About the Cock

Many, many years ago there lived three brothers in the sky—the Sun, the Moon and the Cock. They had neither a mother nor a father. They loved each other dearly and were a very happy family. The brothers lived in a nice house made of wood.

The Sun and the Moon worked and the Cock looked after the house. It was the Cock’s duty to bring meat, vegetables and fruit from the market, prepare their breakfast, dinner and supper, wash up the dishes, sweep the floors, clean all the beautiful things made of gold that were in the house, change the water in the water pots, go to the shops and do hundreds of other things at home.

The Cock was a very good singer and it was his duty too to wake the Sun up early in the morning with his songs. The Sun and the Moon liked to listen to his wonderful songs.

Early in the morning the Sun went to work. When he was at his working place high in the sky everybody said:

“What a fine day it is! What wonderful weather!”

At the end of the day the Sun came home from work. Then the sky turned dark and soon night came. Then it was time for the Moon to go to work. But the Moon was a lazy worker. On his way to work he often came into a new café in the far corner of the sky and sat there with his friends for a long time. Those were very dark nights, as black as ink, and the poor people, walking in the dark, addressed a lot of angry words to the lazy Moon.

One day the Sun went off to work and the two other brothers stayed at home. Late in the afternoon the Moon told the Cock to bring the cows and horses home from the fields.

The Cock answered: “Oh, my dear brother, I have had a long day’s work and I still have a lot of things to do. I cannot go, do it yourself.”

The lazy Moon was very angry with the Cock. He took him by the comb and threw him down from the sky.

In the evening the Sun came home. He went round the house but he did not see the Cock.

“Where is our brother, the Cock?” asked the Sun. asked the Sun. “It is strange that he did not meet me with his wonderful songs.”

“I have asked him to go and see our aunt who is ill,” answered the Moon.

A lot of time passed, but there was still no Cock. Every minute the Sun looked out of the window and soon he began to understand that something was wrong with the Cock. Again and again he asked the Moon about their poor brother. And every time the Moon repeated his story about their aunt who was ill, but he never looked the Sun in the face. In the end he told the Sun everything.

The Sun began to cry and then said, “Oh, Moon, what have you done! You are a very bad brother, but you are going to pay for it. You did not want to live with our dear brother, the Cock, and I do not want to live with you. I do not want to see you any more. We are never going to meet each other. From this day on, the night must belong to you and the day to me. And our brother must never see you any more because you threw him down from the sky. He must not love you any more, but he is going to love and remember me. When I get up, he must get up too and be happy to see me. But when you come out, he must always go to sleep and never see you again.”

And that is how it has been from that day on. When the Sun comes out in the morning, the Cock is happy to see his dear brother and he calls out: “Cock-a-doodle-doo, cock-a-doodle-doo!”

By this he wants to say, “Here I am too! Here I am too!”

But when the Sun goes down and the Moon shows its pale face the Cock quickly runs home and goes to sleep because he does not want to meet his brother whom he does not love any more.