In another Gaelic version a young husband had provided his house with a cradle, in natural anticipation that such an interesting piece of furniture would be required in due time.  In this he was disappointed, but the cradle stood in the kitchen all the same.  One day he chanced to throw something into the empty cradle, upon which his wife, his mother, and his wife’s mother set up loud lamentations, exclaiming, “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 that grew among the thatch, and to keep the animal from falling off, she ties a rope round its neck, then goes into the kitchen, secures at her waist the rope, which she had dropped down the chimney, and presently the cow stumbles over the roof, and the woman is pulled up the flue till she sticks half-way.  In an inn he sees a man attempting to jump into his trousers—­a favourite incident in this class of stories; and farther along he meets with a party raking the moon out of a pond.