There was once an old man whose wife was exceedingly quarrelsome. The old man had no rest from her day or night; she nagged and nagged at him at every little trifle, but if the old man ventured to gainsay her in anything, she immediately caught up a broomstick, or something else, and chased him out of the kitchen. The old man had only one consolation; he would leave his old woman and go into the fields to set snares and bird-traps, hang them up on the branches of all the trees, and entice into his snares every bird that God has made, and so he would bring home a great booty, and give his old woman enough to last her for a whole day, or even two, and then he would for once enjoy a day in peace.

One day he went out into the fields and set his snares, and caught in them a crane. “What a stroke of luck!” thought the old man; “when I take home this crane to my old woman and we kill and roast it, she won’t row me for a long time.” But the crane guessed his thoughts, and said to him with a human voice: “Don’t take me home and kill me, but let me go and live at liberty as before; thou shalt be dearer to me than my own father, and I will be as good as a son to thee.” The old man was amazed at these words and let the crane go.