Once some people were braking flax in the drying barn. One of the people who had just come in started saying that a ziburinis * was coming. One of flaxbrakers said, "I’m not afraid! Show it to me."
He went out and shot at it with a revolver. He shot right through it and came back inside.
"No harm done!" he said. "You’re afraid-why am 1 not afraid?" "No reason to fear this velnias shit," he said. And they all went on braking flax.
So far so good. They went back home, had a meal, and lay down. They say that all the flaxbrakers went to lie down on some straw that they had put on the dirt floor. The mistress of the house didn’t know anything about what had happened. Her husband, the master, was drying the flax in the barn. The men that came back were asleep. They slept as the mistress peeled potatoes for an early meal. Suddenly she saw a ziburinis walk past the windows. She thought of waking the men, but decided not to. Then the ziburinis returned, entered through the window, and turned into a beautiful young maiden. She put her hand to her eyes and walked past all the brakers, looking at them carefully. She also walked up to that one - the one who had fired the shot. She walked up to him and touched him all over from head to toe. Then she made for the window and vanished. The mistress virtually fell off her chair.
As she lay senseless, all the brakers kept on sleeping. The next morning the master came home with a lantern to see why nobody why nobodyhad come to brake flax. He had come to wake up the brakers. When he walked in, he saw they were still sleeping - nobody had wakened them. And the early meal hadn’t been cooked yet either. He came into the kitchen - his wife was still unconscious, lying on the dirt floor.
All the flax brakers jumped to their feet - nobody knew what had happened. They rushed to the mistress, woke her, and she came back to life. The man who had fired the shot was dead.
And what made him shoot? Who was to blame?!

(Recorded in 1962)