Once upon a time there lived an old woman, she had a son, Ivan. Once Ivan left for the city, and the old woman remained at home alone. Two soldiers came to her and asked for something hot to eat. But the old woman was stingy and said:
“I don’t have anything hot, the stove isn’t lit and the casseroles aren’t boiled.”
And right there, a rooster was cooking in the stove. The soldiers checked this out and said to each other:
- Wait, old man! We will teach you how to deceive service people.
They went out into the yard, let the cattle out, came and said:
- Grandma! The cattle went out into the street.
The old woman groaned and ran out to herd the cattle. Meanwhile, the soldiers took out a pot of stew from the stove, took out the rooster and put it in the backpack, and instead put a bast shoe in the pot.
The old woman drove the cattle, came to the hut and said:
- I’ll tell you, servants, a riddle.
- Make a wish, grandma.
- Listen: Petukhan Kurikhanych is sitting in Pechinsk-Gorshechinsk, near Skovorodinsk.
- Oh, old one! It’s too late: Petukhan Kurikhanych was in Pechinsk-Gorshechinsk, but he was transferred to Sumu-Zapplechensk, and now Zapletai Raspletaich is there. So, grandma, guess our riddle.
But the old woman did not understand the soldier’s riddle.
The soldiers sat, ate stale crust with sour kvass, joked with the old woman, laughed at her riddle, said goodbye and left.
A son has arrived from the city and asks his mother for dinner. The old woman put it on the table, took the pot out of the oven, poked it into the bast shoe with a fork and couldn’t pull it out. “Oh, the cockerel,” he thinks to himself, “look how boiled it is, I can’t get it.” I got it, an... bast shoe!
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru