"Do you want to sell the cow, mother?"
"Yes," answered she, "I do."
"How much do you want for it?"
"I want a mark for the cow, and you shall have the hen for sixty marks."
"Well," said he, "I have no need of the hen. You can get rid of that
when you come to the town, but I will give you a mark for the cow."
She sold him the cow and got the mark for it, but when she came to the
town she could find no one who would give her sixty marks for a tough
lean hen. So she went back to the butcher and said--
"I cannot get this hen off, master, so you had better take it also with
the cow."
"We will see about it," said the butcher. So he gave her something to
eat, and gave her so much brandy that she became tipsy and lost her
senses, and fell asleep.
When he saw that, the butcher dipped her in a barrel of tar, and then
laid her on a heap of feathers.
When she awoke she found herself feathered all over, and wondered at
herself.
"Is it me or some one else?" said she. "No, it cannot be me. It must be
a strange bird. How shall I find out whether it is me or not? Oh, I
know. When I get home, if the calves lick me, and the dog does not bark
at me, then it is me myself."
The dog had no sooner seen her than he began to bark, as if there were
thieves and robbers in the yard.
"Now," said she, "I see it is not me."
She went to the cow-house but the calves would not lick her, for they
smelt the strong tar.
"No," said she, "I see it cannot be me. It must be some strange bird."
So she crept up to the top of the barn, and began to flap her arms as if
they had been wings, and tried to fly. Her husband saw her, so he came
out with his gun and took aim.
"Don't shoot, don't shoot," called his wife. "It is me."
"Is it you?" said the man. "Then don't stand there like a goat. Come
down and tell me what account you can give of yourself."
She crept down again; but she had not a shilling, for she had lost the
mark the butcher had given her while she was drunk.
When the man heard that he was very angry, and declared he would leave
her, and never come back again until he had found three women as big
fools as his wife.
So he set off, and when he had gone a little way he saw a woman who ran
in and out of a newly built wood hut with an empty sieve. Every time she
ran in she threw her apron over the sieve, as if she had something in
it.
"Why do you do that, mother?" asked he.
"Why, I am only carrying in a little sun," said she, "but I don't
understand how it is, when I am outside I get the sunshine in the sieve,
but when I get in I have somehow lost it. When I was in my old hut I had
plenty of sunshine, though I never carried it in. I wish I knew some one
who would give me sunshine. I would give him three hundred dollars."
"Have you an axe?" asked the man. "If so I will get you sunshine."
She gave him an axe and he cut some windows in the hut, for the
carpenter had forgotten them. Then the sun shone in, and the woman gave
him three hundred dollars.
"That's one," said the man, and he set out once more.
Some time after he came to a house in which he heard a terrible noise
and bellowing. He went in and saw a woman who was beating her husband
across the head with a stick with all her might. Over the man's head
there was a shirt in which there was no hole for his head to go through.
"Mother," said he, "will you kill your husband?"
"No," said she, "I only want a hole for his head in the shirt."