Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/505

Rh likewise begins with the tailor finding a benumbed thrush which he afterwards puts to his ear that it may prophesy to him. When he is shut up in the chest on the water, he cries out that on no account will he marry the princess, and thus entices the shepherd to take his place. According to another story, the man is called Herr Hands. The peasants hate him because of his cunning, and in their envy destroy his baking-oven; he, however, carries away some of the remains of it in a sack to a noble lady, and begs her to take care of the sack for him, and says that there are spices, cinnamon, cloves and pepper in it. Then he goes to fetch it away again, and makes a great outcry, and says she has robbed him, whereby he extorts three hundred thalers from her. The peasants see the money being counted out to him, and ask how he has come by it? He says it is for the remains of the oven. Then all the peasants destroy their ovens and carry what is left of them to the town, but fare badly. They want to revenge themselves by killing him; he puts on his mother's clothes, and thus escapes, but his mother is killed. He rolls her in a cask to a doctor, leaves her standing there a while, and then returns and blames him for killing her, and thus obtains a sum of money from the doctor. He tells the peasants that he has got this for his dead mother, on which they all kill their mothers too. Then comes the incident of the shepherd getting into the barrel and being drowned in his place, and of the other peasants all leaping in after him. In the story of Peasant Kibitz, which Büsching gives (p. 296), there are also some varying features. Kibitz lets his wife be killed by the peasants, and then sets her up by some railings with a basketful of fruit, and a servant, who has been ordered by his master and mistress to buy something from her, pushes her into the water because she returns no answer. For this Kibitz receives the carriage in which the master was driving, together with ail that pertains to it. Obtaining money by mere clamour is also part of the cunning of Gonella (Flögel's Gesch. der Hofnarren, p. 309). In the people's book, "Rutschki or the Bürgher of Quarkenquatsch," various incidents from this story are used, the purchasing the old chest in which the lover is hid for the cow-hide (p. 10), and the setting up the dead wife. Rutschki puts some butter on her lap, and sets her by the side of the well, and the apothecary who wants to buy some, but can obtain no answer from her, shakes her and pushes her down into it, and for that he has to pay Rutschki a thousand thalers (pp. ]8, 19). The betrayal of the shepherd at the end is also quite different. Rutschki is condemned to death, and is bolted into a clothes-press, and taken out to the pond; but, as this is frozen over, they leave the press standing, and go away to fetch axes to cut a hole in the ice. While they are absent, Rutschki hears a cattle-dealer going by, and calls out, "I will not drink any wine! I will not drink any wine! I am