There was a mother who had a daughter so greedy that she did not know
what to do with her. Everything in the house she would eat up. When
the poor mother came home from work there was nothing left.
But the girl had a godfather-wolf. [372] The wolf had a frying-pan,
and the girl's mother was too poor to possess such an article; whenever
she wanted to fry anything she sent her daughter to the wolf to borrow
his frying-pan, and he always sent a nice omelette in it by way of
not sending it empty. But the girl was so greedy and so selfish that
she not only always ate the omelette by the way, but when she took
the frying-pan back she filled it with all manner of nasty things.
At last the wolf got hurt at this way of going on, and he came to
the house to inquire into the matter.
Godfather-wolf met the mother on the step of the door, returning
from work.
'How do you like my omelettes?' asked the wolf.
'I am sure they would be good if made by our godfather-wolf,' replied
the poor woman; 'but I never had the honour of tasting them.'
'Never tasted them! Why, how many times have you sent to borrow
my frying-pan?'
'I am ashamed to say how many times; a great many, certainly.'
'And every time I sent you an omelette in it.'
'Never one reached me.'
'Then that hussey of a girl must have eaten them by the way.'
The poor mother, anxious to screen her daughter, burst into all manner
of excuses, but the wolf now saw how it all was. To make sure, however,
he added: 'The omelettes would have been better had the frying-pan
not always been full of such nasty things. I did my best always to
clean it, but it was not easy.'
'Oh, godfather-wolf, you are joking! I always cleaned it, inside and
out, as bright as silver, every time before I sent it back!'
The wolf now knew all, and he said no more to the mother; but the
next day, when she was out, he came back.
When the girl saw him coming she was so frightened and self-convicted
that she ran under the bed to hide herself.
But to the wolf it was as easy to go under a bed as anywhere else;
so under he went, and he dragged her out and devoured her. And that
was the end of the Greedy Daughter.
[In the Italian-Tirolese tales is one very similar to this, called
'Catarinetta.'
After the faults of the young, the sins of the old have their share
of mocking. In the 'Russian Folk Tales,' pp. 46-50, is a miser story,
but, for a wonder, not the least trace of similarity.
In Scheible's 'Schaltjahr,' vol. i. pp. 169-71, is a very quaint miser
story, bringing in also an instance of wolf-transformation, which is
said to have happened 'in Italy,' to a certain Herr v. Schotenberg,
on August 14, 1798. He had seized a poor peasant's only cow for a debt,
and when, in punishment, all his own cows were struck dead, he accused
the peasant's wife of bewitching them, and threatened to have her
burnt. The peasant's wife answered that it was the judgment of God, not
hers; and upon that he turned to the crucifix in the farmyard, saying:
'Oh, you did it, did you? then you may go and eat the carrion you have
made, with the dogs.' Then he took out his pistol, shot an arm off
the crucifix, and flung it on to the heap of dead cows, saying, 'Now
one piece of carrion lies with the rest!' 'Albeit it was only a wooden
image,' says the account, 'yet it was of God in Heaven that he spoke,
who punished him on the spot by turning him into a dog.' The portrait
which accompanies the story is quaint, too, having a human face, with
wolfish, erect ears, and the rest of the body like a dog. He wore at
the time a fur cloak, of pale yellow with black spots, and that is
how the dog's fur appeared; and he had to eat carrion all his life,
and follow his good wife about, wherever she went.]