Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/473

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From Hans Sachs, who has thrice treated this tradition—twice dramatically in the year 1553 (Nuremberg edition, 3. 1. 243, 1. 1. 10), and once as a jest, 1558 (2. 4. 83), and in this last best. On the whole, they tally with each other; but the dramatic poems are planned and carried out more circumstantially. The variations are specified in Haupt's Zeitschrift, 2. 258-260, where other information is to be found. Hans Sachs names a Latin poem of Philip Melancthon's as the origin of the story, but it did not originate with him; it is told, and apparently from a Latin source, by Wied, in a letter to Count Johann IV. His version differs slightly in some particulars from that of Hans Sachs. The message that God is intending to pay a visit is not brought by an angel, but Eve looks out of the window and sees him approaching with the angels. She had just begun to wash the children for a festival which was drawing near, but had not washed them all. So she ordered those who were still unwashed to conceal themselves in the hay and straw, but sent those who were ready to meet the Lord. And now God catechised them most strictly. Abel repeated the whole of the Creed, and after him Seth and his sisters were examined, and all acquitted themselves excellently, but then the Lord commanded Cain and the others, whose absence had not escaped the knowledge of the Almighty, to be summoned. Cain came sulkily out with bits of straw and hay-seeds sticking in his uncombed hair. He said the Creed all wrong, left bits out, and spoke very rudely. Thereupon the Lord bade Abel come forward, laid his hands on him and ordained him as a priest; Seth was to be a king, but the clownish Cain was only to be a servant. When Eve lamented, God comforted her, gave his right hand to the children when he departed, and the mother accompanied him a great way from her own house, until he bade her return home, and, concealed in a cloud, ascended to heaven. A story in Agricola's Sprichwörter (in the Low-German Magdeburg edition, folio, 127$b$, No. 264), which more nearly resembles the jest than the dramatic poems and Melancthon's version, is older, and dates from the year 1528. A less valuable rendering of the story is to be found in George Rudolf Widmann's Wahrhaftige Historien von den grewlichen and ahschewlichen Sünden, ''so D. Joh. Faustus hat getrieben'' (Hamburg, 1799), i. 237, 238; nevertheless some variations prove that Widmann neither derived it from Hans Sachs nor from Melancthon, but followed some other written or oral account. The Lord finds the house shut up, and knocks. Adam and Eve perceive him through a chink. In Melancthon's version also Eve looks through the window and sees God from afar, whereas, according to Hans Sachs, a message by an