Once upon a time, across seventeen countries, even across the Peruvian Sea, there was a poor man and his wife. They were both young, they loved each other, but because of their poverty they often quarreled.
One evening the woman makes a fire. She thinks to herself that when her husband comes home, she'll cook some supper, but there was nothing to cook. The water hadn't even boiled yet, and the farmer comes home and tells his wife with great joy:
- Hey, wife, if you only knew what happened. The great poverty is over, and now we'll have everything our eyes and mouths desire.
- "Come, don't joke, kend," said the woman, "have you found a treasure?
- I believe that. Listen to me. As I come out of the woods, what I see in the middle of the road. There was a sweet little carriage in the mud, and two squirrels in front of it, and in the carriage sat a woman as beautiful as I have ever seen in my life. She must have been a certain fairy.
Says the fairy to me:
- Good man, help me out of the mud, and you won't regret it!
- How could I not help? - I said. So I took hold of the sweet carriage, and like a woman, like a squirrel, I plucked it out of the mud. Then he asked me from top to bottom if I had a wife. I said, "I do. I am rich. I said, I am poor as a church mouse.
- Well, if you're poor, tell your wife at home to wish for three things, anything, and all three wishes will be granted immediately.
- "Do you hear," said the woman, "don't joke, for I'm not in the mood for jokes.
- All right, all right, try it, make a wish.
- Very well, I wish. Oh, my goodness, I wish I had a big sausage in here!
In that instant a large casserole descended from the chimney, and in the casserole was a big sausage, nicely curled up.
- "You see that I was right," said the poor man, "but now let us wish for something wiser, for you see that it is fulfilled.
The poor man picked up his pipe, he still had a little tobacco, he filled it. He thought that if he lit a pipe, he would think of something clever. He reached into the fire to get some coal for his pipe, but found it so clumsy to reach in that the pot turned upside down and the sausage was turned over in the ashes. The woman jumps up and starts to make a racket.
- Oh, how clumsy kend, I wish this sausage would grow on his nose!
And as soon as he said this, the sausage was hanging on his master's nose, so twisted that it could not be removed. Oh, my lord, both of them were thirsty, now what to do, what to wish for a third.
Says the man:
- First take off this sausage.
The woman tries, she can't take it off.
- "Well, we'll have to take it off," says the woman. "We've pinched a bit off his nose, it's not so bad!
- But I won't let you do that anymore!
- Yes, if not, then go with the sausage!
- But I don't do it anymore, to be the ugly of the whole world.
My God, my God, what can they do.
- You know what, woman," says the man, "I wish the sausage would fall off my nose.
- What do you think kend, that would be the third wish! But I wanted to wish for all the best, lots of oxen, horses, lots of land, a nice house and everything!
- It's no use, wife, I'm not going out with a moustache like that. I'll soon wish the sausage would fall off my nose.
What could be done, the poor woman wanted the sausage to fall off her husband's nose. When it fell, she washed the ashes off it. They ate it in one sitting, so that there was not a morsel left.
They made peace while they ate and stopped fighting about poverty, but worked hard, hard. Then they got oxen and horses, land and a nice house. They are still alive today, if they are not dead.
