Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/457

Rh up the old sunshine into new moonlight, and the used-up moon and starlight into northern lights (aurora), rainbows, and the bright twilight of the summer nights. No, the blue vault of heaven sank down on the surface of the earth like a dome. The moon was just rising above the horizon, and the tailor allowed himself the pleasure of touching it with his fore-finger. But it hissed, and skin and flesh were scorched off to the nail." Falk has elaborated this story in his Osterbüchlein, pp. 178–252. Compare Kuhn, No. 7. Müllenhoff, No. 3. Büchlein fur die Jugend, No. 1. Meier, No. 49. Sommer, No. 11. Asbjörnsen, No. 334 ? [sic]. The Seven Doves in the Pentamerone, (4, 8), A Lithuanian story, see Schleicher, pp. 109-112, is allied, and so is a Finnish story, as is remarked by Schiefner, p. 607. A portion of the fable reminds us also of the ancient Danish ballad of Berner Ravn, who was bewitched by his step-mother, and whose sister gave him her little child, that by means of its eyes and heart's blood he might be restored to his human form again.

From the Maine district. See Perrault's Chaperon Rouge, whence Tieck's charming elaboration in the Romantic Poems. In a Swedish popular song (Folkviser, 3. 68, 69) Jungfrun i Blåskagen (Black Forest) is a kindred story. A girl is to go across the country to a wake. Her way leads through a dark forest, where the grey wolf meets her. "Ah dear wolf," says she, "do not bite me, and I will give thee my shift sewn with silk." "Thy shift sewn with silk is not what I want, I will have thy young life and blood!" So she offers her silver shoes, and then her golden crown, but all was in vain. In her trouble she climbs up a high oak-tree, but the wolf undermines the root. In her terrible anguish the girl utters a piercing cry. Her lover hears it, saddles his horse, and rides with the swiftness of a bird, but when he arrives at the spot, the oak is lying uprooted, and all that remains of the girl is one bleeding arm.

From two stories heard in the district of Paderborn. A third from Zwehrn differs in this respect, that the four animals do not drive the robbers out of the house in a fright, but enter it peaceably, make music, and in return are entertained by them. The robbers then go out in search of booty, and when they return home at midnight the one who is sent first to light up the house meets with the same adventures that in the other stories befel the one who went to reconnoitre. In Rollenhagen's Froschmeuseler, book 3, chap. 8, we find our story with the title, How the ox and the ass together with their companions storm a hut in the forest.