Real Nonsense

Once upon a time, there lived a husband and wife. They were very poor. They had only one chicken, but it was such a fighter that if you approached it from the front, it would peck you, and if from the back, it would kick you with its legs. The village elder ordered them to slaughter the chicken, but they felt sorry for it. So they locked it in the storeroom, closed the windows, and forgot about it.

One day, the husband remembered the chicken and said:
"Wife, let's go and see what has become of the chicken."
"Alright," said the wife, "let's go and have a look."

They went to the storeroom and saw that it was filled to the brim with eggs. They took the eggs, hitched the oxen, loaded the eggs onto the cart, and sat on top. The eggshells began to crack, and out came roosters to the right and hens to the left. Suddenly, a goose popped out of one egg. It jumped out and ran away. The owner chased after it, but another man caught it and made it thresh grain. This man gave the owner two sacks of grain as a bonus along with the goose. The owner loaded the sacks onto the goose's back and drove it home.

At home, he noticed that the sacks had rubbed the goose's back raw. A healer told him:
"Rub the goose with walnut oil, and the wound will heal."
The owner searched and searched but couldn't find any walnuts. Finally, he met an old woman.
"Listen, dear," he said, "give me some walnuts; I need to heal my goose."
"When I was a child," said the old woman, "my father brought walnuts from India. We ate all of them, but one rolled under the couch. Give me a stick, and I'll poke around."

The husband and wife uprooted a tree, gave it to the old woman, and she rolled out a walnut from under the couch. They crushed the walnut, rubbed the goose's back with it, and a month later, a walnut tree grew on the goose's back. When the goose grazed in the meadow, shepherds and children threw clods of dirt, stones, and sticks at it to knock down the walnuts. All of this got stuck in the branches, and a green meadow formed among the branches. People climbed the tree, plowed the meadow, sowed wheat and rye, and the shepherds began grazing oxen, sheep, and lambs there.

One day, a man picked a watermelon in this garden and wanted to cut it, but his knife got stuck in the watermelon and disappeared. The man undressed and crawled into the watermelon. He wandered around for a long time but couldn't find the knife. Suddenly, he saw a shepherd walking by with a club on his shoulder.

"Hey, brother," asked the shepherd, "what kind of person are you, and what are you doing in the watermelon?"
"My knife fell in here," said the man, "I'm looking for it; maybe I'll find it."
"Ah, you're wasting your time," said the shepherd.
"It's been exactly two years since I lost a whole flock of sheep here. I'm tired of searching, and you're talking about a knife!"

The owner of the knife didn't like these words, so he hit the shepherd. The shepherd struck him back with his club, and a fight broke out. The watermelon fell to the ground, and a hare jumped out of it. The hare spat out a piece of paper, and on it was written: "All of this is utter nonsense."

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Real Nonsense

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