—A certain village butcher, who had bought some meat at market and was returning home in the evening, suddenly came across a wolf, which followed him closely, its mouth watering at the sight of what he was carrying.
The butcher drew his knife and drove the animal off; and then reflecting that his meat was the attraction, he determined to hang it up in a tree and fetch it the next morning.
This he accordingly did, and the wolf followed him no further; but when he went at daylight to recover his property, he saw something hanging up in the tree resembling a human corpse.
It turned out to be the wolf, which, in its efforts to get at the meat, had been caught on the meat-hook like a fish; and as the skin of a wolf was just then worth ten ounces of silver, the butcher found himself possessed of quite a little capital. Here we have a laughable instance of the result of “climbing trees to catch fish.”
II.
—A butcher, while travelling along at night, was sore pressed by a wolf, and took refuge in an old mat shed which had been put up for the watchman of the crops. There he lay, while the wolf sniffed at him from outside, and at length thrust in one of its paws from underneath.
This the butcher seized hold of at once, and held it firmly, so that the wolf couldn’t stir; and then, having no other weapon at hand, he took a small knife he had with him and slit the skin underneath the wolf’s paw.
He now proceeded to blow into it, as butchers blow into pork; and after vigorously blowing for some time, he found that the wolf had ceased to struggle; upon which he went outside and saw the animal lying on the ground, swelled up to the size of a cow, and unable to bend its legs or close its open mouth.
Thereupon he threw it across his shoulders and carried it off home. However, such a feat as this could only be accomplished by a butcher.