Once upon a time, there lived a shoemaker in Oosterlittens who was always short of money. He worked hard, his wife was sparing, but a growing number of children forced him to cut his coat according to his cloth.

Nevertheless, the shoemaker was convinced that there were better times to come.

One morning he said to his wife, "Last night I had a dream that I would find my fortune at the Papenbrug [1] in Amsterdam."

"It's a good thing that Amsterdam is not next door," the woman replied. "You would be foolish enough to go there. Dreams are a delusion, remember?"

The shoemaker kept silent about it, but the whole day long he was unable to get this dream out of his head.

The next night he had the same dream again, that he would find his fortune in Amsterdam on the Papenbrug. He thought this might be a sign, and he mentioned it to his wife once more. However, she laughed right in his face and refused to talk about it.

The third night, the shoemaker had the same dream once more. That morning, his mind was made up. No matter what his wife said, it could not prevent him from packing his suitcase and setting out on his journey.

In Amsterdam, he asked directions for the Papenbrug. Once there, he walked around a bit, without knowing exactly what to look for. The first day he found nothing. The second day he found nothing again.

On the evening of the third day, just as he was about to return to his guesthouse empty-handed, a beggar walked up to him.

"I could not help noticing," he said, "that you've been wandering about for three days now. Are you looking for something?"

"I'll tell you," the shoemaker said. "At home I had the same dream three nights in a row. I dreamt that here on the Papenbrug I would find my fortune."

The beggar started laughing and said, "So you are such a fool that you believe in dreams? I don't. A short while ago I had such a peculiar dream three nights in a row, too. I dreamt that in the middle of a meadow behind the house of a shoemaker, who lives opposite the church of Oosterlittens in Friesland, there is a pole and at the very same spot a pot of money is buried. Am I crazy enough to travel to this place? No way!"

The shoemaker didn't bat an eyelid.

"It's probably for the best that I go home," he said.

Once home, he started digging immediately. His wife called him names, but as soon as he pulled a pot full of money out of the hole, her temper vanished.

"Well?" the shoemaker said. "Didn't I tell you that I had to go to the Papenbrug in Amsterdam to find my fortune?"

She had to admit he was right. They agreed to keep the discovery a secret. The treasure was saved for a rainy day and the pot was used with the other household goods.

There was an inscription on the pot, but they couldn't read it, because it was in a foreign language.

One day the minister came to visit them. As he sat down near the fireplace, he spotted the pot hanging above the fire. He looked at the inscription and asked where the pot had come from.

"I bought it from an iron merchant," the shoemaker said.

"Do you know what is written here?" the minister asked.

"No," said the shoemaker. "I don't understand the language."

"It's Latin," the minister said. "It reads, 'underneath this pot there is another one.' I just don't understand what it means."

"Neither do I," the shoemaker said.

However, as soon as the minister had left, the shoemaker started digging so hard that the lumps of earth flew through the air. Indeed, he found another pot, filled to the rim with money. Now he was a very wealthy man.

As a memorial to his fortune, the shoemaker replaced the wooden pole in his back yard with a stone one. More than a hundred years after his death the stone pole was still standing there.