, "Oh, if
_he_ had been there, he had been killed!" alluding to a potential
son. The man was so much shocked at such an exhibition of folly that he
left the country in search of three greater noodles. Among other
adventures, he goes into a house and plays tricks on some people there,
telling them his name is "_Saw ye ever my like_?" When the old man
of the house comes home he finds his people tied upon tables, and asks,
"What's the reason of this?" "Saw ye ever my like?" says the first. Then
going to a second man, he asks, "What's the reason of this?" "Saw ye
ever my like?" says the second. "I saw thy like in the kitchen," replies
the old man, and then he goes to the third: "What's the reason of this?"
"Saw ye ever my like?" says the third. "I have seen plenty of thy like,"
quoth the old man; "but never before this day," and then he understood
that some one had been playing tricks on his people.[2]

In Russian variants the old parents of a youth named Lutonya weep over
the supposititious death of a potential grandchild, thinking how sad it
would have been if a log which the old woman had dropped had killed that
hypothetical infant. The parents' grief appears to Lutonya so uncalled
for that he leaves the house, declaring he will not return until he has
met with people more foolish than they. He travels long and far, and
sees several foolish doings. In one place a horse is being inserted into
its collar by sheer force; in another, a woman is fetching milk from the
cellar a spoonful at a time; and in a third place some carpenters are
attempting to stretch a beam which is not long enough, and Lutonya earns
their gratitude by showing them how to join a piece to it.[3]

A well-known English version is to this effect: There was a young man
who courted a farmer's daughter, and one evening when he came to the
house she was sent to the cellar for beer. Seeing an axe stuck in a beam
above her head, she thought to herself, "Suppose I were married and had
a son, and he were to grow up, and be sent to this cellar for beer, and
this axe were to fall and kill him--oh dear! oh dear!" and there she sat
crying and crying, while the beer flowed all over the cellar-floor,
until her old father and mother come in succession and blubber along
with her about the hypothetical death of her imaginary grown-up son. The
young man goes off in quest of three bigger fools, and sees a woman
hoisting a cow on to the roof of her cottage to eat the grass t