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Who is the Boss - The Husband or the Wife?

Lewis T Evans (1882-1975)

There were two farmers, one insisting that the wife was the boss everywhere, and the other insisting that the husband was the boss. However, they had a bet - one put up two horses and the other forty-two eggs in a basket. And a lad was put on the back of one of the horses, and the basket of eggs on his arm. And he was to go to every house and ask who was the boss there. And if the husband said that he was boss, he was to give him a horse. And if he said that the wife was the boss, he was to give him an egg. And he went to the first place; he met the husband.

'Is it you or the wife who is boss here?' he asked.

'Oh! I'm the boss', he said.

'Which of the horses will you take?' asked the lad.

'Oh, well! I'll take the black', he said.

'No, John', said the wife, 'we won't take the black, we'll take the brown.'

'Oh! all right, we'll take the brown', he said.

'Here's an egg', said the boy.

And so it was everywhere he went. He asked:

'Who's the boss here?'

'Oh, I am', said the husband everywhere.

But when he chose between the two horses, the wife would say that she wanted the other one. The husband would give in and obey her, and was given an egg. And the lad went all round the countryside, and he came home with the two horses, having distributed the eggs. It proved that the wife was the boss everywhere, didn't it.

Recording

Who is the Boss - The Husband or the Wife?

More information

Tape

MWL 3194. Recorded 5.vii.1971

Notes

A story related by Lewis Evans, the informant's blind uncle at Hafod Llan Isa, Pentrellyncymer, 1891-2. The uncle told the story after his parents (the informant's grandparents) had been quarrelling prior to their visit to the village of Cerrigydrudion, about 4 miles from Hafod Llan Isa.

Only one other distant variant of this narrative was recorded by the Museum of Welsh Life. See tape MWL 2631 (Cellan, Card.). For English versions, see Briggs, vol. 2B, pp. 110-12 ('The Grey Mare is the Better Horse'), and p. 115 ('The Henpecked Husband'). 'The grey mare is the better horse' was once a common proverb in England to describe a house where the wife rules.

Types

AT 1366 A Search for Husband in Command. Man has hundred hens and three horses. He is to give hen where woman is chief of the house, a horse where the man is. He fails to give away any horses since the wife tells the man which to choose.
AT 1375 Who Can Rule his Wife? The husband leaves his wife and goes on the advice of his father-in-law with an egg basket to seek through the wide world for a man who can manage his wife. But after a year, he returns to his wife without having found such a man.

Motifs

AT 1375 Who Can Rule his Wife? The husband leaves his wife and goes on the advice of his father-in-law with an egg basket to seek through the wide world for a man who can manage his wife. But after a year, he returns to his wife without having found such a man.