The magic firkin

Once upon a time the was a magic firkin (hogshead or cask).  It's magic properties included the apparent impossibility of filling it.

One day Baron Thomas arrived in the village. He and his friends had been drinking at the fountain of hope and expectation and needed to relieve themselves. The Baron began to  use the firkin. His friends followed suit and soon the firkin was full. Baron Thomas went back to his castle, happy and confident that the firkin had done its job well.

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But the Baron was a cautious and jealous leader and wanted the firkin to be exclusively for his own use - so he appointed an overseer to supervise it. The overseer never thought to empty it and it stood, steadfastly, in the village centre, full but not overflowing. Every few days the Baron used his exclusive firkin and handed back to the overseer's safe keeping, to ensure that the firkin could not be used by anyone else. 

The Baron protected the firkin from abuse by others by announcing that the firkin was enchanted - a magic cask that could never be filled up.  The cask became know, locally, as Thomas' Enchanted Firkin (TEF for short).  However, over a number of years the contents of the firkin became stale and began to be a health issue for many who worked near it.  Neither the Baron nor the overseer really bothered about it - because the firkin was doing the job it was always intended to do and the enchanted status meant that nobody asked serious questions.

One day the overseer needed to relieve himself too and turned to the full firkin.  He was mindful of the Baron's orders and the nature of the enchantment and so ensured that nobody saw him.  He used the firkin and found, to his immense surprise, that it coped with his needs without overflowing, complaining or leaking.

"Truly, this is a magic firkin" said the overseer  and told the population that they lived in a truly blessed realm.

Once again Baron Thomas came to the village and relieved himself in the firkin.  He then emptied the contents over the overseer as a punishment for disobeying his orders. It was then that the firkin realised that the reason why it never filled up was that someone - probably the Baron himself - had arranged to extract its contents under cover of nightfall so that it appeared never to fill up.  The act of tipping the firkin upside down had stirred the firkin's memory.

The moral of this story is that there is no such thing as a magic firkin that will never overflow and that the country's leaders will often take the pee.

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