This short legend was recorded in March 1896 from Mykhailo Fotul in Stroyne, in the former Bereg county, and published by Volodymyr Hnatiuk in the first volume of his ethnographic materials from Hungarian Rus'. It belongs to the local Christian apocryphal and folk-Biblical storytelling world of Carpathian Rus', where biblical figures move through village-like towns and familiar moral landscapes.

The tale compresses the story of Lot's wife into a brief local episode: Christ and Peter search a town by candlelight in the daytime, find only Lot and his wife, and lead them out before the towns fall. The source also preserves a final scholarly note, signed only І. Фр. in the printed text, observing that the Greek motif of Diogenes' lantern has been woven into the biblical story.

This Good Works Translation was made from the older Ukrainian/Rusyn source text in Hnatiuk's 1897 printed volume, checked against the scanned page image. The original source text is included below for verification.

Christ was walking over the earth with Peter. They came into a certain town, and they went through that town for a whole day with a candle, looking for a man in the daytime.

They found only one man in the town of Sodom and Gomorrah: Lot, with his wife, a man of God. They led that man, together with his wife, out of the town, and those two towns collapsed. And in that town there had been great crowding and wailing.

Lot's wife was grieving for her sworn brothers, for her own lovers. She looked back behind herself at those towns, and then there, all at once, she became a pillar of salt. At night the animals come and lick that pillar of salt, and in the morning the same pillar grows up again. And that pillar will remain there until the end of the age, because Christ laid a curse on it.

Recorded in March 1896 from Mykhailo Fotul, in Stroyne, Bereg county.

The printed note, signed І. Фр., observes that this tale has woven the Greek motif of Diogenes' lantern into the biblical story of Lot.

Colophon

This Good Works Translation was made from Volodymyr Hnatiuk's Етноґрафічні материяли з Угорської Руси. Том I. Лєґенди і новелї, published in Lviv in 1897 as Етноґрафічний збірник, volume III. The translated unit is legend 4, Лот і його жінка, printed on page 7.

The English was translated directly from the source-language text, using the OCR only as a navigation aid and checking the text against the source-page image from the scanned PDF. No existing English translation was used as the base. The source's final scholarly note is signed І. Фр.; this edition leaves the initials as printed rather than expanding the attribution.

Source route: Internet Archive identifier etnohr_03-1; source image checked at IA PDF page 26 / printed page 7. The underlying 1897 source is public-domain-era under the Good Works Library's United States operating posture.

Compiled and formatted for the Good Works Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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Source Text: Лот і його жінка

Ukrainian/Rusyn source text from Volodymyr Hnatiuk's 1897 Етноґрафічні материяли з Угорської Руси. Том I. Лєґенди і новелї, legend 4, printed page 7. Presented here for reference, study, and verification alongside the English translation above.

4. Лот і його жінка.

Ходив Христос по-зимли с Питром. Прийшли у йиден варош і тот варош ісходіли цїлий день іс свічкой глядаючи чоловіка у день. Найшли йидного лем чоловіка у вароши Содомі і Гоморі, Лота і жону, божого. Увили того чоловіка ж жоноу вон з вароша і тоті вароші два заломили сьа. І там у тім вароши дужи тиск буў і йойк. І Лотова жона жалувала за побратимовами, за своїми любасами, і она сьа поозирала позат себі на оті вароші і она тоді там нараз опстала сьа стовпом соляним. У ночи звірка ізлижи того стовпа соляного, а раницько ўрости уп'ять стовп такий. І тот там стовп буде до скончанія віка, бо Христос закляў.

Записана в мартї, 1896, від Михайла Фотула, в Стройні, Береської столиці.

Цїкаве тут вплетене грецького мотіву про Діоґенову лїхтарню в біблійне оповідане про Лота. І. Фр.

Source Colophon

Source witness: Volodymyr Hnatiuk, Етноґрафічні материяли з Угорської Руси. Том I. Лєґенди і новелї, Lviv, 1897, printed page 7. Internet Archive identifier: etnohr_03-1, https://archive.org/details/etnohr_03-1.

The source page was checked against the source-page image of IA PDF page 26. The source transcription is lightly normalized from OCR against the page image and is intended as a verification witness, not a full diplomatic edition.

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