There lived on one estate a very angry and cruel gentleman: he tortured his people with work and beat them, God forbid. Once on a holiday, the master ordered the workers to thresh bread. There was nothing to do, I had to thresh. And the headman is warming himself by the stove in the barn, playing with a baton and sarcastically saying:
“But the master is right: threshing is better on holiday!”
Here, out of nowhere, a gray-haired old man stood next to the headman and also wanted to warm up. The headman and the old man drove to work, but he didn’t go. The elder got angry and ran to the master.
The master came:
- Hey, you, go to work!
But the old man doesn’t come.
The master turned green with anger and howled:
- Hey, headman, bring me the rod, I’ll show him how to skip work!
“Don’t bring the rod,” said the old man, “but rather bring the halter!”
The headman brought the rod and halter. The master grabbed the rod and swung it at the old man, and the old man took the halter, threw it over the master’s head and shouted as if at a horse:
- Whoa! Whoa!
At that same moment the master turned into a white horse.
The old man immediately jumped on his horse, hit him with rods and rushed off like the wind. And he went to a peasant who belonged to the same master. Meanwhile it got dark. The old man tied his horse to a post and went to the hut to ask for a place to stay for the night. The owner let him spend the night and began to cry:
“The master completely ruined me: all the time I was working on the corvée, I bent my hump, I didn’t even have time to harvest bread for myself - so it sprouted in the field, and I didn’t cut hay for the cattle - all the horses, all the cows died of hunger. So I have nothing to treat my guest with, nothing to feed his horse with.
“Well, it doesn’t matter,” the old man replies, “take my horse to the stable and throw him an armful of straw, since there is nothing else.”
The owner took a lantern and lit a torch.
- Don’t you even have a candle? You can’t burn a torch in a lantern!
“No, no,” the owner complains, “whoever doesn’t have sheep doesn’t have any lard, so what am I going to pour candles from?”
- How can it be, there are plenty of candles on your shelf!
The owner looked - what a miracle! - the old man is right: there are plenty of candles on the shelf. He lit a lantern and, marveling at the miracle, went to the stable to stable his horse. He entered the stable - and the whole top was filled with hay right up to the ridge, entered the barn - there were cows in all corners, went to the sheepfold - it was full of sheep, looked into the barn - all the bins were filled with bread. The owner saw all this and was dumbfounded. And the old man came out next and said:
- Why are you surprised, come into the hut, it’s time to go to bed!
And the next morning the old man gave his horse to the owner and said:
“Take my horse and work on it for a whole year, don’t feel sorry for it, raise the ground, cultivate the fields.” In a year I will come for my horse.
That’s how it was: the horse worked for three people, and the owner plowed all the fields on it.
A year later, the old man came for the horse, jumped on it and galloped straight to the estate, and there he released the horse in the master’s garden. Soon the elder saw the horse in the garden and ordered him to be taken to the stable.
The next morning, the out of breath groom ran to the lady:
- What a miracle: the horse that I tied up in the stable yesterday turned into our former master overnight!
The lady ran to have a look - yes, that’s how it is, only the master was so emaciated, so thin, that you could hardly recognize it. The lady, in joy, rushed to hug him and kiss him, but the master could barely move his tongue:
- Kiss me quickly and feed me: for a whole year I ate nothing but hay!
Soon the master completely recovered, and from that time on he lived with his people better than his own brother: he did not flog anyone, did not torture anyone, and did not force them to work on holidays.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru