The Three Wishes

Once, in Hungary, there lived a very poor peasant named Franz. He and his wife, Maria, had a tiny cottage on the edge of the forest and did not have a penny to spare between them. They lived mostly on the food they could grow in their garden. They were quite content but sometimes became bad-tempered and had quarrels. Then they would both be very cross indeed.

One evening, Franz returned home and sat in front of the fire to warm himself. His wife was just putting the pan on the fire to cook their meager evening meal. It was late autumn, and the weather was turning cold. In the nearby village, the farmers were gathering the last of the harvest. Franz had been helping them, and in return for his help, he received money to buy food.

“I saw the strangest thing on my way home tonight,” said Franz.

“What was it?” asked his wife.

“Well, as I was returning from the fields, I had to walk down the lane. As I rounded a bend, I saw a golden carriage. It was not pulled by horses but by four strong dogs. Inside, there sat a lady, very tiny and very beautiful,” he explained.

“A golden carriage standing in the lane,” laughed his wife. “Hardly anyone uses that lane. You must be joking.”

“No, I’m quite serious,” Franz insisted. “It’s true that lane is seldom used, and it is quite rough with pools of water and mud. The carriage was stuck, and as hard as the dogs pulled, they could not move it. So the lady begged me to help her, promising a reward. With my help, the dogs pulled the carriage out.”

“Well, what did she give you as a reward?” asked Maria.

“Nothing,” replied Franz. “But she asked me if I was married, and I told her I was. Then she asked if I was rich and I replied that there were probably none poorer than us in the whole village. She said, ‘I will do something about that, for you are very kind. You may tell your wife that I will grant her any three wishes she makes.’ With that, she disappeared. She must have been a fairy.”

“She certainly made a fool of you,” laughed Maria. “You should have asked her for something to bring home, but it never did any harm to help someone. It doesn’t matter.”

“We shall see,” replied Franz. “Try making a wish and see what happens.”

“That’s easy,” said his wife. “I’m hungry, and we have little food. Right now, I would like a string of fine sausages in that pan on the fire.”

No sooner had she spoken than a string of sausages came down the chimney. It was long enough to go right around the house and filled the frying pan on the fire.

“This is wonderful,” cried Maria. “We shall eat well tonight for a change.”

“We must be more careful with our next wishes,” said Franz. “We’ve already wasted our first one. I think with the other two, I should like to ask for two cows, two horses, and some pigs to have a little farm of my own.”

He took his pipe out of his mouth as he spoke and tried to light it with a burning branch from the fire, but he only succeeded in upsetting the pan. When his wife saw that he had upset the sausages, she lost her temper.

“What are you doing to our supper?” she cried. “Look at you! You are so clumsy; you’ve upset the pan and all the sausages as well. I just wish the sausages were growing on your nose. That would teach you a lesson.”

She had quite forgotten the three wishes when she spoke, and to her horror, before she had finished speaking, the sausages had left the pan and were dangling from her husband’s nose. Terrified, she grabbed the end of the string and tried to pull them away, but they were stuck quite firmly.

“What a stupid woman you are,” yelled her husband in a fine rage. “Now you’ve wasted the second of our three wishes.”

“But what are we going to do about the sausages?” asked Maria.

“We can’t remove them,” said her husband. “Don’t you see? They are growing from the end of my nose.”

“Perhaps I can cut them off with a knife,” Maria suggested hopefully.

“And cut my nose off with them?” asked her husband. “Don’t you realize that to cut them off would be like cutting off a piece of me? No, you can’t do that. You have one wish left, and you will have to use it to wish the sausages back into the frying pan again.”

“But what about the two cows and the two horses and the pigs and the little farm you wanted?” said Maria. “If I use up my last wish on your nose, you’ll never have any of them, and we shall be back where we started with nothing.”

“You should have thought about that earlier,” grumbled Franz. “It’s obvious that I can’t go about like this for the rest of my life. Nobody will want to talk to me or even look at me like this.”

Maria agreed with him, and rather sadly, she wished the sausages back into the frying pan and put them on the fire to cook. As they fried, a delicious smell rose from the pan. It was so appetizing that both Franz and Maria stopped quarreling and sniffed happily. They could never stay annoyed for long.

They sat down to the largest and tastiest supper they had had in a very long time and soon ate every scrap of sausage from the pan. They had the fairy’s three wishes, but they were as poor as before.

“It’s a pity about the farm and the animals you wanted,” said Maria at last, “but still, we got a good supper. We always manage to have enough to live on.”

“Perhaps some good did come from the fairy’s three wishes after all,” replied Franz thoughtfully. “If we had not been quite so quarrelsome, we might not have wasted the wishes so foolishly. If we learn to live peaceably and not argue, the fairy will have done us more good than if she had made us very rich.”

Maria agreed, feeling very ashamed of herself. From that day on, whenever they started to quarrel, they both remembered the sausages and stopped at once. Strangely enough, Franz and Maria seemed to prosper more than ever before. The vegetables in their little garden grew bigger and better, bringing profit. Many farmers wanted Franz to work for them and paid him well. Soon, his small dream came true—first buying cows, then horses, and eventually a herd of pigs, ducks, and chickens too.