They fritter away all their money, and leave him to pay the bill when their credit runs out.

He sees the bailiff coming in the distance and decides to be clever and prepare his answers ahead of time.

He thinks that the other questions will be about the length of the axe handle, his ferry, his mare and the way to the cowshed.

(Good day, fellow axe handle) has become a common idiom for a non sequitur, not just in Norway but also the rest of Scandinavia ("Goddag, yxskaft!"

[citation needed] The folktale was later published in the widely used Swedish elementary school book Sörgården [sv] by Anna Maria Roos in 1912.

[citation needed] A similar tale appears in a 1985 collection of folktales given an erotic twist, by Erik Høvring.