Then he says to himself,
“I shall do no good stopping here. The wolf is my enemy, and the blackbird, too. Something will happen to me if I stay here. I must go off to the other side of the water.”
He goes and stands at the water’s edge. A boatman happened to pass, and he said to him:
“Ho! man, ho! Will you, then, cross me over this water? I will tell you three truths.”
The man said to him, “Yes.”
The fox jumps (into the boat), and he begins to say:
“People say that maize bread is as good as wheaten bread. That is a falsehood. Wheaten bread is better. That is one truth.”
When he was in the middle of the river, he said:
“People say, too, ‘What a fine night; it is just as clear as the day!’ That’s a lie. The day is always clearer. That is the second truth.”
And he told him the third as they were getting near the bank.