Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/433

Rh frères qui cuidèrent être pendus pour leur latin, we find our story. They constantly repeat the words, "nos tres clerici; pro bursa et pecunia: dignum et justum est." In Pfaffe Amis there is a jest founded on the fact that he persuades a certain man to make no other answer to everything than, "that is true." A Hungarian story, in Stier, p. 25, is allied to this.

From the neighbourhood of Paderborn, but the tradition is already confused or obscured. The whole reminds us a little of the exploits of Hercules. The release of the maiden is told in much the same way in a story from Thuringia. See Sommer, p. 122. No. 11, in Müllenhoff, is also allied to this group.

From German Bohemia. The changing human beings into asses which we are already familiar with from Apuleius, is remarkable. A popular story which Prätorius has very frequently heard, and which he has given in the Weltbeschreibung, 2. 452, 455 (compare Zeileri epistolæ, 2. 956, and following pages, ep. 575), is much more closely related to this. A burger's son from Brück, in Saxony, goes among the Swedes, and for some time occupies a Silesian town where he has an intrigue with the beautiful daughter of a poor widow, and betroths himself to her. When he goes away, and is trying to console the mother and daughter by promising to come back for them, the former sees that he does not sincerely mean this, and says, "Thy betrothed intends to desert thee; so I will change him into an ass." The daughter replies, "If he intends to act so unfaithfully, he deserves no better fate." The trooper goes away, but when he is riding a little behind the others and comes to a thicket, he dismounts, and no sooner has he done so, than he is turned into an ass, and remains standing by his horse. And now some other troopers come who keep the horse, and sell the ass to a miller to carry sacks. But he is mischievous, and throws off all the sacks, so the miller sells him to another miller, with whom, however, the man-ass behaves no better; nay, once when the miller is going to kiss the maid, the ass even cries aloud and kicks, and is again sold, and to a man in the very town where he had been turned into an ass. Once when he with his sacks is passing by the witch's house, just as the mother and daughter are standing at the door, the latter says, "Oh, mother, look! there is our little ass! Will he never be able to become a man again?" "Yes," answers the mother, "if he eats some of the lilies when they are in flower, he can do so." The ass hears that