Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/467

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I have used Caroline Stahl's story, Der undankbare Zwerg, the contents of which will be given afterwards, but I have told it in my own fashion. The saying—

which is taken from a popular song, is to be found in a child's story in the Taschenbuch Minerva, for the year 1813, p. 32, and may refer to this story. Here the malicious nature of the dwarf is predominant, and the bear appears to take revenge on him for his own transformation into the shape of that animal, of which the dwarf seems to have been the cause.

The origin of this is "The 101 Psalm expounded by Martin Luther," Wittenberg, 1533, 4to, ending with "by Hans Lufft, 1535," folio G. 111b. Luther no doubt knew the story by oral tradition.

From a romance, Das verwöhnte Mutter-söhnchen, or Polidor's strange and most amusing life at school and the university, by Sylvano, Freiburg, 1728, p. 22. The substance is not altered, but we have told it in rather a different manner. Though this is overworked, and has some additions, it has some affinity to a genuine saga.

The ground-work of this story is taken from Proverbiorum copia, a collection of some hundreds of Latin and German sayings by Eucharius Eyering, Eisleben, 1601, vol. 1. pp. 70-73. There is a still more circumstantial story in vol. 2. 392-394. The bit about the slow snail at the end, occurs in the letters of Elizabeth of Orleans, with which Keller's Altdeutsche Erzählungen, p. 584, should be compared. A similar story is to be found in the Zeitvertreiber (1668), p. 466, 469. But the story was also known in the East; compare Pantscha Tantra, p. 210, and Bidpai (in Philip Wolf's translation, 2. 3), from whence Hans Sachs has taken it (Nuremberg edition, 4. 3, 54), there it is told of a monk, or hermit, with different details. The man intends to buy ten goats with the money which he has got for the honey he has collected, and so on from one thing to another until he has gained great wealth, and then he will take to himself a beautiful wife, and will chastise the son which she will bear him with his stick if the boy is not obedient.