Three Clever Heads
Once upon a time, there lived a farmer and his wife, and they had only one daughter.A certain gentleman courted their daughter. Every evening, he would come to visit them and stay for dinner.
One day, the daughter went down to the cellar to fetch beer for dinner. As she was pouring the beer into a pitcher, she happened to glance up at the ceiling. And what did she see? An axe stuck in a beam. It must have been there for a long time, but she had never noticed it before. Then she began to think: "This axe sticking here is no good! When we get married and have a son, he’ll grow up, come down to the cellar for beer like I’m doing now, and the axe might fall on his head and kill him. What a tragedy that would be!"
The girl put the candle and the pitcher on the floor, sat down on a bench, and began to weep.
Upstairs, they wondered: what had happened? Why was she taking so long to pour the beer?
The mother went down to the cellar. She saw her daughter sitting on the bench, crying her eyes out, while the beer, having overflowed the pitcher, was spilling onto the floor.
"What are you crying about?" asked the mother.
"Oh, Mother!" said the daughter. "Just look at that dreadful axe! When we get married and have a son, he’ll grow up, come down for beer, and the axe might fall on his head and kill him. What a tragedy that would be!"
"Oh, Lord, what a terrible tragedy!" agreed the mother, sitting down beside her daughter and bursting into tears as well.
After a while, the father grew worried: why were they taking so long? He went down to the cellar to see where his wife and daughter had disappeared to. He found them both sitting and crying buckets, with beer flowing all over the floor.
"What’s going on?" he asked.
"Just look at that dreadful axe!" said the mother. "When our daughter gets married and has a son, and he grows up and comes down to the cellar for beer, the axe might fall on his head and kill him. What a tragedy that would be!"
"Good heavens! What a tragedy indeed!" said the father, sitting down beside them and bursting into tears as well.
By now, the gentleman had grown tired of sitting alone in the kitchen, so he too went down to the cellar to see what was happening. He found all three sitting side by side, crying their eyes out, while beer flowed from the tap and spilled all over the floor. He rushed to the barrel, turned off the tap, and asked:
"What’s happened? Why are you sitting here crying? Can’t you see the beer is spilling all over the floor?"
"Oh!" said the father. "Just look at that dreadful axe! What if you marry our daughter, and you have a son, and he grows up and comes down to the cellar for beer, and the axe falls on his head and kills him!"
And all three began to cry even louder than before. The gentleman laughed, pulled the axe out of the beam, and said:
"I’ve traveled far and wide, but I’ve never met such 'clever' heads as yours! Now I’ll set off traveling again, and if I find three people even sillier than you, I’ll come back and marry your daughter."
He wished them well and set off to wander the world.
...He walked and walked until he came to a village and approached the last house. He saw a ladder propped up, and the housewife was trying to make her cow climb the ladder onto the roof—the roof was overgrown with grass, so she had decided to graze her cow up there. But the poor animal resisted and refused to climb.
"What are you doing?" he asked the housewife.
"Can’t you see?" she replied, surprised. "Look how thick the grass is on the roof. Why should this lazy thing graze on scraps down here when she could graze on the roof!"
"But what if she falls?" asked the gentleman.
"She won’t fall! I’ll tie a rope around her neck and loop the other end around my hand through the chimney. If she starts to fall, I’ll feel it right away!"
"How silly you are!" said the gentleman. "Why don’t you just cut the grass from the roof and throw it down to the cow?"
"Cut the grass?!" scoffed the housewife. "She can feed herself!" And with that, she finally managed to drag the cow onto the roof.
The gentleman watched this spectacle for a while, then continued on his way. Before he reached the next house, the cow fell off the roof and dangled from the rope, while the housewife was pulled into the chimney. The cow choked to death in the noose, and the housewife got stuck in the chimney, covered in soot.
He walked on until he came to a roadside inn, where he decided to spend the night.
The inn was packed, and he was given a room to share with another man.
His roommate was a friendly fellow, and they quickly became friends. In the morning, as they were getting dressed, the gentleman noticed something strange: his roommate hung his trousers on the drawer handles, took a running start, and—jumped! But he missed and didn’t get his legs into the trousers. He tried again and missed again. The gentleman stood there, puzzled: what was the man trying to do?
Finally, the man stopped and wiped his face with a handkerchief, exhausted and sweaty.
"Oh, Lord!" he said. "These trousers are the bane of my existence—such an awkward piece of clothing! I can’t imagine who invented them! Every morning, it takes me an hour just to get into them. I’m completely worn out! How do you manage with yours?"
The gentleman burst out laughing. After laughing his fill, he showed the man how to put on trousers properly. The man thanked him profusely, saying he would never have figured it out on his own.
The gentleman continued his journey and came to another village. There, a crowd had gathered by a pond, poking at the water with brooms, rakes, and pitchforks.
"What’s happened?" asked the gentleman.
"A terrible disaster!" they replied. "The moon has fallen into the pond! We’ve been trying to fish it out, but we can’t catch it!"
The gentleman laughed and advised them to look for the moon in the sky instead of the pond—after all, it was only its reflection in the water. But the villagers wouldn’t listen and cursed him so much that he hurried away.
And so, he learned that there were plenty of fools in the world, and many were even sillier than his bride and her parents. The gentleman returned home and married the farmer’s daughter.
And if they didn’t live happily ever after, well, that’s certainly not our fault.
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