Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/533

Rh saw his mantle, which he had once given to a poor man, lying inside, and jumped upon it, crying, "I am on my own land and property." Compare Keller in the Introduction to Li romans des sept sages, and following, and Hans von Bühel's, Diocletian, p, 54.

The printed popular book entitled, Das bis an den jüngsten Tag währende Elende (The History of Misery who will live to the Day of Judgment), or as it appears in the French translation, Histoire nouvelle et divertissement (divertissante?) du bon homme Misère (Troyes, chez Gamier), agrees for the most part with the story already given in the dialect of Hesse. On the other hand, however, many circumstances point to an Italian origin for this last story, or at all events, De la Riviere heard it related in Italy. The Apostles Peter and Paul arrive in very bad weather in a village, and stumble on a washerwoman who is thanking heaven because the rain is water, and not wine; they knock at the door of a rich man who haughtily drives them away, and are taken in by poor Misery. He only makes the one wish with respect to the pear-tree, which has just been plundered by a thief. The thief is caught, and so are other people besides who climb up out of curiosity to set the lamenting thief free. At length Death comes, and Misery begs him to lend him his scythe, that he may take one of the finest pears away with him; Death, like a good soldier, will not let his arms go out of his own hands, and himself undertakes the task. Misery does not set him free until he has promised to leave him in peace until the day of judgment, and this is why Misery still continues to live on for ever in the world. A fragment from the district of the Maine may be here quoted because it is conceived in the same spirit. The Devil comes to fetch away a certain man who has pledged himself to him, and whose time is up. At the same time, he brings with him a number of carts laden with old shoes. "What are they?" asks the man. "These shoes have been worn out by my spirits in thy service, but now thou art mine," replies the Devil. But the man desires to see the hand-writing in order to recognize it himself, the Devil comes nearer to show it, on which the man approaches it with his mouth, snatches at it and swallows it, and thus he is freed. Lastly, we must remark that Coreb and Fabel in the Merry Devil of Edmonton (Tieck's altengl: Theater 2), are clearly the characters of our story.

Here is a very perfect instance of the wide circulation and living diversity of a saga. Of its antiquity there can be no doubt; and if we see, in the smith with his hammer, the god Thor, and in Death and the Devil, a clumsy monstrous giant, the whole gains a well-based antique Norse aspect. We find references to it among the Greeks also, where the crafty smith is the cunning Sisyphus in a story which has been preserved by old Pherekydes, and which must