Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/472

458 stuck fast in the deepest mire with horses and cart in a pool, and being unable to move either backwards or forwards, harnessed two horses behind, and two in front, and urged them on. This Hans Pfriem could not endure, because driving was his own occupation; so in a fury he cried to the waggoner, and reproved him for his foolish project, as it seemed to him, bade him harness the horses together and drive them on. This was his ruin, for so soon as it became known that he had broken the agreement, and forgotten his promise, they sent directly and reminded him that he would have to quit Paradise. At first he was in despair, but speedily took heart again, and was rude and insolent to all the spirits of the saints who came to show him the way out. He upbraided them one and all with the sins for which they are decried in the world. He twitted the two thieves who had been crucified by the side of Christ, with the gallows; Mary Magdalene with unchastity, and with the seven devils; Zachæus with his falseness, thieving, and skill in finance; St. Peter with his denial of Christ, his oath, perjury, and other things; St. Paul with persecutions and blasphemy; Moses with the want of faith and doubt, by which he forfeited the promised land, and even with the fact that God would not allow the place of his grave to be known. In this way did Hans Pfriem protect himself, and cover all the saints with shame until no one ventured to drive him out, inasmuch as they all felt that they had been quite as great sinners as he. What then did they do? They sent to him the innocent children whom Herod had murdered, and as they had died in child-like innocence, and were without any former sins, Hans Pfriem was unable to accuse them of anything; but he very soon thought of a trick by which he could protect himself from them too, and divided among them gingerbread and apples with which people do pacify children, and then took them out for a walk and shook down apples, pears, and other fruit for them, played with them, and amused them until they too forgot to turn him out. Here also Pfriem refuses to leave Heaven, and contrives to protect himself skilfully and cunningly, but his spirit of resistance is seen in the reproaches which he makes to the saints. He is here not a shoemaker, but a waggoner, and is described in the dramatis personæ of the Comedy as Fuhrpech; Schusterpech would be more suitable. The name of Pfriem suits his trade too (subula, awl). In Wolf's Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie (2. 2-7), it is proved that in reality he belongs to the stormers of heaven.

From a story by Andreas Schuhmacher, in Vienna, which is to be found in Kletke's Almanach, No. 2.