One guy was talking to a girl, but her father didn’t want his daughter to marry a camp gypsy.
“Don’t even dare talk to him,” he ordered his daughter, “we live richly, settled, and he is a poor man, a camp tramp.” He's not a match for you.
However, the young people loved each other very much and did not want to part.
One day, the gypsy woman’s father was going to the city to change horses at a fair, and he punished his daughter:
“I’m leaving today with my mother, and you stay at home, look after the livestock and the household.”
The parents left. And that’s all young people need. A guy came home to a girl, they sat in front of each other, speaking kind words. The girl put on the samovar and began to drink tea. Suddenly, in the evening, the father returns. Some kind of bad luck happened to him: either something happened at the market, or on the way to the fair. In short, father and mother returned before their due date. When the girl saw her parents through the window, she turned pale worse than death:
- Well, now I'm gone. My father will kill me and will not spare you. Where should I take you, my dear?
She began to look around with her eyes and saw: there was a chest in which her parents kept her dowry. She opened the lid of the chest and shouted to the guy:
- Get out quickly before your mother and father enter the house!
The guy climbed into the chest. She covered the chest with a lid and walked around the house not herself. Father comes in.
- Why did you come back so early? - asks the girl.
- Yes, so and so, so and so...
And the guy is still lying in the chest, but the girl can’t get it out of her head, how can she get this guy out of there and send him home? Well, in short, the gypsy woman went to set the samovar to give her father and mother some tea, and she got so excited that she fell unconscious.
And what, my dears, are these gypsies doing? When the father and mother saw that their daughter had fallen, they cried out in one voice:
- Ay, ay! Our daughter has died! Our darling has died!
The noise spread throughout the area. They began to prepare the funeral.
They dressed and put on the shoes of the gypsy, as it should be, sang her soul, put the coffin on a cart and got ready to go to the cemetery.
Here the mother says:
“Since she is dead, let her wealth follow her to the grave.” She is our only daughter anyway, so there is no need for us to accumulate this dowry.
The gypsies took the chest and placed it next to the coffin.
And the poor guy lies in the chest and hears everything, but doesn’t know how to get out of there.
The gypsies arrived at the cemetery, lowered the chest into the grave, placed the coffin on top, covered the grave with earth and went to commemorate the deceased.
There have been different types of gypsies in the world. There were also guys who didn’t even hesitate to dig up graves in order to rob the dead person. After all, it happened that people were buried in gold and jewelry. Everyone saw how the girl was laid in the coffin, and some noticed that she was wearing a lot of gold jewelry. And then there's the dowry chest.
In short, two gypsies gathered for a thieves' business. As soon as night fell, they came to the cemetery and began to tear up the fresh grave. They pulled out the girl's chest and coffin.
“Let’s open the chest first,” says one gypsy to another.
They broke the lock on the chest and just opened the lid when the guy crawled out.
- Well, guys, thank you. “You,” he says, “saved me from certain death.”
When the gypsies saw this, they almost got caught out of fear and started running in all directions, only they were seen.
The guy sat down next to the coffin and became sad:
“Oh, dear, God didn’t allow me to kiss you alive, I’ll kiss you even if you’re dead.”
He opened the coffin and kissed the girl. What's happened? And she is warm. You can even feel her breath on your lips. The guy leaned against her chest and heard her heart beating. The guy was surprised. Sat down next to me.
A little time passes - the young gypsy comes to her senses. She sat down, opened her eyes and couldn’t understand anything:
- Where am I? What's happened? Where have you taken me? What's all this around?
The guy told her everything as it happened, and then he said:
“Well, since we were destined to both die at once, it means that we are destined to live together.”
They collected the dowry from the chest, tied it in a knot and left.
“Let’s go to my camp,” the guy suggested.
- No, I can’t now, I have to show up to my father and mother and calm them down.
– Yes, and I also need to meet my parents, probably they are looking for me?!
They dispersed in different directions. The guy comes to his tent, and his parents say to him:
- Where have you been, son? While you were away, your bride was buried.
The guy laughed:
- What are you doing, mom, how did you bury it? Only now we broke up with her. She went home.
- Why are you talking, we just returned from the wake.
– If you don’t believe me, let’s go.
The gypsies came to the girl’s house, and there her parents did not let her go home.
- Dad, open the door, open it! – she knocks on the window. - It’s me, your daughter has come!
- Why, dear, go where you were, I buried you. Your mother lies sick from grief. Go with God to your place. And what is this evil spirit that has become attached to you?
In short, the parents don’t let their daughter in, they think it’s their imagination that she’s dead, so they’re afraid to open the door. The guy's mother approaches the girl and asks:
- Daughter, why don’t they let you in?
“But they got scared and won’t let me in,” the girl cried.
- Well, wait, I’ll help you. The boy's mother began to knock on the hut:
- And why are you such villains, you don’t let your own daughter into the house? Why do you want her to freeze in the yard?
Still, the father and mother did not believe it, and only when the gypsy woman took an oath and swore in gypsy style did the parents open the door of the house.
The gypsies began to judge and point out what happened, why and how. The guy told how it happened, and then came forward and said to the girl’s parents:
“Well, I wasn’t able to take your daughter before, but now, be that as it may, you’ll have to give her to me in marriage.”
And so it happened. They were married. She married him. And when their child was born, they gave him a name after the day when they were buried together.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru