The Peasant and the Devil
A buried pot of gold, a two-year bargain over what grows above and below the ground, and a devil who never learns
Page 1
Long ago, in a small village, there lived a peasant who was known for being a clever man — the kind who always seemed to land on the better side of any bargain he made. He had only one field, a sturdy grey horse to pull his plow, and a small farmhouse at the top of the slope, but he worked hard and never went hungry. One bright spring morning he hitched his horse to the plow and went down to turn the soil before planting, the way he did every year of his life. The field ran from his farmhouse down to a line of broken grey rocks at its far edge, and beyond the rocks nothing grew but gorse and brambles. As he walked the first furrow, he noticed a low mound of freshly turned earth near the middle of the field — a mound he was quite certain had not been there the spring before. He stopped the horse and looked at it for a long moment before deciding to plow straight toward it.
Page 2
The plow blade caught on something hard, and the peasant reined in the horse to see what it was. Kneeling by the mound, he began digging with his bare hands and found, just under the loose soil, a scatter of black lumps that looked at first like burnt coal, though they still gave off a faint heat. He pushed them aside and felt something harder underneath — the curved rim of a buried clay pot. He worked it free, tipped it toward the light, and gold coins slid out into the furrow, more gold than he had ever seen in his life. He sat back on his heels, turning one coin over in his fingers, hardly able to believe his own field had been hiding such a thing under the plow all along.
Page 3
The peasant had barely finished gathering the spilled coins into his hat when the loose earth beside the hollow began to shift on its own. Up out of the hole climbed a small, dark, stocky figure with short horns, a swishing tail, and one bare cloven hoof showing under his ragged black coat — the devil himself, blinking in the daylight as though he had been woken from a long sleep underground. He planted himself on the lip of the pit, looked at the gold in the peasant's hat, and declared in a sharp little voice that the treasure belonged to him, since it was his field below the ground long before it was anyone's field above it. The peasant, who had not survived as a clever man by giving things away for nothing, did not hand the gold back. Instead he folded his arms and asked the devil what he proposed to do about it.
Page 4
The two of them argued back and forth across the furrow for a while, the devil wanting all the gold back outright and the peasant refusing to give up a single coin. In the end they struck a bargain instead of a fight. The peasant would keep every coin in the pot, but in return he would share the next harvest from that same field with the devil, fair and square, for one year. Whatever grew above the ground when the crop came in would belong to the devil; whatever grew below the ground would belong to the peasant. The devil liked the sound of that very much, picturing tall golden wheat waving above the soil, and shook hands on it at once, well pleased with himself. The peasant shook on it too, said nothing more, and walked home that evening already deciding exactly what he meant to plant.
Page 5
All that spring and summer the peasant planted and tended turnips in the field, and by late summer the ground was thick with bushy green turnip tops standing well above the soil, while the fat round turnips themselves swelled quietly underneath, hidden from sight. When harvest time came, the devil arrived at the field exactly as they had agreed, ready to collect his half. The peasant kept his word to the letter: he cut every leafy green top off at the ground and piled the whole heap of leaves in front of the devil, keeping nothing of them back. The devil stared at the pile of limp green leaves, turned it over with one claw, and realized slowly that there was nothing underneath it worth having — the real turnips, round and solid and good eating all winter, were already safely dug up and carted off to the peasant's own cellar.
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While the devil was still turning over his pile of worthless leaves out in the field, the peasant was down in his cool stone root cellar, carrying in basket after basket of the fat turnips he had kept for himself. He stacked them in neat rows along the cellar's earthen shelves, where they would keep firm and sweet through the whole winter ahead — a season's worth of good food for very little work. He counted the baskets as he went, setting the last one down with a quiet, satisfied smile at how neatly the bargain had worked out: the devil had taken exactly what he'd asked for, and so had the peasant, and only one of them had gotten anything worth having. He latched the cellar door behind him and climbed back up into the daylight to see how the devil was getting along.
Page 7
When spring came round again, the devil climbed up out of his pit to find the peasant already walking his field, and he wasted no time saying what was on his mind. He had thought the matter over all winter, he said, and he was quite sure now that he had been cheated the year before — nobody got rich on a pile of old leaves. This time, he announced, the bargain would run the other way: whatever grew below the ground would be his, and the peasant could keep whatever grew above it. He folded his arms as though daring the peasant to argue. The peasant, who had rather hoped the devil would say exactly that, agreed at once and held out his hand to shake on it, careful not to look too pleased about it.
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That same morning the peasant hitched up his horse and set to work sowing the field, scattering handful after handful of wheat seed along the fresh rows while the horse pulled a light harrow behind to cover them over. Wheat, as every farmer knows, sends its grain up into the light on tall stalks, while its roots below are nothing but thin, stringy and no use to anybody. The peasant worked steadily all that morning, whistling to himself more than usual, and by the time the sun was high the whole field was sown from end to end. All through the spring and summer that followed, the wheat came up green and then turned gold, taller every week, while down below the roots stayed exactly as thin and worthless as he had known they would be.
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By late summer the wheat stood tall and gold from one end of the field to the other, every stalk heavy with ripe grain. When harvest day came, the peasant cut the whole crop down with his scythe and carried away stalk after stalk heavy with grain, exactly as the bargain allowed him to keep everything growing above the ground. The devil arrived eager to collect his own half this time, certain that whatever lay hidden below such a fine, tall crop must be worth having. He dug down along the empty rows with his claws, pulling up nothing but thin, pale, stringy wheat roots, no thicker than string and no good for anything at all. He stared at the heap of roots in his hands, then at the peasant's wagon piled high with golden grain rolling off toward the farmhouse, and understood at last exactly what had happened to him — twice now.
Page 10
The devil had had quite enough. Beaten twice by the same bargain, with nothing to show for a whole year's trouble but armfuls of leaves and roots, he threw down the tangle of wheat roots, let out a furious shriek, and stormed across the field to the broken grey rocks at its far edge. There, in the stone, was a narrow black cleft just wide enough for him to squeeze into, and he dove down into it and was gone — and no one in that village ever saw so much as his tail again. The peasant watched him go, then turned back toward his farmhouse with his wagon of grain and, tucked safely in his coat, the very gold he had dug up the spring before. He had kept every coin, every turnip, and every stalk of wheat, and he walked home that evening a rich man, whistling the whole way up the hill.
About this story
- Audience: kids (ages 6–12)
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