After the feast was over and the guests had gone, the peasant’s wife cast away the food that was left, for what was the use of keeping it when fresh could be so easily got? The next morning she went to the basket and asked it for various things, but a great change seemed to have come over it, for it paid no heed to her.
“Old Greyhead,” cried she to her husband, “this is a nice basket you have got us! What is the good of it if it does not do what we tell it? Be off to the wind again, and tell it to give you back your flour, or I will thrash you till you are half dead.”
There was nothing for it but he must go. He came to the old woman’s hut, and there he began to tell her what a terrible wife he had got, and the old woman told him to wait a while till her son, the South-wind, came home.
Not long after in came the South-wind, and the peasant told him all about his trouble.
“Well,” said the wind, when he had heard him to an end, “I am sorry, old man, that you have such a bad wife, but I will help you, and your wife shall thrash you no more. Here now is a cask. Take it home with you, and when your wife threatens to beat you, stand behind the cask and say, ‘Five, come out of the cask and beat my wife!’ When you think they have punished her sufficiently, say, ‘Five, go back to your cask!’”
The peasant was very grateful to the Wind, made him his best bow, and went home. When he got there, he said—
“There, wife, now you have a cask instead of the basket.”
His wife flew into a rage, and said—
“What do I want with your cask? Why didn’t you bring the flour with you?”
She grasped a weapon as she said this, and got ready to lay on her husband, but he slipped behind the cask, and when he saw how matters were, he said—