The Man Who Wanted to Keep House
There was a man who had such a bad and violent temper, and never believed that his wife had enough work to do in the house. One evening he came home from haymaking, grumbling and cursing that he almost sparked with angry lights.
Oh, please don’t be so angry, father,” said his wife, “tomorrow we shall switch tasks; I shall go with the haymakers, then you can keep house.”
Oh, yes, the man was well satisfied and delighted with this.
Early the next morning, the wife took the scythe and walked to the fields to make hay, and her husband would then work in the house. First,the man churned cream to make butter but when he had churned for a time, he got thirsty so he went down to the cellar to tap beer from the barrel. As he tapped the beer into a bowl, he heard the go into the living room. He went up the cellar steps with the bowl in his hand as fast as he could to see what the pig was up to. It had overturned the churning bucket and he saw that the pig had turned it upside down and was slurping at the cream that was now all over the floor. He became so angry that he forgot he had left the beer tap running and ran after the pig as best he could. He caught the pig at the door and gave it a good kick so that the pig lay down where it was. Then he remembered that he was running around with the stop of the beer barrel in his hand, but when he went down the cellar again, he saw that the beer had all flowed down and the barrel was empty.
He went back to the milk shack and found so much cream that he got the churning bucket full, and he set to churning again, as he wanted butter with his dinner. When he had been churning for a while, he remembered that the cow had neither had water or food that day. He thought the pasture was too far, so he thought he would insted bring the cow up to the turf roof where it could feed on the nice grass that had grown in the turf. The house was on a steep hill, so he that if he laid a plank of wood against the roof, he could bring the cow up the roof that way. But he did not dare leave the churning bucket either, because his little son was still a toddler who crawled all over the floor and he might upset the churning bucket. So he took the bucket on his back, but first he must give the cow some water before he brought it up to the roof. And so, he took a pail to fetch water from the well, but when he stooped down the well, the cream flowed out of the bucket and down his neck.
It was almost noon, and he had not made the butter yet, so he thought he would cook porridge. After he had set a pot of water in the fireplace, he remembered that the cow might walk to the edge and fall frin the roof and break its leg or its neck, so he went up to the roof to tie it down. He tied one end of the rope around the cow’s neck, tied it around the chimney, and the other end he tied around his thigh, because the water was boiling in the pot and he must stir the porridge. But while he stirred the pot, the cow fell over the roof and as it fell, dragged the man up the chimney. The man was stuck in the chimney and the cow dangled by the wall, swinging between the sky and the earth, and neither the cow nor the man could go down or come up.
The wife had waited 7 lengths and 7 widths for the husband to come and call her to dinner, but time went by and went but nobody came. At last, she thought that she had waited long enough and went home. When she saw the cow hanging dizzily, she ran and cut the rope with the scythe. In the same moment the man fell down the chimney and when the wife went inside the house, he stood with his head in the porridge pot.
