Once upon a time there lived a farm laborer. He served the master for many years and, as a reward for his labors, received such a pitiful and unfortunate lamb - eyes would not look at it. The farm laborer took the lamb and wandered around the world, and kept wandering in search of work, and he grazed the lamb by the side of the roads, in the open woods, along the banks of rivers. The lamb grew, became stronger and became round, like a cucumber. Every day the rings on it became curlier and more golden. Now the farm laborer was drinking and feeding the lamb with all his heart, never taking his eyes off it - after all, that was the only consolation the poor thing had.
One day he was grazing him by the side of the road and saw the king’s heralds, who announced that the king had a daughter who was in great sadness in her young years. There has not yet been found a person who could call at least
a faint shadow of a smile on her face. The Tsar is very darkened by this misfortune and suffers day and night. He announces that if anyone cheers him up
daughter - will receive her as a wife and half of the kingdom in addition. When the farmhand heard about this, he thought: “I’ll go to the royal palace and try my luck. And if I disgrace myself, then I’ll probably not be alone.” And with this thought he set off on his journey to the royal mansions. He walked from morning to evening, and as dusk deepened, he reached some village and knocked on one of the gates to be let in to spend the night. When the gates opened, oh my God! - the man saw that he had gotten to the very bottom, and he - what to do! - I had to pretend, like a pious man, that he was accepting him to spend the night with an open soul, and led the farmhand into one of the rooms. As soon as the priest and his three daughters saw the lamb, its curly rings became across their throats. And how could it be otherwise, if the sheep where it passed was a place of gilding. Late at night the priests came up with an idea: if they couldn’t steal the sheep, they would at least pull out a few of the poor thing’s golden curls. Quietly, on tiptoe, the eldest daughter of the priest crept up to the sheep, pulled as many curls as possible, but they would not be pulled out. Then she decided to grab less and wanted to lower her hand, but her hand did not lower, as if it had grown to the sheep. The girl also applied her other hand, but as soon as her hand touched the golden hairs, it turned to stone. Horror, fear, trembling filled the poor girl. She tries to break free, pull her hand back - to no avail! The hand seemed to have grown to the sheep’s wool. The middle priest did not endure it for long - she crept up to the door in order to also steal at least a few curls. When she saw that her sister was already pulling the sheep - she rushed to her, but it was not to be! - and her hands immediately stuck to the curls of the sheep and, even if they cracked, did not pull away. After a while, the youngest couldn’t stand it either - and was caught like the others.
The priest and priest began to worry:
- Why are our daughters so slow? What could have happened to them? Popadya plucked up courage and went to see what was happening in the next room. Opening the door, she thought that her daughters could not tear off the wool, and she grabbed the sheep with both hands. Yes, I was petrified. In alarm and concern for his daughters, he went and scouted for something. He opened the door of the room and, thinking of helping, grabbed the priest’s shoulders to pull him back, yes - right! - he stuck himself together with his priest and daughters.
Until the morning they suffered in a way that birds in cages do not suffer. The next day, Shepherd got up at sunrise in the morning and set off on his journey, as he had planned before. The sheep also got up, followed and pulled the priest’s entire family with him. They trudged along, stumbling and falling, sometimes on all fours, sometimes crawling, but the shepherd saw all this, but, walking ahead, did not pay attention to them and only chuckled in his mustache. Near the outskirts of the village, a certain man who was winnowing grain, seeing the priest with his family, said in his hearts to his assistant: “Look at the priest, the desert has swallowed him up, he is so greedy that he wants to take away this sheep too,” and, swinging, he grabbed the priest on the back with a shovel so that even his bones cracked. Now this man was trailing behind them.
And the sheep, in pursuit of grass, ran either by the side of the road or through the bushes, and everyone who came to it was already writhing from agony and fatigue. So they came to the royal palace. The farm laborer knocked on the royal gate and shouted at the top of his voice:
- Open the gate, I’m bringing the priest with me!
The guards opened the gate, and the king came out to meet him. Yes, when I saw him, I grabbed my sides and started laughing, literally twitching in place. This was no longer a joke, but an accident. This has never happened to anyone before or since.
And as the farmhand approached closer to the palace, he saw in the window above the gloomy tsar’s daughter, who had never laughed in her life. Looking at the frightened and confused priest, at everyone else holding on to one another, and at the candle, which, every step, knocked them all to the ground, in the most funny way possible, she could not resist and laughed so hard that she could not stop. The Tsar's daughter laughed so merrily.
It was as if the sun had fallen to the earth and all the wealth of the world had accumulated at the royal palace - such joy overwhelmed the people, and most of all, the king himself. He ordered to call the best musicians, and dressed the farm laborer in clothes shimmering with gold, betrothed him to his daughter,
and they threw a wedding - there was never another one like it. I was also at that feast; I feasted for many weeks and months. Out of great joy, the guests began to shoot from the cannon, and due to carelessness, they loaded me into it instead of a shell. When they fired, I flew and flew and ended up right here to tell you this tale about a farm laborer and his sheep.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru