Folk Tales Every Child Should Know | Page 9

Wind.
"I want my rights for that meal of ours which you took," said the lad; "for as for that cloth I got, it isn't worth a penny."
"I've got no meal," said the North Wind; "but yonder you have a ram which coins nothing but golden ducats as soon as you say to it:
"'Ram, ram! make money!'"
So the lad thought this a fine thing but as it was too far to get home that day, he turned in for the night to the same inn where he had slept before.
Before he called for anything, he tried the truth of what the North Wind had said of the ram, and found it all right; but when the landlord saw that, he thought it was a famous ram, and, when the lad had fallen asleep, he took another which couldn't coin gold ducats, and changed the two.
Next morning off went the lad; and when he got home to his mother he said:
"After all, the North Wind is a jolly fellow; for now he has given me a ram which can coin golden ducats if I only say, 'Ram, ram! make money!'"
"All very true, I dare say," said his mother; "but I shan't believe any such stuff until I see the ducats made."
"Ram, ram! make money!" said the lad; but if the ram made anything it wasn't money.
So the lad went back again to the North Wind and blew him up, and said the ram was worth nothing, and he must have his rights for the meal.
"Well," said the North Wind; "I've nothing else to give you but that old stick in the corner yonder; but it's a stick of that kind that if you say:
"'Stick, stick! lay on!' it lays on till you say:
"'Stick, stick! now stop!'"
So, as the way was long, the lad turned in this night too to the landlord; but as he could pretty well guess how things stood as to the cloth and the ram, he lay down at once on the bench and began to snore, as if he were asleep.
Now the landlord, who easily saw that the stick must be worth something, hunted up one which was like it, and when he heard the lad snore, was going to change the two, but just as the landlord was about to take it the lad bawled out:
"Stick, stick! lay on!"
So the stick began to beat the landlord, till he jumped over chairs, and tables, and benches, and yelled and roared:
"Oh my! oh my! bid the stick be still, else it will beat me to death, and you shall have back both your cloth and your ram."
When the lad thought the landlord had got enough, he said:
"Stick, stick! now stop!"
Then he took the cloth and put it into his pocket, and went home with his stick in his hand, leading the ram by a cord round its horns; and so he got his rights for the meal he had lost.

IV
THE LAD AND THE DEIL
Once on a time there was a lad who was walking along a road cracking nuts, so he found one that was worm-eaten, and just at that very moment he met the Deil.
"Is it true, now," said the lad, "what they say, that the Deil can make himself as small as he chooses, and thrust himself on through a pinhole?"
"Yes, it is," said the Deil.
"Oh! it is, is it? then let me see you do it, and just creep into this nut," said the lad.
So the Deil did it.
Now, when he had crept well into it through the worm's hole, the lad stopped it up with a pin.
"Now, I've got you safe," he said, and put the nut into his pocket.
So when he had walked on a bit, he came to a smithy, and he turned in and asked the smith if he'd be good enough to crack that nut for him.
"Ay, that'll be an easy job," said the smith, and took his smallest hammer, laid the nut on the anvil, and gave it a blow, but it wouldn't break.
So he took another hammer a little bigger, but that wasn't heavy enough either.
Then he took one bigger still, but it was still the same story; and so the smith got wroth, and grasped his great sledge-hammer.
"Now, I'll crack you to bits," he said, and let drive at the nut with all his might and main. And so the nut flew to pieces with a bang that blew off half the roof of the smithy, and the whole house creaked and groaned as though it were ready to fall.
"Why! if I don't think the Deil must have been in that nut," said the smith.
"So he was; you're quite right," said the lad, as he went away laughing.

V
ANANZI AND THE LION
Once on a time Ananzi planned a scheme.