The Tale of the Wolf Who Found a Piece of Lard
One day, a wolf went for a walk. Along the way, he found a piece of lard. At that time, the wolf wasn’t hungry; he sniffed the lard, touched 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. "Oh, if only I had thought to eat that piece of lard when I found it! But now it’s too late to change that."
A little while later, he came across a pig with a whole litter of piglets and said to her:
"Listen, I’m going to eat one of your piglets. I’m very hungry."
"Very well, you can eat one," replied the pig, "but my little ones aren’t baptized yet. You can’t eat them without baptizing them first. Let’s go to the pond to get some water for the baptism."
When they reached the pond, the pig said to the wolf:
"Catch one of the little ones!"
Once they had caught a piglet, she said:
"Scoop up some water with your paw!"
As soon as the wolf bent down to scoop the water, the pig pushed him with all her might, and the wolf tumbled into the pond. While he was floundering in the water, the pig 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, you sheep! Whether you like it or not, I’m going to eat one of you. I’m very hungry!"
"Alright, you can eat one of us," said the sheep, "but first we must hold an evening service."
The sheep huddled together and began bleating at the top of their lungs. The shepherds, who were watching over them, thought, "Why are our sheep huddled together like that?" 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 need to eat at least one calf from your herd. I’m very hungry!"
"Alright, poor thing," said the cows, "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 as soon as the wolf tried to approach, the cows thrust their horns forward. They would have gored him to death. Once again, the wolf had to leave hungry.
"Oh," he kept saying to himself, "how unlucky I am! If only I had eaten that piece of lard when I found it! I’m going to starve to death."
He went to a meadow where a mare was grazing with her foal. The wolf said to the mare:
"I’m so hungry! I’ll have to eat your foal!"
"Alright, wolf," said the mare, "you can have him, but he’s not shod yet. I can’t let you eat him until I’ve shod him."
She asked the wolf to hold the foal’s leg so she could shoe him more easily, 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 dry branches. The wolf loudly lamented his misfortunes.
"How unlucky I am!" he wailed. "I found a piece of lard but didn’t think to eat it. I met a pig with piglets and, out of stupidity, couldn’t get even one of them. I came across some sheep: they said they wanted to hold an evening service 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 it 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.
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