The Fox And The Wolf

A long time ago a fox and a wolf lived together as brothers. One day they peacefully went in search of some food when they found upon the path of the nomads a bag of butter. They wanted to devide the butter equally between themselves. But then the fox said: "When we eat the butter here, people will come. Let us go to the peak of a high mountain and eat it there."

"Let's do it like that. But how should we carry the butter?" the wolf wanted to know.

"How we will carry the butter?" asked the fox, "One of us will have to carry it upon his back. But the panting, that's really hard work."

"Oh well, I will carry the butter upon my back. You do the panting," the Wolf hastily told him and took the butter upon his back. The fox agreed, opened his mouth wide and followed the wolf panting heavily.  

When the two of them finally arrived at the mountain peak, the fox said: "It would be useless to devide the butter. One of us should eat it all."  

The wolf wanted to trick the fox wanting to have the butter for himself. Therefore he said: "When I was little, the Sumber Mountain was but a little hill and the Milk Sea was but a little puddle." (1) As soon as the fox heard these words, he burst into tears. The wolf thought he had won the butter already.Aloud he asked: "Why are you crying?"

"I have three little cubs," the fox told him, "My youngest son has to be about your age. That really touched me." When the wolf heard that, he was deeply ashamed. Hungry and with a grumbling stomach he went back to his cave. Meanwhile the fox ate all the butter by himself until he was satisfyingly full.

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(1) That phrase is very typical for the Mongolian folk literature. The reference the mystic mountain and the mystic ocean always implie that the one using the phrase is very old or that something happened a long time ago. (back to the text)