The Rooster Beam

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

　　There was once a magician who was standing in the midst of a great crowd of people performing his wonders. He had a rooster brought in, which lifted a heavy beam and carried it as if it were as light as a feather. But a girl was present who had just found a four-leaf clover, and had thus become so wise that she could see through every deception, and she saw that the beam was nothing but a straw. So she called out, "You people, do you not see that it is a straw that the rooster is carrying, and not a beam?"

　　The magic vanished immediately, and the people saw what it was, and drove the sorcerer away in shame and disgrace.

　　He, however, full of inward anger, said, "I will avenge myself."

　　Some time later the girl's wedding day arrived. She was all decked out, and went in a great procession across a field to the place where the church was. Suddenly they came to a swollen brook, and there was neither a bridge nor a walkway to cross it. So the bride nimbly lifted up her clothes, and was about to wade through it. She had just stepped into the water when a man near her, and it was the magician, called out mockingly "Aha! What kind of eyes do you have that think they see water?"

　　Then her eyes were opened, and she saw that she was standing with her clothes lifted up in the middle of a field that was blue with flax blossoms. Then all the people saw it too, and they chased her away with ridicule and laughter.