Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/416

402 he once more strikes the rock, whereupon it closes together again in a moment. And now they both return, the Devil intending to go to Innsbrück to fetch the man who had imprisoned him. Paracelsus has compassion on the exorciser, and resolves to rescue him. When they once more arrive at the fir-tree he admires the Devil for having been able to turn himself into a spider. The Devil says, "I will gladly perform the feat before thine eyes," vanishes, and then crawls into the well-known little hole in the shape of a spider. Quick as lightning the doctor thrusts the plug, which he has kept in his hands, into the hole again, strikes it firmly in with a stone, and scratches three new crosses on it with his knife. In his rage the Devil shakes the fir-tree as with a tempest, till its cones rattle down on Paracelsus in heaps, but the Devil's anger is all in vain, he is tightly shut in, and has little hope of coming out again, for the forest is not allowed to be cut down, because of the avalanches, and though he cries night and day, fear of them keeps everyone away from that region. Paracelsus finds his little bottles genuine, and by means of them becomes a celebrated and distinguished man. The similarity of our story with one in The Thousand and One Nights (1. 107) has been already remarked by Fischer (No. 19). Here, from another aspect, it is much more evident, and the strong connection between the two stories is remarkable. This story is likewise a striking companion to Simeli Mountain (No. 142); to the Hartz story of the Dummburg (Otmar, 235), which is also to be found in The Thousand and One Nights (6. 342), and to The Three Birds (No. 96). The Hungarian story, Der Weltlohn, No. 11, in Gaal, also belongs to this group. The shutting up the Devil in a bottle (for it is an evil spirit, as in the Eastern tale), appears in other places, viz., in the saga of the Greek magician Savilon (Zaubulon, Diabolo), where Virgilius liberates him (see Reinfr. von Braunschweig. Hanov. MS. folio, 168-171, and Liebrecht's translation of Dunlop, pp. 186, 187) and in the Galgenmännlein. The stratagem by which he is overcome is the same by which the fearless smith saves himself (see note to No. 81).

From Zwehrn. Other stories of the same kind are to be found in Müllenhoff, No. 592; Meier, No. 74; Zingerle, No. 18; Prohle's Kinderm. No. 71. The old story of Bearskin is told even in Simplicissimus (3. 896). As an Austrian story it is to be found in J. F. Horæ Subsecivæ, 4, 355, and following; and from thence in Happel's ''Relat. curios''. 2, 712. It is said that a picture of him is still to be found in an Austrian town. Compare Arnim's Tröst Einsamkeit, and his story Isabelle von Aegypten. There the innkeeper