Once the smart Mother went to woo the bride. They greeted him cordially - they wiped down the bench where he should sit. They sit and have a conversation. The owner says:
- Come on, mother, run to the closet! Why - you know!
And the mother is just waiting for this - she jumped out of the room and ran for a treat. They are waiting for her - they will wait, the woman has disappeared somewhere, she is not there and is not there! Father says:
- Go ahead, daughter, look where our mother is stuck? The daughter ran and also disappeared, as if she had fallen through the ground.
- Why the hell are they messing around there? Well, wait, I'll tell you! - the father got angry and went after them himself.
Mother sits waiting for the owners. I sat for a long time - there was no one. He will either yawn, throw some food on the fire, or do something else to stay awake, but they still don’t go and don’t go.
“Well,” Matko decided, “whether it’s good or bad, I’ll go and see what happened to them.” Maybe they were stuck to the floor in that closet.
I went, and in the closet the candle that my mother had taken with her had almost completely burned out!
And all three of them are sitting, roaring loudly, so that the neighbors can hear it two houses away.
- Why are you shouting? - Matko asks, but you can’t really get a word out of them, just moans and screams.
The mother screams and somehow explains to him:
- Look, our dear Matko! Here is the ladder that leads from the closet to the attic, and here is the ax hanging. You and our Dorka will get married, you will have a child, he will accidentally run into the closet, move the ladder out of place, an ax will fall on his head and kill him! What a disaster! Oh, our poor child, our poor child! - the mother began to voice again, followed by the father and daughter.
Matko doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Barely calmed down. And then he says:
“If I find five more stupid people in the world who are more stupid than you, then I will take your daughter as my wife!” In the meantime, goodbye!
I walked and walked and searched and searched, but no one came across.
But then he reached some village. He sees a barn, barns and stables standing. He's there.
“I’ll see how people manage things here,” he decided.
And then I noticed that near one of the chicken coops a woman was mercilessly beating a chicken, so beating it that the feathers were just flying.
- Why, mistress, are you punishing your corydalis? - asks Matko.
- Look, what rubbish, she has twelve chickens, but she doesn’t want to feed them milk.
He taught Mother Baba that you need to boil an egg, peel it, chop it, steam the millet, mix it and feed the chickens with this porridge. Baba doesn’t believe that chicks don’t suck a hen’s udder. I saw how they pecked, she was delighted, she began to thank Matko, and gave her a lot of money.
So Matko found the first fool, maybe not stupider than his others, but certainly not smarter.
“Okay,” he thinks, “there’s the first fool.”
Matko began to approach the second village - he heard bells ringing, and a funeral procession was moving towards him. The men are carrying the coffin, the women are trailing behind, screaming, wringing their hands, old and young have come running to the funeral, the coffin is open, and in the coffin lies a young beautiful woman alive.
“Tell me, good people, what are you doing,” asks Matko.
- And what? - they answer him. “Our headman’s daughter walked into the water, stuck her hand in a jug, but couldn’t pull it back out!” The whole village was scratching its head, couldn’t come up with anything, and the girl was completely exhausted! Well, should she carry the jug on her hand all her life? So we want to save her from all her sorrows at once!
- What fools you are!
They could, of course, give him such an insult, but Matko was not lazy, he broke the jug and freed the girl.
The whole village escorted him to the rich Starostin courtyard, and instead of a wake, a merry revelry began. And then - the dish went around in a circle, they collected a lot of money for the smart Matko.
Here's some more foolishness for you. Things are going well!
In the third village they wanted their church to be white and white both outside and inside. Just what to build from? Someone recommended cottage cheese. They immediately began to curd the milk, and build a church out of the cottage cheese, they built it, but only without windows. She looks good on the outside and is white. But the inside is worse than a dungeon. They began to carry light in bags. It's all in vain.
But soon birds flew in from the forest, pecked holes in the cottage cheese, and it became light in the church.
“No other way than birds bring light!” Let's catch them, lock them up, they will shine there day and night.
Without hesitation, the whole village went into the forest, to a tall tree, to look for bird nests. They took a long ladder with them and carried it on their shoulders. But the ladder clings to every tree, and where the forest is thicker, it doesn’t allow you to move either here or there. They had to break out the crossbars one by one. Finally we reached a tall tree, and there were only three rungs left on the ladder!
But the big men stood up near the tree, climbed onto each other’s shoulders and reached up to the very top of the head. The very first one reached the nest and grabbed it in his fist along with the birds. Shouts in joy:
- I’m holding it! - here the bottom one raised his head, wanted to look, but his leg twisted, he fell to the ground, and everyone else followed him.
The birds did not wait, and in the meantime they flew away. Gee! Some have a broken leg, some have a broken arm, and some have a broken head.
And then our Matko came to their village. He taught them to build a church out of stone, cut windows in it and whitewash the walls with lime. The church is white and beautiful! The men gave Matko more money than the church was worth.
So Matko found third fools.
In the fourth village there lived not such fools: they had a solid, stone church. But there is no end to stupidity! Matko sees healthy men dragging a bull home! Mother doesn’t believe her eyes and asks:
- Good people, what are you doing?
- What's wrong? Our rich butcher died and bequeathed a bull to the house, so we want to fulfill his last wish, drag the bull to the house.
The mother of that bull sold it, and explained that it was not the bull, but the money that should be used for the house.
Matko received a reward from these men for his smart advice. It means our Matko has already found four fools.
“Now, maybe I’ll find the fifth ones?” - he thinks. - Although, maybe the fifth ones are not the last?
And it’s true, we didn’t have to go far. In the fifth village, they began to serve him food, suddenly people parted, mice climbed onto the table - apparently or invisibly.
“The mice ate their fill, and the people began to eat the scraps.”
- What are you doing here? - asks Matko, - I would sooner die of hunger than pick up mice!
“We used to think the same thing,” people answer him, “but need forces us.” What to do with them? We fight as best we can, set mousetraps, but we still can’t cope. Apparently mice from all over the world have come running to us!
“They’ll run even more if you don’t come to your senses!” - Matko tells them.
“Help us, good man,” the villagers ask him.
Matko - for a good price - brought them a strange animal. All he does is catch mice - to put it simply, a big cat.
Suddenly the men were overcome with fear. What will this unprecedented beast eat when it destroys all the mice? But Matko has already gone far. They began to shout after him. Mother answers from behind the hill:
- It’s not your problem!
And the men heard:
- You then!
The men want to catch the cat, but they can’t catch it, they decided to set the village on fire from all sides. Everything burned down, and the cat sat there alive as if nothing had happened. And next to him - where did it come from? - cat! Soon cats and kittens filled the whole village. But there were no more mice. The village began to live peacefully, and the mice didn’t bother me, and the cats disappeared overnight. Where? - the villagers themselves know, this time they got it with their own minds, they learned from their stupidity.
Matko didn’t look any more foolishly. For what? Who knows how many more there are in the world! He returned home, brought money and said:
“There are many fools in the world, I immediately found five, the sixth will be my wife, and the seventh will be all my relatives and in-laws.”
We heard that Matko and his wife were healed - pure joy! After all, everyone knows that a stupid wife suits a smart husband! They also say that a smart person can learn from a fool, but with one smart person, seven fools can feed themselves.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru