Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/526

444 them a good beating. The King readily consents to let him live in his palace, and eat and drink with him, but secretly hopes to get rid of him, and persuades him to pass a night in a haunted castle in which, up to that time, every one has lost his life. And now the story passes into that of the Youth who went out to learn how to shiver. See notes to that story. He overcomes all the spirits by wishing them in his knapsack. Thus he frees the castle, and discovers a great treasure which he shares with the King. When the ten years are over, the Devil comes, the soldier gives him his child and obtains ten years more. When these are over the Devil comes again, but the soldier wishes him in his knapsack, and now he has him captive. He makes six peasants who were in a barn thresh him furiously; and, not content with that, goes to a smithy where the blacksmith's men have to heat the knapsack red-hot and hammer it out. The Devil is so bruised, that in order to be free, he is glad to promise never to come back again. In the meantime the soldier sees that his end is approaching, and orders his purse and knapsack to be laid in the coffin with him. When after his death he comes to the door of heaven, St. Peter will not allow him to enter. It is true that eternal happiness had been promised him, but he had pledged himself away to the Devil. The soldier goes to hell, but the Devil is terrified, and he too will not let him enter. He goes back to heaven and entreats St. Peter to open the door just wide enough to let him have one peep inside. Hereupon he throws his knapsack in and wishes himself inside it, and then he is in heaven. The hammering out the Devil which occurs here carries us on to another form of this wide-spread saga according to which a smith himself is the bearer of it. First there is a story from Tachau, in Grerman Bohemia, in the dialect peculiar to that place.

Once on a time when the Lord Jesus and St. Peter were on earth, they came to a village where no one lived but very rich peasants. They went from house to house to ask for a lodging, and everywhere the door was shut in their faces. At last they came to a blacksmith's, who was a merry fellow and not particularly pious, and he invited them to come in. They ate and drank, and at day-break when they rose, the Lord told the Smith that he might ask for three things, but that he was not to forget his poor soul, and wish for nothing but temporal things, lest the Devil should some day fetch him. "Let the Lord look after that, for me," said the Smith; "and as you are so good as to grant me three wishes, I wish in the first place that my cherry-tree out there in the garden may always go on bearing cherries, and that whosoever climbs up it, may never be able to come down until I permit him. Next, I wish that whosoever sits down in my chair there, may never be able to get out of it until I am willing. Lastly, that no one who creeps into my stove shall be able to get out