One day a Tugodumov man went to a neighboring village to visit his godfather. He comes, and his godfather’s horse has fallen, and he rips the skin off it.
“Why are you,” he wonders, “in the middle of winter, at the very hour of transport, killing a horse?”
The godfather decided to play a joke on the guest:
“And now,” he says, “horse skins are painfully expensive.” For one skin I will get so much money that I can buy ten horses.
The godfather, when he heard this, immediately turned back. He ran home, killed his horse, and began to skin it.
- What are you doing? - the neighbors ask.
“And now,” he says, “in the neighboring village all the horses are being slaughtered!” Skins are highly valued in Petrozavodsk. I’ll go there, sell it, and get ten horses’ worth of money!
The men killed all the horses in the village. In the spring there was nothing to plow or sow.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru