‘Your children are homeless and friendless. All people work and you are lying. Shame on you! Get up and go to work!’
‘If it is work – do not praise it to me!’ – the lazy man said and turned to the other side.
Once he got up and went to the priest of the village.
‘Father, - he said, - read me the burial service and call the peasants to bury me.
‘Why?’ – the priest said in astonishment.
‘Because I am fed up with people scolding me. They do not leave me alone. Every day they abuse me for not working. I will go to the Other world – to rest in peace.’
‘All right’ – the priest agreed. He read the funeral service and called two peasants to carry the man to the cemetery. The priest was going first waving the censer; the two man carrying the coffin were coming next. They met a diligent man.
‘Where are you carrying him?’ – he asked.
‘To the cemetery, we will bury him.’
‘Stop! Do not! You can not! How can you bury somebody who is still alive!’
The people told him the story. The working man thought for a while and then said to the lazy man in the coffin:
‘Listen, get up and come home. I will give you half a bushel of wheat to have bread until you earn something.’
The lazy man raised a bit and asked:
‘Will it be milled?’
‘Come on! It won’t be milled.’
‘Then go on to the cemetery.’ – he said to the two men who carried the coffin. ‘Such wheat is not for me. I have to take it to the mill, to grind it, to take it home, to knead it, to bake it, to eat it… too much efforts. It is better in the cemetery.’
They took him to the cemetery. The dug a pit and put the alive man inside. They however felt pity on him, covered him with a small amount of earth and a put a tube in his mouth to be able to breathe. The priest read a funeral service, shook the censer and went home together with the gravediggers. The night came and the diligent peasant said to himself: ‘Let me go to the cemetery and cure that man over there from his laziness.’
He put on black clothes, coloured his face with soot, put horns on his head and went to the cemetery. He uncovered the buried man who was still alive:
‘Get up!’ - he kicked him.
‘Who are you?’ – the buried man was surprised in his dream.
‘I am the devil. Today, when we were distributing the souls of the dead I got yours. I am your master. You will do everything I order you or I will send you to be burnt in the hottest cauldron with boiling tar. Your rest is over.’
The buried man started to shiver
‘What work do you have for me?’
‘Do you see the big pile of stones over there, at the far end of the cemetery? Go! I want them at the near end before dawn.’
The lazy man started to carry the heavy stones – one by one. He was carrying them and sighing, falling and getting up again. At the end he was all in sweat. When he finished his torturer came again with a lash.
‘Come! I will pay you now!’ – he said, tied him to a tree, and started to beat him with the lash.
‘This is the way the Devil pays his servants! Now get again in the grave!’ – the working man said at the end.
The lazy man got in. His torturer threw one-two handfuls of earth and left.
The dawn came. The buried man came to his senses and realizing that there were only several handfuls of earth above him jumped out of the grave and ran to the village. He reached home puffing, grasped an ax and dashed to the forest. He started to cut woods. The working man passed him and greeted:
‘Good morning, brother! Do you have news from the Other world?’
‘Do not mention it, - the lazy man said – it is terrible – you have to carry stones the whole night and at the end they beat you with a lash instead of a reward while they fix your bones!’
‘Will you go again to the cemetery tonight?’ – the peasant asked.
‘I won’t hear of it! I will chop the whole forest but will never be the devil’s servant again.’
And he continued chopping woods.