A foolish old man was sitting in a tavern, making a pint of beer last all afternoon. He had not always been foolish, or old, but had gradually become so. At one time he had been considered a very wise man, consulted by the villagers on all manner of matters.

But great age had weakened his brain.

He overheard a farmer say to another, “A warm, comfortable lodging and a good roast beef dinner are as rare as hens’ teeth”.

“What do you mean by that, brother?” he interjected.

“Just what I say, Samuel. They are impossible to find in these hard times, unless you can afford to pay a great deal of money”.

This idea went round and round in Samuel’s head. When at last he had finished his beer and searched his pockets in vain for a penny to buy another, he took up his stick and trudged homewards.

In his back garden was a fine hen that his wife kept for eggs. He had seen it every day and had never thought about its teeth. But today, his preoccupation with the farmer’s words led him to take a closer look.

“By heavens!” he exclaimed. “My hen has many teeth! And apparently people will pay a lot of money for them. But I must make sure that no-one steals her”. So he shooed her into the coop and fastened the door. Then he went in to make himself some supper, as his wife was away, visiting her sister.

He wondered how best to go about selling the hen’s teeth. It suddenly came to him that the king would be very interested in anything so rare. So early the next morning he took the hen out of the coop, popped it in a sack and set off to the carter’s house, where the carter was getting his horse ready for a trip to the city. Samuel and the hen were the only passengers that morning, and the carter was glad of the company.

As they went along the carter heard the hen stirring inside the sack, making a muffled clucking. “Is that your hen in there?” said he. “Is there something the matter with it? You could let me have a look”.

“Oh no”, said Samuel, worried that the carter would see the hen’s precious teeth. “It’s not a hen. It’s a cat that I found in my kitchen. It must have come in looking for food”.

“But why are you taking it to the city?” said the carter.

“Because it’s wearing a fine fur collar, and I think it must belong to someone important. So I’m going to hand it in at the Town Hall”.

“Let me see”.

“No, no, I daren’t. It might jump out and scratch you to pieces”.

So the carter decided to leave well alone.

By midday they arrived in the city and Samuel asked the carter to drop him off outside the Town Hall. But as soon as the cart had gone on, he went to the gate of the royal palace, rang the bell, and asked to see the king.

The guard who had opened the door came from the same village as Samuel, and recognised him, although he had not seen or heard of him since the days when he was known for his wisdom. So the guard told a courtier that Samuel the Wise Man had come to see the king, and the courtier told another more important courtier, and so on until the Grand Vizier himself told the king.

“Send him in”, said the king eagerly.

So Samuel was brought to the great hall, where the king was sitting surrounded by his many daughters, courtiers of all ranks, musicians, jugglers and some exotic animals which he kept as pets.

Samuel whispered in the king’s ear that he needed to speak to the king in private. So the king, intrigued, dismissed all the folk from the room. Then Samuel was ready to divulge his secret.

“In this sack, Your Majesty, is a hen that has a thousand teeth, each one of them so rare that its worth can hardly be imagined! It belongs to me, but I thought you might wish to acquire it. As your loyal subject, I would let you have it for a very reasonable price”. And he opened the neck of the sack to let the king peep in.

The king happened to be as foolish as Samuel, but he had always been so. He saw what looked like an ordinary hen, but he was quite convinced that the hen was as fabulous as described. “What price would you ask?” he enquired. “Twenty crowns?” suggested Samuel hesitantly. “Very well”, said the king immediately, amazed at what seemed like a very low price for such a marvel. “Have you any more of these?”

“Not just now, Your Majesty, but I may be able to find another”. Samuel was thinking that he would ask his wife where she had got the hen from.

“If you can find any others, bring them here, and you shall have another fifty crowns for each,” said the king. “I shall keep this one for my menagerie, but I would like to send the others as presents to my favourite kings of other countries”.

Samuel and the king were both delighted with their side of the bargain. “Let out the hen” said the king, bursting with excitement now he was about to see the wondrous teeth. “How amazed all my daughters and courtiers will be when they come back in!” So Samuel opened the sack and the bird fluttered out. A leopard, which was dozing on a rug near the king, heard the noise and opened one eye a little to see what it was. In a flash it had sprung forward and snatched the hen in its jaws. Then it had bounded into a far corner with its prey and swallowed it down whole.

“Oh dear!” wailed the king. “I should have thought of that. That leopard is always hungry. But never mind. You shall have your twenty crowns, and we will keep this a secret for now. The royal coach will take you home, and as soon as you find another such hen, bring it to me”.

The king clapped his hands to summon a footman. Samuel received his twenty crowns and was told to return as soon as possible. As he followed the footman across the great chamber, he spotted a feather on the carpet. It had recently belonged to the unfortunate hen. Samuel cunningly dropped the sack as if by accident, and in retrieving it, he secretly gathered up the feather.

When the Royal Coachman delivered him to his cottage door, his wife had come home, and was astonished to see him arrive in such style. “Come inside, wife, and I’ll explain,” said he. Swearing her to secrecy, he told her what had happened, and gave her the twenty crowns to prove his story. “But I never knew our hen had teeth!” she exclaimed. What were they like?” “Like this!” said Samuel, producing the feather with a flourish. “I kept just this one”.

“But that’s a feather”, she said. “Every hen has those – thousands of them”.

Immediately the foolish old man realised his mistake. “Of course! I got confused. I’m getting more and more confused these days. So this isn’t worth a fortune at all?”

“Certainly not, you silly old fool. But tell me again exactly what happened, every little thing, while you can still remember”. As she listened carefully to the tale, she prepared their supper. While they ate it, Samuel stared dejectedly at the table, with little appetite for his soup. But she was thinking hard about what he’d told her, and before they went to bed she’d had an idea.

By the morning she was confident that her plan would work, but just in case it didn’t, she told her husband that she was going to the palace the next day to explain the mistake to the king, and to return the money. And so, the next morning she put the twenty crowns into the sack and went to the city.

“What have you got in there – another stray cat with a fur collar?” asked the carter, laughing at his own joke. “Don’t be silly,” said she. “No, it’s the same one as yesterday. The mayor let it go to let it find its own home, but instead, it must have followed Samuel home”. Suddenly the sack slipped and the coins clanked inside. “It doesn’t sound much like a cat”, said the carter. “That’s the chain I’ve wrapped around it to stop it struggling”, said the woman. “Let me have a look” said the carter. “It can’t jump up and scratch me now”.

“Even so, you’d better not. It’s got an evil eye, and Samuel and I are both almost blinded from the looks it gave us”. So again the carter left well alone, and on they went in silence, all the way to the Town Hall.

Then off she slipped to the palace, where she was quickly ushered into the king’s private room. He leapt up to take the sack from her. “But there is just money in here!” he gasped with disappointment. “Well, Your Majesty, let me explain. There are no more magic hens like the one Samuel brought yesterday. It was surely the only one in the world. But we reasoned that, since the hen had a thousand or more teeth, at least one must have fallen out when it was pecking for grain. So we searched and searched all yesterday, in just a little part of the garden, but we haven’t found one. Now we’re nearly blind with the strain of looking for something so small. But we can hardly ask anyone else to help look, as we couldn’t trust them to say if they did find a tooth. They might make off with it. So we thought that, as you haven’t got anything for your money, you should have it back”.

The king was impressed by the simple generosity of these subjects, and upset that they were left almost blind by their efforts. A clever idea formed in his silly head. He was sure that they were right to expect to find the odd tooth on their land. He would buy their cottage and carry on the search himself. Happily for Samuel’s wife, this was the very idea that had occurred to her.

“You will find it difficult to stay in your cottage if your sight is failing,” he said. I will give you a fine apartment here in the palace, and a hundred crowns for your trouble. And of course you must keep those twenty crowns. After all, I did have something for the money – a good meal for my leopard”.

And she was very pleased to agree to this proposal. For the rest of their lives she and Samuel lived in warm, comfortable lodgings and ate many a roast beef dinner, and only they knew why the king spent every day busily scratching around in their old garden.