“It seems that every kind of work has something unpleasant about it. To play the violin you must practice until your arm aches. When you make cheese you dare not stop a minute until the work is done, and in taking honey from a hive the bees sting you until your head is on fire. Work in my garden is not so bad after all, and I am going back to it.”
So he said good-by to the bee man and was soon back in his carrot patch. He hoed and raked and weeded, singing as he worked, and there was no more contented pig in all that kingdom. Every autumn he took his vegetables to the fair and brought home the royal prize, and sometimes, on holidays, the cat and the dog and the bee man came to call.
(_Old Bavarian Folk Tale—Helpful in Nature Study_)
Once upon a time a strange thing happened. A cormorant, a bat, and a bramble met at the mouth of the river Elbe one day and told a sorrowful story. Each was almost bankrupt; so they decided to postpone paying their debts, put their remaining possessions together, and share in the consequent weal or woe.
They bought a merchant vessel, a ship large and strong, and so seaworthy it seemed it could sail to the nethermost parts of the Spanish Main. Wool was precious then as now, and in a country far away a hundredweight of sheep’s fleece brought many a gold doubloon. So they freighted the vessel with the best wool that was to be had and joyfully watched the white sails disappear in the pearl-gray mist. But a storm arose and angry winds dashed their galleon against demon-like rocks. Instead of reaching a distant land of gold doubloons the ship went to Davy Jones’s locker, and her precious cargo made couches for the mermaids.
Then sad indeed was the plight of these partners on the North Sea shore! Bailiffs began to sue them for payment of their debts, and ever since that time the bat has flown by night, for in no other way can he avoid his creditors. The cormorant, a solitary black figure, still broods beside the waves and dives into the sea, hoping to retrieve his shattered fortune, while the bramble has turned thief. Whenever a sheep goes by, he seizes a bit of the fleece, trying in this way to make up for the loss of the wool that went to the bottom of the Spanish Main instead of bringing him the gold of which he had dreamed.
