Kabanata Kabanata 148 · The Ditmarsch Tale of Wonders

. The Ditmarsch Tale of Wonders

I will tell you something. I saw two roasted fowls flying; they flew

quickly and had their breasts turned to heaven and their backs to hell,

and an anvil and a mill-stone swam across the Rhine prettily, slowly,

and gently, and a frog sat on the ice at Whitsuntide and ate a

ploughshare. Three fellows who wanted to catch a hare, went on crutches

and stilts; one of them was deaf, the second blind, the third dumb, and

the fourth could not stir a step. Do you want to know how it was done?

First, the blind man saw the hare running across the field, the dumb

one called to the lame one, and the lame one seized it by the neck.

There were certain men who wished to sail on dry land, and they set

their sails in the wind, and sailed away over great fields. Then they

sailed over a high mountain, and there they were miserably drowned. A

crab was chasing a hare which was running away at full speed, and high

up on the roof lay a cow which had climbed up there. In that country

the flies are as big as the goats are here. Open the window, that the

lies may fly out.