“Well,” said the lad, “there’s no help for it but to go to the North
Wind again;” and away he went.
So late in the afternoon he came to where the North Wind lived.
“Good evening!” said the lad.
“Good evening!” said the North Wind. “I want my rights for that meal of
ours which you took,” said the lad; “for, as for that cloth I got, it
isn’t worth a penny.”
“I’ve got no meal,” said the North Wind; “but yonder you have a ram
which coins nothing but golden ducats as soon as you say to it—
“‘Ram, ram! Make money!’”
So the lad thought this a fine thing; but as it was too far to get home
that day, he stopped for the night at the same inn where he had slept
before.
Before he called for anything, he tried the truth of what the North
Wind had said of the ram, and found it all right; but when the landlord
saw that, he thought it was a famous ram, and, when the lad had fallen
asleep, he took another which couldn’t coin gold ducats, and changed
the two.
Next morning off went the lad; and when he got home to his mother, he
said—“After all, the North Wind is a jolly fellow; for now he has given
me a ram which can coin golden ducats if I only say, ‘Ram, ram! Make
money!’”
“All very true, I dare say,” said his mother; “but I shan’t believe any
such stuff until I see the ducats made.”
“Ram, ram! Make money!” said the lad; but the ram made no money.
So the lad went back again to the North Wind, and blew him up, and said
the ram was worth nothing, and he must have his rights for the meal.
“Well,” said the North Wind, “I’ve nothing else to give you but that
old stick in the corner yonder; but it’s a stick of that kind that if
you say— ‘Stick, stick! lay on!’ it lays on till you say, ‘Stick,
stick! now stop!’
So, as the way was long the lad turned in this night, too, to the
landlord; but as he could pretty well guess how things stood as to the
cloth and the ram, he lay down at once on the bench and began to snore,
as if he were asleep.
Now the landlord, who easily saw that the stick must be worth
something, hunted up one which was like it, and when he heard the lad
snore, was going to change the two, but just as the landlord was about
to take it, the lad bawled out— “Stick, stick! lay on!”
So the stick began to beat the landlord till he jumped over chairs, and
tables, and benches, and yelled and roared,— “Oh my! oh my! bid the
stick be still, else it will beat me to death, and you shall have back
your cloth and your ram,
When the lad thought the landlord had got enough, he said— “Stick,
stick! now stop!”
Then he took the cloth and put it into his pocket, and went home with
his stick in his hand, leading the ram by a cord round its horns; and
so he got his rights for the meal he had lost.