One day the wolf went for a walk. On the way, he found a piece of lard. At that time the wolf was not hungry; he sniffed the lard, touched it with his paw and said:
“I would probably eat you, but you’re so salty.” The wolf left the fat and moved on. When he wanted to eat, he found nothing.
“What a fool I am,” he thought, “oh, if only I had thought of eating that piece of lard in time! But now you can’t turn it back.”
A short time later he met a pig with a whole litter of piglets and said to her:
“Listen, I’ll eat one of your piglets, I’m really hungry.”
“You can eat one, so be it,” answered the pig, “but my babies are not baptized.” You can’t eat them without christening them. Let's go to the pond, there we'll get water for baptism.
Having reached the pond, the pig said to the wolf:
- Catch one of the kids!
And when they caught the pig, she said:
- Scoop up the water with your paw!
As soon as the wolf bent down to draw water, she pushed him with her snout as hard as she could; the wolf rolled into the pond. While he was floundering there, the pig and piglets ran away.
And the poor wolf kept remembering that piece of lard: “What a fool I am for not eating it when I found it!”
The wolf went further and saw sheep in the meadow. He told them:
- Hey you sheep! Whatever you want, I have to eat one of you, I’m very hungry!
“Okay, you can eat one of us,” said the rams, “but first we must serve Vespers.”
The sheep huddled together and began bleating with all their might. The people who were assigned to guard them thought: “Why are our sheep huddled together?” They noticed the wolf and drove it away.
The wolf approached a herd of cows, followed by calves and heifers. He said to the cows:
- Listen, I have to eat at least one calf from your herd, I’m really hungry!
“Okay, poor fellow,” said the cows, “so be it, eat him; but first we must dance. - And the cows* instantly gathered in a circle, and placed the calves and heifers in the middle.
“Now take the calf,” they said to the wolf. As soon as the wolf tried to get closer, they put their horns forward. They would have gored him to death. Again the wolf had to leave hungry.
“Oh,” he repeated to himself, “how unfortunate I am! If I guessed in time to eat that piece of bacon! I'll die of hunger."
He went to the meadow where the mare and her foal were grazing. The wolf said to the mare:
- I'm really hungry! I'll have to eat your foal!
“Okay, wolf,” said the mare, “you will get him, but he is not savvy.” I can't give him to you to eat before I kick him.
She asked the wolf to take the foal by the leg so that it would be more convenient for her to shoe him, and the foal grabbed the wolf’s hoof and broke his jaw.
Completely despondent, the poor wolf settled down under an oak tree on which a man was sitting and cutting off the withered branches. The wolf loudly complained about his misadventures.
- How unfortunate I am! - he wailed. “I found a piece of lard and didn’t think to eat it.” I met a pig with piglets - and out of stupidity I was unable to get a single one of them. I came across some rams: they said that they wanted to serve Vespers first; I agreed to wait - and I didn’t get any of them. I came across a herd of cows. They wanted to dance before giving me the calf. Poe met a mare - she decided to shoe her foal, and he broke my jaw. The only thing missing is for me to be killed by thunder.
At this time, the man, who was sitting on an oak tree and listening to everything that the wolf said, dropped the ax; here the wolf came to an end.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru