Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/534

452 have been known to the singer of the Iliad. Zeus, angry with the aged Sisyphus, seizes the opportunity to fetter him with strong bands, and then no one can die. See Welker on Schwenk's Etymological Mythology, Hints, pp. 323, 324. Gruber's Mythological Dict. 3. 522. Compare also the Jewish Days of David, and Deaths, Helvicus, 1, No. 12. The story of the Poor Man and the Rich One, No. 87, is clearly related to it. (Compare the note). There a good and a bad man made the good and bad wishes. Here a middle-state is depicted. The smith is both good and bad, spiritual and worldly, for which reason he wears a black and white coat. He, in his poverty, gladly entertains the Lord, and stops his ears that he may not for the second time gamble away the money intended for a refreshing draught, and is good-hearted, but sometimes thoughtless. On this account, he is at length allowed to enter into heaven, or, in the more severe instance, placed between heaven and hell. This ending connects the story with the saga of the lansquenets who can find no place in heaven, which is told by Frei in the Gartengesellschaft, No. 44, and by H. Kirchhof, in Wendunmut (1. No. 108). The Devil will not have them because they bear the red cross on their standards, and St. Peter also will not admit them because they were bloodhounds, robbers of the poor, and blasphemers against God, The captain however reproaches St. Peter with his own treachery to the Lord, until the apostle becomes red with shame, and shows them a village called "Wait a while," between heaven and hell, where they sit and gamble and drink. With this story are connected many others of St. Peter and the lansquenets. Wolf's Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie, 2. 3, shows how Gambling Hansel belongs to the stormers of heaven. A seat from which no one who has sat down on it can arise again, is already known in the Greek Saga; Hephæstus had such a one made for the witch: see Gruber's Mythological Dict. 2, 57, notes. The cunning which the Smith uses against the Devil in order to catch him while prevailing on him to take the form of a mouse, occurs also in the Story of the Spirit in the Bottle, No. 99, and in the French Bluebeard.

Communicated by Aug. Wernicke, in the Zeitschrift Wünschelruthe, 1818, No. 33, from oral tradition. It reminds us of the comic tale of Block and the tailor Bock (Wunderhorn, 2. 347). Block bought seven yards of cloth for a coat, then it was to be made into a doublet, then a pair of trousers, then stockings, gloves, a thumb-stall, and at last a girdle; but Block did not even get this out of it. It is to be found in Zingerle, p. 152, but with another ending, according to which the bargain turns out to the advantage of Hans. In Norwegian, see Asbjörnsen, p. 105. A Cornish story of Ivan belongs here. (See further on).