In ancient times, there lived a peasant. He had some good things, but most of all he valued his beloved wife. They used to get up at dawn and get to work together. They worked hard and somehow made ends meet. But it’s not for nothing that they say that grief and misfortune walk among people. Less than a year after the wedding, the unfortunate husband lost his only treasure: his dear wife died.
It is known that a good housewife is the pride of any home, and whoever has lost such a wife is sickened to look at a careless one. The widower's hut is empty, the hearth has grown cold, and he himself now goes about in a dirty shirt to the feast, and to the world, and to good people. There was nothing to be done, he had to think about marriage. Marriageable brides are like nuts in the forest, but look closely at them and you will see: the girl is beautiful, but lazy to spin. The peasant was tired of choosing a bride for himself, and then one day he decided to go to a neighboring village and marry the first girl he met on the way.
Once upon a time there were horse-drawn mills. On the outskirts of a neighboring village there was just such a mill, and near that mill the widower saw a girl - she was waiting for the miller to sweep away her grain.
-Will you marry me, red maiden? - he asks at random.
The girl perked up and sang in a sweet voice, as if she had eaten enough honey gingerbread:
- I don’t know. Ask mother!
There will always be a bride for the groom, but the peasant’s word was firm, and he did not want to back down from his decision. He went to the mother of the girl who was waiting for the grinding near the mill, and she said to him:
“We have a girl of marriageable age - that’s true, but I’ll just tell you frankly: my daughter is not trained to herd sheep, nor do laundry, nor cook dinner. Then don’t blame us for giving you a pig in a poke.
“Look, son,” the girl’s father intervened, “the mother spoiled her daughter; she just didn’t dip her in honey or bathe her in milk.” If you hope that you can make a good wife out of her, well, then take it!
The groom himself understood what the bride was like as soon as she said a word, but he said to the old man:
- It's not a big deal! I have a big bag - as long as the bag is full, the young woman will sit with her hands folded.
And then the widower showed the old man a large colorful bag, filled to the brim with all sorts of food - wheat bread, meat, butter, but what kind of secret was contained in that bag, he never discovered. He just added, addressing the bride:
“Your job is to make sure the bag is always full, and don’t worry about anything else.”
And then the fun began: the father is happy to death to throw away his couch potato, and the mother is happy that she has found a home for her beloved daughter, and the groom is happy that the bride agreed to only sit back until the bag is full.
The next day, the husband got ready to plow in the field, and the young woman remained to guard the house. Before leaving, the husband hung the bag on a nail and punished:
- Hey, bag! Pokaty is full, please do all the housework!
And to the door, and his wife called out to him:
- Why are you leaving, hubby, and not telling me where I can get lunch and dinner?
“There’s all sorts of stuff in the bag—just take the trouble to stretch out your hands, my darling.”
In the evening, the husband returned home from the arable land and saw that the young woman had settled down behind the stove with a cat on her lap; you couldn’t tell who was purring songs to whom. And the house is in disarray and desolation. The lazy woman trips over the broom, but still doesn’t touch it - why on earth, if the husband ordered the bag to be in charge. The husband had not yet crossed the threshold, and the wife was already complaining to him:
- Look, hubby, your bag didn’t even sweep the hut!
The peasant pretended that this was something new to him, got angry and started hitting the bag:
- Oh, you lazy thing, you should hang everything on a nail!
He whipped the bag properly, and then exclaimed, as if he had guessed something:
- Listen, wife, it seems to me that our bag has become thin...
“So I took food from it for both lunch and dinner!”
“That’s probably why the bag was so careless today,” said the husband and took dinner out of it.
The same thing happened on the second and third days. The husband kept scolding and beating the bag until it was completely empty.
- What should we do now? — the wife became worried when it was time for dinner.
The husband seemed to be upset and worried too, as if my head was spinning from worries, and when my wife was really hungry, he said:
- Yes, nothing, apparently, we have no choice but to fill the bag to the top... And then we can rest.
- What should we do?
- We'll have to work hard on the bag. I warned you when I came to get married - fill your bag and have a good time. But after the first lunch, the bag lost a lot of weight - you noticed it yourself.
Then the husband showed his wife what business she should take on first. The young woman had to clean the house and feed the cattle, and her husband twisted the head of a large rooster and ordered it to be fried. Then he got some flour and taught his wife how to knead the dough, light the stove and bake bread. When everything was ready, the husband put the bread and the roast rooster in a sack and said:
- Well, now, little wife, you can sit back.
The time has come to reap the wheat. The peasant gave his wife a sickle - go, reap and knit sheaves.
- But I can’t! - the young woman cries.
“You’ll learn, don’t worry, wife.” If you like to sit at the stove, you also like to stuff your bag full. Wheat will make flour, flour will make cakes, so your bag is full.
Involuntarily, the young woman has to work, but she just really doesn’t like the fact that the reserves in the bag are constantly melting and they need to be replenished constantly. And she told her mother: take me home or tame my husband.
The mother became angry, like a witch, and rushed to her daughter as fast as she could. And the son-in-law had been waiting for his mother-in-law for a long time and, as soon as he saw her, he grabbed a saw and started sawing wood and dumping it right under his feet.
- Hey, you crazy! Where have you seen this - dumping firewood at your feet? — the woman was still squealing from the gate.
- What, mother, is it only crazy people who dump firewood under their feet?
— the son-in-law answers meekly, as if he had no idea what kind of storm was about to break out.
The mother-in-law sees that her son-in-law is out of his mind and rushes to her daughter. The young woman spoke to her about three times, and her mother listened to her complaints and let’s honor her son-in-law. His mother-in-law calls him to the hut, but there is no trace of his son-in-law. They went back and forth and finally found him in the attic.
The woman became more furious than ever:
- Why are you hiding behind a pipe like some kind of bat or owl!
- Oh, mother, don’t scold me! - the poor man groaned. - This is me hiding from my worries! I don’t know where to hide - they are hot on my heels.
- What other worries, thunder strikes you!
- Yes, I need to plow, but one of my ox died. What should I do now, poor wretch? After all, a pair of oxen is needed; the yoke falls off one of them and the furrow lies crookedly!
“What are you going to feed your wife, you fool, if you don’t sow on time!” - the woman scolds him.
And the son-in-law pricked up his ears, remained silent and listened.
- Give me your ox, I’ll teach you how to work now! - his mother-in-law yelled at him.
The son-in-law quickly took the ox out into the field and set up the plow. The woman also did not waste time - she climbed into the yoke along with the ox and said to her son-in-law:
- Now hold the handles tightly, the furrow will lie evenly!
The son-in-law obeys, and the mother-in-law drew a furrow almost to the middle of the field and said:
- Why are you so sour, so limp, like last year’s sauerkraut? Harness instead of me, and let your wife support the handles of the plow - and so that the whole field is sown!
“Okay, mother,” the peasant answers. “Just repeat all this louder so my wife can hear.”
“Yes, I’m not going to talk to you, the good-for-nothing,,” the woman snapped and rushed to her daughter, and from her straight home, so that her eyes would no longer see her son-in-law.
The mother-in-law returned to her village and told all the neighbors that her son-in-law was a bungler, he couldn’t provide his own wife with bread, and all he knew was that he was running around with his bag. She buzzed the ears of all her neighbors, and most of all her old man, until he got ready to visit his son-in-law.
- Well, now two wise little heads will come together! - the woman mocks.
But the old man doesn’t even care about her ridicule. He immediately liked his son-in-law - he was apparently a hard-working and thrifty owner, and the old man had already studied his wife and daughter to the last detail. So he decided to look at the life of the young people with his own eyes. He comes to the village and sees that the son-in-law is plowing, and the daughter is leading the ox.
“Well, well, my children,” the grandfather rejoiced, “work together and you will live comfortably.”
The old man speaks smartly, the son-in-law doesn’t really know where to sit him, and the daughter immediately complains to her father:
- Father! When he married me, he promised that I wouldn’t have to work at all, but in reality, look, I’m in the field just like him.
- Excuse me, the agreement was this: rest while the bag is full! Is that so, father?
“Yes, yes,” confirmed the father-in-law. -What about the bag, isn’t it full?
“It’s full,” the daughter answers, “if you don’t take food from it for lunch and dinner.”
- Well, you don’t have lunch or dinner, so you’ll be throwing around, but your bag will be full! - her father advised her.
- I'm not used to starving!
“Then put in it exactly as much as you take!”
The old man sees that his son-in-law is smarter than he thought, and the son-in-law realized that he had a smart old man, and he tried to treat the owner to the fullest. They feasted for three days; the hostess only had time to offer food. When the father-in-law got ready to go home, his son-in-law greeted him with honor and even hung a bottle of honey drink around his neck.
The grandfather approaches his village, and the woman is already looking out for him. She saw her husband with a heavy bag around his neck and caused a commotion throughout the entire neighborhood. The neighbors came running, and the woman shouted:
“I told you what a crazy person got my daughter!” For those who didn’t believe, let them see for themselves! This crazy man plowed half of my field, but I ran away from him that same day! And he kept my poor grandfather for three days and, probably, harnessed him to my plowing and harrowed him and sowed him. So it seemed to him that this was not enough; he also hung a yoke around the unfortunate old man’s neck.
Meanwhile, the grandfather came very close, the neighbors looked at what was hanging around his neck, and burst into laughter. And when the old man treated them to a honey drink, everyone shouted, as if they had agreed:
- Hey, woman, they should put such a yoke on us more often!
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru