good with me.
“Well, then come cut down the forest with me, if you’re so inclined,” said the woodcutter and handed him an ax.
Less than three days had passed before the forest, which a woodcutter could not cut down in a whole year, lay on the ground, laid out in even rows. Things are looking up for the woodcutter. And the children no longer cried from hunger.
“Well, master,” says the farmhand, “you’re cutting down the wood here slowly, and I’ll go somewhere and hire myself to thresh so that we have enough bread for the winter.”
“Go,” the woodcutter replies, “and for now I’ll start cutting down the forest as much as I can.”
A rich gentleman had a farm on one huge wasteland. Three hundred stacks of grain stood in the field, three hundred fattened oxen and three hundred fattened hogs lay in the barns. The devil farmhand came to this gentleman and began to hire himself out as a thresher.
-Where is your artel? - asked the gentleman.
- Don't worry about them! Will you let me thresh your bread?
- Why not give it! But you won’t start threshing alone, will you?
– One – not one – does it matter?
- How much will you charge for the work?
“Nothing, just what I can carry,” the farmhand answers.
“It’s a big deal,” the master thought, “how much can he carry?” and he agreed.
And then, close to midnight, three thousand flails began to clatter at the stacks: knock, knock, knock, tack, tack, tack! Knock, Knock, Knock, Knock, Knock, Knock! These are the devils from all over the underworld who came running to help their comrade. By morning, all the bread had already been threshed, all the grain had been winnowed and poured into bags.
As soon as it’s light, the thresher comes to the owner and calls for work. And the owner is amazed, rejoices and orders the thresher to take what he has earned.
The thresher puts up his broad shoulders, and the master's servants dump a good ten sacks of wheat on him.
- Well, have you had enough? - asks the owner.
- Is that a lot? - the thresher laughs. - Put more! With this I can also jump!
They put all the grain on his shoulders. The owner's hair stood on end with fear.
- Well, is that enough now? - he asks for the second time, and the thresher just laughs, it’s not enough, they say.
“Put down,” he says, “everything you have!” You see, even with this load I can jump like a feather! - And he put a hundred fat pigs on his back.
- Oh, damn you, maybe that's enough?
And the devil just laughs, jumps up and tells him to put it on. The owner almost bursts with anger, but he knows, having given his word, hold on!
- Release a hundred oxen! - he shouts to the workers. - He can’t carry them away!
But the thresher took these too and, laughing in the eyes of the enraged owner, ran to his woodcutter.
- Here, get it! - and threw off the burden from the woodcutter in the yard. “Now you have nothing to fear from hunger, but I will leave you, because my year is up.” Do you even know who I am? Do you remember how the last piece of bread disappeared in your forest?
The woodcutter nodded his head.
“I remember,” he says, “I wish I could remember!”
- So I’m the devil! I stole bread from you and was sent to serve you for a year as punishment. Well, stay healthy!
And then such laughter was heard near the house, as if three thousand horses neighed at once. It was the devils who were making fun of their friend, who served as a farm laborer for a poor woodcutter.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru