ONCE on a time the Cock, the Cuckoo, and the Black-cock bought a cow between them. But when they came to share it, and couldn’t agree which should buy the others out, they settled that he who woke first in the morning should have the cow.
“Now the cow’s mine! Now the cow’s mine! Hurrah! hurrah!” he crew, and as he crew, up woke the Cuckoo.
“Half cow! Half cow!” sang the Cuckoo, and woke up the Black-cock.
“A like share, a like share; dear friends, that’s only fair! Saw see! See saw!”
And now, can you tell me which of them ought to have the cow?
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ONCE on a time there was a man whom they called Rich Peter the Pedlar, because he used to travel about with a pack, and got so much money, that he became quite rich. This Rich Peter had a daughter, whom he held so dear that all who came to woo her, were sent about their business, for no one was good enough for her, he thought. Well, this went on and on, and at last no one came to woo her, and as years rolled on, Peter began to be afraid that she would die an old maid.
“I wonder now,” he said to his wife, “why suitors no longer come to woo our lass, who is so rich. ’Twould be odd if nobody cared to have her, for money she has, and more she shall have. I think I’d better just go off to the Stargazers, and ask them whom she shall have, for not a soul comes to us now.”
“But how,” asked the wife, “can the Stargazers answer that?”
“Can’t they?” said Peter; “why! they read all things in the stars.”
So he took with him a great bag of money, and set off to the Stargazers, and asked them to be so good as to look at the stars, and tell him the husband his daughter was to have.
Well! the Stargazers looked and looked, but they said they could see nothing about it. But Peter begged them to look better, and to tell him the truth; he would pay them well for it. So the Stargazers looked better, and at last they said that his daughter’s husband was to be the miller’s son, who was only just born, down at the mill below Rich Peter’s house. Then Peter gave the Stargazers a hundred dollars, and went home with the answer he had got.
Now, he thought it too good a joke that his daughter should wed one so newly born, and of such poor estate. He said this to his wife, and added,—
