One day Pekale and Tyndale were hired as farm laborers for the same priest. And the priest was evil and greedy - he tormented his poor servants. When they asked for food, he forced them to work; when they asked for reward for their labors, he forced them to pray to God.
“You ignoble ones,” the priest scolded, “you only think about food and
money, we would pray to God more diligently: in the other world is the true life prepared for man.
Pekale and Tyndale tried to reason with the priest, and this way and that, he kept repeating himself. Seeing that they could not get a tolerable life or money from the priest, they decided to teach him a lesson.
And since they’ve already made up their minds, rest assured: they will do so. One fine day, Pekale and Tyndale caught a whole basket of crayfish, put a thin candle in the nose of each crayfish, lit them and sent the crayfish around the room. They themselves dressed in white robes and, taking a thick candle in their hands, began to walk from corner to corner and sing:
“We, the messengers of the Lord God, came for the priest and priest in order to lift them to the kingdom of heaven.”
The priest looked into the upper room and was amazed. It seemed to him that it was heaven itself - with the stars, the sun and the angels - descending to earth.
“Great is your mercy, Lord,” the priest began to thank and ran to the priest:
- Hey, priest, get ready: now we’ll ascend to heaven. Get ready - don't get ready, the priest and priest came, as they were, to the upper room to go to heaven.
- Are you ready?
- Ready, brightest angels!
“Then get into this bag, because you don’t yet have wings to fly.” We will take you to heaven.
The priest and priest climbed into the bag, and Pekale and Tyndale tied it tightly and dragged it along the floor through all the thresholds into the street.
- Oh, my God, my bones hurt from this shaking! - the priest wailed.
“Be quiet, priest, I think that now we are flying through the clouds,” the priest answers. And Pekale and Tyndale tied a bag to a well crane and wrote on it: “Whoever hits this bag three times will receive gold, and God will forgive him one sin.”
In the morning this news spread throughout the village. People came to the well, hit the bag three times, received gold from Pekale and went home. Then the priest’s servants came and began to hit the bag - shreds flew from it.
“Oh, oh, my poor ribs,” the poi screamed. And the priest kept asking:
- What have we sinned, Lord, that you are punishing us so severely?
When he hit the sack, the last one, the farm laborer, the priest and the priest fell to the ground. Stunned and scared to death, they looked around and still could not come to their senses.
“Father,” says Pekale then, “maybe you can tell us what it’s like in heaven, that you so earnestly asked us to ascend there?”
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru