The Poor Boy in the Grave

There was once upon a time a poor Lad, whose father and mother were dead, so the Magistrate placed him in the house of a rich Farmer to be fed and brought up. But this Man and his Wife too had very bad dispositions; and with all their wealth, they were avaricious and mean, and very angry when any one took any of their bread. So the poor Boy, do what he might, received little to eat and many blows.

One day he was set to watch the hen and her chickens, and she ran through a hole in the paling, and a hawk just then flying by pounced upon her and carried her off to his roost. The Boy cried, “Thief, thief! stop, thief!” but to what end? the hawk kept his prey, and did not return. The Master hearing the noise came out, and perceived that his hen was gone, which put him in such a rage that he beat the Boy so much that for a couple of days afterwards he was unable to stir. Then the poor Lad had to watch the chickens, which was a harder task still, for where one ran the others followed. At last, thinking to make it sure, he tied all the chickens together by a string, so that the hawk could not take one. But what followed? After a couple of days he fell asleep from weariness with watching and with hunger, and then the hawk came and seized one of the chickens, and, because all the others were tied together to that one, he bore them all away and devoured them. Just then the Farmer came home, and perceived the misfortune which had happened, which angered him so much that he beat the Lad so unmercifully that for several days he could not leave his bed.

When he was on his legs again, the Farmer said to him, ‘You are so stupid that I can no longer keep you as a watch, and therefore you shall be my errand-boy.” So saying he sent him to the Judge, to take him a basket of grapes, and a letter with them. On the way hunger and thirst plagued the Lad so much that he ate two of the grape-bunches. So when he took the basket to the Judge, and the latter had read the letter and counted the grapes, he said, “Two bunches are missing.” The Boy then honestly confessed that, driven by hunger and thirst, he had eaten two bunches; wherefore the Judge wrote a letter to the Farmer, and requested more grapes. These, also, the Boy had to carry, with a letter; and again, urged by great hunger and thirst, he devoured two bunches more. But before he went to the Judge he took the letter out of the basket, and laying it under a stone put the stone over it, so that it could not be seen and betray him. The Judge, however, taxed him with the missing grapes. “Alas!” cried the Boy, “how did you know that? the letter could not tell you, for I had laid it previously under a stone.” The Judge was forced to laugh at the simplicity of the Lad, but sent the Farmer a letter, in which he advised him to treat the Boy better, and not to allow him to want meat or drink, or he might be taught the difference between justice and injustice.

“I will show you the difference at once!” said the hard-hearted Farmer, when he had read the letter; “if you will eat, you must also work; and if you do anything wrong, you must be recompensed with blows.”

The following day he set the poor Boy a hard task, which was to cut a couple of bundles of straw for fodder for the horse. “And,” said the Master in a threatening tone, “I shall be back in five hours, and if the straw is not cut to chaff by that time, I will beat you till you cannot stir a limb.”

With this speech the Farmer went to market with his Wife and servant, and left nothing behind for the Boy but a small piece of bread. He sat down at the machine, and began to cut the straw with all his strength, and as he became hot he drew off his coat and threw it aside on the straw. Then, in his terror lest he should not get done in time, he caught up, without noticing it, his own coat with a heap of straw, and cut it all to shreds. Too late he became aware of this misfortune, which he could not repair, and cried out, “Alas! now it is all up with me. The bad Master has not threatened in vain; when he comes back and sees what I have done, he will beat me to death. I would rather he took my life at once.”

Now the Boy had once heard the Farmer’s Wife say that she had set a jar of poison under her bed, but she had only said so to keep away the sweet-tooths, for, in fact, it contained honey. The Boy, however, drew it out and ate the contents, and when he had done so, he thought to himself, “Ah! people have told me that death is bitter, but it tastes sweetly to me! No wonder that the mistress should so often wish for death.” So thinking, he sat down on a stool to die; but instead of growing weaker, he felt really strengthened by the nourishing food. Soon he began to think, “This can be no poison, but I recollect the Farmer once said that in his clothes-chest was a bottle of fly poison, which will certainly kill me.” But this, also, was no poison, but Hungary wine. The Boy, however, fetched the bottle and drank it out, saying, “This death also tastes sweetly!” Soon the wine began to mount into his head, and to stupify him, so that he thought his death really was at hand. “I feel that I must die,” he said; “I will go to the church yard and seek a grave.” He reeled out of doors as he spoke, and managed to reach the churchyard, where he dropped into a fresh-opened grave, and at the same time lost all consciousness. Never again in this world did the poor Boy awake. The fumes of the hot wine, acted upon by the cold dews of evening, took away his life, and he remained in the grave wherein he had laid himself.

By-and-by, when the Farmer received the news of the death of his servant, he was frightened, because he feared he might be taken before the Judge, and his terror was so great that he fell to the earth in a swoon. His Wife, who was turning some butter in a pan over the fire, ran to his assistance, and in a moment the grease caught fire and soon communicated with the whole house, which was burnt to ashes in a few hours.

Then the years during which the Farmer and his Wife lived afterwards were spent by them in misery and poverty.