K67G. Smiling Sheep. .15.27.29.31.

Pretending to follow the owner's orders, the worker cuts off the animals' lips (to make it appear as if they are smiling).

Portuguese, Maltese, Macedonians, Abkhazians, Latvians.

Southern Europe. Portuguese [a worker and an owner agreed: if the worker gets angry, he will remain without wages, but if the owner gets angry, he will pay the worker for a year, even if the year has not passed; the owner offers to pierce a pine tree with his finger; the worker drills a hole in advance, covers it with bark, pierces it; the owner breaks his finger; sends him to tend goats - so that they laugh; the worker cuts off the lips of all the goats; to tend sheep so that they dance; he dislocates the legs of each one; sent him to drive thrushes out of the vineyard; the worker shoots and wounds the owner's wife who was there; the owner gets angry and drives the worker out, paying him for a year]: Cardigos, Correia 2015(2), No. 1000: 587-588; Maltese [after the death of the father, the elder brother is hired on the condition that whoever decides to leave the other first or complains of fatigue will have his back skinned and his money taken; tasks: release and then gather birds or hares; drive goats from the pasture so that half of them laugh and the other dance; bring a cow to the pasture without opening the gate; the worker loses; the younger brother himself tortures the employer (breaks the legs of one half of the goats and cuts off the lips of the others; cuts the cow into pieces and pushes it through a crack); overhears the owner agreeing with his wife to push him into a well at night; gets up unnoticed, the wife, still half asleep, pushes her husband into the well; realizing her mistake, bends over the well, the worker pushes her in too]: Mifsud-Chircop 1978, No. 1000+116*: 418-419, 442.

Balkans. Macedonians [a beardless man put a coin under a donkey's tail, hit it, the coin fell; a companion bought the donkey for a lot of money, telling it to feed it with rye grain; the buyer returned and accused him of cheating; beardless: that's because you overfed it; tied a purse with money around a hare's neck and let it go: this is a tax, I'm sending it to the king; a man bought a hare, tied the purse, let it go; tax collectors came; the man says he's already sent the money with the hare; they beat him; they put the beardless man in a sack and threw it into the river; a shepherd fished out the sack; beardless: they threw me into the water because I refuse to marry the priest's daughter; shepherd: but I want to; beardless: then get into the sack; the beardless man drowned the shepherd and drove off his flock; he says to those who were drowning him that if they had thrown him where the water was deeper, he would have driven more sheep; they asked to be put in sacks and thrown into the river; they drowned; the beardless man hired himself out to the effendi; whoever gets angry first, the other will rip a strip of skin off his back; the effendi gave him some bread to take with him, telling him to bring it whole; the beardless man ate it from the inside; And may your donkey dance on one leg, and your oxen smile! the beardless man cut off one leg of the donkey, cut off the lips of the oxen; And may he bring for firewood the branches on which the magpie did not relieve itself! the beardless man chopped up the plough; the effendi told his wife to pack her belongings and run away from such a worker; the beardless man recognized him and hid in a sack of clothes; he wet himself; the effendi: the vodka spilled; the beardless man pokes the effendi with a needle, the wife explains that she put needles in the sack; the beardless man crawled out; they decided to spend the night on the bridge, in order to push the beardless man into the river at night; he lay down in the middle {changing places with the woman} and they pushed the woman into the water; the effendi ran and hid in a hole; the beardless man found him; the effendi got angry, the beardless man tore three belts off his back and he died; the beardless man met the wedding procession and said that they were giving out shoes down there; everyone ran, and he asked if the bride loved her parents; if she loved her, then let her change clothes with him; took her place {apparently, under the veil} at the wedding feast; in the bridal chamber he said that he was going down to wash, tying the groom to himself with a rope; tied the rope to a goat and ran away; the groom thinks that the bride has turned into a goat; (then the beardless man went with the thieves, deceived them, took everything stolen for himself; he deceives the priest and his wife)]: Mazon 1923, No. 25: 107-115.

Caucasus - Asia Minor. Abkhazians [the eldest brother hired himself out as a worker to Spinodral - until the cuckoo cuckoos in the spring, and whoever is the first to be offended will have his back skinned; he hired himself out as a shepherd, but they also told him to plow the land; he got angry, S. skinned his back, he died; the same with the middle brother; the youngest was told to plow wherever the dog led him; it stopped by the forest; the young man cut off its tail, it returned home, he plowed a little, slaughtered bulls with the shepherds, threw a feast; S. told them to drive the goats so that they would smile; the young man cut their lips; told them to make the sheep dance - he drove them over dry thorns; to get rid of the farmhand, S. told his mother to climb a tree and start cuckooing; the farmhand was going to throw a stone at her, she slid down, hung on a branch; at night S. and his wife decide to leave unnoticed; the young man hid in a chest; seeing him, S. got angry, the young man went to skin him, S. and his wife ran away, the young man took possession of their property]: Bgazhba 1983: 256-260.

Baltoscandia. Latvians[the fish tells the childless widow to boil it and eat it; the maid ate a piece, the offal - the mare; each gives birth to a son, the mare's son is the strongman Kurbad; all three go to free the house from evil spirits; on the first night K. killed a three-headed giant on the bridge, on the second - a six-headed one; on the third night - a nine-headed one, his heads grow back, he drives K. into the ground up to his knees, then up to his armpits; the brothers are sleeping, do not see that the water in the ladle has turned into blood; K. threw pastals (shoes) at them; the brothers came running, began to cauterize the severed heads; K. hears the bugs talking in the cracks: killed our husbands; let one wife become a bed, the second - a spring, the third - a man-eating snake; K. does not let him lie down, get a drink, chops down a bed, a spring; the king's three daughters disappeared while they were washing in the bathhouse; K. pinched the devil in the door there, he gave him a pipe (10 dwarfs would come out to do the job), said that there was a stone in the swamp, a hole under it, and the kidnapped ones were there; K. rolled the stone away, ordered the dwarfs to bring a rope; the brothers were afraid, K. went down, cut off the devil's head; the princesses were in the silver, gold, and diamond castles; they gave K. strong water, and the six-headed one drank weak water instead; the sisters rolled up their castles into diamond, gold, and silver eggs, and gave them to K.; K. sent the maidens up; the wife of the 9-headed giant cut the rope and covered the hole with a stone; K. comes to the old man, who tells him that the ogre sucked out his eyes and is beating the giant bird's children with hail; K. killed the ogre, smeared the old man's eyes with a potion, he regained his sight; covered the chicks from the hail; the bird promises to carry K. across the sea, orders to prepare meat; K. cut off the last piece from his own eggs; K. opens the eggs, lives with the youngest princess in a diamond castle; it is necessary to kill the wife of the 9-headed; K. came to the forge, where Debess Kaleis was forging a golden crown, a silver belt and a diamond ring for the daughter of the Sun; he forged a horse for K. to catch up with the witch, ordered not to look back; K. looked back, thunder and lightning, the horse was gone; K. fell asleep, the witch switched the vessels with strong and weak water, K. took a sip, lost his strength for a year; went to the devil as a worker, whoever gets angry will have three strips of meat cut from his back; 1) to graze hares, 2) cows; the dwarfs from the pipe gathered them all; K. beat off a leg from each cow; the devil is forced to answer that he is not angry; 3) horses (ditto; cut off their lips); 4) plow as much as a white bitch can run (beat the bitch, she lay down); 5) clean out the stable (the dwarfs cleaned it out); 6) bring firewood on a mare (the mare is the devil's mother, K. threatens to cut the straps from her sides, the mare carries it); 7) slaughter a sheep that is looking at you (everyone is looking, he slaughtered them all); 8) eat a pood of dumplings; K. puts the dumplings down his shirt, and the devil ate his pood, his stomach hurts; K. pretends to rip open his stomach, the dumplings fell out; 9) the devil takes K. to the forest to cut down an oak tree; K. brings a hare - his younger brother; the devil cannot catch him; they agree to carry the felled oak tree together; the devil carries, K. rides on the oak tree; he killed the devil's children; he gouged out the eyes of the mare; put a pot of sour cream in his place at night, the devil and his mother think that K. has broken.head; the devil and his mother run away to the witch, K. hid in her belongings, here again; at night they decided to drown K. in the river, K. changed places, the devil drowned his mother; K. killed the devil; his strength returned, K. killed the witches, threw the cannibal into the fire, killed the cannibal eagle; enemies attacked; the witch poured bile on K.; K. killed her and the cannibal, but he himself died]: Nierde 1952: 116-146.