What is the moral of "An Honest Woodcutter"?

That honesty is rewarded and greed punished. The woodcutter refuses two valuable axes because they are not his and receives all three; the greedy neighbour claims one that is not his and loses even his own.

Should the greedy neighbour be included?

Yes, if you have room. The second half is what completes the moral: without it the story shows honesty rewarded, but with it the contrast between the two men makes the lesson unmistakable. It needs only two short paragraphs.

Why does the woodcutter refuse the golden axe twice?

Because the refusals are the test, and repeating it is what makes the story work. A single refusal could be caution; two refusals, when he is poor and hungry, establish that his honesty is settled rather than accidental.

English · Completing Story

An Honest Woodcutter

Completing story: a poor woodcutter refuses the gold and silver axes and is rewarded.

A woodcutter loses his axe in a river and is offered a golden one that is not his.

The story begins: A poor woodcutter was cutting wood on the bank of a river. Suddenly his axe slipped from his hand and fell into the deep water. He sat down on the bank and began to weep.

The Story

A poor woodcutter earned his living by cutting wood in a forest beside a deep river. One morning, as he swung his axe at a branch that hung over the water, the head slipped from the handle and fell into the river with a splash.

The water was deep and swift, and the axe was gone in a moment. The woodcutter sat down on the bank and wept, for the axe was his only tool and without it his family would go hungry.

As he sat there, the god of the river rose from the water and asked him why he was weeping. The woodcutter told him what had happened.

The god dived into the river and came up holding an axe of pure gold. "Is this your axe?" he asked. The woodcutter looked at it and shook his head. "No, sir. Mine was not so fine as that."

The god dived again and brought up an axe of silver. "Then is this yours?" he asked. Again the woodcutter shook his head. "No, sir. Mine was only iron, with a worn wooden handle."

A third time the god went down, and this time he brought up the old iron axe. The woodcutter's face lit up at once. "That is mine!" he cried. "That is my own axe. I thank you with all my heart."

The god was pleased with the poor man's honesty. "You have told the truth when a lie would have made you rich," he said. "Take all three axes. You have earned them."

The woodcutter went home with the three axes and told his neighbours what had happened. One of them, a greedy man, went at once to the same place, threw his own axe into the river on purpose, and sat down to weep.

The god appeared again and brought up a golden axe, and the greedy man claimed it at once as his own. But the god knew that he lied. He vanished into the water with the golden axe, and the greedy man lost even the axe he had thrown away.

Moral: Honesty is rewarded; greed loses even what it has.