One husband kept quarreling with his wife.
- You're lazy! - he shouts at her. “I plow and mow, and you’re too lazy to even bring me lunch to the field!”
“Yes, I have more work at home than you have in the field,” says the wife. - When should I bring you another lunch?
Husband doesn't believe his wife:
- And what kind of work is there at home! I handle this kind of work jokingly.
One day my wife got angry:
“If that’s the case,” he says, “I’ll go to plow, and you stay at home.”
The husband was delighted:
- Okay. Now you will see which of us is telling the truth! Plowing is not about rearranging pots in the oven.
The wife gathered in the field and said to her husband:
- Just make sure you do all the work.
The husband looked around the house:
- What kind of work is there?
- Look, do you see the dough in the bowl?
“I see,” the husband answers.
- So, measure flour on millstones, knead the dough, put the loaves in the oven.
“Well, this is an easy job,” the husband waved his hand. - What else?
-Churn the butter.
- And this is not difficult. What else?
- Look after the calves in the pasture so that they don’t do anything bad. Cook dinner and keep an eye on the hen so that she doesn’t fly off the sieve, otherwise the eggs will get cold.
The wife told her husband what he should do at home, got ready and went to the field. And the husband stomps around the house, grinning to himself: “Not only will I do this work, I’ll also have time to sleep.”
He lit a pipe and began to grind flour. And to make the work go better, he tied a butter churn with sour cream to his belt. He turns the millstones, and he sways from side to side, well, sour cream - heaps, heaps! - it gets clogged with oil.
Work is in progress!
And then suddenly the neighbor’s children start screaming under the window:
- Uncle, your calves got into the oats!
- Oh, so that the wolves eat them! - the man shouted and rushed to the pasture.
And the butter churn - bam, bam! - him on the knees. He ran a little and fell to the ground like a sheaf. The lid came off the churn and all the sour cream spilled out.
The man got up, spat in anger and ran on. I drove the calves out of the oats and drove them home.
“If you don’t want to graze in the pasture,” he says, “stand in the barn hungry!”
The man returned to the hut. Lo and behold, instead of him, a speckled pig is in charge: she scattered all the flour, ate the dough and drove the hen off the sieve.
The man kicked the pig out, stood in the middle of the hut and scratched the back of his head: what to do now? He thinks he needs to at least save the eggs, but as soon as they cool down, the chickens won’t hatch, and he’ll get his money’s worth from his wife... He turned back and forth - there’s no chicken.
Out of grief, the man sat down on the sieve himself. “When the hen returns,” he thinks, “then I’ll shed a tear, I’ll start cooking dinner, and I’ll plant her.”
A Cossack was passing by on that side and went into a hut to get a drink of water. I saw a man on a sieve.
- What are you doing? - asks.
- Yes, I hatch chickens.
- Who put you on the sieve, poor fellow? The man told about his misfortune: how he was left to manage the house and how unlucky he was.
The Cossack laughed, and then let him whip him with a whip... He beats him and says:
- Here's to you for your stupidity! The wife is plowing the field, and what are you doing?
The man spun and spun and crushed all his eggs. He sees that things are bad. He jumped off the sieve, got scared and climbed into the attic and hid in a box of feathers. And the Cossack drank water and moved on. A man sits in feathers, trembling with fear.
And at that time my wife’s relatives came to visit. They enter the house. The mother-in-law looked at the disorder in the house and said to the old man:
“And it’s no wonder that our son-in-law is quarreling with our daughter!” It's true that she's a lazy person.
“If that’s the case,” says the old man, “then we’d better give the gift not to our daughter, but to our son-in-law!”
The man hears all this from the attic. “What kind of gift did they bring?” he thinks, “they brought?”
He leaned out of the box to look at the gift, and the box - boom-boom! - and flew down with the man together.
The old man and the old woman heard a roar, ran out into the hallway and saw a man in feathers there.
- Crap! Crap! - they shouted in one voice. The old woman began to cross herself, and the old man grabbed a poker and started hitting the devil.
- Look where the evil spirit has gotten into the habit! The man got up and rushed to the garden. He hid there in the hemp and sat neither alive nor dead, scratching his bruised sides.
My wife returned from the field in the evening. The old people tell her:
- Well, now you and your husband will live in harmony.
- Why? - asks the daughter.
- Yes, we kicked the devil out of your hut. It was he, the damned one, who quarreled you!
And it’s true - from then on the husband stopped calling his wife a lazy woman.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru