` Just keep quite quiet , for before the sun rises you will be a dead man . ' The man was very frightened at her words , and lay absolutely still while the undertaker came and measured him for his coffin ; and his wife gave orders to the gravedigger about his grave . That evening the coffin was sent home , and in the morning at nine o'clock the woman put him on a long flannel garment , and called to the undertaker 's men to fasten down the lid and carry him to the grave , where all their friends were waiting them . Just as the body was being placed in the ground the other woman 's husband came running up , dressed , as far as anyone could see , in no clothes at all . Everybody burst into shouts of laughter at the sight of him , and the men laid down the coffin and laughed too , till their sides nearly split . The dead man was so astonished at this behaviour , that he peeped out of a little window in the side of the coffin , and cried out : ' I should laugh as loudly as any of you , if I were not a dead man . ' When they heard the voice coming from the coffin the other people suddenly stopped laughing , and stood as if they had been turned into stone . Then they rushed with one accord to the coffin , and lifted the lid so that the man could step out amongst them . ` Were you really not dead after all ? ' asked they . ` And if not , why did you let yourself be buried ? ' At this the wives both confessed that they had each wished to prove that her husband was stupider than the other . But the villagers declared that they could not decide which was the most foolish -- the man who allowed himself to be persuaded that he was wearing fine clothes when he was dressed in nothing , or the man who let himself be buried when he was alive and well . So the women quarrelled just as much as they did before , and no one ever knew whose husband was the most foolish . -LSB- Adapted from the Neuislandische Volksmarchen . -RSB- Asmund and Signy Long , long ago , in the days when fairies , witches , giants and ogres still visited the earth , there lived a king who reigned over a great and beautiful country . He was married to a wife whom he dearly loved , and had two most promising children -- a son called Asmund , and a daughter who was named Signy . The king and queen were very anxious to bring their children up well , and the young prince and princess were taught everything likely to make them clever and accomplished . They lived at home in their father 's palace , and he spared no pains to make their lives happy . Prince Asmund dearly loved all outdoor sports and an open-air life , and from his earliest childhood he had longed to live entirely in the forest close by .
After many arguments and entreaties he succeeded in persuading the king to give him two great oak trees XXXXX his very own .
So about after as at for if that to with