At last, when the cock got unpleasantly warm, he thought of the wind, and called out: "Oh, Wind, come to my help!" and the Wind said: "Why, there is that noble domestic bird in trouble. I will help him." So he came down the chimney, blew out the fire, blew the lid off the pot, and blew the cock far away into the air, and at last settled him on a steeple, where the cock remained ever since. And people say that the halfpence which were in the pot when it was boiling have given him the queer brown colour he still wears.
—From the Spanish.
[SNEGOURKA]
There lived once, in Russia, a peasant and his wife who would have been as happy as the day is long, if only God had given them a little child.
One day, as they were watching the children playing in the snow, the man said to the woman:
"Wife, shall we go out and help the children make a snowball?"
But the wife answered, smiling:
"Nay, husband, but since God has given us no little child, let us go and fashion one from the snow."
And she put on her long blue cloak, and he put on his long brown coat, and they went out onto the crisp snow, and began to fashion the little child.
First, they made the feet and the legs and the little body, and then they took a ball of snow for the head. And at that moment a stranger in a long cloak, with his hat well drawn over his face, passed that way, and said: "Heaven help your undertaking!"