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A poor peasant went off early one morning to plough, taking with him for his breakfast a piece of bread. He got his plough ready, put his coat round the bread, hid it under a bush and started work. After a while, when his horse was tired and he was hungry, the peasant stopped ploughing, let the horse loose to feed, and went to get his coat and his breakfast.
He lifted the coat, but the bread was gone! He looked and looked, turned the coat over and shook it, but the bread was gone. The peasant could not understand this at all.
‘That’s strange,’ he thought; ‘I saw no one, yet someone has been here and has taken the bread!’
It was an imp who had stolen the bread while the peasant was ploughing, and at that moment he was sitting behind the bush, waiting to hear the peasant swear and call on the name of the Devil.
The peasant was sorry to lose his breakfast, but, ‘It cannot be helped,’ said he. ‘After all, I shall not die of hunger! No doubt, whoever took the bread needed it. May it do him good! ‘
He went to the well, had a drink of water and rested for a while. Then he caught his horse, fastened it to the plough and began ploughing again.
The imp was upset because he had not made the peasant do wrong, and he went to the Devil, his master, to report what had happened.
He came to the Devil and told how he had taken the peasant’s bread, and how the peasant, instead of swearing, had said, ‘May it do him good! ‘
The Devil was angry and replied, ‘If the man got the better of you, it was your own fault – you don’t understand your business! If the peasants and their wives do that kind of thing, we shall be lost. The matter can’t be left like that! Go back at once and make things right. If in three years you don’t get the better of that peasant, I’ll have you thrown into holy water!’
The imp was frightened. He hurried back to earth, thinking how he could make up for his mistake. He thought and thought, and at...