THE IDIOT’S LUCK.

Sacred-Texts Legends & Sagas   

WE find this form of the story of the despised younger son in the “Strange Tale of an Ox” (Kreutzwald). A dying father leaves an ox to his third son, a simpleton, who goes to sell it, and when passing through a wood he hears a noise in a tree, and thinks it is an offer to buy the ox; so he ties it to the tree, and takes a log home with him as security for the money. Not receiving it when he expected, he breaks open the log, and finds a jar of money inside. He afterwards kills a shepherd who tries to cheat him out of it; and it is given out that the shepherd has been carried away by the devil.