The Tale of the Nine Lamb Brothers and Their Sister
Once upon a time, a wolf went out for a walk. Along the way, he found a piece of lard. At that time, the wolf wasn’t hungry; he sniffed the lard, poked it with his paw, and said:"I might have eaten you, but you’re too salty." The wolf left the lard and went on his way. When he got hungry later, he couldn’t find anything to eat.
"What a fool I am," he thought. "If only I had eaten that piece of lard when I found it! But now it’s too late."
A little while later, he met a sow with a whole litter of piglets and said to her:
"Listen, I’m going to eat one of your piglets. I’m very hungry."
"Fine, you can eat one," the sow replied, "but my little ones haven’t been baptized yet. You can’t eat them without baptizing them first. Let’s go to the pond to fetch water for the baptism."
When they reached the pond, the sow said to the wolf:
"Catch one of the little ones!"
Once they caught a piglet, she said:
"Scoop up some water with your paw!"
As soon as the wolf bent down to scoop the water, she pushed him with all her might, and the wolf tumbled into the pond. While he was floundering in the water, the sow and her piglets ran away.
The poor wolf kept thinking about that piece of lard: "What a fool I was not to eat it when I found it!"
The wolf went on and saw some sheep grazing in a meadow. He said to them:
"Hey, sheep! However you look at it, I must eat one of you. I’m very hungry!"
"Alright, you can eat one of us," the sheep said, "but first we must hold vespers."
The sheep huddled together and began bleating as loudly as they could. The shepherds, who were watching over them, thought, "Why are our sheep huddled together like this?" They spotted the wolf and chased him away.
The wolf approached a herd of cows, followed by calves and heifers. He said to the cows:
"Listen, I must eat at least one calf from your herd. I’m very hungry!"
"Alright, poor thing," the cows said, "you can eat one. But first, we must dance." The cows quickly formed a circle, placing the calves and heifers in the middle.
"Now, go ahead and take a calf," they said to the wolf. But every time the wolf tried to approach, the cows pointed their horns at him. They would have gored him to death. Once again, the wolf had to leave hungry.
"Ah," he kept saying to himself, "how unlucky I am! If only I had eaten that piece of lard when I found it! I’ll starve to death."
He went to a meadow where a mare was grazing with her foal. The wolf said to the mare:
"I’m very hungry! I’ll have to eat your foal!"
"Alright, wolf," the mare said, "you can have him, but he’s not shod yet. I can’t let you eat him before I shoe him."
She asked the wolf to hold the foal’s leg to make it easier for her to shoe him, but the foal kicked the wolf with its hoof and broke his jaw.
Utterly dejected, the poor wolf sat down under an oak tree where a man was sitting, trimming dead branches. The wolf loudly lamented his misfortunes.
"How unlucky I am!" he cried. "I found a piece of lard and didn’t think to eat it. I met a sow with piglets and was too foolish to get even one of them. I came across some sheep: they said they wanted to hold vespers first; I agreed to wait, and not one of them ended up being mine. I stumbled upon a herd of cows. They wanted to dance before giving me a calf. I met a mare—she decided to shoe her foal, and he broke my jaw. All I need now is for lightning to strike me."
At that moment, the man sitting in the oak tree, who had been listening to everything the wolf said, dropped his axe, and that was the end of the wolf.