Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/483

Rh (compare No. 72): "I met a man who made a long, long nose at me (aimed his gun) and spat fire out of it, and black seeds in my face; then I rushed at him, but he pulled a white rib out of his side which was sharp, and struck me on the paws, but I broke it in two, and then he fetched out a black rib (the scabbard), but I contrived to get away." In Wendish, see The War of the Wolf and the Fox (No. 8) in Haupt and Schmaler. In Servian, see Reinhart Fuchs, ccxciv. In Esthonian, the same, cclxxxv. The story of The Fox and Horse (No. 32) is allied to this, and so is the Willow Wren and the Bear, (No. 102). Also The War of the Wasps and the Ass, in Barachja Nikdani, in Wolf's Zeitschrift, 1. 1, 2; and lastly, Der kleine Knäpzagel in Haltrich, No. 31. A story of animals in Lassberg's Liedersaal, 1, 291, should also be compared, and the eleventh extravaganza, The Wolf and the Hungry Dog, in Steinhöwel (1487), pp. 56, 57.

From Hesse. It is connected with the story of the Seven Ravens (No. 25), only here we have six swans, because the children have been bewitched when perfectly innocent. Another story from German Bohemia links the two stories together. It agrees with the former up to the point where the sister went out into the world with a loaf of bread and a small pitcher of water to seek her brothers. Then it is related that she wandered on day after day for many a mile, and never found the least trace of them, but came at length to an ancient deserted castle, and thought that she might perhaps find something there. But no human being was to be seen in the castle, and yet she saw smoke ascending, and heard a fire crackling. "Where smoke is rising and fire burning, human beings must be living too," thought she, and went onwards. At last she reached a kitchen where seven pans were standing on the hearth, frothing and bubbling up, but no cook was there. "Eh, what is being cooked here?" said the girl, and peeped into the pans, and strange roots and herbs were inside them. "How good these must taste!" said she, and tasted a little bit out of each, and stirred them round thoroughly. She liked cooking, which she had not done for a long time, and the morsel of warm food did her good too, for it was long since she had tasted any. And now she heard a rustling in the air, and seven black ravens came whirring down through the chimney; each laid hold of his little pan and flew with it into the dining-room and began to eat his dinner. The first raven had just eaten a couple of mouthfuls when he said, "It is strange! There is rather less of my food than there ought to be, but it tastes as if it had been cooked by a human hand." "It is the same with mine!" said the second, "What if our little sister should be here?" "Ah!" said the third, "she is the cause of all our misery; we will