The three wishes

Tale from England.

Once upon a time there was a poor woodcutter who went out every morning to chop wood. He worked hard all day and in the evening returned home to his cabin, where his wife was waiting with supper. It was a tiring life, but the only kind of life they knew.

One day when the woodcutter was in the middle of his work, he heard someone calling for help. It was a small, squeaky voice so it took him a while to find the caller. It turned out to be a little old man with his foot stuck in a cracked tree trunk. The figure couldn't have been much bigger than a bottle and the woodcutter realized it must be one of the fairies. The woodcutter went up to the tree and soon had chopped up the trunk with his axe, so the old man could get free. The little man was very grateful for the help and said to the woodcutter: “You will get three wishes as a reward from me. You just have to say what you want and it will come to you instantly. But remember, you only have three, so use them!” With those words, the old man disappeared into thin air.

The woodcutter had certainly been given something to think about as he wandered home in the evening. As he sat down at the kitchen table, he felt for the first time that day how hungry he actually was. "Isn't the food ready soon?" he asked his wife. "It's ready when it's ready!" she replied. "I wish I'd at least had a sausage to gnaw on," muttered the lumberjack without thinking. Suddenly there was a large sausage on the plate in front of him. His wife stared at the sausage in surprise and wondered how he got it. Then the woodcutter told about his meeting with the little old man in the forest and about the three wishes.

Then the wife became furious and scolded her husband. “Are you that stupid to waste a wish on a hot dog?? How can you be so careless? How can you be so stupid??? I wish the sausage was stuck on your nose!” And voila, the sausage was at the far end of the lumberjack's nose. Now it became quite quiet in the cabin, when they both realized how stupid they had been. Now what would they put their last wish on? A big house? Lots of money? A long and healthy life?

"I wish the sausage would disappear from my old man's nose," said the wife at last, and the sausage disappeared.
"That's true love!" said the woodcutter. "Aren't we fine the way we are anyway?" The wife grumbled and laid out a large portion of food for her old man, because tomorrow he was going out to chop wood again.