This is a story about how generosity makes the giver richer. It also makes people around the giver good.
Once upon a time, long long ago there lived a soldier called
Ivan in Russia . He had served for a long time in the Tzar’s
army. Do you know who a Tzar is? That is the name of the king in Russia .
Ivan decided one day that he was tired of being a soldier
and decided to go home to his village.
So he said goodbye to all his friends.
They hugged him and gave him two loaves of bread to eat while travelling
home. Ivan started walking home.
On the way he saw a very poor man who was very, very hungry
who was looking very hungrily at the loaves of bread. Ivan said “Oh, poor man. You look like you haven’t had any food for
days! Here have a loaf”. The poor man was so happy. He took the bread and gave Ivan a pack of
cards. He said “Whenever you play with
this set of cards you will always win”.
Ivan took the remaining loaf and the pack of cards and started walking
home. Soon another man came to him and
said “Oh I am so hungry, will you give me some food to eat”. Ivan said “Oh poor man, you look like you
have not eaten all day. Here have this
loaf of bread”. The man was so happy and
gave him a big empty sack. Ivan said
“Hmnn, what can I do with an empty bag?.
The man said “That’s a very special bag.
If you open in and ask anything to come inside it, it will just jump
inside the bag”.
So Ivan picked up the bag and started walking home. He got hungry after a while and said “Maybe I
can use the bag the man gave me”. He
said “I wish I had some pumpkins to eat.
Pumpkins, come into this bag”.
Sure enough, three big pumpkins came flying through the air and fell
into the bag.
Ivan said “That’s great!” and he walked to a nearby village
which had an inn. He gave the three
pumpkins to the inn-keeper and said “Cook one pumpkin for me to eat. Take one
pumpkin in exchange for all the things to go with the pumpkin, like bread and
drink, and you take the last pumpkin because you cooked the pumpkin for
me”. The inn-keeper cooked the pumpkin
for Ivan and while he was eating the inn-keeper told him the story of the village.
In the village the Tsar had built a beautiful
palace. However, some really bad devils
had got into it. They would get up in
the middle of the night and start playing their really scratchy fiddles realy
really badly and dancing.
Kee—kee---cheee—cheee – boom boom boom boom … It sounded so loud and so
bad that all the windows of the palace all broke. The Tsar was offering to pay a sack of gold
pieces if somebody would get rid of the devils.
Well, Ivan was pretty strong. He had fought a lot of wars. So he thought he could help the Tsar. The Tsar said “OK, you can try. No one has succeeded so far. So don’t be too hopeful!” So Ivan found a
corner of the palace and sat down. It
became midnight and all of a sudden there was this awful fiddle playing
kee-kee-chee-chee and the devils came down and started dancing really badly
making a lot of noise and the whole palace started shaking. Then the devils saw Ivan and said ‘Ha, what
are you doing here?”. Ivan said I have a
pack of cards. Why don’t you stop your fiddling and dancing and play cards
instead”. The devils said “Ok,
sure!”. That’s because devils are very
good at playing cards. They said “If we
win, you have to give us all your money, if you win, we will give you our
money”. Ivan cards were magic, remember?
So he won the game! So the devils had to
give him all their big bags of gold and silver coins.
But the devils were sore losers. They started saying “Oh no- you cheated” and
tried to take the money away. So Ivan
said “All of you come here into this bag”.
Remember, the bag was magic. So
all the devils came flying into the bag.
Ivan tied the bag up and tried to sleep.
He could not sleep much though because the devils were making a lot of noise
in the bag. When the Tsar came down in
the morning, he was very happy and gave Ivan a big bag of coins and big cart to
carry all his bags of coins.
Ivan put
all his gold and the bag with the devils in it and started driving to his
village. It was a nice day to drive but the devils kept
playing their violins very badly ‘Kee-kee-chee-chee.. So Ivan climbed up a very very tall
fir tree and tied the bag to the very top.
The devils said “No no no …please please please don’t leave us
here”. So Ivan said “Ok – but here is
the deal. You come with me but only if
you stop playing your fiddles badly and no dancing either. You have to be my helpers. If you don’t, I will put you in the bag again
and tie you to the top of the tree. The
devils said “Ok . Ok. We will do
whatever you want.”. So Ivan went home
with the devils, took them to the village tailor and got them all some nice
clothes and gave them good food to eat and warm beds to sleep in.
After that day they were his helpers. He sent them all over the countryside looking
for people who were poor and in need of help. The devils had to help all the
people. The devils obviously did not
want to help, because they are naughty, remember? But whenever they said they would not help
Ivan would say “Watch out – otherwise I will tie you to the top of the
tree”. Then the devils would stop being
naughty.
There was only one problem though. The devils did not go for music lessons or
practice. So they did not learn to play
violin properly. So Ivan built them a
house far away from the village where they would play fiddle once in a while
very very badly – kee-kee-chee- chee.
But nobody could hear them. So
that was OK. So Ivan lived happily ever
after.
