A Naive Treasure Hunter

Once upon a time, treasure hunters would always engage in superstitious practices to succeed in their mad undertaking: reciting prayers to Saint Christopher, keeping totally silent, having their tools blessed, or plundging them into a mysterious spring. To find the precise location of the treasure, they would rely on the most pecular signs. Thereby, they believed that, at midnight, catching a glimpse of a purse made of flowers by moonlight, floating slightly above the ground, would indicate the existence of treasure.
This belief once played a trick on a gullible farmer of Wintzenheim. This man owned a beautiful cherry tree in his vineyard. Some jokers told him about a purse they had seen floating next to his beautiful tree. The credulous man, an inveterate miser, already saw himself as very rich. He then dug under the roots of his fine tree, from which he unearthed a stoneware jar but inside only found fire ants. The jokers intended to comfort him, by teling him the ants would have turned into gold had he had the treasure hunters’ magic formula.