Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/405

 meets on his way two men who are fighting about a boot which carries any one who puts it on a hundred leagues in one step. So he says to them, "I will put an end to this contest; stand opposite to each other, and the one to whom I throw the boot shall have it." They turn round, but he puts on the boot, makes one step, and in a moment is a hundred leagues away from them. He obtains possession of a cloak which makes people invisible in the same way. And now he journeys onwards and comes to the town where the king's daughter is just about to celebrate her wedding. He enters the apartment in his cloak, and places himself behind her, but no one can see him; and when she wants to eat, he holds her hand. On this she is alarmed, and looks round, and he draws the cloak a little away from his face so that she may recognize him. Then she goes out with him, and he advises her to inform the prince that when one has found the old key one does not want the new one. For the division of the magic possessions compare the story of The Shoes that were danced to pieces, No. 133, according to that version of it in the note which was derived from Paderborn, in which the lion and the fox struggle for a cloak and boot of this kind. Compare also The Gold Egg, in the Erfurt Collection, where three men do not know how to divide a wishing-mantle. The contest of the giants for the possession of a cloak, boot, and sword, is also to be found in a Swedish story in Cavallius, p. 182. In Pröhle's Kindermärchen, No. 22, two men contend for a saddle which carries every one through the air. Still more noteworthy is the analogy with a Tartar story which is to be found in the Relations of Ssidi Kur, and also in the Quarterly Review, 1819, 41, 106. The son of the Khan is travelling with a faithful servant, and enters a forest where he finds some children quarreling with each other. "What are you about?" he asks. "We have found a cap in the forest and each of us wants to have it." "What's the use of the cap?" "It has this property: whosoever wears it can neither be seen by God, nor by men, nor yet by evil spirits." "Well, then, if you will all go to the end of the wood," says the Khan's son, "I will take the cap and give it to the one who gets here first and wins the race." But when they have gone the Khan's son puts the cap on his servant's head, and, when the children come back, it has disappeared and they search for it in vain. The Khan's son travels onwards with his servant, and again comes into a forest where some evil spirits are disputing about a pair of boots which have this property that whosoever puts them on is at once taken to any country where he wishes to be. The Khan's son orders the evil spirits also to go away and run back, and says that the one who reaches him first shall have the boots. As soon as he is alone he puts them under his servant's cloak; the servant puts on the cap as well, and when the spirits come back they find that