There once lived a peasant lad, who tended his crops with earnest.  His lords did not look kindly upon those peasants who did not produce sufficient crops.  This year, however, something was wrong.  The local lords must have irritated some arcane power, for the rains of spring were not coming.  Without the precious life-giving water, the seeds of last years' harvest would not germinate.

  The peasant lad begged a priest to aid him in his plight, for he did not wish to have a whipping through no fault of his own.  The priest asked for the peasant's prize calf to sacrifice, to appease whatever power was angered.  The priest slaughtered the calf, and sliced off the choice cuts of meat.  He uttered some arcane words, packed up the veal and beef, and declared these lands sanctified.  The priest then  took his leave, with enough food to last him some time.  The rains, however, did not come.

  The peasant, growing more desperate for a solution, tried to buy water to irrigate his fields manually.  He sold some more of his livestock.  Without grain growing he would not have been able to feed them, anyway.  Water, however, was in short supply.  Prices proved too dear for the peasant's meagre funds.

  As the peasant tried to ponder some other quick solution to the lack of rain, a wandering wizard happened by.  This wizard wore a flashy robe and spoke very quickly.  He offered the peasant an instant solution to his water troubles.  The wizard waved his arms about and unveiled a tube and some jars of blue liquid.  For the low, low price of three chickens, the wizard was willing to part with this one of a kind, sure-fire, money-back guaranteed rain making system.

  Three chickens were all that remained of the peasant's livestock, but magic was powerful and surely would not fail.  The wizard certainly seemed confident of such, at any rate.  He reassured the peasant of the system's effectiveness at every sign of doubt on the peasant's part.

  The deal was struck.  Grinning from ear to ear, the wizard took the chickens and instructed the peasant in the use of the system.  A bottle of blue fluid was to be placed in the tube.  Upon uttering the proper, so easy a child can remember them chants, the tube would fire the bottle high into the sky, where it would infuse the clouds with rain.  A single bottle should cure his rain woes for an entire season.

  The wizard left with his chickens and a happy expression.  The peasant waved good-bye, and immediately placed a bottle in the tube.  He was overly eager to see rain fall again.  The peasant chanted, and indeed, the tube launched the bottle deep into the sky, where it exploded in a blue light.  The peasant grinned, stretched out his arms and stared to the heavens, waiting for the rain to come.

  Several minutes later, the peasant decided that the sky must be too dry.  Another bottle must be needed.  So he fired another bottle of condensed rain into the sky...  Still no rain fell.  Quite irritated, and completely out of patience, the peasant fired all the bottles into the sky, waited, and grumbled off to his hovel to sleep.

  The next day, the peasant awoke to a sound he had not heard in ages... Rain.  Blessed rain!  Once more falling from the sky!  The peasant ran out of his hovel and danced about in the tempest.  His problems were over!

  On the fifth day, as the rains continued to fall, the peasant began to grow a bit worried.  But the seeds had sprouted, and the earth had indeed been parched.  Five days of rain was not so bad.  His fields could handle that much rain.

  On the tenth day, the rain still fell unabated, and the fields began to flood.  The peasant tried to construct some channels for the rain to flow down.  The wet earth was heavy, but the peasant dug with all his strength.  He managed to keep the rains contained to a few hastily dug ditches.

  By the fifteenth day, the ditches had become as rivers, and the fields once more were flooding.  The seedlings had been washed away under so much rain, and the peasant could think of naught to do save turn his hovel and chicken coop into a makeshift raft.

  As the moons went by, the peasant lad, now living on his hovel on a raft in a lake of unending rain, sat and wondered how he had come to this.  His desire for a hasty solution to his problem had doomed him.  Some say he managed to live on, as a fish farmer, and tells his tale to teach people the lesson he failed to grasp in time:

 If you seek a speedy solution to your problems, make sure you can withstand the speed first.