Ilyá Múromets swore blood brotherhood with Dobrýnya Nikítich, then they saddled their good horses and rode forth on the open fields; and they journeyed on for about three months and found no opponent worthy of their steel: they had only gone in the open field. Then they met a passer-by, a beggar singing psalms. His shirt weighed fifteen pud, and his hat ten pud, and his stick was ten sazhéns long. Ilyá Múromets set on him with his horse, and was going to try his mighty strength on him.
Then the passing beggar saw Ilyá Múromets and said: “Hail, Ilyá Múromets! Do you recollect? I learned my letters with you in the same school, and now you are setting your horse on me, who am only a beggar, as though I were an enemy, and you do not know that a very great misfortune has befallen the city of Kíev. The infidel knight, the mighty man, the dishonourable Ídolishche, has arrived. His head is as big as a beer cauldron, and his shoulders a sazhén broad. There is a span length between his brows, and between his ears there is a tempered dart. And he eats an ox at a time and he drinks a cask at a time. The Prince of Kíev is very aggrieved with you that you have left him in such straits.”
So Ilyá Múromets changed into the beggar’s dress and rode straight back to the palace of the Prince, and cried out in a knightly voice: “Hail to thee, Prince of Kíev! give me, a wandering beggar, alms.”
And the Prince saw him and spoke in this wise: “Come into my palace, beggar. I will give you food and drink and will give you gold on your way.”
So the beggar went into the palace and stood at the stove and looked round.
Ídolishche asked to eat, so they brought him an entire roasted ox and he ate it to the bones; then Ídolishche asked for drink, so they brought him a cauldron of beer; and twenty men had to bring it in. And he held it up to his ears and drank it all through.
Ilyá Múromets said, “My father had a gluttonous mare; it guzzled until its breath failed.”
Ídolishche could not stand this affront, and said, “Hail, wandering beggar! Do you dare me? I could take you in my hands; if it had been Ilyá Múromets I would even have braved him.”
“Well,” said Ilyá Múromets, “that is the kind of man he was!” And he took off his cap and struck him lightly on the head, and he nearly knocked through the walls of the palace, took Ídolishche’s trunk and flung it out. And in return the Prince honoured Ilyá Múromets, praised him highly, and placed him amongst the mighty knights of his court.