Читать книгу The Marvellous Adventures and Rare Conceits of Master Tyll Owlglass - Robert Henderson Mackenzie Kenneth - Страница 11

How Owlglass brought it about that the stingy farmer’s poultry drew for baits

The next day, when he that had beaten the children went forth, Owlglass met him, and he said unto Owlglass: “Dear Owlglass, when wilt thou come again to eat the butcher-soup at my house?” “Yea, that will I,” answered Owlglass, “when thy poultry draw for baits, and four and four together fight for a little bread.” Then said the other: “Wilt thou be so long?” But Owlglass said: “An if I came ere the time of the fat soup hath come?” Then he went on his way and thought over it until the time that the man’s poultry ran about the streets; then had Owlglass some twenty strings tied together at the midst, and at either end of the string was a morsel of bread hanging. These took he and threw to the poultry. When then the fowls here and there picked up and swallowed the bread, they could not keep hold, for at the other end another fowl was pulling, so that they were contending, and thus from the size of the bread they could not get rid of it, and so stood more than thirty fowls one over against the other and in throttling ran a wager.