Once upon a time there lived a man who was fond of drinking wine. He had four sons, and each day one of his sons fed him, and the old man became drunk every day.

One day he went out for a walk in the street and he saw a drunkard wallowing in the mud and doing all sorts of foolish antics, whilst the boys ran after him and threw stones at him. When the drunkard became sober again, the old man went up to him and asked him where he had gotten such good wine. He told him, and the old man went there and drank a great deal more than he usually did.

His children, fearing that he might also demean himself and behave foolishly, went, all four of them, to the inn and took him home and put him in the cellar and locked the door, so that he should not be able to get out.

After a while they went into the cellar to see what their father was doing, and they found him lying asleep on the floor with his mouth wide open and the wine running out of his throat.

Then they said: "It is clear that he will not give up drinking," and they gave him all the wine he desired until he became very old and was too weak to live."

This story is a variant of a familiar one in which the father is carried by the children to the cemetery in a drunken state. Later they go in search of him and find him again very drunk, as it happens that an innkeeper had made a cellar in the corner of the field and the old man had found it and had drunk his fill. When the children saw this they said: "If he can find wine even in the cemetery, we had better take him home and let him drink as much as he pleases until the end of his days."