228 COSSACK FAIRY TALES.

night's rest afterwards. The next day he again
drove the cattle mto the pastures. They began
grazing till he took out his fife again, when they all
fell a-dancing like mad. He played on and on till
evening, when he drove the cattle home again, and
they were all as hungry as could be, and wearied to
death from dancing.

Now the parson was not a little astonished when
he saw his cattle. ‘“ Where on earth has he been
feeding them?” thought he; “they are quite tired
out and almost famished! Tl take care to go myself
to-morrow, and see exactly whither he takes them,
and what he does with them.” On the third day
the neatherd again drove the cattle into the pastures,
but this time the parson followed after them, and
went and hid himself behind the hedge near to which
Ivan was watching the cattle graze. There he sat
then, and watched to see what the man would do.
Presently Ivan mounted on to the haystack and
began to play. And immediately all the cattle fell
a-dancing, and everything in the hedge, and the
parson behind the hedge danced too. Now the
hedge was a quickset hedge, and as the parson began
capering about in it, he tore to shreds his cassock and
his breeches, and his under-coat, and his shirt, and
scratched his skin and wrenched out his beard ag if
he had been very badly shaved, and still the poor