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Friday night folktales: The Bakki-brothers and the Cat


Read part one.

Read part two

Read part three.

Once when the Bakki-brothers were out and about they met a man who was carrying an animal inside his shirt, the like of which the brothers had never seen before. They asked what this wondrous beast was called and what it was for and were told it was a cat and that it killed mice and kept them out of the houses. The brothers thought this was a splendid beast and asked if the cat was for sale. The man answered that they would have to offer him a grand price for the cat if he were to sell it to them, and they ended up paying through their noses for the beast.

They then took kitty home and were full of joy over their new house pet. When they got home they remembered that had forgotten to ask what the cat ate, so they went to the seller’s home. It was late at night and one of them knocked on a window and woke up the man, calling to him: “What does the cat eat?”

The man answered carelessly: “The damn cat eats everything.”

Upon hearing this the brothers returned home and thought deeply about what the man had said. Suddenly one of them said: “The cat eats everything, and my brother too,” and the others repeated this after him.

They decided that the cat was maybe not such a good beast after all and rather than having it eat them all, they paid a man for killing the cat and so made a loss on that purchase.

Copyright notice: The wording used to tell this folk-tale is under copyright. The story itself is not copyrighted. If you want to re-tell it, for a collection of folk-tales, incorporate it into fiction, use it in a school essay or any kind of publication, please tell it in your own words or give the proper attribution if you choose to use the wording unchanged.

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