Molbos

The molbos have a long way to the forest so they must rise early to collect wood. One morning some of them drove to the forest to bring home a tree they had bought. But on the way the one who drove first happened to lose his axe, and when the others saw that, they thought he threw it away on purpose, so they threw away their axes as well. Now, as they stood in the forest, they had nothing with which to chop, they didn’t know what to do at all, and they certainly didn’t want to come home empty-handed. Finally one of them had the brilliant idea to pull the tree down; but as they hadn’t brought a rope, one of them had to climb the tree and lay his head in the cleavage between two branches then the others were to pull his legs until the tree yielded. Very well, they pulled and they pulled, and eventually they all fell backwards, including the chap they had been pulling, only he had no head. This they couldn’t fathom, they went searching and searching, but no, they didn’t find the head, because it was stuck in the tree. Well, that couldn’t be helped, now it was time to return home. And so they laid the headless man in the wagon and took him home to his wife and asked if she was sure that her husband had brought his head when he left home this morning. “I can’t remember that right now!”, said the wife; but then she thought for a while: “Oh yes, he did bring his head!” she said. “He ate cabbage with it this morning before he left.”