A long time ago, there lived a clumsy girl in the world: she couldn’t cultivate the field, she couldn’t spin yarn, she didn’t even know how to sing properly. Only partying and idleness are on my mind. It was in vain that the poor parents taught their daughter to be smart, in vain they scolded her with reproaches, and reproached her for laziness; she turned a deaf ear to their words. And despite all this, life was not fun for the incompetent girl - the neighboring girls did not want to hang out with her, who wanted to kill time with a slacker. And the guys completely avoided her.
One day, the incompetent woman went alone to the mountains and wandered into such remote places where even the human foot had rarely set foot. There was not a soul around, only some poor hut could be seen on the slope of a black mountain. I desperately wanted to know who lived in it. She came to the hut, pushed the door and went inside. He looks, and two small children are sitting on the floor - the adults, apparently, have gone somewhere. In response to the girl’s questions, the children stammered that their father and mother and brothers and sisters had gone to a mountain field, but they could not explain whether this field was far or close: either they had to climb up the mountainside, or, on the contrary, go down.
The girl’s legs hurt from walking for a long time, her soul was sad, and therefore she decided to stay in the hut to rest, and maybe spend the night. How could she know that the owners of this hut are real cannibals. As soon as it got dark, the owners showed up home, looked the girl up and down, asked how she got into their house, and then sat her down to dinner. For dinner they had only one dish - pieces of some kind of meat. The girl thought it tasteless, but the poor thing was so hungry that she ate everything offered. She ate her fill and began to look at the owners of the house by the light of the fire. They seemed disgusting to her: their heads were huge, their eyes were bulging and round, and their mouths were stained with blood. At first the girl felt terrified, but little by little she got used to it and stopped being afraid.
The next day, the adult inhabitants of the hut got up before dawn and got ready somewhere. The girl looked at them and was scared again: their arms were very long, hanging down to their knees, their legs were too short, and even covered with hair. They waddle as if they were limping. They told the girl to shell beans and look after the children. As soon as it got dark, the owners returned again. This time they brought boiled pork and vegetables and prepared dinner for the girl. She was delighted by their concern for her, and her soul became happier.
The next day the owners got up early again. Before leaving, they again ordered the girl to shell the beans and not sit around doing nothing. They took the children with them.
The incompetent girl was left all alone in the house. Having nothing else to do, she began shelling beans, but soon she became bored with this activity: after all, she was a lazy person and was not used to working. She sat in a daze, lazily thinking about something, when suddenly she heard a voice from somewhere above:
- Will you stay or run away?
The girl shuddered, lifted her head up, but saw only bare boards - the attic was knocked together from them. The girl thought that she had imagined the voice, because, as she knew, there was no one in the house except her. But then from somewhere under the ceiling the same mysterious voice came again:
- Will you stay or run away?
This time the girl was seriously scared, but still managed to control her fear and climbed into the attic. “Maybe some prankster got in there on purpose to scare me,” she thought.
In the attic she saw something that left her dumbfounded: a half-dead man was tied to a riser, right under the roof, his head fell helplessly on his chest, blood was oozing from his mouth and drop by drop flowed into the jug that stood at his feet.
Not remembering herself from horror, the girl rushed down, jumped out of the house and ran away from the terrible place. The girl wounded her feet on sharp stones, and her skirt kept catching on thorns and thorns and turned into rags, but the poor thing kept running and running without looking back. The high mountain of black stone was already behind, but the girl still could not stop - she was driven by fear. Finally she saw a hut in which a light flickered welcomingly. The girl impatiently knocked on the door. Her heart almost jumped out of her chest. The poor thing was exhausted, tired, completely exhausted from running. The old lady opened it for her. The fireplace was burning brightly in the hut. And besides the old woman, the girl saw an old man and a young guy.
- Where are you from? Who are you looking for? - the old lady asked tenderly.
“Let me spend the night with you, mother, I’m very, very scared...” the girl said with difficulty.
They let her in. Having looked at the nice, kind faces of the old man, the old woman and the young guy, the girl calmed down. The owners sat her close to the fireplace to keep her warm. When the girl finally came to her senses, she told her owners about her misadventures.
The old man said calmly:
“So you, poor thing, didn’t know that you had visited cannibals?” All day long they are busy catching lonely travelers, eating them alive, and returning home in the evening. They didn’t immediately eat you just because you seemed painfully skinny to them, they decided to fatten you up first!
- What did they treat you with? - asked the old lady. The girl said that she was fed some kind of tasteless meat, and then pork and vegetables.
“It was human meat,” said the old woman. The girl covered her face with her hands and cried bitterly; she begged the old man and the old woman not to leave her in trouble.
“Don’t worry, we are good people, we will help you,” answered the old man. “Just eat and warm up first.” You, poor thing, have suffered a lot of fear, but in our house nothing threatens you. You are very tired, exhausted, and the best cure for fatigue is sleep. First of all, you need to get a good night's sleep.
While the old man calmed the girl down, the old woman prepared a simple dinner.
Meanwhile, the young guy prepared the girl’s bed. Only then did she take a good look at him and saw that he was very similar to his kind parents. He looked friendly, and his lips smiled affectionately. He was strong and well-behaved - this is how a young man should be. The girl noticed that there was a khen hanging on the wall. “This is probably his khen,” for some reason she thought to herself with tenderness and smiled.
The girl lived with good people for two whole days, and on the third she got up early, but it turned out that the owners’ son had been fiddling around in the stable for a long time, adjusting the saddles - he was going to take the girl home. The old woman cooked chicken in order to properly treat her guest at parting and so that the young people would have something to satisfy their hunger on the way.
The girl sat on the horse, and the guy walked next to her. He did not forget to take his kheon with him on the road. When the young people set off, the sun came out to meet them. It gilded the slopes of the mountains - the native mountains and the corn fields on their slopes became even more elegant in its rays, and the new pants and new indigo shirt in which the young man dressed up became even brighter and more beautiful.
The girl’s heart began to beat tremblingly, she was overcome with a joyful premonition. The young man also felt excitement, he played the khen, and the gentle sounds rushed upward, then died away somewhere in the distance, then sounded nearby, and the girl’s soul became more and more joyful.
The guy started singing a song about love. The song sounded far in the mountains, the song penetrated into the very heart. The path was not short, but there was no end to the song. The guy walked the girl all the way home. The girl fell in love with him, and he fell in love with the girl and wanted to marry her. The young people consulted with their parents and soon got married. At this cheerful wedding, as has been the custom since ancient times, songs were played until the night. At night, the bride was led singing to her new house and continued singing until the morning.
Remembering how she ended up in the house of the cannibals, the young wife was very angry with herself: she complained that she had once been lazy and careless and because of this she almost died.
She promised her father: “From now on, I will obey you in everything, father.” She promised her mother: “From now on, I will grow flax and spin yarn from it, like you, mother, like all Meo women.” She loved her husband and helped him in everything. Every morning she went with her husband to a mountain field. The husband walked in front and played the khen, and the wife walked behind and sang.
The father couldn't be happier with his daughter, the mother couldn't be happier with her son-in-law. But the father planned to put an end to the family of cannibals, so that everyone in their region could live happily and peacefully. He asked his daughter where to find the hut of these monsters. Then he properly sharpened the cutting knife, put on a beautiful woman's skirt taken from his daughter, grabbed a mortar and pestle and went to the cannibals' house. Coming very close to him, he hid a long knife-cutter in his belt and calmly began to pound the corn. The sound of the pestle hitting the mortar echoed loudly in the mountains. A family of cannibals leaned out of their house at the knock. They saw a girl in a beautiful skirt near the house. The cannibals crept closer to her. The girl's father pretended not to notice them, and all the pounding and pounding of corn, everything still echoed in the mountains.
He suddenly left the mortar and pestle, grabbed a sharp cutting knife from his belt and rushed at the cannibals. In a fair battle he defeated them. So a man from the village of Meo dealt with the evil monsters. He returned home happy and cheerful.
The news that the cannibals had come to an end quickly spread throughout all the mountain villages. Since then, people calmly went to the forest for brushwood, cultivated their mountain fields, went to the fair without fear, and their life became as joyful as the singing of young happy spouses going to the mountain field.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru