The Lid on the Nose

One Friday evening Bauke Foppes of Wier went to the inn and ordered a great stone pot of beer. Bauke worked hard, drank gladly, and his wife Nynke waited at home with bread and butter. «One pot,» said Bauke, «and I go.» He drank the pot dry. «Another,» he said. And another. And another.

When at twelve o’clock Bauke had finished the sixth pot, he fell forward on the table. His nose sank into the stone pot. The lid, standing upright on the table, fell over and closed the pot round his nose. Bauke woke with a pot round his face. He could not see, could not breathe, did not know where he was.

The innkeeper and two other drinkers carried Bauke out and put him on his neighbour’s cart, which took him to Wier. When Nynke heard her husband arriving at two in the morning, she opened. There stood Bauke, swaying, with a stone pot round his head. «Nynke,» he said from inside the pot, «I am back.» Nynke took the tongs from the hearth and broke the pot off. «Bauke,» she said, «next time you come home, bring the lid too.» Since then, they say in Wier, no man with a nose goes to the inn without first telling his wife where he is going.