There lived a poor gypsy. He was so poor that... and it's impossible to say. The gypsy once thought about his life. "What to do? - thinks. – How to get rid of this poverty? We need to go steal horses.”
The gypsy went to thieves. I chose a darker night, drove further away from the camp, and saw: a herd grazing. One horse will look like a gypsy, another - there is nothing suitable, they are all such nags that you can’t take anything for them. What to do? “I’ll go,” the gypsy thinks, “I’ll spend the night in the village, and in the morning I’ll look around and see if I can pick something up.”
The gypsy knocks on the last hut:
- Let me in, owners, to spend the night.
A woman comes out onto the porch and says:
“You know what, gypsy, I would let you in, but my husband is jealous, and besides, he has connections with evil spirits.” He will kill you.
- Let me go, dear, because the night is not a year. What will he do to me? I will climb onto the stove and lie quietly, and in the morning I will get up, thank you and go on my way.
“Okay, come in and spend the night if you’re not afraid.” And at that time the husband of this woman was returning home. There was some kind of holiday, so he walked through the village and bawled songs to the accordion. He approached his hut and shouted to his wife:
- Open up!
The poor thing is shaking, but it opens. A man came in:
– Who’s that lying on the stove?
Well, turn around! The man looked at the gypsy and grinned:
- Ah, the sea! Well, get up, sea, we’ll have dinner. The gypsy thinks: “Why did the woman say that her man is bad? He won’t give you a bad treat.”
The wife began to take out the cast iron with food from the stove. The man eats, treats the gypsy, and pours the leftovers into the cauldron: borscht and porridge - that’s all. The man and the gypsy ate and drank.
- Well, thank you, mistress!
The man says to the gypsy:
- Where is your bag, boy?
- Yes, over there.
- Well, put the bag on your shoulders. The gypsy was scared. “Now,” he thinks, “he’ll kick me out...” “Put it on, put it on,” the man shouts, “don’t hesitate!” He put the gypsy bag on his shoulders, and the man came up behind him, untied the knot and - wow! – I poured everything hot into this bag behind him.
The man took the accordion in his hands and said:
- Now, gypsy, let’s dance!
The gypsy’s back is on fire, no matter what you say, but the man scalded him badly, but the fear is worse than the pain.
The gypsy wanted to jump out of the house, but the man wouldn’t let him in:
- Dance, they say! And that's all... Until then, the gypsy danced until he fell off his feet. And then morning came.
A man opens the door and says:
“Well, here’s the threshold for you, gypsy, and here’s the road.” With that I drove away.
A gypsy is walking along the road, and he is overcome with bitter resentment. “Why,” the gypsy thinks, “did you hurt me like that? Well, I’ll take revenge on you.”
The gypsy waited until evening and returned to the village again. He approaches the very edge of the village and sees: the horses of a peasant sorcerer are grazing: one is gray, the other is black.
“I’ll steal this guy’s horse,” the gypsy decided. He walked up to the black horse, jumped on it, lashed him with his whip, and was gone. How long he drove - God knows. Only he comes again to this village, to its very edge, to the sorcerer’s house, next to which a gray horse grazes. "What's happened? - the gypsy thinks. “I drove for so long, but I arrived at the same place, I probably lost my way.”
Again the gypsy whipped the horse on the sides, and again the horse drove the gypsy, drove him and brought him to the old place, to the sorcerer’s house. The gypsy was surprised: “If I had sat on the yard owner, he would have killed me and trampled me in the mud. So, this man really is a sorcerer!
This means that his horses really are enchanted! Let me,” the gypsy thinks, “let me ride the gray horse.” Maybe he’ll take me home?” The gypsy mounted a gray horse and rode off. It takes an hour or another. And the gray horse took him into such an impassable wilderness, into such a swamp that he could not get out and climb out. The gypsy prayed:
- Lord, save me, help me get out of this swamp, I swear, I will never compete with sorcerers again.
Somehow, by morning, the gypsy forcibly got out onto the road, and returned to the camp with nothing.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru