TRUE STORY **

 A situation when a person is bored and does not know what to do is unknown in the peasant's life. So you work hard now and then alternate, give a manageable, feasible work for the elderly and children, mix farm work with domestic work, purely peasant chores interlaced with the crafts.

 Monotonicity of many labour functions was brightened with songs, games, conversations. In such cases, the boundary between work in its purest form and entertainment is vague. But during this respite from heavy physical labour, there is always in some degree of collective action, in the intervals between work and sleep started deliberately, special entertainments. Among such distractions could be listed storytelling of true stories, jokes, and fairy tales.

 Storytelling and singing songs at the gatherings could be accompanied by work like weaving basketry and bast shoes, knitting fishing gear, and shoe-making. But this is the case when the narrator is at home, in normal circumstances.

 Outside the house, spending the night on the road, in the forest hut (at the time of logging or hay-making), sleeping in the barracks while rafting, fishing, on pilgrimage, at the fair, people were telling "true stories" for purpose while resting.

 Particularly would strike a child's imagination, still untouched by the rust of analytical distrust. Let's imagine an evening in warm and smoky winter quarters, where anyone who wants to sleep sleeps and whoever wants to listen listens.
 The gates are opened, any of the neighbours may leave or enter at will. But, while there is light from the splinter, fantasy and stories, no one goes. Fighting to stay awake with bated breath, children listen to stories about wizards and witches, eyes keep closing, and the heart stops in fear, the narrator's voice flows smoothly and casually, and only the burning birch splinter crackles.

 Another time, when you go on the road, you wake up in unfamiliar surroundings, and in the darkness, you hear the same flat, husky voice. Behind the wall of the cabin noise, the forest wind makes a sound, and someone from the audience snoring is out of rhythm to the narrator. Again, a true story entwined in your sleep, and in the morning, you cannot make out what was a dream and what you heard.

 During the Yuletide, after running in the cold, you would drop in with two or three friends in a hut near the collective farm stables, where hang on pins and saddle clamps, dries up after a day's proceedings felt, the stove is burning, and on a wooden cot sits a narrator. However, you at any moment can become a storyteller, talk drivel as you want, and you too will be listened to. But this is for the first time. But whether they will listen to your second time?

 Or you arrive at the watermill for overnight work. While waiting your turn, you doze off from fatigue and mosquito ringing and then fall asleep dead to the world. And suddenly, you wake up from the same smooth, slightly muffled voice:

 "Here, my friend, I'll confess to you, I was a little naughty toward that horse, but in the evening, I got drowsy. I poured a full basket of kolkhoz barley and the other three stupas milled oats. The miller was sleeping. I locked the barn and went back to the cabin. I ate some soup, but I felt something was wrong. I think I must get up and go check but can move neither hand nor foot. Suddenly the horse's hoof hits the wall. I can not get up as I am chained, the horse again kicks, but it does three times. I sleep, and the miller is asleep. We awakened at the dawn that is half the sky. I, my boy, rushed to the mill, thinking that from the millstone were left only bits and pieces. I looked and saw that the wheel and the water were stopped. And the tray is dry. And in fact, the pestles still are working. Here's how he gave me the lesson. I swore at him, but he was still good to me ..."

 A true story is entirely dependent on the character and life experiences of the narrator. But not all experienced people know how to talk about what happened in their life. Others, having less experience in life, were much better storytellers. The narrator's talent is often combined with the skill of an artisan, but there were storytellers by birth, getting inspired by the conversation. They invented a plot; images appeared suddenly in the story by themselves. They gradually began to believe in what they told, adding to the actual facts something of their own, imagining, fantasizing, and augmenting reality. Finally, after several repetitions, the fantastic image was hardened and stood for the improviser for an objective fact ...

 In contrast to the legends, the true stories lived precisely as long as minutes of their telling, but one or another account or plot could come up for any reason and at any place. But borrowed plots lost their charm, though... A born storyteller rarely repeated himself or others, though a colourful individual language does wonder even with the most hackneyed plot.

 By genre, the true stories can be divided into hunting, fishing, military, love, sorcerer, visions, etc., but such a division would be very arbitrary. In any group of true stories could be elements of the different group, and not even one. Still, multiple, realistic images can alternate with fantastic because everything depends on the storyteller's talent, the circumstances at the time of improvisation, and the audience's composition.

 On biases in the prevalence of domestic material is not always possible to guess the professional identity of the narrator. Thus, the story about the dog, abandoned by the hunter one on one with the bear, could be born in an environment far removed from hunting. Many "true stories" are created by so-called "visions." Specific details in such "visions" are so realistic, accurate and imaginative that not believing in the story is very difficult.

 Recall the story of the centurion's daughter and her stepmother. A terrible howling cat disappeared when the stepdaughter hit her with the father's sabre. Stepmother appears the following day with a bandaged hand. The subject werewolf with a similar plot is present in many Northern true stories, but instead of a stepmother could be a wizard, instead of a cat - a wolf and the sabre can become a bread knife or a sickle. Interestingly, in these stories, good forces do not win and triumph each time, though the moral orientation is always clear and definite. A peasant, who in his youth dropped the church bells, has his hands starting to dry off, a guy who was unfaithful to his fiancée "burns" from vodka, losing himself into drinking to his death.

 The power of authentic stories reaches its limits just on the elusive border between real and fantastic worlds. Village girls danced with some really very insolent strangers, and suddenly one of them stepped on the girl's foot. But because every country girl knew the difference between a hoof and a human foot, she immediately realized what kind of outsiders they were. In other cases, nothing supernatural happens. For example, grandfather-wanderer, who was given a shelter for the night, fed and offered drinks, in gratitude for all this led from the house all the cockroaches. And then suddenly a woman cannot start the oven in the morning, and it turns out that the reason was some night sin. The frivolity of many true stories was neutralized by a familiar moral tone. Thus, it appears that an unfaithful husband, who took his wife's money for adultery, was not dealing with a lonely neighbour but with his own spouse. In the morning, boasting with cash in front of him, his wife says: "When they sell hay, then they will provide more."

 The military folklore is also rich in short amusing stories. Miraculous stories from the sentries standing guard, the stories about the evil force, opposing soldiers' tricks, interspersed with original episodes here and unusual cases, abundant in the front and a soldier's life.