The storyteller's grandfather used to tell him about a man who could skate incredibly fast. His name was Bauke. [1] He worked somewhere in a small village, but he lived in the countryside, in the neighbourhood of Earnewâld. Once upon a time, he came home from his work in the afternoon and his mother had just prepared a meal of baked potatoes.

"I would like to have some mustard with that," Bauke said.

"We're all out of mustard," was the answer.

"No problem," Bauke said. "I'll just skate to Warten to buy me a pot of mustard. I will be on my way and back in no time; the potatoes won't even get cold."

So he put on his skates and raced over the Langeslaetten towards Warten. Somewhere on the side of the ditch, a boat was frozen into the ice. Bauke was skating extremely fast, taking very long strokes, and as he came alongside, he tipped the boat with one of his skates, so that the flatboat [2] started to spin in the ice like crazy.

He kept on skating, and in front of him was a hole in the ice. He did not notice the hole and fell in, full speed. He hit the other side of the hole with his neck, and it so happened that his head was cut off by the sharpness of the ice. While his head continued to slide on the ice, his body went on beneath the ice. A bit farther there was another hole, and there the head and the body reunited. Because of the severe frost, the head and the body froze together again.

Bauke managed to climb out of the hole and arrived in Warten, where he visited the small store to buy his mustard. As he walked out again, he noticed how cold it was and he realized that he had to skate for a considerable distance. So he decided to take a rest and have a drink in order to warm himself up a bit.

Bauke entered the local inn, where people were sitting around the fireplace. He joined them and after a while, his nose started running. He went for his handkerchief, but the hanky was so wet that it was of no use to him. So he had to blow his nose the old-fashioned way, just using his index finger and thumb. Due to the warmth, his head came loose again, without Bauke noticing. As he tried to blow his nose into the fire, he accidentally threw his whole head in the frreplace – believe it or not.

Then he skated home without his head. And the boat, which had started spinning after he had touched it with his skate earlier, had built up such speed that it was still going round and round when he passed it on his way back home.