The Pot of Sweet Porridge

A poor girl, sent by her hungry mother to gather berries in the forest, met a kind old woman who, sensing the girl's genuine goodness, gave her a small clay pot along with two magic words: spoken one way, the pot would fill itself with delicious sweet porridge for as long as needed, and spoken the other way, it would stop immediately, no matter how full it currently was.

The girl brought the wonderful pot home, and she and her mother ate well from it every day, their hunger finally solved. One day, however, while the girl was away visiting a neighbor, her mother grew hungry and, having watched her daughter use the pot many times, confidently spoke the starting words herself — only to realize in growing panic that she had never actually learned the words to make it stop.

The porridge poured out steadily, filling the pot, then the kitchen, then spilling out the door into the street, the mother's frantic search for the stopping words accomplishing nothing as the sweet flood crept steadily through the entire town, eventually reaching nearly every house before the girl, returning home and seeing the disaster from a distance, ran the last stretch and spoke the stopping words just as the porridge was about to reach the town's final house. The relieved townsfolk spent the rest of the day eating their way back through the streets, and the story was told for years after as a reminder that using power you don't fully understand, even with good intentions, can create a mess far bigger than the problem it was meant to solve.