“Oh, let us have him, please; take what seems good to thee!”
“Well, ye need him so greatly, I will give him, and will not take much,—the middle toe of each man’s foot.”
They thought and thought, took off their boots, and each man cut off the middle toe of his foot. The simpleton took the toes, hid them, and gave the pig with gold bristles. The brothers-in-law went home, taking the pig with them.
The Tsar was so glad that he knew not what to call them, where to seat them, or what to give them to eat.
“Have ye seen the fool?” asked the Tsar.
“With seeing we have not seen him, with hearing we have not heard.”
The simpleton crept into one ear of his horse, out of the other, and became just such a fool as before. He killed his horse, took off his skin, and put it on; then he caught magpies, crows, jackdaws, and sparrows, tied them around himself, and went home. He came into the palace and let all his birds loose; they flew around on every side, and broke nearly all the windows of the palace.
The Tsarevna, Priceless Beauty, covered herself with tears, and her sisters were screaming with laughter. “Our husbands,” said they, “brought home the pig with gold bristles, and thy fool—look, if it please thee, how he has dressed himself as a monster!”
The Tsar shouted: “What a clown! I’ll fix him.”
Again the Tsar called his sons-in-law. “My dear sons-in-law, I have heard that in such a kingdom, in such a land, there is a wonder,—a deer with golden horns and a golden tail. Can ye not get him in any way?”