Prevod

A man was travelling somewhere with his wife, and they crossed a freshly mown meadow. “Well, wife!” said the man. “What a neatly mown meadow this is!” His wife replied, “Have your eyes gone bad, that you can’t see it wasn’t mown, but clipped with shears?” “God be with you, woman!” said the man. “How can anyone clip a meadow with shears? It was mown—look, you can see the swathes.” And so, with the man insisting it had been mown and the woman that it had been clipped, they fell to quarrelling. The man struck his wife and began shouting at her to hold her tongue, but she kept pace beside him along the road, thrust two fingers under his eyes, and, snipping them like scissors, cried, “Clipped! Clipped! Clipped!” Walking along like this, looking not where she was going but into her husband’s eyes and at her own snipping fingers, she stepped on a pit covered over with cut grass and fell into it. When the man saw her tumble down and disappear into the pit, he said, “Ha! That serves you right!” And he went on his way without so much as peering over the edge. After a few days, he began to feel sorry for her and said to himself, “Let me go and pull her out, if she’s still alive! Whatever she may be, she’s my wife; perhaps she’ll even mend her ways from now on.” So he took a rope and went to the pit, lowered the rope into it, and called to her to take hold so that he could pull her out. When he felt the rope grow taut, he began to haul away. But when he had drawn it almost to the top, what a sight met his eyes! Instead of his wife, a devil was clinging to it, white as a sheep on one side and black, as a devil ought to be, on the other. The man took fright and was about to let go of the rope, but the devil cried, “Hold fast, my brother in God! Pull me out, and then kill me if you won’t spare my life—only get me out of here!” The man accepted him as his brother in God and pulled him out. At once the devil asked what good fortune had brought the man there to rescue him, and what he had been looking for in the pit. When the man told him that his wife had fallen in a few days before and that he had now come to pull her out, the devil cried, “What, sworn brother, for God’s sake! That’s your wife? And you could live with her? And now you’ve come back to pull her out! Why, I fell into that pit a long time ago, and at first, to be sure, I had a hard time of it, but after a while I more or less grew used to it. Yet since that accursed woman joined me, I’ve nearly died of her wickedness in these few days! She drove me into a corner, and look how this side of me, the side facing her, has turned white—all from her wickedness! Leave her alone, for God’s sake! Let her stay where she is, and I’ll make your fortune for saving me from her.” Then he plucked a herb from the ground and held it out to the man. “Here, take this herb and keep it. I’m going off to enter the daughter of such-and-such an emperor. Physicians, priests, and monks will come from all over the empire to cure her and drive me out, but I won’t leave until you arrive. Pass yourself off as a physician and come to cure her too. All you need do is burn this herb and fumigate her with it, and I’ll leave at once. Then the emperor will give you his daughter and let you reign alongside him.” The man took the herb, put it in his bag, and bade his sworn brother farewell, and they parted. A few days later, word spread that the emperor’s daughter was ill: a devil had entered her. Physicians, priests, and monks gathered from throughout the empire, but all in vain; no one could do anything. Then the man took the bag with the herb, hung it round his neck, took a staff in his hand, and set off on foot for the imperial capital, making straight for the emperor’s palace. As he approached the rooms where the emperor’s daughter lay ill, he saw physicians and women healers hurrying to and fro, while priests, monks, and bishops read prayers, consecrated oil, held vigils, and called on the devil to come out. But the devil kept shouting from within the girl and mocking them. The man tried to go in with his bag, but they would not let him enter. So he went straight to the empress in her own quarters and told her that he too was a physician and had a herb with which he had already driven out several devils. The empress, like any mother, sprang up at once and took him to the girl’s room. As soon as the devil caught sight of him, he said, “So you’re here, sworn brother!” “Here I am.” “Good! Do your part, then, and I’ll leave. But wherever you hear of me again, don’t come after me, or it will go badly for you.” (They spoke in such a way that no one but the two of them could hear or understand.) The man took his herb from his bag and fumigated the girl with it. The devil came out, and the girl was left as sound and healthy as the day she was born. All the other physicians dispersed in shame, but the emperor and empress embraced this one as their own son. They led him into the treasury, dressed him in fine clothes, and gave him their only daughter in marriage, and the emperor bestowed half his empire upon him. Some time later, that same devil went and entered the daughter of another, greater emperor, whose realm bordered on the first. They searched throughout the empire for a cure, and when they could find none, they learned that the neighbouring emperor’s daughter had suffered from just such an illness and had been cured by a physician who was now his son-in-law. So the emperor wrote a letter to his neighbour, asking him to send the physician who had cured his daughter, so that he might cure this daughter of the same illness, and promising to give him whatever he asked. When the emperor told his son-in-law, the son-in-law remembered his sworn brother’s parting words and dared not go. He began making excuses, saying that he had given up medicine and no longer knew how to cure anyone. When this reply was sent to the other emperor, he sent a second letter, declaring that he would raise an army and make war unless the emperor sent him his physician. On receiving this message, the emperor told his son-in-law there was no other way: he must go. Seeing that he had no choice, the emperor’s son-in-law made ready and set out. When he came to the emperor’s daughter, the devil was astonished and cried, “Ah, sworn brother! What are you doing here? Didn’t I tell you not to come after me again?” “Ah, my sworn brother!” replied the emperor’s son-in-law. “I haven’t come to drive you out of the emperor’s daughter. I’ve been looking for you to ask what we’re to do now. My wife has got out of the pit! That she’s looking for me is bad enough—but you! She’s after you for not letting me pull her out.” “What the devil! Your wife has got out?” cried the devil. And he leapt out of the emperor’s daughter and fled all the way to the deep blue sea, never again to return among men.