Two Cows for a Melody
Once upon a time there was a husband and wife who had two cows, one black and the other red. One day the husband was driving his cows through town when he saw a man who was playing this melody on his fiddle:
He went up to the man and said, “Teach me how to play that melody.”
The fiddler said, “What will you give me if I do?”
“Anything you want,” said the man, “Just as long as you teach me how to play it.”
And so the fiddler played:
Then the man gave the fiddler his red cow, and the fiddler taught him how to play the tune.
The man went on his way until he came to another fiddler, who was playing this melody:
The man went up to the fiddler and said, “Teach me that melody.”
The fiddler said, “And what will you give me if I do?”
“I’ll give you my black cow,” said the man.
So the fiddler taught him how to play it.
When the man came home, his wife asked, “Shepsl, where is the red cow?”
The man replied:
Then she asked him, “Shepsl, where is the black cow?” to which the man replied:
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Glossary
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Annotations
TELLER: Moyshe Kador, Warsaw, Poland, (no date recorded)COLLECTOR: Shmuel Lehman.
SOURCE: Prilutski and Lehman (1933), no. 6, pp. 382–84.
