Part 52

“You miserable greedy thing, you! You can eat, and yet you see that the master is going to die!”

The Cock answered the Dog, “And let him die since he is such a fool. I have a hundred wives, and I call them all together whenever I find a grain of corn, and as soon as they have come round me, I swallow it myself. And if any one of them got angry, I should be at her directly with my beak. The master has only one wife, and he cannot even manage her.”

When the husband heard this he quickly sprang out of the coffin, took up a stick, and called his wife into the room.

“Come, wife,” he said, “I will tell you what you so much want to hear.”

Then as he beat her with the stick he cried, “This is it, wife! This is it.”

In this way he quieted his wife, and she never asked him again what he had been laughing at.

THE EMPEROR TROJAN’S GOAT’S EARS

By W. S. Karajich

There once lived an emperor whose name was Trojan. This emperor had goat’s ears, and he used to call in barber after barber to shave him. But whoever went in never came out again; for while the barber was shaving him, the emperor would ask what he observed uncommon in him, and when the barber would answer that he observed his goat’s ears, the Emperor would immediately cut him into pieces.

At last it came to the turn of a certain barber to go who feigned illness, and sent his apprentice instead. When the apprentice appeared before the emperor he was asked why his master did not come, and he answered, “Because he is ill.” Then the emperor sat down, and allowed the youth to shave him.

As he shaved him the apprentice noticed the emperor’s goat’s ears, but when Trojan asked him what he had observed, he answered, “I have observed nothing.”

Then the emperor gave him twelve ducats, and said to him—

“From this time forth you shall always come and shave me.

When the apprentice came home, his master asked him how he got on at the emperor’s, and the youth answered—

“All well; and the emperor has told me that I am to shave him in future.”

Then he showed the twelve ducats he had received; but as to the emperor’s goat’s ears, of that he said nothing.

From this time forth the apprentice went regularly to Trojan to shave him, and for each shaving he received twelve ducats; but he told no one that the emperor had goat’s ears.

At last it began to worry and torment him that he dare tell no one his secret; and he became sick and began to pine away. His master, who could not fail to observe this, asked him what ailed him, and after much pressing the apprentice confessed that he had something on his heart which he dared not confide to anyone, and he added, “If I could only tell it to somebody, I should feel better at once.”

Then said the master—

“Tell it to me, and I will faithfully keep it from everybody else; or if you fear to trust me with it, then go to the confessor and confide it to him; but if you will not do even that, then go into the fields outside the town, there dig a hole, thrust your head into it, and tell the earth three times what you know, then throw the mold in again and fill up the hole.”

The apprentice chose the last course; went into the field outside the city, dug a hole, into which he thrust his head, and called out three times—

“The Emperor Trojan has goat’s ears.”

Then he filled up the hole again, and with his mind quite relieved went home.

When some time had passed by, there sprang an elder tree out of this very hole, and three slender sterns grew up, beautiful and straight as tapers. Some shepherds found this elder, cut off one of the stems, and made a pipe of it. But as soon as they began to blow into the new pipe, out burst the words:

“The Emperor Trojan has goat’s ears!”

The news of this strange occurrence spread immediately through the whole city, and at last the Emperor Trojan himself heard the children blowing on a pipe:

“The Emperor Trojan has goat’s ears!”

He sent instantly for the barber’s apprentice, and shouted to him—