The man did as the lark had taught him, and the woman came in for a drubbing she never expected. The tables were now turned, and instead of beating the husband the woman got it now, and twice over.
That was the first case of the men beating their women, instead of the men being beaten by the women, for the neighbours, seeing how things had changed with this man, soon followed his example, and there was yelling and shouting and cursing as never before, the women getting the worst.
When the women saw that the men got the upper hand, they all gathered together in the market-place and held a conference under the leadership of the head woman of the town. After a long consultation and discussion, they all decided to leave their husbands alone and to get across the Danube to the other side.
So they did; they gathered themselves together and, led by the head woman, left the town to go across the Danube. When the men saw what the women were doing, and that they were in earnest, they turned on the first man who had set the example and threatened to kill him, for he had brought all that trouble upon them. And the man got frightened and ran out into the field, and going to the lark told all that was going on and that he was in danger of his life.
The lark laughed and said, “Oh, you are worse than a set of old women. Do not be afraid, nothing will happen to you; you just wait and see, I am going to bring the women home again.”
So saying, the lark rose up in the air, and flying over the heads of the women who were standing by the banks of the Danube waiting to cross, it sang out, “Tsirli, tsirli, on the other side of the Danube there are no men.”
One of the women, hearing the bird’s song, said to her neighbour, “Did you hear what that bird was singing?”
“Oh, yes, we can all hear it saying that across the Danube there are no men, and if that be true I think we had better return to our own husbands, never mind whether they beat us or not.”
And they all returned home quite meekly to their houses, and ever since then the men beat their wives, but the women never beat their husbands. And you should know that if a woman does beat her husband, he is not a man, but a donkey.