THE KNOT-GRASS
Once upon a time an old hag got up early and went out among the mountains to gather all sorts of green herbs and practise her sorceries.
About midday she set out upon her return, and met some Knot-grass hastening to the mountains.
“Hi! whither away?” asked the witch. “What bad luck sends you on this rough road?”
“Upon my word, little mother, I can’t stand it down there any longer! Wherever the moujik digs or ploughs he does his best to root me out, tearing and clawing me with all his might. There is nothing left for me but to flee away and seek some quiet place where I can grow and spread in peace.”
“Go back to your home, little grass,” replied the old hag. “Mark my words, the more they dig and hoe about a plant the better it thrives and the more it spreads. What does the proverb say? ‘Woe to the thing that never is harvested!’”
The Knot-grass turned about, and ever since that day it has been found in meadow and field, in vineyard and garden—everywhere, indeed, where it is not wanted; and it is a hard matter to root it out.
CHAPTER XXI
THRESHING-TIME
It was the joyous threshing-time. The summer’s work was over. The harvest had been good, and from all the fields the high-piled carts were bringing the sheaves to the threshing-floors. On these high levels busy flails were flying, making a quick music that chimed well with the sweet, melancholy threshing-song of the girls who were gathering the wind-swept grain into bags. When the threshing was all done the little boy’s eldest sister would be married, for autumn is the time for marriages, when vegetables and pork are plenty and there is money to buy brandy from the Jew.
The grandmother had gone out with the little boy to see the threshing and to hear the threshing-song. She had sung that same song in her young days, and so had her great-grandmother before her. On the way back to the house a cow-herd woman met them—not their own, but that of a neighbor—and told them that her old master, the bolshak, or head of the family, was dead. The grandmother looked terror-stricken, and hastily exclaimed:
“May the Saviour’s cross be with thee!”
The cow-herd woman went on her way to spread the news.
“Why did you say that, grandmother?” asked the little boy.
“To scare away the death angel,” replied the grandmother. “Never forget to say that when any one tells you of a death; otherwise it may come to your own house next.”
The grandmother seemed sad when she reached home. She had known the old man when she was a girl. He had been a stern and severe bolshak in his family, keeping all his married sons at home and making them work hard for him, not at all like her son, the starosta, who was so kind to his children. Nevertheless, it made her sad that he was dead. She sat quiet, distaff and spindle lying idly in her lap.
“Grandmother,” said the little boy, “would it comfort you to tell me a story?”
“Indeed it would,” said the grandmother. “Come now, sit on that stool and hold this yarn for me, and I will tell you about