The Potter
A potter was driving along the road when a passer-by came towards him. “Hire me as your worker!” the man said. “But do you know how to make pots?”
A potter was driving along the road when a passer-by came towards him.
“Hire me as your worker!” the man said.
“But do you know how to make pots?”
“Do I ever!”
They agreed on the terms, shook hands and drove on together. When they reached home, the worker said:
“Now, master, get forty cartloads of clay ready. I’ll start work tomorrow!”
The master got forty cartloads of clay ready. But the worker was the Devil himself, and he warned the potter:
“I’ll work at night, and you mustn’t come into the shed!”
“Why not?”
“That’s just how it is! Come in, and you’ll bring trouble on yourself!”
The dark night came. At twelve o’clock sharp, the Devil gave a loud shout, and little devils gathered around him in countless numbers. They began shaping pots, and the whole yard rang with clattering, banging and laughter. The master could bear it no longer. “I’ll just go and have a look!” He came to the shed and peered through a crack. There were the devils, squatting and shaping pots. Only one lame fellow was doing no work, just looking about. He spotted the master, snatched up a lump of clay and hurled it straight into his eye! The master lost the sight in one eye and went back to the cottage, while the noise and laughter in the shed grew louder than ever.
In the morning, the worker said:
“Hey, master! Go and count the pots. See how many we’ve made in one night.”
The master counted them: forty thousand had been made.
“Now get me ten sazhen of firewood ready. Tonight I’ll fire the pots.”
At midnight sharp, the Devil gave another loud shout. Little devils came running from every direction, smashed all the pots, threw the shards into the kiln and began firing them. The master made the sign of the cross over the crack and watched. “Well,” he thought, “there goes all that work!” The next day the worker called him. “Come and see whether I’ve done a good job!” The master went to look: all forty thousand pots stood there whole, each finer than the next! On the third night, the Devil called the little devils together, painted the pots in different colours and loaded every last one onto a single cart.
The master waited for market day and took the pots to town to sell. The Devil ordered his little devils to run through every house and street, calling people to come and buy pots. People poured into the market at once, crowded around the potter on every side and bought his entire stock in half an hour. The man came home with a sack full of money.
“Now,” the Devil said to him, “let’s divide the profit.”
They split it equally. The Devil took his share, said goodbye to the master and vanished. A week later, the man took pots to town again. However long he stood in the market, no one bought anything. Everyone passed him by, heaping abuse on him:
“We know your pots, you old fart! They look fine, but pour in some water and they fall apart straight away! No, my man, you won’t fool us now.”
People stopped buying his pots. The man fell into utter poverty, took to drinking out of grief and began lying around in taverns.