"Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!"
The milkmaid was so startled to hear a voice coming from the cow that she upset the milking pail and rushed to her master, and said:
"The cow's bewitched! The cow's bewitched! She's talking through her tummy."
The farmer came and looked at the cow, and when he heard Thumbkin speaking out of her tummy he thought the milkmaid was quite right, and gave orders for the cow to be slaughtered.
And when she was cut up by the butcher he didn't want the paunch—that is the stomach—so he threw it out into the yard. And a wolf coming by swallowed the paunch and Thumbkin with it.
When he found himself again in the wolf's stomach he called out as before:
"Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!"
But the wolf said to him:
"What'll you do for me if I let you out?"
"I know a place where you can get as many chickens as you like, and if you let me out I'll show you the way."