The devil constantly watches people and does not leave them even in church. They tell of a peasant who saw another peasant spit to the right during a church service and leave the spit there without rubbing it away (peasants consider spitting in church and not rubbing it away a grave sin). The devil standing to the left of the man who had spat immediately went over to the spit, produced a hammer from somewhere, and began hammering at it. Two more devils with hammers came to help him and began forging the spit, from which they made a skin. One of the devils who had arrived took it away with him.

The Christmas season began. One evening, the peasant who had spat in church went out of his house without crossing himself. The devils seized him, sat him on the skin forged from the spit, and dragged him to the Vokhma [river] to drown him in an ice hole. The devils dragged the man right up to the ice hole and were about to drown him when a rooster crowed, and the devils vanished instantly. The peasant found himself sitting on the skin right beside the ice hole. According to peasant beliefs, the crowing of roosters makes all the wiles of evil spirits disappear.

Russian Peasants: Life, Everyday Customs, and Mores: Materials of Prince V. N. Tenishev’s Ethnographic Bureau, vol. 5, Vologda Province, part 3, 2009, p. 140.