The gypsy stole a horse somewhere far from his camp and returns home. Everyone knows that when you return from such a job, you hide more and more in the forest during the day, and at night, when everything calms down, you go. You don’t return with your bare hands - with someone else’s horse! And at night all the evil spirits come to life, here they have freedom! Mermaids check their rivers, and forest mermaids wander through the forests and punish those who wander into their domain. Sometimes they will spin you around so much that you won’t be able to get out.
So the gypsy rides with a stolen horse, and rides. Suddenly he hears as if someone is ringing a bell. The gypsy realized that this forest worker was luring him. He was scared, but didn’t show it.
“There’s no need to scare me,” he shouts to the forester, “I’m not here at all, I’m sleeping in a tent.”
The forester laughed and let the gypsy circle around the forest. The gypsy seemed to be next to the camp, but not even a minute had passed before he found himself a hundred miles from his tents.
The gypsy circled and circled through the forest, and the next morning, exhausted, he tied the stolen horse to a tree, marked the place and set off on foot home. It took a whole week to get there.
He came to the camp and told what happened to him.
“That’s why he dragged you around the forest, because you offended him, didn’t pay him off, you should have thrown him some silver, then he would have left behind,” said the old gypsy.
The next night the gypsy gathered at the marked place behind the horse and took the silver with him. Since then, he no longer quarreled with the forester.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru