This tale begins with a description of the delightful luxuries of a summer day in Little Russia. Among the beauties of the afternoon of August, carts filled with goods and walking people to the fair in the town of Sorochinets move. Behind one of the wagons loaded with not only hemp and bags of wheat (because, moreover, there is a black-browed maid and her evil stepmother), Solopius Cherevik, who was tormented by heat, wanders. Having hardly reached the bridge over the Psel River, the catcher draws the attention of local couple, and one of them, “dressed more dandy than the others,” admiring the beautiful Paraskoy, starts a squabble with an evil tongue. However, having arrived at the godfather, Kozak Tsybul, travelers forget this adventure for a while, and Cherevik and his daughter leave soon for the fair. Here, hustling between carts, he learns that the fair has been given a “cursed place”, they are afraid of the appearance of a red scroll, and there were true signs to that. But no matter how preoccupied with the fate of his wheat Cherevik, the sight of Parasky, who is embracing with the old couple, returns him to "former carelessness." However, the resourceful couple, calling himself the Golopupenkov son and taking advantage of long-standing friendship, leads Cherevik to the tent, and after several mugs the wedding is already agreed. However, when Cherevik returned home, his formidable wife did not approve of such a turn of events, and Cherevik backtracked. A gypsy, trading with the saddened Hritsko oxen, is not completely disinterested in undertaking to help him.
Soon, “a strange incident happened at the fair”: a red scroll appeared, and many saw it. That is why Cherevik with his godfather and daughter, who had been planning to spend the night before the carts, hurriedly returned home in the company of frightened guests, and Havronya Nikiforovna, his formidable cohabitant, who had delighted her popovich Afanasy Ivanovich to the point of hospitality, was forced to hide him on the boards under the ceiling among all household utensils. and sit at the common table as if on needles. At the request of Cherevik, the godfather tells the story of the red scroll - how the devil was expelled from the hell for some kind of misconduct, how he drank from grief, nestled in a shed under the mountain, drank everything he had in a shred, and laid down his red scroll, threatening to come for in a year. The greedy shinkar forgot about the deadline and sold the prominent scroll to some passing pan, and when the devil appeared, he pretended as if he had never seen him in his eyes. The devil left, but the evening prayer of the shinkar was interrupted by the suddenly appearing in all the windows pig snouts. Terrible pigs, “on legs as long as they walked”, treated him with lashes until he admitted his deception. However, it was impossible to return the scrolls: a Pan robbed a gypsy on the way, sold the scroll to a second sale, and she again brought it to the Sorochinskaya Fair, but the trade was not given to her. Realizing that it was a scroll, she threw it into the fire, but the scroll did not burn out, and the outbid slipped a "damn gift" on someone else's cart. The new owner got rid of the scroll only when he crossed himself, chopped it into pieces, scattered it around and left. But since then, every year during the fair, the devil “with the guise of a pig” looks for pieces of his scroll, and now only the left sleeve is missing from him. At this point in the story, which was repeatedly interrupted by strange sounds, a window crashed, "and a terrible pork face was exposed."
Everything in the hut was mixed up: the priestess “with a thunder and a bang” fell, the godfather crawled under the hem of his wife, and Cherevik, grabbing the pot instead of the hat, rushed out and soon collapsed without force in the middle of the road. In the morning, the fair, although filled with terrible rumors about a red scroll, is still noisy, and Cherevik, who had already come across a red crib in the scrolls in the morning, grumbles leads the mare for sale. But, noticing that a piece of the red sleeve was tied to the bridle and rushing to run in horror, Cherevik, suddenly captured by the lads, was accused of stealing his own mare and, at the same time, turned up with a godfather that had fled from the devil who had come to see him, tied up and thrown into the barn with straw. Here, both godfathers, who mourned their share, find their son Golopupenkov. Having reprimanded Paraska, he frees the slaves and sends Solopia home, where he is waiting not only for the miraculously acquired mare, but also for buyers of it and wheat. And although a frantic stepmother is trying to prevent a merry wedding, soon everyone dances, and even the decrepit old women, who, however, are carried away not by general joy, but by hop alone.
