Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/475

Rh when he was captured by the enemy, and placed in the scales, he only weighed as much as an obolus. Comp. Athenæus, 12, 77, in Schweighäuser, 4. 551, 552. Aelian, Var. 9. 14; the Grecian Anthology also (2. 350. LXV. Jacob's Tempe, 2, 7) furnishes us with a contribution—

The following, too, are also stories which belong to this group. A certain man was so thin of body that he could jump through the eye of a needle. Another crept nimbly on to the spider's web, which was hanging in the air, and danced skilfully upon it until a spider came, which spun a thread round his neck and throttled him with it. A third was able to pierce a sun-mote with his head, and pass his whole body through it. A fourth was in the habit of riding on an ant, but the ant threw him off and trampled him to death with one foot. A filth was on one occasion blowing up the fire, and, as in our story, flew up the chimney with the smoke. A sixth was lying by the side of a sleeping man, and as the latter breathed rather heavily, was blown out of the window. Finally a seventh was so small that he dared not go near anyone for fear of being drawn in to his nose with the air when he breathed.

In Eucharius Eyering's Sprichwörter, 1601, a spider relates,

Einsmals fieng ich ein Schneider stolz, der war so schwer als Lautenholz, der mit eim Schebhut in die Wett vom Himmel rab her fallen thet.