Folk Tales of the Russian Empire

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 the most important thing!” said the Shirt. “You do not know how they would crush and break my bones! Thus, they must crush and break me as long, as my body will be cleansed up from the bones. More than that, they should put me in a mortar, and the three or four of them should beat me with pestles…”

“Get out of the way!” said the evil spirit, having lost his patience.

“They would then knock all the dust out of me,” continued the Shirt, “and leave the clean body. They would hang me on a combing machine and divide into thin fibres, and then they would spin me for some time. A spun yarn they would wind round a reel, and put it into alkaline liquor. Then it will be hard to survive, because they would clog up my eyes with ash, so that I could see nothing. Yes, I can’t see now…”

“And I don’t wanna hear it any more!” said the evil spirit and was about to fly into the house, but at that time the cock crowed the next time, and the devil disappeared.

He reappeared on the third night, feeling a little irritated at that tricky shirt. But the Hempen Shirt continued its tale:

“Okay dear, they should wash me off, then dry, make the coils, pass through a reed, then weave, and only then I’ll turn into a canvas.”

“Hey, is that all now?” asked the evil spirit. “Let me go!”

“There is no standing still,” said the Shirt. “You should listen to the whole tale… They would boil the canvas in alkaline water, lay it on the green grass and wash it from the ash. And then the three or four of them would crush me for the second time, until I got soft. After that they would cut off a piece of canvas, as you want, and sew a shirt. Only then the seed, that was thrown down into the ground long before, could turn into the Hempen Shirt, which now is curtaining the door…”

There again crowed the rooster in the yard, and the evil spirit had to get out of his way empty-handed. After all, he had been tired of standing at the door and listening to “the old wives” tales”…

Since then, he had lost interest in his job and left the young widow alone.

The Irony of Fate

A Tajik folk tale

The Tajiks are the most prominent indigenous non-Turkic population in Central Asia. They are of Persian/Iranian ethnic descent, although their exact origin is subject to debate. Legends link the Tajiks with Alexander the Great and his campaign in the region north of Afghanistan and west of China – what is today Tajikistan.

Encyclopedia of Russian History, editor in chief James Millar

In the old days there lived a rich man in a city – Agha. Every morning after his breakfast, he used to have a rest lying on a sofa, on the top of seven blankets. Sometimes he called his wife and began to blow his horn:

“Hey, woman, you are swimming in luxury and prosperity under the shadow of my brilliant mind and my inexhaustible wealth. Women all over the city pay honour to you, an ordinary and poor girl, because of my high position and far-reaching influence. Only thanks to my good fortune, you have never felt hunger and thirst. A thousand times you should praise the Almighty for your wise and intelligent husband!”

All this time the wife of Agha stood before him bowing her head. She was totally overawed by her husband.

Every day, she got up before dawn. All day long she had been on the fly, cooking meals, feeding the cattle, milking the cows, sweeping the yard or cleaning the house. In the evening, she used to cook tasty treats for some friends of her husband and then she served his insatiable guests. The greedy master had not given her helpers, and the good woman coped with all the work by herself. Moreover, she embroidered skullcaps at odd moments, after all the cases. The woman next door then sold them at a high price, and the wife gave all the money to her husband.

One day, when the rich man began to praise himself and to blame his wife for the next time, she could not be patient any longer and said:

“For a long time, I was also thinking that only thanks to you I have been clad and shod. But over time I realized that there was a large share of my work in increasing your wealth, and you have no reason to reproach me.”

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