Once upon a time there lived a shepherd who spent all his life as a shepherd. One day, while tending a flock, he fell into a snake hole and found himself in a dungeon. There in the dungeon lay a snake like a ridge. She was the leader of the snakes.
By the will of fate, the shepherd spent the whole summer in the dungeon. When autumn arrived, snakes began to gather here. Here at the exit lay a large stone. Crawling into the hole, all the snakes licked the stone.
“Well,” thought the shepherd, “let me lick him too.” As soon as he touched the stone with his tongue, the shepherd did not want to drink or eat. The shepherd, having licked the snake stone, suddenly began to understand the snake’s language.
There lived a shepherd among the snakes and understood everything that they were talking about among themselves. So he spent the whole winter with them.
Summer has come. The time has come for the snakes to come to earth. Before leaving, the snake leader taught all the snakes:
- On the ground, do not touch either cattle or people! All the snakes left the hole and crawled out onto the ground. But the leader of the snakes did not let go of the shepherd.
Next autumn has arrived. The snakes began to gather in the hole again. Before entering the hole, all the snakes licked the stone. Different snakes with their leaders were located in their own corners.
The shepherd lived with the snakes for exactly three years, and in three years he learned the languages of all the snakes, birds and animals. Three years later, the leader of the snakes released the shepherd and told him not to say that he understood the language of animals. Otherwise he will die.
Again the shepherd began to graze the cattle. At noon each time he drove his herd to rest to a large oak tree. So one day he drove the cattle to the same oak tree, and he lay down to rest under it. A crow flew to the top of an oak tree and said to itself:
“What a shepherd! He has been tending his flock for twenty-five years, but he still doesn’t know that there is gold buried under this oak tree in a forty-bucket barrel.”
The shepherd was just dozing under the oak tree, and therefore he heard all the words of the crow. The shepherd woke up, drove the flock away, then dug out a forty-bucket barrel of gold from under the oak tree.
The shepherd got rich. With this money he built himself a new house, bought all sorts of cattle, and then got married. The wife turned out to be healthy and fat.
One day a shepherd harnessed a couple of horses to a tarantass and went with his wife to the market. On the way, the horses began to talk to each other. The shepherd sat and listened to what they were talking about.
“Only I,” says one of them, “pull the tarantass, but you don’t pull at all, pull harder.”
“Look back,” says another. “There’s a woman sitting on your side, a healthy fat woman, and on my side is her thin husband.” That's why it seems to you that you are pulling harder than me.
Hearing the horses talking, the Mari couldn’t stand it and laughed. The wife, surprised, asked her husband:
- Why are you laughing?
“Just like that,” the husband answers.
The wife became stubborn and wanted to find out why her husband was laughing.
Husband says:
“We’ll buy some rolls at the market.” Let's return home, feed the cattle, and then tell you what I laughed at.
The husband and wife returned home. Mariets gave the rolls to the chickens and the dog. The dog did not eat, she was grieving. The chickens and rooster began to peck. And in front of the dog the roll lay untouched.
The rooster, seeing that the dog was not eating, asked her:
- Why don’t you eat?
“I don’t feel like eating, because our owner will die soon,” says the dog.
- Of course, he will die, since he does not find justice for his wife alone. I have twelve wives, and I hold them all in my hands. He only has one, and he can't handle it. He has nothing to grieve: he has a twelve-sided whip hanging in his cage. If only he could whip his wife with this whip, saying: “Are you going to ask more questions about what you shouldn’t ask?”
Mariets stood right there and heard the conversation between the rooster and the dog. Then he took the twelve-sided whip from the cage and went in to his wife.
-Are you going to ask me more?! - he repeated, whipping her. And he whipped his wife until she said: “Okay, I won’t ask any more questions.”
After this, the husband and wife began to live together.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru