Hungarian Folk Tales: The Horse-Egg
There once lived a peasant who found a giant pumpkin in the meadow.
What on earth could this be, he thought.
So he bent down, lifted the giant pumpkin up,
felt it and smelt it, but he still had no clue what it was.
So he took the pumpkin to the village council.
The counselors were in the middle of an important meeting when the farmer walked in
and plumbed the giant pumpkin on the table.
And this surprised them all.
I have lived a very long life but I have never seen anything like that before.
I have experienced a lot in my life but I have never come across anything like that before.
And I'm not a young man either but I really couldn't tell you what on earth that is.
Then the village mayor added wisely:
Gentlemen, this peculiar object, judging by its shape, cannot be anything else but an egg.
Of course, what else could it be? It must be an egg!
The peasant agreed and added that the egg-like object had been warm when he first found it.
The local mayor had a very clever mind and so he wanted to know exactly what kind of egg this might be.
The old village leaders thought it could possibly be a terrible green dragon's egg.
However the mayor was inclined to agree with a farmer who said that
he had recently seen a strange horse in the very same meadow.
The village leaders liked the sound of this and said:
It must be so!
Nothing other than a horse could have laid such a giant egg!
Good.
So tell me my friends, what should we do next?
Why? You must catch it of course!
Yes, but what animal could do it?
All horses don't lay eggs, so they could never hatch it.
Everyone thought hard what to do but then the mayor had an idea:
Gentlemen of the council!
If the local horses are too stupid to hatch an egg then we, the village council, should do it!
We, gentlemen, must hatch the giant egg!
That's what I say.
This sounded like a wonderful idea and everyone nodded in agreement.
The village mayor decided to set an example and so he was the first to sit on the giant egg.
And then the gentlemen of the council followed one after the other.
And they would all be still sitting on it today if the people in the next village
had not spread the rumor that it had gone bad under their bottoms.
When they heard this the local leaders protested and refused to sit on the egg for a day longer.
This made the mayor very sad because he said he was sure he had felt the horse moving inside it.
But the village leaders were convinced the egg was wrong and it smelled very bad.
But each stopped their own side of the story.
In the end the council voted and decided to take the egg to the top of a hill
and roll it down on to the people of the village below who had teased them so.
The men, women and children of the village all walked up to the top of a nearby hill
and prepared to punish their neighbors with a stinking egg.
Everyone pinched their noses and the mayor began to roll the egg.
And the giant egg rolled down
and rolled down the hill
until it rolled into the bushes at the bottom.
This is where it broke into just as a rabbit ran out of the bushes.
And all the villagers cried out:
There goes the horse!
Come on, let's catch it!
And they all gave chase to the rabbit.
Only the mayor stayed standing on top of the hill and muttered sadly to himself:
I told them that something was moving inside.
We should've had the patience to sit on the egg for another day,
and it would have grown into a fine strong horse.