The Butcher and the Baker

Once upon a time there was a Butcher a Baker and two Candlestick makers too. The Baker put yeast in his bread and baked some nice cakes for all his friends. He loved his friends and his friends loved him. Those who knew this Baker could have their cake and then eat it too because he could just bake another cake. Now that takes the cake!

The Butcher offered tasty meat but could not make enough of it. He did not want to be the Baker’s friend because he was jealous, so he took a cake. Then, he did it again. So he thought, “That tasted mighty fine. I bet I could even get some friends this way too.” So then the Butcher began stealing some of the best of the Baker’s cakes and he offered them to others. So some people became friends with the Butcher, although he had bloody hands and sometimes this got on the cakes too. It was obvious that something was wrong but some people were like the Butcher so they began to like him. But then the Baker began to lock his doors at night. His wife was a candlestick maker and her candles seemed to burn very bright, sometimes it seemed like they just kept burning through the whole night. So the Butcher was having a hard time stealing now and he was running out of cakes. He did not have enough and couldn’t bake a cake. His wife was a candlestick maker too. Yet her candles did not burn right through the night, if at all. In fact, it seemed like she would rather not have them burn. For it just did not seem nice to her to allow something she made to burn so she kept her candles smothered and hidden under bushels. So their house was dark.

The Butcher was trying to keep his friends, yet he was running out of food. So slowly, while his friends ate some of the best cakes of all he began to stop up their ears. Then, he began to blind them too. He had this way about him, since he was used butchering pigs and had some pigpens in the back. As the candles burned brightly and he couldn’t steal any more cakes he had to make his friends more and more deaf and blind. They were quite deaf, dumb and stupid in the end.

Then the Butcher began to eat his friends little by little. For you see, the Butcher and his wife were hungry too!

I rewrote this for Delaware Politics.