A favourite figure in Ukrainian folk narratives was the devil hired as a farmhand. He could mow whole fields of wheat in an instant, carry away and thresh haystacks at once, or work for a poor man in payment for a stolen last piece of bread.

But he was not imagined as all-powerful. Miloradovych notes that in most stories the devil is a fool: a farmhand tricks him, a miller beats him, and women outwit, torment, shear, and scald him.

Source: V. P. Miloradovych, Ukrainian Witch: Essays on Ukrainian Demonology (Kyiv: Veselka, 1993)., “Devil, Unclean One, Bes, and Other Names.”