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Rh earth as it is from earth to heaven. The Gesta Romanorum contain two stories conceived in a similar spirit (see the extract, No. 14, further on). There is another in the Kurzweilige Zeitvertreiber, by C. A. M. von W. (1668), pp. 70, 71. The story also appears in Franco Sacchetti's Novelle (about 1370), No. 4; see F. W. Val. Schmidt, in the Wiener Jahrbuch, 1822, vol. 22, Anzeigeblatt, pp. 54-57. Compare Holzmann's Indische Sagen, 3, 109, and following, and The Thousand and One Nights, 15. 245. In the Untersuchungen über Saxo Grammaticus, p. 145, P. E. Müller writes on the custom of telling three truths to save yourself from peril. In a Servian story, see Wuk, No. 45, a shepherd outwits the king by cunning replies, compare Schmidt's Taschenbuch der Romanzen, p. 83, and following.

Written down from a somewhat hazy recollection, I trust that some one will complete and correct it. Jean Paul mentions this story in the Unsichtbare Loge, 1. 214. Arnim, too, has used it in his Tales, pp. 231, 232.

From Cassel. Compare Altdeutsche Blätter, 1. 181.

From Switzerland given by Wyss in his Volkssagen, p. 321. There are Swabian versions in Meier, No. 30, and Müllenhoff, p. 413. There is something rather like it in Schütze's ''Holst. Idiot''. 1. 334, 335. A young man visited three sisters and found their distaffs full of flax. He secretly put a key in the eldest sister's flax-bag, and next day found it was still among the flax. It was the same with the second sister; but when he did this to the third, she said to him next day, "You put a key among my flax." "Thou art the right one," said he, and took the industrious maiden to wife. The way in which four girls are proved in a Persian story (Reise der Söhne Giaffars) is quite different. The lover throws rose-leaves into the bosom of one of them, and as a rose-branch is among them which hits her face, she pretends to faint. The second pretends to be coy, and covers her eyes with her hands that she may not see the image of a man. The third cries, "Lord, depart, for the hair of your fur wounds me!" The fourth covers her face when she sees some fishes leaping in the sea, because there might be some little men among them.

From Mecklenburg. Belongs to the class of stories which convey an old lesson in a simple form, like Brides on their Trial (No. 155).