One peasant had a horse. She grew old and could no longer work. The owner did not want to kill her, because she had served him faithfully for so many years, and he drove her into the forest - let her live there as best she knows. The horse became sad; it didn’t know how to feed itself. She grieved and grieved, and then decided to go to Riga and become a musician. So she goes to Riga and sees: a dog trudges towards her and cries.
- Why are you crying? - the horse asked her.
- How can I not cry? - the dog answers. “I can’t serve my master anymore, so he sent me away, let me live as I know how.”
The horse says to the dog:
– Don’t cry, I was kicked out too. Come with me to Riga, let’s hire ourselves as musicians and live happily ever after.
The dog agreed and they went together.
They walk and meet a rooster along the way. It turned out that the same trouble befell him. Well, what can you do, they invited him to Riga to be hired as a musician. OK. The three of them are walking, suddenly, out of nowhere, there is a cat on the road. They took him with them to Riga to be hired as a musician.
So the horse, the dog, the rooster and the cat walked until night overtook them. It became pitch dark. They see that they will probably have to spend the night in the forest. But it’s scary in the forest: no matter how much the wolf attacks you. They decided that one of them would climb a tree to see if they could see a light or some kind of hut somewhere. The cat immediately climbed the tree and noticed a light on the western side. They ran there and looked: there was a hut in the clearing. The cat, rooster and dog immediately wanted to enter the hut, but the horse held them back. She went to the window to see who was in the hut. And twelve robbers were having dinner in the hut. The musicians were scared. But then they decided that the robbers would not touch them if they played something more beautiful.
OK. The horse stood up on its hind legs and rested its front legs against the wall, a dog climbed onto its back, a cat climbed onto the dog, and a rooster climbed onto the cat. And they trumpeted, some as best they could: some subtly, some roughly. The robbers heard such commotion, decided that the end had come for them, and went into all serious troubles. The musicians saw that the hut was empty, they entered it and went to bed where they liked: the cat in the hut on a bed, the horse near the dung heap, the rooster on the roof, the dog under the porch.
And the robbers decided to return and see who drove them out of the hut. But none of them dare to go. They argued for a long time, and finally the bravest robber volunteered to go. I entered the hut and it was dark all around. He began to feel around on the bed for a match and hit the cat. And the cat, poor thing, was so scared, he doesn’t remember himself, he rushed at the robber and scratched his eyes with all his strength. The robber jumped out of the hut like a bullet. But from around the corner the horse kicks him in the back, and then the dog grabs his leg. But the rooster doesn’t see anything in the darkness, he screams and screams:
- Whoa, whoa, come here!
Half-dead from fear, the robber ran to his friends and said:
- Well, I got into trouble. In the hut one wanted to skin me. But you can’t run away either: another is holding his leg with tongs, a third is beating him on the back with a baton, and the fourth is screaming at himself: “Where, where, come here!” This one would eat me alive.
The robbers ran away, and the musicians got the hut.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru