Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/437

Rh is a cognate story. Compare Thomas Decker's Fortunatus and his Sons; translated from the English, and with an essay on the story of this group, by Fr. Wilh. Val. Schmidt, Berlin, 1819. There is also said to be an old French Fabliau.

From Paderborn. The whole has some resemblance to Jorinde and Joringel (No. 69). The old woman is the witch of the story of Hänsel and Grethel (No. 16) a Circe, who entraps human beings, and transforms them into beasts. The idea of a tree which comes to life occurs also in a song of Dürner's (MS. 2. 209a).

From the district of Schwalm; it is heard elsewhere in many other forms; but this is the most complete. It is an old jesting and lying tale, and apparently very widely spread. It is known in Bavaria also, as may be seen in Schmeller's Bairische Mundarten (pp. 484, 485). In the 16th century a collection of jests of this kind by Philipp d'Alcripe (Picard), Herr von Neri (rien), in Verbos (Vertbois), appeared in France, in which among others this story may be found. A number of these exaggerations are gathered together in the Neu eröffnete Schaubühne menschlicher Gewohn- und Thorheiten (without place or year, probably soon after the Thirty Years' War). Therein we find, "that I here make no mention of that child of four years old which could fight in such a masterly manner with a heavy broadsword that in the heaviest rain not a single