‘You have no idea how it is done. Be off with you,’ said he angrily.
A little further down the road the hare was resting in a ditch, but when she saw the bear, she came out and spoke to him, and inquired why he looked so sad. The bear told her of the loss of his wife, and of his search after a mourner that could lament over her in the proper style. The hare instantly offered her services, but the bear took care to ask her to give him a proof of her talents, before he accepted them. ‘Pu, pu, pu, pum, poh,’ piped the hare; but this time her voice was so small that the bear could hardly hear her. ‘That is not what I want,’ he said, ‘I will bid you good morning.’
It was after this that the fox came up, and he also was struck with the bear’s altered looks, and stopped. ‘What is the matter with you, godfather?’ asked he, ‘and where are you going?’
‘I am going to find a mourner for my wife,’ answered the bear.
‘Oh, do choose me,’ cried the fox, and the bear looked at him thoughtfully.
‘Can you howl well?’ he said.
‘Yes, beautifully, just listen,’ and the fox lifted up his voice and sang—weeping: ‘Lou, lou, lou! the famous spinner, the baker of good cakes, the prudent housekeeper is torn from her husband! Lou, lou, lou! she is gone! she is gone!’
‘Now at last I have found some one who knows the art of lamentation,’ exclaimed the bear, quite delighted; and he led the fox back to his cave, and bade him begin his lament over the dead wife who was lying stretched out on her bed of grey moss. But this did not suit the fox at all.
‘One cannot wail properly in this cave,’ he said, ‘it is much too damp. You had better take the body to the storehouse. It will sound much finer there.’ So the bear carried his wife’s body to the storehouse,
