In one village there lived two men, two brothers: one was poor, the other rich.
The rich man moved to live in the city, built himself a large house and signed up as a merchant; and sometimes the poor man does not have a piece of bread, and the children - small, small, smaller - cry and ask for food. From morning to evening the man fights like a fish against ice, but still nothing.
He once said to his wife:
- Let me go to the city and ask my brother: can I help with anything?
Пришел к богатому:
— Ах, братец родимый! Help my grief in any way; the wife and children sit without bread, starving for whole days.
- Work for me this week, then I’ll help!
What to do? The poor man set to work: he cleans the yard, grooms the horses, carries water, and chops wood. A week later the rich man gives him one loaf of bread:
— Вот тебе за труды!
— И за то спасибо! - said the poor man, bowed and wanted to go home.
- Wait! Come and visit me tomorrow and bring your wife: after all, tomorrow is my name day.
— Эх, братец, куда мне? You know it yourself: merchants will come to you in boots and fur coats, but I wear bast shoes and a thin gray caftan.
- Nothing, come! And there will be a place for you.
- Okay, brother, I’ll come.
The poor man returned home, gave the rug to his wife and said:
- Listen, wife! The next day you and I were invited to visit.
- How to visit? Who called?
- Brother: he has a birthday tomorrow.
- Well, let's go.
The next morning they got up and went into the city, came to the rich man, congratulated him and sat down on a bench. There were already many distinguished guests sitting at the table; The owner treats them all to glory, but he forgot to think about the poor brother and his wife - he gives them nothing; they sit and just watch while others eat and eat.
Lunch is over; The guests began to crawl out from the table and thank the host and hostess, and the poor man, too, rose from the bench and bowed to his brother from the waist. The guests went home drunk, cheerful, making noise, singing songs.
And the poor man goes back with an empty belly.
“Give me this,” he says to his wife, “and we’ll sing a song!”
- Oh, you fool! People sing because they ate sweetly and drank a lot; why did you decide to sing?
- Well, after all, I was at my brother’s name day; I'm ashamed to go without songs. When I start drinking, everyone will think that I was treated too...
- Well, sing if you want, but I won’t! The man began to sing a song, and he heard two voices; he stopped and asked his wife:
- Was it you who helped me sing in a thin voice?
- What's wrong with you? I didn't think at all.
- So who?
- Don't know! - said the woman. - Come on, binge, I’ll listen.
He began to sing again: he was singing alone, but two voices were heard; stopped and asked:
- Is it you, Grief, who helps me sing? Grief responded:
- Yes, master! I'm the one helping.
- Well, Gore, come with us.
- Let's go, master! I won't leave you now. The man came home, and Grief called him to the tavern. He says:
- I have no money!
- Oh, man! What do you need money for? You see, you’re wearing a sheepskin coat, but what is it for? It'll be summer soon, but you won't be able to wear it anyway! Let's go to a tavern, with a sheepskin coat on the side...
The man and Gore went to a tavern and drank their sheepskin coat. The next day, Grief groaned - she had a headache from a hangover, and again called the owner to drink some wine.
“There’s no money,” says the man.
- What do we need money for? Take a sleigh and a cart - that’s enough for us!
There was nothing to do but fight off the peasant from Grief: he took a sleigh and a cart, dragged it to a tavern and drank it together with Grief.
The next morning, Grief groaned even more, calling the owner to recover his hangover; The man drank away both the harrow and the plow.
Less than a month passed before he lost everything; He even mortgaged his hut to his neighbor and took the money to the tavern.
Grief pesters him again:
- Let's go to the tavern!
- No, Woe! Your will, but there is nothing more to drag.
- How is there nothing? Your wife has two sundresses: leave one, and need to drink the other.
The man took the sundress, drank it and thought:
"That's when you're clean! No stake, no yard, neither on yourself nor on your wife!"
In the morning Grief woke up, saw that the man had nothing more to take, and said:
- Master!
- What, Grief?
- Here's what: go to your neighbor, ask him for a pair of oxen and a cart.
The man went to his neighbor.
“Give me,” he asks, “for a while, a pair of oxen and a cart; I’ll work for you for at least a week for that.
- What do you need?
- Go to the forest for firewood.
- Well, take it; Just don’t put too much burden on it.
- And what are you, the breadwinner!
He brought a pair of oxen, sat down with Gor on the cart and drove into an open field.
“Master,” asks Sorrow, “do you know a large stone in this field?”
- How can you not know!
- And when you know, go straight to him. They arrived at that place, stopped and got out of the cart.
Grief tells the man to lift the stone. A man lifts, Grief helps; They lifted it up, and under the stone there was a hole filled with gold.
- Well, what are you looking at? - Gore says to the man. - Hurry up and put it in the cart.
The man set to work and filled the cart with gold; he took everything out of the pit down to the last ducat, saw that there was nothing left, and said:
- Look, Woe, there’s no way there’s any money left there?
Grief bent down:
- Where? I don't see something!
- Yes, there are lights in the corner!
- No, I don’t see.
- Climb into the hole, and you will see. Grief crawled into a hole; it just landed there, and the man covered it with a stone.
- It will be better this way! - said the man. - Otherwise, if I take you with me, then you, wretched grief, even if not soon, will still drink away this money!
The man came home, dumped the money in the basement, took the oxen to a neighbor and began to think about how to arrange himself. He bought a forest, built large mansions and lived twice as rich as his brother.
Whether long or short, he went to the city to ask his brother and his wife to come to his name day.
- That's what I came up with! - the rich brother told him. - You yourself have nothing, and you’re still celebrating your name day!
“Well, once there was nothing to eat, but now, thank God, I have no less than you; come and you will see.
- Okay, I'll come!
The next day the rich brother got together with his wife and went to the name day; they look, and the poor naked man has new, tall mansions, not every merchant has those! The man treated them, treated them to all sorts of food, gave them all kinds of honey and wine to drink. The rich man asks his brother:
- Tell me, please, how did you get rich?
The man told him in good conscience how the unfortunate Grief became attached to him, how he and Grief drank all his goods to the last thread in a tavern; All that remains is that the soul is in the body; how Grief showed him a treasure in an open field, how he took this treasure and got rid of Grief.
The rich man became envious.
“Let me,” he thinks, “let me go to an open field, pick up a stone and let out the Grief - let it ruin my brother to the ground, so that he doesn’t dare to boast about his wealth in front of me.”
He sent his wife home and drove him into the field; drove up to a large stone, turned it to the side and leaned down to see what was under the stone. Before he could bend his head, Grief jumped out and sat on his neck.
“Oh,” he shouts, “you wanted to kill me here!” No, now I will never leave you alone.
“Listen, Gore,” said the merchant, “it wasn’t I who put you under a stone...
- Who else if not you?
“It was my brother who locked you up, and I came on purpose to let you out.”
- No, you're lying! You deceived me once, you can't deceive me again!
Woe settled firmly on the rich merchant's neck; He brought him home, and his whole household went awry. In the morning, grief takes over as its own: every day it calls the merchant to get over his hangover; a lot of good things went into the tavern.
“It’s so different to live!” the merchant thinks to himself. “It seems that I amused Grief enough; it’s time to part with him, but how?”
I thought and thought and came up with an idea: I went to a wide yard, cut two oak wedges, took a new wheel and firmly drove the wedge from one end into the hub. Comes to Gor:
- Why are you, Gore, still lying on your side?
- What else should I do?
- What to do? Let's go out into the yard and play trick-or-treaters. And Grief is happy. We went out into the yard. At first the merchant hid - Grief now found him; after that it’s Burn’s turn to hide.
“Well,” he says, “you won’t find me soon!” I'll hide in any crevice!
- Where are you going? - the merchant answers! “You won’t fit into this wheel, otherwise you’ll fall into the gap!”
- Can’t fit into the wheel? Look how I can hide!
Grief got into the wheel; The merchant took it and hammered an oak wedge into the hub from the other end, lifted the wheel and threw it, along with Grief, into the river.
The grief drowned, and the merchant began to live as before, as before.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru