Hukumusume fairy tale collection > Foreign language (English) > Aesop’s Fables

The two travelers and the axe

(Aesop’s Fables)

Translation　ちいさな翻訳屋さん

Japanese　←→　Japanese ＆ English　←→　English

　Two men were travelling together.

　One of them picked up an axe on a path.

　The other one looked at him and said,

“We just found an axe,

didn’t we?”

“No, it has to be ‘You’, ” replied the man picked up an axe,

“not ‘We’.”


　After a while, a man who had dropped the axe came after them.

　He was a thief and stole the axe.

“This is so helpless! He must be thinking that we took the axe. We are not going to make it,”

cried the man with an axe.

“No, it has to be ‘I’, not ‘We’,” replied the other man,

“You didn’t count me in when you found the axe, did you?”


　The one who doesn’t share his luck with his friend won’t deserve to be saved when in danger.

　That’s the moral of this story.

The end

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