Since then the fox and the hedgehog are good friends.
South Slavonic Tales, Krauss, No. 13.
A fox meeting a hedgehog asked him, “How many wits have you?” And he replied, “Only three. But how many have you?” “I,” boasted the fox, “have seventy-seven.”
As they were talking and walking along, not noticing whither they were going, they fell into a deep hole which the peasants had dug. The fox asked the hedgehog to save him. The hedgehog said, “I have only three wits, perhaps you will save me first, then I will see about you afterwards”; and he asked the fox to pitch him out of the hole. The fox did so, and then asked the hedgehog whether he could help him. The hedgehog said, “I cannot help you with three if you cannot help yourself with seventy-seven.” And so the fox was caught in the morning by the peasants and killed.
In the Rumanian version, the hedgehog saves the fox by one wit and puts him to shame, which rounds off the story much better; in the Slavonic tale there is scarcely any point.
But this probably goes back to a more ancient legend referred to in a Greek epigram, v. Benfey, Pantschatantra, i. 316.
Compare the parallel story in Grimm (No. 75) of a fox with the hundred wits, and also Hahn (91).