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Once upon
a time...
In a little village that stood on a wide plain, where you
could see the sun from the moment he rose to the moment he set,
there lived two couples side by side. The men, who worked under the
same master, were quite good friends, but the wives were always
quarrelling, and the subject they quarrelled most about was-- which
of the two had the stupidest husband.
Unlike most women--who think that anything that belongs to them must
be better than what belongs to anyone else--each thought her husband
the more foolish of the two.
'You should just see what he does!' one said to her neighbour. 'He
puts on the baby's frock upside down, and, one day, I found him
trying to feed her with boiling soup, and her mouth was scalded for
days after. Then he picks up stones in the road and sows them
instead of potatoes, and one day he wanted to go into the garden
from the top window, because he declared it was a shorter way than
through the door.'
'That is bad enough, of course,' answered the other; 'but it is
really NOTHING to what I have to endure every day from MY husband.
If, when I am busy, I ask him to go and feed the poultry, he is
certain to give them some poisonous stuff instead of their proper
food, and when I visit the yard next I find them all dead. Once he
even took my best bonnet, when I had gone away to my sick mother,
and when I came back I found he had given it to the hen to lay her
eggs in. And you know yourself that, only last week, when I sent him
to buy a cask of butter, he returned driving a hundred and fifty
ducks which someone had induced him to take, and not one of them
would lay.'
'Yes, I am afraid he IS trying,' replied the first; 'but let us put
them to the proof, and see which of them is the most foolish.'
So, about the time that she expected her husband home from work, she
got out her spinning-wheel, and sat busily turning it, taking care
not even to look up from her work when the man came in. For some
minutes he stood with his mouth open watching her, and as she still
remained silent, he said at last:
'Have you gone mad, wife, that you sit spinning without anything on
the wheel?'
'YOU may think that there is nothing on it,' answered she, 'but I
can assure you that there is a large skein of wool, so fine that
nobody can see it, which will be woven into a coat for you.'
'Dear me!' he replied, 'what a clever wife I have got! If you had
not told me I should never have known that there was any wool on the
wheel at all. But now I really do seem to see something.'
The woman smiled and was silent, and after spinning busily for an
hour more, she got up from her stoop, and began to weave as fast as
she could. At last she got up, and said to her husband: 'I am too
tired to finish it to-night, so I shall go to bed, and to- morrow I
shall only have the cutting and stitching to do.'
So the next morning she got up early, and after she had cleaned her
house, and fed her chickens, and put everything in its place again,
she bent over the kitchen table, and the sound of her big scissors
might be heard snip! snap! as far as the garden. Her husband could
not see anything to snip at; but then he was so stupid that was not
surprising!
After the cutting came the sewing. The woman patted and pinned and
fixed and joined, and then, turning to the man, she said:
'Now it is ready for you to try on.' And she made him take off his
coat, and stand up in front of her, and once more she patted an
pinned and fixed and joined, and was very careful in smoothing out
every wrinkle.
'It does not feel very warm,' observed the man at last, when he had
borne all this patiently for a long time.
'That is because it is so fine,' answered she; 'you do not want it
to be as thick as the rough clothes you wear every day.'
He DID, but was ashamed to say so, and only answered: 'Well, I am
sure it must be beautiful since you say so, and I shall be smarter
than anyone in the whole village. "What a splendid coat!" they will
exclaim when they see me. But it is not everybody who has a wife as
clever as mine.'
Meanwhile the other wife was not idle. As soon as her husband
entered she looked at him with such a look of terror that the poor
man was quite frightened.
'Why do you stare at me so? Is there anything the matter?' asked he.
'Oh! go to bed at once,' she cried; 'you must be very ill indeed to
look like that!'
The man was rather surprised at first, as he felt particularly well
that evening; but the moment his wife spoke he became quite certain
that he had something dreadful the matter with him, and grew quite
pale.
'I dare say it would be the best place for me,' he answered,
trembling; and he suffered his wife to take him upstairs, and to
help him off with his clothes.
'If you sleep well during the might there MAY be a chance for you,'
said she, shaking her head, as she tucked him up warmly; 'but if
not--' And of course the poor man never closed an eye till the sun
rose.
'How do you feel this morning?' asked the woman, coming in on
tip-toe when her house-work was finished.
'Oh, bad; very bad indeed,' answered he; 'I have not slept for a
moment. Can you think of nothing to make me better?'
'I will try everything that is possible,' said the wife, who did not
in the least wish her husband to die, but was determined to show
that he was more foolish that the other man. 'I will get some dried
herbs and make you a drink, but I am very much afraid that it is too
late. Why did you not tell me before?'
'I thought perhaps the pain would go off in a day or two; and,
besides, I did not want to make you unhappy,' answered the man, who
was by this time quite sure he had been suffering tortures, and had
borne them like a hero. 'Of course, if I had had any idea how ill I
really was, I should have spoken at once.'
'Well, well, I will see what can be done,' said the wife, 'but
talking is not good for you. Lie still, and keep yourself warm.'
All that day the man lay in bed, and whenever his wife entered the
room and asked him, with a shake of the head, how he felt, he always
replied that he was getting worse. At last, in the evening, she
burst into tears, and when he inquired what was the matter, she
sobbed out:
'Oh, my poor, poor husband, are you really dead? I must go to-
morrow and order your coffin.'
Now, when the man heard this, a cold shiver ran through his body,
and all at once he knew that he was as well as he had ever been in
his life.
'Oh, no, no!' he cried, 'I feel quite recovered! Indeed, I think I
shall go out to work.'
'You will do no such thing,' replied his wife. 'Just keep quite
quiet, for before the sun rises you will be a dead man.'
The man was very frightened at her words, and lay absolutely still
while the undertaker came and measured him for his coffin; and his
wife gave orders to the gravedigger about his grave. That evening
the coffin was sent home, and in the morning at nine o'clock the
woman put him on a long flannel garment, and called to the
undertaker's men to fasten down the lid and carry him to the grave,
where all their friends were waiting them. Just as the body was
being placed in the ground the other woman's husband came running
up, dressed, as far as anyone could see, in no clothes at all.
Everybody burst into shouts of laughter at the sight of him, and the
men laid down the coffin and laughed too, till their sides nearly
split. The dead man was so astonished at this behaviour, that he
peeped out of a little window in the side of the coffin, and cried
out:
'I should laugh as loudly as any of you, if I were not a dead man.'
When they heard the voice coming from the coffin the other people
suddenly stopped laughing, and stood as if they had been turned into
stone. Then they rushed with one accord to the coffin, and lifted
the lid so that the man could step out amongst them.
'Were you really not dead after all?' asked they. 'And if not, why
did you let yourself be buried?'
At this the wives both confessed that they had each wished to prove
that her husband was stupider than the other. But the villagers
declared that they could not decide which was the most foolish-- the
man who allowed himself to be persuaded that he was wearing fine
clothes when he was dressed in nothing, or the man who let himself
be buried when he was alive and well.
So the women quarrelled just as much as they did before, and no one
ever knew whose husband was the most foolish.
Which Was The
Foolishest?
from the Brown Fairy Book
Story Edited
by Andrew Lang |
