Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/474

460 angel announces him. The motive given by Widmann and Agricola for Eve's hiding some of her children, viz. that she was afraid that God would reprimand her for having such a number, is ignored by Melancthon and Hans Sachs, it is much more mother-like that she should pick out the pretty and hide the ugly ones. But Agricola and Melancthon's stories agree in this, that Eve, while washing her children for a festival, was surprised by a visit. In Hans Sachs it is only after receiving the message that Adam gives orders to clean the house, to strew it with green boughs, and dress up the children. The last presentation of the story entirely lacks the catechising, but the hiding-places of the children and the various offices they are to fill, are described more fully one by one. The story in Eyering's Sprichwörter, 1. 773-74, corresponds on the whole with the jest of Hans Sachs. But there is a still more ancient testimony to the existence of the story. In the year 1509, a dramatic performance was given at Freiberg in Saxony, entitled The History of Adam and Eve's Children, and how the Lord God spoke to them, and examined them. There is a full account of it in Haupt's Abhandlung. There the story is linked with the Lied von Rigr dem Wanderer in the Edda, in which the god Heimdallr goes to the three couples and establishes difference of rank. The ancient saga transferred itself finally to Adam and Eve.

From a story current in Upper Lusatia, in Haupt's Zeitschrift, 2. 257, 267. Here again we have a malicious Nix, while in other stories of this kind, as in No. 34, the Devil takes her place, but the benevolent old woman who helps the unfortunate is not lacking.

This was picked up by Sommer in Halle, pp. 81-86. The shaving the hair and beard by spirits occurs elsewhere, among other places in a story by Musäus. The elves, especially when angry, like to bestow a hideous form on a man and disfigure him. Just as in this story, the goldsmith receives as a punishment for his greediness a second hump in front on his breast, so in the Irische Märchen (3), mischievous Jack Madden has one given him in addition to that which he has already, and it presses him to death. In a story from Brittany (Souvestre, p. 180) which on the whole tallies with the Irish one, the covetous man is after all only punished by having a single hump given him. In our previous edition there is the trial by means of peas, but we have omitted it in this, as it is apparently derived from Andersen (see p. 42). It also occurs in Cavallius, p. 222.