The Ditmarsch Tale of Wonders
I will
tell you something. I saw two roasted fowls flying; they flew
quickly and had their breasts turned to heaven and their backs to
hell, and an anvil and a mill-stone swam across the Rhine prettily,
slowly, and gently, and a frog sat on the ice at Whitsuntide and ate a
ploughshare. Three fellows who wanted to catch a hare, went on crutches
and stilts; one of them was deaf, the second blind, the third dumb,
and the fourth could not stir a step. Do you want to know how it was
done? First, the blind man saw the hare running across the field, the
dumb one called to the lame one, and the lame one seized it by the neck.
There were certain men who wished to sail on dry land, and they set their
sails in the wind, and sailed away over great fields. Then they sailed
over a high mountain, and there they were miserably drowned. A crab was
chasing a hare which was running away at full speed, and high up on the
roof lay a cow which had climbed up there. In that country the flies are
as big as the goats are here. Open the window, that the lies may fly out.
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