Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/506

424 not thirsty!" The cattle-dealer asks what he is doing. Rutschki gets him to unbolt the door, and tells him that he has been elected burgomaster, and is quite willing to accept the appointment, for very little work and a salary of five hundred thalers go with it, but that he will on no account comply with the custom that every burgomaster shall, when he takes office, drink to the dregs a great glass of Burgundy, because he never drinks any wine at all. He also says that they have set him out there on the ice in order that the frost may make him long for a warm draught, but that all is in vain, for he will not drink it. The cattle-dealer proposes to exchange his herd for this position, and gets into the press. Rutschki bolts it. The peasants come and cut a hole, and let the press down into it. When they are returning, they meet Rutschki with the cattle, and he tells them that he has found them at the bottom of the pond, and that it is a beautiful land where perpetual summer reigns. And now they all plunge into the water (pp. 22, 23). H. Stahl communicates another version in the Mitternachtblatt, 1829, No. 35, 36. The poor peasant is called Hick, and lives at Lieberhausen in the county of Gimbornneustadt. His poverty compels him to slaughter his only cow, and he goes to Cologne to sell its hide. As he is going, it begins to rain, so he covers himself with the hide, the bloody side being outwards. A raven lights upon it, and is about to eat. Hick catches it carefully, and takes it with him into the town. He relates his adventure in an inn at Cologne. He twitches the raven's tail and makes him prophesy. The innkeeper buys the prophet at a high price. Hick tells his neighbours that cows' hides are frightfully dear in Cologne. The people of Lieberhausen now kill all their cows, and get nothing by the sale of the hides. Out of revenge they put Hick in a barrel to roll him into the Rhine, but they stop awhile at an inn on the shore. Hick cries from the barrel, "I am to go to Cologne to be bishop," and a shepherd gives him his sheep, and takes his place in the barrel. Hick drives his flock home, and tells the people of Lieberhausen that he has found them in the Rhine, and that the bottom of the river is full of them. Hick advises one of them to lump into the river, and when he has found the sheep, to come to the top again and stretch out both arms as a token. They follow his advice, and when one of them has leaped in, and before drowning stretches out his arms, they all leap, plump, plump, after him. Two stories from the Tyrol in Zingerle have many peculiarities, pp. 5 and 419. There is another in Pröhle's Märchen für die Jugend, No. 15; and two which vary very much in Müllenhoff, Nos. 23 and 24, which repeat the contents of the Latin Unibos of the 11th century in the most perfect manner. (Jac. Grimm, Latein. Gedichte, p. 354, and notes 382.) The Wallachian story Bakáld, No. 22 in Schott, is allied with this.