The Old Woman and Her Pig

While sweeping her house, an old woman found a small, crooked silver coin. She considered what she might do with it and decided to go to the market to buy a little pig.

As she was bringing the pig home, they reached a fence with steps allowing people to climb over it. The pig refused to go over. The woman went a little farther, met a dog and asked it to bite the pig. If the pig would not cross the fence, she explained, she would not get home that night. The dog would not help.

Next she came across a stick. She asked the stick to beat the dog, since the dog refused to bite the pig. But the stick was equally unwilling. She went on to a fire and asked it to burn the stick, repeating the problem with the dog and the pig. The fire refused.

The old woman then asked some water to put out the fire. When the water would not act, she asked an ox, a large farm animal, to drink it. The ox refused too. So she appealed to a butcher, asking him to kill the ox, but the butcher would not.

Every refusal led to another request. She asked a rope to hang the butcher and a rat to bite through the rope. Neither agreed. Meanwhile, none of these requests had got the pig over the fence.

Finally, she reached a cat. She asked it to kill the rat and explained the whole difficulty once more. The rat would not damage the rope; the rope would not hang the butcher; the butcher would not kill the ox. And without the ox, the water, the fire, the stick and the dog acting in turn, the pig would stay where it was.

The cat offered an agreement rather than a refusal. If the woman brought it a dish of milk from the nearby cow, it would kill the rat.

The cow, however, also had a condition. First the woman had to fetch a handful of hay from the stack nearby. Once it had the hay, it would give her milk. The woman did as requested. The cow ate the hay, supplied the milk, and the woman carried it to the cat.

As soon as the cat had drunk the milk, the whole chain began to move. The cat started attacking the rat, the rat started biting the rope, and the rope started hanging the butcher. The butcher began killing the ox, which began drinking the water.

The water began putting out the fire. The fire began burning the stick. The stick began beating the dog, and the dog began biting the pig. In fright, the little pig jumped over the fence, and the old woman got home that very night.