Once a Crab* man went into the forest, built a fire under a tree and cooked sausages. He put the sausage down, went away, and in the meantime a fox came running, picked up the sausage and ran away with it.
The fox stands up to eat the sausage, and at that moment a magpie swoops down, snatches the sausage out of the fox's mouth and flies up to the top of a tree. The fox runs after the sausage, and sees it dangling in the magpie's beak. He wonders what to do to get the sausage back.
He is, he thinks to himself, cutting down the tree. But he thinks to himself that if the magpie sees the axe, it will fly away. He holds himself up, puts the axe behind his back and shouts to the magpie:
- Give me the sausage, I don't have an axe. (Give me the sausage, I don't have an axe.)
But the magpie had more sense than a man, and flew away with the sausage so fast that he had no place to go.
Had the magpie not flown away, my story would have lasted longer.
(Elek Benedek: Hungarian tale- and mythology Volume 2)
*Rac: in the past, Serbs and Croats living in Hungary were called Races - ed.
