“I will let you go in the water if you will do all you promise.”
“Let me go first,” said the pike, “and then I will keep my promise.”
The fool, however, said that the pike must first perform his promise,
and then he would let him go. When the pike saw he would not put him
into the water, he said—
“If you wish, as I told you, that I should do all you desire, you must
tell me now what your desire is.”
“I wish,” said the fool, “that my buckets should go of themselves from
the river up the hill, and that without spilling any of the water.”