In autumn, Basque shepherds descend from the mountains to green, low pastures. And then one day they forgot in a mountain hut an iron grate for baking flatbread. And they only realized it in the evening, when it was time for dinner. But no one dared to walk through the mountains, especially in the dark.
The fact is that at this time the forest man Basa-Jan manages the mountains as he wants. Basa-Jean is enormous in stature, as if she were not a person at all, but a hundred-year-old oak tree. Only instead of moss on his body he has fur. Bassa-Jean is the true master of the Pyrenees Mountains. He has extraordinary strength: he can uproot an entire forest, he can even move a mountain from its place. Well, that’s why people don’t want to meet him. They'll stay away. Can you really save yourself? Basa-Jean goes everywhere. Do you hear a stone falling from a cliff? It was Basa-Jean who threw him off. Do you think this tree extends its branches to the road? No, Basa-Jean is standing, thinking...
Well, the shepherds are sitting by the hearth, but there is no grate, there is nothing to bake bread on. No one wants to go to bed hungry, so the shepherds began to tease each other about who should go upstairs. Nobody, of course, wants to. They are afraid of Bas-Jean. Finally, it was agreed that whoever now goes to the mountains is entitled to a gold coin. Here one shepherd agreed.
“What happens, cannot be avoided,” he says. – If our grating is now in Bas-Jean’s hands, then we still need to take it away. He has no business using other people's things.
As he said, so he did. I got to the hut and looked inside. And there, of course, Basa-Jean is sitting, getting ready to have dinner.
The shepherd is frightened and does not go into the hut. But Basa-Jean noticed him and ordered him to enter. Yes, he shouted at him so loudly that the shepherd decided: the top of Ori had collapsed.
Basa-Jean asks what the shepherd needs. The shepherd replies that he came, they say, to get a grill for flatbreads, they forgot it here. Basa-Jan says to the shepherd:
“If you answer my question in such a way that you have nothing to object to, I’ll let you go.” And I'll return the bars. If you don’t answer, blame yourself. I didn't invite you to visit me.
Basa-Jan fanned the fire in the hearth even more than before. It became as bright as day in the hut. Basa-Jean looks at the shepherd: a tired man sits in front of him, his face is furrowed with wrinkles; you can’t tell how old he is right away.
- Well, how old are you, shepherd? – Basa-Jean asks and grins, waiting for an answer.
The shepherd sighed and also grinned.
“I, Basa-Jean,” he says, “count my sheep: I’m afraid of losing them.” I count money: I always don’t have enough. But I never counted my years, and for what? You won't lose a single one...
Basa-Jean laughed.
- Well answered, well done. Take your grill and don’t get caught on my road again.
The shepherd thanked Bas-Zhan, took the grate, and began to go down the mountain. As he walks, he thinks: “It turns out that Basa-Jean wouldn’t mind talking to an intelligent person. It’s good that I went, otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten the bars anyway...” Just thinking that, he immediately stumbled and dropped the bars on the ground. I spent the whole night looking for her.
So the shepherd punished himself for boasting, and maybe Bas-Jean could not have done it without him...
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru