Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/462

448 far from earth as a man's voice can be easily heard; climb up, and if you do not hear me calling, come down again and take my church back." (5.) "What is the breadth of Heaven?" "A thousand fathoms and a thousand ells, then take away the sun, and moon, and all the stars in heaven and press all together, and it will be no broader." In the Büchlein für die Jugend, pp. 91-94, the questions and answers are different, and so they are in a Swabian story in Meier, see the note to No. 28. In Eulenspiegel which, apart from this, is connected with Pfaffe Amis, there are (chap. 28, in Lappenberg) the same questions and answers; the former are propounded to him by the rector of the university. The old English ballad of King John and the Abbot of Canterbury, Percy Collection, 2. 305-311, is allied to this. The King puts three questions to him which he has to answer in three weeks, or lose his life and land. (1.) The exact value, within a penny, of himself the King with his golden crown on his head? (2.) How long a time it would take him to ride round the whole world? (3.) What he is thinking of at that moment? The Abbot does not know what to do, but a shepherd promises his aid, dresses himself like the Abbot, goes to the King, and gives these answers. (1.) As the Lord Jesus was sold for thirty pieces of silver, the King is only worth nine-and-twenty. (2.) If he sets out with the sun and rides with him he will get round the whole world in four-and-twenty hours. (3.) The King thinks he is the Abbot of Canterbury, and he is only a poor shepherd. In Pauli's Scherz und Ernst it is related that the following questions are put to the Abbot by his patron. (1.) What value he set on him? (2.) Where the centre of the earth was? (3.) How far fortune was removed from misfortune? The shepherd comes in the Abbot's clothes and answers. (1.) Eight-and-twenty pieces of silver, for as our Saviour was sold for thirty, he valued the emperor at nine-and-twenty. (2.) In his house, as in Pfaffe Amis. (3.) There was only one night between them, for yesterday he was a shepherd, and to-day he was an Abbot. The story in Eyering's Sprichwörter, 1. 165-168, 3. 23-25, tallies with this. We have also read the history of a King of France, in which the first and third questions were the same as in the English ballad, but the second was like that in our story—how many stars there were in heaven? A miller who gives the answer in this, names a certain very large number, and orders the King to count them. Finally, the story is also to be seen in the Jewish Maasäbuch, chap. 126 (No. 39) in Helwig's Judische Historien. The three questions (of which the two first vary a little) are put to the King's counsellor, 1. Where the sun rises? 2. How far it is from heaven to earth? (as in Amis). Then follow the weak answers made by a shepherd. The sun goes up in the morning and down in the evening, and it is just as far from heaven to