Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/473

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This is more complete than in the earlier editions, and is taken from a story in the Büchlein für die Jugend, pp. 173, 174.

A better and more complete version than in the earlier editions. Use has been made of a poem by Meier Teddy in the Frauentaschenbuch, 1823, p. 360.

From Hesse; but here oral tradition completes the story by the fact of Death showing the physician the cavern with the life-candles, and warning him. The stratagem by means of which Death punishes his Godson is taken from the rendering of the story in Schilling's Neue Abendgenossen, 3. 145, 286, who has also derived it from modern folklore. The age of the story is proved by one of Hans Sachs's Meister Songs in the year 1558, which is to be found in a MS. collection of Meister songs in Berlin (German MSS. No. 22 and following parts. The conclusion is different. Compare a Meister song by Henry Wolf in the year 1644, in another collection (German MSS. No. 24 fol. p. 496), in which first the Devil and then Death is rejected by the peasant. Jacob Ayrer, too, has made a Shrove-Tuesday Play of it (the 6th in the theatrical works), called The Peasant and his Godfather, Death. First Jesus offers himself as Godfather, but is not accepted by the peasant because he makes one man rich and another poor. Thereupon the Devil comes up whom the peasant likewise rejects (as St. Christopher did when he was in search of a master), because he runs away at the name of the Lord and the holy cross. At length the Devil sends Death to him who treats every one alike, and he stands Godfather to the child, and promises to make him a physician, so that superabundant wealth will come to him: