Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/456

442 and when he answers the old man,

In Servian, see Wuk, No. 9, where it is a snake which strips off its skin every night. In another story of the same kind which is to be found in Wuk (No. 10), misfortune actually arises from burning the snake-shirt. An Indian story which altogether resembles ours is given in the ''Altd. Wälder'' (1. 165-167). It is likewise known in Persia, as is shewn by Firdusi. (Görres, 2. 441, 442).

From Schimpf und Ernst, chap. 413. This is quite in the same style as The Grandfather and the Grandchild, No. 78. The story is given in an older and more legendary form by the Dominican Thomas of Cantimpre, from an oral tradition of the 12th century; compare Büsching, who, in Schlegel's Museum (4. 32, 33), names another book in which it appears. See also Geiler von Kaisersberg's Euangelia mit Usslegung (Strasburg, 1517), folio 195, 196.

From its external form this is an old story; it is, in fact, translated from a Latin poem of the middle ages, and indeed from the 15th century manuscript now in Strasburg (MSS. Johann, c. 102), which contains 392 elegiac lines, and is entitled Raparius; another of the same period is preserved in Vienna (Denis, II., 2, p. 1271, Cod. R. 3356). The poem itself may however have been composed in the 14th century, and, without question, from some popular story learnt by word of mouth, perhaps in Alsace itself, for the great turnip is one of the popular jests there; and Fischart, in his preface to the Ehzuchtbüchlein, has already mentioned the turnip of Strasburg. In the Volksbuch von dem lügenhaften Aufschneider (also translated into Swedish, Lund, 1790), we find, "Now, when I had travelled farther and came to Strasburg, I there saw such a great turnip in a field as I had never seen the like of before, and I really believe that a man on horseback would not have been able to ride round it in three long summer's days." The Strasburg vegetable is also extolled in the Pfingstmonat, a comedy in the Strasburg patois (p. 177). "Kruttkiph vierdels zentnerschwer und zwölfpfündje Retti." The story itself does not lack noticeable features. Other stories as well as this tell of the unsuccessful attempts of one man to outdo another in the acquisition of wealth when single-heartedness is wanting. The deliverance from the sack closely resembles that from the bucket in the animal