A Woman's Slander
A pious man, every time he went to the field and returned from there, prayed to God.One day, his wife said to him:
— Dear husband, why don’t you ask God in your prayers to save you from a wife’s slander?
— That’s the last thing I need! What is a woman that I should pray out of fear of her?
Hearing this, the wife decided to teach her husband a lesson and play a trick on him: she bought several fish, tied them in a bundle, and carried them along with lunch to the field. While her husband, taking his breakfast, went to eat by the spring, she secretly buried the fish one by one in the ground. After doing this, she gathered the dishes from the meal and returned home.
When the husband began plowing, he suddenly saw fish emerging from the tilled earth. He collected the fish, brought them home in the evening, and told his wife how he had dug them out of the ground. He expressed his amazement that the Lord God could even create fish in the earth. He instructed his wife to cook them so they could have them for lunch in the field the next day. The wife cooked the fish, ate them herself, and took some broth with her to bring to her husband in the field.
— And where are the fish? — asked the husband.
— What fish are you talking about?
— The ones I got from under the ground.
— You must have lost your mind! You never brought any such fish home, and I’ve never seen them.
Hearing this, the husband became angry, grabbed a club, and was about to attack his wife, but she raised a cry and called for help from the peasants working in the neighboring fields.
— Let me go, — said the husband, — I’ll teach this wretch a lesson! She ate my fish and is calling me crazy.
The peasants who came to the cry asked the wife what fish he was talking about.
— I’m talking about the fish I dug up from under the ground in the field, — said the husband.
— Poor, poor woman, you’re right, he’s lost his mind! — the gathered peasants decided, and considering the man insane, they tied his hands, took him home, and tied him to a post.
When the people dispersed and the wife was left alone with her husband, she said to him:
— Well, are you still not afraid of a woman’s slander? Know that this is the least that could happen to you.
— I beg you, wife, in the name of God, — answered the husband, — untie the rope and free me from this trouble! I vow to pray daily, first and foremost, for deliverance from a woman’s slander.
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