“How can you say that? Your wife has got two petticoats: leave her one, but the other we must turn into drink.”
The peasant took the petticoat, drank it away, and said to himself:
“We’re cleaned out at last, my wife as well as myself. Not a stick nor a stone is left!”
Next morning Woe saw, on waking, that there was nothing more to be got out of the peasant, so it said:
“Master!”
“Well, Woe?”
“Why, look here. Go to your neighbor, and ask him to lend you a cart and a pair of oxen.”
The peasant went to the neighbor’s.
“Be so good as to lend me a cart and a pair of oxen for a short time,” says he. “I’ll do a week’s work for you in return.”
“But what do you want them for?”