An idle peasant had married a hard-working woman. All day he lay on the stove while she worked in the fields. One day the woman went to work in the fields while her husband stayed at home to prepare the dinner and feed the chickens, but he did nothing at all. Instead, he lay down, and while he was asleep a crow carried off all the chicks. Their mother filled the farm-yard with her cries of distress, but the peasant let her shriek herself hoarse. When the woman returned to the house, she asked, ‘Where are the chicks? What have you done with them?’—‘Oh, little wife, a misfortune has happened. While I was asleep, a crow carried off all the chicks.’ ‘Oh, you lazy dog! Now, you son of a whore, you must sit on the eggs and hatch them yourself.’
On the morrow, the woman went to the fields, and the peasant took the basket containing the eggs, placed them in the loft, then took off his trousers and sat on the eggs. His wife, who was not devoid of cunning, dressed herself up in a cloak and cap which she borrowed from an old soldier, and in this disguise, she came to the house and shouted at the top of her voice ‘Hallo, master! Where are you?’ The peasant jumped out of the loft, and in so doing, made all the eggs fall onto the floor and break. ‘What are you doing?’—‘Mister soldier, I am minding the house.’—‘Have you no wife?’—‘Yes, but she is at work in the fields.’—‘Then why do you stay in the house?’—‘I am sitting on the eggs.’—‘Oh you are, are you? You son of a bitch!’ and with his whip the soldier rained blows on the peasant’s body. ‘Don’t lie around in the house,’ continued the pretended soldier, ‘and sit on eggs, but go and work in the fields!’—‘I will do so, batouchka. I will work and labour hard, I assure you.’—‘You lie, you scoundrel!’ and the woman again thrashed her husband, and when she had finished, she lifted up her leg, ‘Look at this, you son of a bitch,’ she said. ‘I have been in the wars, and have been wounded, as you see. Well, do you think my wound will heal?’ The peasant examined his wife’s coynte and replied, ‘It will heal over, batouchka.’
The peasant woman went away, put on her own clothes, and returned to the house, where she found her husband groaning dismally. ‘Why are you groaning?’—‘A soldier came just now, and has beaten me black and blue all over with his whip.’—‘For what reason?’—‘He wanted me to work.’—‘You ought to have been thrashed long ago. I am sorry I was not here. I would have asked him to keep on thrashing you.’—‘That would have been difficult for him: he is on his last legs.’—‘How is that?’—‘He has been in a battle and received a wound between the legs. He showed it to me, and asked if it could be cured. I replied that it would heal up, but the wound is very red, and the hair has grown all round it.’ Henceforth, the peasant cultivated the ground, and his wife kept the house.
[Comparative Note: The first part of this tale deals with a very popular motif—the fool. The episode here related faithfully follows the most famous and most widely disseminated form of the story, which in Tuscany takes the name of Giucco, Giucca or Giuca, and in Sicily, Giufa; The second part of the tale treats of the woman who dressed as a soldier, and of the events which followed; it directly recalls the fable Du Berengier au long cul, of which there are two versions, for which see Anatole de Montaiglon et Gaston Raynaud, Recueil général et complet de fabliaux des XIIIe et XIVe siècles, imprimés ou inédites, publiés avec Notes et Variantes d’apres les Manuscrits, Paris 1878 e 80 ti III e IV ni 86 e 93. Imbert has versified this story. See also Bernhard Jülg, Mongolische Märchen, die neun Nachtrags-Erzählungen des Siddhi-Kür u.s.w. Innsbruck, Wagner, 1868, no. 18: Die verrätherische Trompete, pag. 23-27; Benfey, Pantsch. Einleitung I, pag. XXV, e pag. 136-38; Liebrecht in Orient und Occident, 1862, I, 116-21. The female sex organ is described to the fool in such a way that he believes it a wound. Similarly, there occurs in the book: La fleur lascive orientale, contes libres inédites traduits du mongol, de l’arabe, du japonais, de l’indien, du chinois, du persan, du malay, du tamoul, etc. Oxford, 1882, page 81: Le jeune homme qui ne connaît pas son sexe.]