Grimm's Household Tales

A countryman was once going out to plow with a pair of oxen. When he got to the field, both animals’ horns began to grow and went on growing, and when he wanted to go home, the horns were so big that the oxen could not get through the gateway. By good luck a butcher came by just then, and the countryman delivered the oxen over to him and made the bargain in this way: he was to take the butcher a measure of turnip seed, and then the butcher was to count out a Brabant thaler to him for every seed. I call that well sold! The peasant now went home and carried the measure of turnip seed to the butcher on his back. On the way, however, he lost one seed out of the bag. The butcher paid him justly, as agreed, and if the peasant had not lost the seed, he would have had one thaler more. In the meantime, when he was on his way back, the seed had grown into a tree that reached up to the sky. Then the peasant thought, “Since you have the chance, you must just see what the angels are doing up there above, and for once have them before your eyes.” So he climbed up and saw that the angels above were threshing oats, and he looked on. While he was watching them, he observed that the tree on which he was standing was beginning to totter. He peeped down and saw that someone was just about to cut it down. “If I were to fall down from here, it would be a bad thing,” he thought, and in his need he did not know how to save himself better than by taking the chaff of the oats that lay there in heaps and twisting a rope of it. He likewise snatched a hoe and a flail that were lying about in heaven and let himself down by the rope. But he came down on the earth exactly in the middle of a deep, deep hole. So it was a real piece of luck that he had brought the hoe, for he hoed himself a flight of steps with it and climbed up, and he took the flail with him as a token of his truthfulness, so that no one could have any doubt of his story.