The husband who looked after the house

 A farmer's wife became fed up with being criticised by her husband about how she ran the house, so one day she challenged him. “Tomorrow I'll go out and work in the fields, and you can take care of the work in the house, if you think you can do it better than me!” The next day the husband did his best to do things right. He began to make the butter, but his efforts soon made him thirsty and he went down to the cellar to drink some wine. He opened the barrel, but then he heard the pig come into the house and knock over the butter dish. He rushed back upstairs to stop the animal from causing more trouble, but he forgot to put the cork in the wine barrel again.

He kept getting into trouble all morning long. At lunchtime, when he put the stew on to boil, he remem­bered that he had not taken the cow out to pasture yet; but there was no time anymore. He decided to take it onto the roof, so it could eat the grass that grew among the tiles. It was very difficult to get the cow onto the roof. In the end he succeeded, and to make sure that the animal did not fall off, he tied it there with a rope.

Then he remembered the stew over the fire. To get back to the kitchen as fast as possible, so that the stew did not bum, he lowered himself down the chimney. For safety, he tied the other end of the rope to his foot. But the cow fell off the roof Just then, and the man was yanked back up the chimney and got stuck there.

When his wife came home from the fields, the first thing she saw was the cow dangling from the rope, so she cut it loose. On the other end the man dropped down.... into the fireplace. When the woman entered the house, she found the floor covered in butter, the cellar flooded with wine, and her husband upside down with his head in the stew!

She returned to her housework. From then on, of course, he never grumbled at her again.