Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/408

394 warrants, and the King observes her wisdom just as Ragnar observes that of Kraka (the name which Aslaug bore when a peasant). In order to prove her, he too sets a riddle which her penetration enables her to solve quickly and truly. The subjects of the riddles themselves coincide, and they are only different expressions of the same thought. The Norse King desires of Kraka (Ragnar Lodbrok's Sage, chap. 4) that she shall come "clothed yet unclothed, having eaten yet having not eaten, not alone, and yet without any one's companionship." She wraps herself, as here, naked in a fishing-net, with her beautiful hair falling over it; just tastes a leek, so that its smell can be perceived, and lets her dog run by her. A similar riddle in other stories Pauli's Schimpf und Ernst, for instance, contains a jest, according to which a certain punishment is to be remitted if the offender comes "half- riding and half-walking, with his greatest enemy and his greatest friend." He comes with his horse, having the right foot in the stirrup, and with the other he leaps on the ground; he brings his wife, who, on having her ear boxed by him, immediately accuses him of a murder (he had falsely declared himself guilty of it to her, and confided it to her as a secret), and thus she proves herself his greatest enemy; he likewise brings his dog, who is his greatest friend, because if he calls it after he has beaten it, it always comes back wagging its tail. An old German poet, Pfälz. MS., 336, folio 190, has also treated this saga. Hans Sachs relates the story extremely well, and the events are similar. (1560, folio 78.) It is somewhat different in the Gesta Romanorum (Latin edition, chap. 124, German, 124, under No. 12), where, too, the task varies. The guilty person, for example, brings his horse, but puts his right leg over the dog, and, as besides this he has to bring his best playfellow, he has taken his child with him, for when he sees it playing it amuses him more than anything else. Moreover the same story appears in one of the Cento novelle antiche (Turin, 1802), p. 163. He who on an appointed day shall bring his friend, his enemy, and his companion in play, shall receive the King's pardon and great treasures. It is solved there as here, only it lacks the incident of his having to come half-riding and half-walking. A Servian story in Wuk, pp. 125, 126, belongs to this group, and so does a passage in Würdtwein (p. 488). "The Sendherr (Synodal Judge) shall come with two parts and a half of a man, two parts and a half of a horse, and shall neither come on the road nor out of the road." The Lalenbürgers likewise have to come to meet the King, half-riding and half-walking. The first mention of this occurs in a story in Ratherius (d. 975), Sermo de octavis paschae (p. 895b, and following, D'Achery Spicil), printed in Haupt's Zeitschrift, 8, 21. Compare the Altdeutsche Blätter, 1, 149, 154, Ferd. Wolf on the ''Altfranzös. Heldengedichte'', p. 133. should be compared, for it appears generally as an ancient popular riddle.

Likewise she resembles Aslaug in the continuance of her sagacity, and in the way she brings back to herself the love of the King who wants to send the peasant girl away. Ragnar was in Sweden with