Folk Tales of the Russian Empire. Коллектив авторов

profound the drink, the more pleasure of drinking. Gulp down another glass! Don’t worry, it will not hurt you. It’s the same bread, just boiled.”

      The man drank the second glass, and it seemed not to burn as badly as the first one.

      “It’s bitter,” said the farmer, “but the heat spreads throughout the body. That’s a good job!”

      The Demon poured him a third glass and sighed:

      “See what happens next, let’s have another one!”

      The master clinked with the labourer and drank the third glass in one gulp.

      “Really, it’s not so bitter,” said Jonah the Needy. “It’s not bitter at all!”

      “To say ‘not bitter’ means to say nothing,” said the Demon. “This tastes out of this world! Let’s have one more drink!”

      The man himself moved up the glass.

      “Oh cheers!” he said. “Indeed, it’s a very tasty drink, it makes me cheerful. Yea, I feel like a new man of hot blood, ten years younger – I’m walking on air! Oh dear, my woman won’t recognize me, that’s for sure!”

      “Let’s pour a fifth glass – still enjoy it,” said the Demon.

      “And a sixth glass, I think, would not hurt us!” cried Jonah the Needy.

      “Viva moonshine!” yelled the drunken Demon and started dancing around the house.

      “Wait a minute,” shouted the man trying to pour the sixth glass. “I would be dancing with you if the hut were not shaking somehow up and down.”

      The Demon thought aloud:

      “Yeah, pigs might fly! It looks like I’m in a belly of hell; your soul, man, is in my pocket; and the Great Devil, our Lord, bestowed me the title of Black Demon for my trick, which will lead endless crowds of human souls under our wings…”

      The bottle fell down and broke into pieces. The farmer’s wife came running and their children were running behind her. They looked – their dad was dancing with the labourer. They began to laugh, and it was the first time, when their father become a laughingstock for his children. Only the wife did not laugh – she realized that her husband was out of his mind. The drunken men began squirming after a great merriment, and black tar was flowing from the Demon’s mouth.

      The woman ran to a barber for assistance and brought him home. The booze fighters had collapsed in the same place, where they had done “a job”. One of them was sleeping under a bench, and the other – in a pig’s trough.

      They had slept it off by the morning, got up, but could barely move – their eyes were weary and their heads were like heavy stones.

      “No problem,” said the Demon. “Let us fight fire with fire – let’s have a drink!”

      “Oh no, you must be joking!” moaned Jonah the Needy.

      “You should drink in one go. We’ll take a cup of kindness for old long since!” said the Demon and drank a mug of moonshine. The man obeyed and drank after him.

      “It’s true – I feel better. Now I got it, let’s have another drink! Call the neighbours – let people know that I am no longer Jonah the Needy!”

      “Just a moment,” said the Demon, “the more, the merrier; let’s have a revel!”

      Since then, the farmer became fond of the bottle. The wife had a lot to put up with living with a drunkard like him. In less than a year Jonah the Needy had died. His land and his house were sold for the debts. His kids were left in the rough and rocky lap of poverty. They had to ask for handouts and listen to spiteful words about their father…

      A lot of water had flowed under the bridge since then, and vodka has spread among people – the gift of the Black Demon.

      The Hempen Shirt

      A Chuvash folk tale

      Scholars agree that today’s Chuvash are descendants of at least three groups: Turkic Bulgar tribes who arrived on the Volga in the seventh century from the Caucasus-Azov region; the closely-related Suvars (suvaz, perhaps the origin of chavash) who migrated from the Caucasus in the eighth century; and Finno-Ugric tribes who inhabited Chuvashia before the Turkic settlement.

      Encyclopedia of Russian History, editor in chief James Millar

      Once upon a time there lived a man and his wife. One day the husband felt bad and became ill. He suffered for a while and then died. Some time passed and an evil spirit got into the habit to visit the young widow every night. The devil used to appear before the woman in the guise of a handsome man and she became infatuated with him. Finally she realized that something terrible was happening. Somehow or other, the unfortunate woman tried to get rid of the man. She was almost exhausted, but the devil preyed on her mind and she could not do anything with him.

      Once the widow told the woman next door about her trouble and the good woman said to her:

      “Dear, you should curtain the doorway with a hempen shirt. It will not allow the evil spirit to enter the house.”

      The widow obeyed her neighbour. She made a long shirt from hempen cloth and curtained the doorway to her house. The next night, the evil spirit came to the widow but the Hempen Shirt told him:

      “Wait a minute, good man, listen to what I have had to see and experience in my lifetime.”

      “Well, what is it with you? Come on, get it out,” answered the evil spirit.

      “Look, even before I had come into the world,” the Shirt began its story, “there was a great deal of trouble with me. In the old days there lived a farmer in a village. Once on a spring morning he ploughed up the field. In a while, he harrowed the surface of his plot, and only then planted the hemp – that was me! At a later date, he harrowed the soil for the second time. The ground covered me like a blanket, and the sun warmed my bed. While the first rains have made the ground damp, there sprouted little stems and I saw the light. Well then, when I was born, I began to grow and grow, rising to the sun…”

      “Okay dear, stop talking,” said the evil spirit with a dirty look. “Let me in!”

      “But if you started to listen, let me finish the explanation,” answered the Shirt. “When I grew up and become hardened, I was pulled out of the ground…”

      “I realize,” again interrupted the angry devil, “off with you!”

      “No mate, you do not understand,” the Shirt did not let him go. “Hear me out, please, I have still a lot to say. Then folks had to grind me and separate the seeds…”

      “What the hell? Stop it!” The evil spirit lost his patience. “Go away!”

      But at that time a rooster crowed in the yard, heralding the morning, and the evil spirit disappeared, never having visited the widow.

      The next night he came again, and again the Shirt did not let him go.

      “So, where was I?” said the Shirt. “Oh, yeah, it’s on the seeds. Then folks skinned the hemp, blew it in the wind and put the seeds into storage. And the very hemp without seeds, they first piled in the stacks, and then put in the water to soak for a while.”

      “Well, is that all?” asked the evil spirit in a bad temper. “Let me go!”

      “No, that is not the half of it!” answered the Shirt. “I am still lying in the water. Only in three weeks, I should be pulled out of the water and put to dry!”

      “Enough is enough, leave now!” The devil was getting furious. “Make way!”

      “You have not even heard