Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/523

Rh begging. The trooper hastens to a village where a church is being consecrated, and begs both sleeves full. St. Peter cures the mayor of a fever, who gives him thirty gulden and a cheese for doing it. Both meet in an inn; the trooper shows the food he has got, and asks St. Peter how much he has made by preaching. He brings out his cheese. "Have you only got a cheese?" cries the trooper. St. Peter orders the innkeeper to serve a roasted fowl. The trooper goes into the kitchen and eats its liver. When it comes to table, St. Peter says to the trooper, "I do believe thou hast eaten the liver!" The trooper protests that he has never seen it. Then St. Peter pulls out the thirty gulden, divides them into three parts, and says, "The man who ate the liver shall have the third portion!" Whereupon the trooper immediately sweeps up the money. The story in the Wegkürzer (by Martinus Montanus, Strasburg, date not given, but probably in 1551) is much better. The Lord and a merry fellow from Swabia are travelling together. They arrive at a village where the bells are ringing for a wedding and a funeral at the same time. The Lord goes to the latter and the Swabian to the former. The Lord awakens the dead man, for which a hundred gulden are given him. The Swabian fills the glasses at the wedding, for which, when it is over, he receives a kreutzer. Satisfied with his reward he goes away, and when from afar he sees the Lord, he holds up his little kreutzer and shows it off. The Lord laughs at it, and shows him the bag with the hundred gulden, and the Swabian adroitly throws his little kreuzer in among them, and says, "In common! in common! we will have all in common." Then the lamb is killed, and the Swabian eats its liver, and says afterwards, "I declare to God that it had none!" They come to another village, where the bells are again ringing for a wedding and a funeral. And now the Swabian wants to bring the dead man to life again, and earn the hundred gulden, and says if he cannot do it they shall hang him without a trial; but the dead man does not stir. He therefore is to be hanged, but the Lord comes, and says if he will confess that he ate the liver, he will save him. The Swabian however insists on it that the lamb had none. The Lord says, "I will restore the dead man to life, and set thee free if thou wilt tell the truth." But the Swabian cries, "Hang me! Hang me! It had none!" When the Lord sees that there is no moving him, he brings the dead man to life again and sets the Swabian free. Then he divides the money into three portions, and the Swabian cries in a moment, "By God and all the Saints, I did eat it." There are other stories in the Büchlein für die Jugend, No. 9, pp. 180–186. In Pröhle's Kindermärchen, No 16; in Meier, Nos. 10, 62, 78. In Croatian in Vogl's Grossmütterchen, p. 27. The proverb, "The Swabian must have eaten the liver all the same," which is quoted in the Zeitvertreiber (1668), p. 152; and in Berkenmeyer's Antiquarius