Once upon a time there lived a priest. He was so greedy and stingy that he kept his family from hand to mouth, although he did not need anything.
One summer the priest hired neighboring peasants to weed the corn on his estate.
He promised them to slaughter a pig and arrange a good dinner.
However, the priest immediately decided to deceive the peasants. He went to the barn and began to pull the pig by the ears, and it squealed furiously.
Hearing the squeal, the workers rejoiced, believing that the priest was already fulfilling his promise and would have fatty pork for lunch.
But the priest left the pig and ordered his farmhand to slaughter the dog. They skinned her and buried her head and legs.
Having learned what her father was going to feed the workers, the priest’s daughter began to shame and reproach him:
- Father! How will you, having led people into such sin, confess them? After all, Easter is in a few days.
“Nothing,” answered the priest, “they have such a heap of sins that mine will be lost.” And what’s special here: Christ turned a horde of demons into a herd of pigs, and I just replaced the pig with a dog.
The dog carcass was cut into pieces, placed in a cauldron and boiled. But the farm laborer, who was angry with the priest, quietly threw a dog's tail into the cauldron.
It was already dusk when the tired peasants began to eat together, laying pieces of the brew on walnut leaves. But then one of them pulled a dog’s tail out of the cauldron and was stunned.
Then everyone guessed about the priest’s trick and began to demand that they be shown the head and hooves of the pig. But there was nothing to show.
The peasants disgraced the priest and went home.
From then on, as soon as the priest appeared in the village, the peasants turned their backs to him, and the children grunted and squealed after him.
This is where the saying about the priest who “made a pig squeal in order to kill a dog” came from.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru