To the north of the Montastruc church there is a large pond. Here shepherds water their cattle and women wash clothes.
One evening, at about six o'clock - and it was in the dead month - the moon rose and was reflected in the water of the pond, as if in a large mirror. At this time, a man approached the pond and began to water his donkey. While the donkey was drinking, the wind suddenly changed and drove clouds into the sky, so that it became completely dark.
The donkey's owner got scared and ran away from the pond, shouting:
- Lord have mercy! Lord have mercy! My donkey drank water and swallowed the moon! My donkey swallowed the moon!
All the inhabitants of Montastruc came running to his screams.
- Why are you shouting so much?
- My donkey swallowed the moon! My donkey swallowed the moon!
The Montastruc residents looked at the sky, at the pond and began to cry and scream:
- His donkey swallowed the moon! His donkey swallowed the moon! Immediately all the local authorities gathered for a council in front of the church.
— Bring the donkey that swallowed the moon. They brought the donkey.
- Donkey! Did you swallow the moon? The donkey raised his tail and yelled.
- Now, you yourself admit that you swallowed the moon! What are we going to do now, how are we going to walk at night? After all, you can’t see anything in the dark.
The donkey raised his tail again and yelled.
- Yeah! This is how you behave in court! Good! We sentence you to death. You will be hanged.
Ten minutes later the donkey was hanged from a tree. But then one of the judges caught on.
“Friends,” he said, “we have exceeded our authority.” We are allowed to impose death sentences. But we have no right to execute. This right belongs only to the chief judge in Lectoure. If I were him, I would be very unhappy with what just happened here! You know what: to appease him, we will send him a whole cart of various poultry. We'll send away the dead donkey too. The chief judge will call a good surgeon to remove the moon from the donkey's belly. In addition, there are many high stairs in Lectoura. If you put such a ladder on the bell tower of the Lecture Cathedral, then, I think, some clever and brave mechanic will find a way to nail the moon to its place in the sky.
No sooner said than done. Twelve young Montast-Ryuk residents immediately set off, loaded with gifts for the chief judge - chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks. The other twelve carried on their shoulders a long oak pole, on which a dead donkey was suspended by its four legs.
Until they passed Fleurance, everything was going well. But behind Fleurence, the wolves from the Ramières forest smelled the smell of a dead donkey and rushed in packs, growling as if mad. The Montastruc residents, in fear, abandoned the birds and the donkey and galloped back to Montastruc. In an instant, the wolves devoured all the birds and gnawed the donkey to the bone.
The next day in the evening the moon rose and shone in the sky as usual.
The Montastruc judges breathed a sigh of relief.
“The Ramier wolves did us a tremendous service,” they said. “The donkey is eaten, and the chief judge in Lectur will not know that we ourselves hanged this beast.” Well, as for the moon, which the donkey swallowed, it, as you see, turned out to be more cunning than the wolves. She escaped them and returned to her place in the sky.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru