Ep. 925 - The Bad Wife - A Russian Folktale

A bad wife lived on the worst of terms with her husband, and never paid any attention to what he said. If her husband told her to get up early, she would lie in bed three days at a stretch; if he wanted her to go to sleep, she couldn’t think of sleeping. When her husband asked her to make pancakes, she would say: “You thief, you don’t deserve a pancake!”

If he said:

“Don’t make any pancakes, wife, if I don’t deserve them,” she would cook a two-gallon pot full, and say,

“Eat away, you thief, till they’re all gone!”

“Now then, wife,” perhaps he would say, “I feel quite sorry for you; don’t go toiling and moiling, and don’t go out to the hay cutting.”

“No, no, you thief!” she would reply, “I shall go, and do you follow after me!”

One day, after having had his trouble and bother with her he went into the forest to look for berries and distract his grief, and he came to where there was a currant bush, and in the middle of that bush he saw a bottomless pit. He looked at it for some time and considered, “Why should I live in torment with a bad wife? can’t I put her into that pit? can’t I teach her a good lesson?”