“Let me alone, wife! What is the matter with you? I do not know myself
why I laughed.”
But the more he denied her the more she insisted upon his telling her
what he had been laughing at. At last the husband said to her—
“Know then, that if I tell you the reason, I shall instantly die.”
The woman, however, did not care for that, but urged him to tell her
notwithstanding.
Meanwhile they had reached home. The husband ordered a coffin to be
made immediately, and when it was ready he had it placed before the
house, and said to his wife—
“See now, I now lay me down in this coffin, and then tell you why I
laughed; but as soon as I have told you I shall die.”
The husband lay down in the coffin, and looked around him for the last
time. And there came the old Dog from the farmyard, and sat down at his
head and whined. The husband seeing this, said to his wife—
“Bring a piece of bread and give it to this Dog.”
The wife brought out a piece of bread, and threw it down to the Dog;
but the Dog would not even look at it. Then the House Cock ran up, and
began to pick at the bread; and the Dog said to it—
“You miserable greedy thing, you! You can eat, and yet you see that the
master is going to die!”
The Cock answered the Dog, “And let him die since he is such a fool. I
have a hundred wives, and I call them all together whenever I find a
grain of corn, and as soon as they have come round me, I swallow it
myself. And if any one of them got angry, I should be at her directly
with my beak. The master has only one wife, and he cannot even manage
her.”
When the husband heard this he quickly sprang out of the coffin, took
up a stick, and called his wife into the room.
“Come, wife,” he said, “I will tell you what you so much want to hear.”
Then as he beat her with the stick he cried, “This is it, wife! This is
it.”
In this way he quieted his wife, and she never asked him again what he
had been laughing at.