Fearless Simpleton

A man had a nephew who was as stupid as could be. The boy understood nothing; on the other hand, nothing frightened him. Now the man left home, instructing his nephew to watch out for robbers and not let them steal any belongings from the house. The boy began wondering. "What are robbers? What are belongings? I'm afraid of nothing."

The robbers appeared and said, "What are you doing here, boy? We have come to rob you."

"So what are you waiting for? Go on and rob me. Is anybody stopping you? Do you think I'm afraid?" And he let them steal everything in the house.

The uncle returned and found the house ransacked. He asked his nephew, "Did you send for the robbers?"

"Me? I was here on the doorstep. The robbers came. They said, 'What are you doing here? We have come to rob you.' And who's stopping you?' I said to them. 'How dumb can you be!' So they went ahead and robbed us. I had nothing to do with it."

The man thought of his priest brother, who could perhaps teach the boy something. "You are going to your priest uncle," he told him.

"What is a priest uncle? I don't know of any priest uncles or anybody else. If we must go to my priest uncle, let's go! "

The first evening the priest uncle said to him, "Tonight you will go and put out the lights in church."

The nephew replied, "What are lights? What is a church? I don't know of any lights or any church. I'll go wherever you say, I'm afraid of nothing."

The uncle had given instructions that while his nephew was putting out the lights, the sacristan was to lower a basket of flaming candles and say, "Get into the basket, whoever wants to see the kingdom of heaven."

The nephew saw the basket, heard the voice, and said, "What heaven? What heaven? I don't know of any heaven. Wait, let me get in."

He took a knife and cut the rope. The sacristan went to pull up the basket and ended up with nothing but rope.

The next evening the priest uncle ordered the sacristan to get into a coffin and pretend to be dead, in order to frighten the nephew. "Tonight," he told the boy, "you are going to wake a dead man."

"What is a dead man? What is wake? I'll go anywhere." And he went into church to wake the dead man. A small candle flickered near the corpse, while the rest of the church was pitch-dark. The corpse slowly raised one leg. The boy watched and didn't move a muscle.

The dead man raised his head, and the boy yawned. Then the dead man spoke: "You, there! I'm still alive!"

The boy replied, "If you are alive, you are going to die now." He picked up a candle-snuffer, struck him on the head, and killed him. Then he went back and told his priest uncle, "That dead man hadn't finished dying, so I finished him off myself."