Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/440

358 In a Latin poem of the Middle Ages (MS. Strasburg), the fable of the mouse and the coal travelling occurs with the variation that both make a pilgrimage to church to confess their sins, and, in crossing a little brook, the coal falls in, hisses, and is extinguished. The cat and mouse travel, the straw breaks, and the cat falls into the water, at which the mouse laughs so that she bursts. See Stöber's elsass: Volksbuch, 95. In a Wendish story, see Haupt and Schmaler, p. 160, a coal, a pair of bellows, and a straw, travel together. Compare ''Neue Preuss. Provinzialblätter'', i. 226. In Transylvania a duck, a frog, a mill-stone and a red-hot coal travel together, and the two last are drowned. (Haltrich, No 46). The Æsopian fable of the thorn-bush, the diver, and the bat (Furia, 124, Coray 42) ought to be mentioned.

This story has been excellently well taken down by Runge of Hamburg, in the Pomeranian dialect, and it was kindly communicated to us by Arnim, as early as in the year 1809. It was afterwards printed in Runge's works also. It is often told in Hesse, but imperfectly and with variations. It is called The History of little Husband Domine (sometimes also of Hans Dudeldee), and little Wife Dinderlinde (Dinderl, Dirne?) Domine complains of his ill luck and goes out to the sea. There a little fish stretches forth its head and says,

He goes home to his wife and asks what he is to wish for. "Wish for a better house for us," says Dinderlinde. He goes to the sea and cries,

And now the wishes begin: first a house, then a garden, then oxen and cows, then lands and kingdoms, and so on to all the treasures of the world. When they have wished for everything they can wish for, the man, says, "Now I should like to be God, and my wife to be the mother of God." Then the little fish stretches out its head again and cries,

In Justus Kerner's Poetical Almanack for 1812, pp. 50-54, the story is told in a similar way, apparently from a South German version, but the doggrel rhymes are wanting. The fisherman is called