Then the king said, ‘If you it be, that I may believe you are really the man, do you see this peasant coming? Well, you must steal the ox from under the yoke without his seeing you.’
Then the thief said, ‘I’ll steal it, O king; watch me.’ And he went before the peasant, and began to cry aloud, ‘Comedy of Comedies!’
Then the peasant said, ‘See there, God! Many a time have I been in the city, and have often heard “Comedy of Comedies,” and have never gone to see what it is like.’
And he left his cart, and went off to the other end of the city; and the thief kept crying out till he had got the peasant some distance from the oxen. Then the thief returns, and takes the ox, and cuts off its tail, and sticks it in the mouth of the other ox, and came away with the first ox to the king. Then the king laughed fit to kill himself. The peasant, when he came back, began to weep; and the king called him and asked, ‘What are you weeping for, my man?’
‘Why, O king, whilst I was away to see the play, one of the oxen has gone and eaten up the other.’
When the king heard that, he laughed fit to kill himself, and he told his servant to give him two good oxen. And he gave him also his own ox, and asked him, ‘Do you recognise your ox, my man?’
‘I do, O king.’
‘Well, away you go home.’
And he went to the thief. ‘Well, my fine fellow, I will give you my daughter, and you shall become king in my stead, if you will steal the priest for me out of the church.’
Then the thief went into the town, and got three hundred crabs and three hundred candles, and went to the church, and stood up on the pavement. And as the priest chanted, the thief let out the crabs one by one, each with a candle fastened to its claw; he let it out.