n it but bones, and those broken very small.
The old man went out of his house and wept bitterly.

Presently a fox met him.

"What are you crying about, old man?"

"How can I help crying? My old woman is smashed to
pieces."

"Hold your noise! I'll cure her."

The old man fell at the fox's feet.

"Only cure her! I'll pay whatever is wanted."

"Well, then, heat the bath-room, carry the old woman there
along with a bag of oatmeal and a pot of butter, and then stand
outside the door; but don't look inside."

The old man heated the bath-room, carried in what was
wanted, and stood outside at the door. But the fox went into
the bath-room, shut the door, and began washing the old
woman's remains; washed and washed, and kept looking about
her all the time.

"How's my old woman getting on?" asked the old man.

"Beginning to stir!" replied the fox, who then ate up the
old woman, collected her bones and piled them up in a corner,
and set to work to knead a hasty pudding.

The old man waited and waited. Presently he asked;

"How's my old woman getting on?"

"Resting a bit!" cried the fox, as she gobbled up the hasty
pudding.

When she had finished it she cried:

"Old man! open the door wide."

He opened it, and the fox sprang out of the bath-room and
ran off home. The old man went into the bath-room and looked
about him. Nothing was to be seen but the old woman's bones
under the bench--and those picked so clean! As for the oatmeal
and the butter, they had all been eaten up. So the old man was
left alone and in poverty.

This story is evidently a combination of two widely differing tales.
The catastrophe we may for the present pass over, but about the
opening some few words may be said. The Beanstalk myth is one which is
found among so many peoples in such widely distant regions, and it
deals with ideas of such importance, that no contribution to its
history can be considered valueless. Most remarkable among its
numerous forms are those American and Malayo-Polynesian versions of
the "heaven-tree" story which Mr. Tylor has brought together in his
"Early History of mankind."[382] In Europe it is usually found in a
very crude and fragmentary form, having been preserved, for the most
part, as the introduction to some other story which has proved more
attractive to the popular fancy. The Russian versions are all, as far
as I am aware, of this nature.