Christmas Eve

In his leisure time, the blacksmith was engaged in painting and was known as the best painter in the whole neighborhood. The centurion L ... co, who was still alive at that time, called him on purpose to Poltava to paint a board fence near his house. All the bowls from which the Dikan Cossacks sipped borscht were painted by a blacksmith. The blacksmith was a God-fearing man and often wrote images of saints: and now you can still find in T ... the church of his evangelist Luke. But the triumph of his art was one painting painted on the church wall in the right narthex, in which he depicted Saint Peter on the day of the Last Judgment, with keys in his hands, driving out the evil spirit from hell; the frightened devil rushed in all directions, anticipating his death, and the sinners imprisoned before beat and drove him with whips, logs and everything that came to hand. While the painter was working on this picture and writing it on a large wooden board, the devil did his best to interfere with him: he pushed invisibly under the arm, lifted ash from the furnace in the smithy and sprinkled it on the picture; but, in spite of everything, the work was over, the board was brought into the church and embedded in the wall of the narthex, and from that time the devil vowed to take revenge on the blacksmith.