“Which makes it safe for me,” he murmured. On and on he went, never stopping until he came to a cabbage patch, the largest and finest in the village. They were bigger than his head, those cabbages, and every one of them belonged to the mayor.
“But some shall go into my good wife’s pot,” he laughed as he saw them, and climbing the fence he went into the patch and began to help himself.
Then suddenly along the road came a child on a snow-white horse. He rode as if nothing could halt him, but seeing the man in the patch, he stopped and shouted, “What are you doing?” The peasant looked to right and left and began to stammer, “Just b-b-b-borrowing some of the m-m-m-mayor’s cabbages,” he replied, as he threw a plump one into his basket.
The clear, strong tones rang out again, “You steal, and on the Holy Night too! So you and your basket shall go to the moon.”
Then, whisk! Up the peasant started and never stopped until he came to the middle of the moon, and there he has stayed ever since. Whether or not he ate the cabbages, no one knows, but he and his basket are there to this day, and every night when the moon is full you may see them.
THE DISCONTENTED PIG
(Thuringian Folk Tale—Ethics, teaching contentment)
Ever so long ago, in the time when there were fairies, and men and animals talked together, there was a curly-tailed pig. He lived by himself in a house at the edge of the village, and every day he worked in his garden. Whether the sun shone or the rain fell he hoed and dug and weeded, turning the earth around his tomato vines and loosening the soil of the carrot plot, until word of his fine vegetables traveled through seven counties, and each year he won the royal prize at the fair.
But after a time that little pig grew tired of the endless toil.