The Husband and the Wife

A husband was always arguing with his wife.

"You're so lazy!" he yelled at her. "I plow and mow, and you can't even be bothered to bring me lunch in the field!"

"I have more work at home than you do in the field," the wife replied. "When am I supposed to bring you lunch?"

The husband didn’t believe her:

"What kind of work could there be at home? I could handle that kind of work with ease."

One day, the wife got angry:

"If that's how it is," she said, "I'll go plow, and you stay home."

The husband was delighted:

"Fine. Now you'll see who's telling the truth! Plowing isn't like moving pots around in the oven."

The wife got ready to go to the field and said to her husband:

"Just make sure you do all the work."

The husband glanced around the house:

"What work is there to do?"

"See the dough in the kneading trough?"

"I see it," the husband replied.

"Well, grind some flour on the millstones, knead the dough, and bake the bread."

"That's easy work," the husband waved his hand. "What else?"

"Churn the butter."

"That's not hard either. What else?"

"Keep an eye on the calves in the pasture so they don’t cause trouble. Cook lunch, and watch the broody hen so she doesn’t jump off the sieve, or the eggs will get cold."

The wife explained everything he needed to do at home, got ready, and left for the field. The husband stomped around the house, smirking to himself: "I’ll not only do all this work—I’ll even have time to take a nap."

He lit his pipe and started grinding the flour. To make the work go faster, he tied a churn with sour cream to his belt. As he turned the millstones, he swayed from side to side, and the sour cream—splash, splash!—started turning into butter.

The work was going well!

But then the neighbor's children suddenly shouted under the window:

"Uncle, your calves got into the oats!"

"Ah, may the wolves eat them!" the man shouted and ran to the pasture.

But the churn—bang, bang!—hit him on the knees. He ran a little farther and fell to the ground like a sack. The lid of the churn came off, and all the sour cream spilled out.

The man got up, spat in frustration, and ran on. He chased the calves out of the oats and drove them home.

"If you don’t want to graze in the pasture," he said, "then stay hungry in the barn!"

The man returned to the house. He looked around, and there, instead of him, a spotted pig was running amok: it had scattered all the flour, eaten the dough, and chased the broody hen off the sieve.

The man chased the pig out, stood in the middle of the house, and scratched his head: what to do now? He thought, "At least I need to save the eggs, or if they get cold, the chicks won’t hatch, and my wife will give me an earful..." He looked around—no hen in sight.

The man, in despair, sat down on the sieve himself. "When the hen comes back," he thought, "I’ll get up, start cooking lunch, and put her back on the eggs."

A Cossack was passing by and stopped at the house to get some water. He saw the man sitting on the sieve.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Hatching chicks."

"Who put you, poor thing, on the sieve?" The man told the Cossack about his troubles: how he stayed home to manage the household and how unlucky he’d been.

The Cossack laughed, then started whipping him with a whip... He beat him and scolded:

"That’s for your stupidity! Your wife is out plowing the field, and what are you doing?"

The man twisted and turned until he crushed all the eggs. He saw things were going badly. He jumped off the sieve, climbed up to the attic in a panic, and hid in a box of feathers. The Cossack drank some water and rode off. The man sat in the feathers, trembling with fear.

At that moment, the wife’s relatives arrived for a visit. They entered the house. The mother-in-law looked at the mess and said to her husband:

"No wonder our son-in-law argues with our daughter! It seems she really is lazy."

"If that’s the case," the old man said, "let’s give the gift not to our daughter but to our son-in-law!"

The man heard all this from the attic. "What kind of gift," he thought, "did they bring?"

He leaned out of the box to see the gift, but the box—crash!—fell down with him inside.

The old man and woman heard the noise, ran out to the porch, and saw the man covered in feathers.

"A devil! A devil!" they shouted in unison. The old woman started crossing herself, and the old man grabbed a poker and started beating the "devil."

"Look where you’ve crawled, you unclean spirit!" The man got up and ran to the garden. He hid in the hemp, sitting there half-dead, rubbing his bruised sides.

In the evening, the wife returned from the field. The old folks told her:

"Well, now you’ll live in peace with your husband."

"Why?" the daughter asked.

"We chased the devil out of your house. It was him, the cursed one, who made you argue!"

And indeed, from that day on, the husband stopped calling his wife lazy.

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The Husband and the Wife

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