Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/476

462 the little crab. This, though varying a little, agrees in the main with the Low-German stories. The fox seeing the crab lying on the grass ridiculed its slow way of walking, and said, "When will you get across this meadow? You could walk backwards better than forwards." The crab haughtily replied that he could run better than the gods, and offered to run a race of one mile with him from Lune to Toskan. The fox consented, and a stake was agreed on. The crab wished to give the fox the start, and to run behind him. So the fox turned his back on the crab, and the crab, without his adversary being aware of it, seized hold of his tail with his claws. The fox ran as fast as he could, and when he reached the goal turned round and cried, "Where is the crab now?" The crab was standing before him, and replied, "Here am I, how slowly you have run!" So the fox lost the wager. A story from the neighbourhood of Mark, Kuhn, p. 243, is almost the same, only the conclusion is differently told, viz. that when the fox is very near the goal, the crab nips his tail so hard that the fox flings it round in a fury, and the crab is thrown to the winning-post and cries as victor, "Huzza for the crab!" (Krebsjuchhe). A village was afterwards built on the spot, and received the name of Krebsjuchhe, which was corrupted into Krebsjauche. Here we ought to quote the saying, mentioned by Eyering, 2. 447, "A crab may outstrip a hare." A Wendish story (see Leop. Haupt, 2. 160) is very like this. A fox came to a pond and was about to drink. A frog croaked at him, and the fox said menacingly, "Go away, or I will swallow thee!" "Don't be so arrogant," replied the frog, "I am nimbler than thou." The fox laughed at him, and said, "We will run into the town, and then we shall soon see." The fox turned round, and the frog jumped on his tail. Reynard then began to run, but when he was near the gate, he turned round to see if the frog were following, and in an instant the frog leaped down from his tail, and went in by the gate. When the fox had turned round again and came to the gate, the frog was already at the goal, and cried to him, "Art thou here at last? I am just on my way back home, I thought thou woulds't never come at all."

Burkard Waldis gives the story another but a good form in his Æsopus, p. 172b (Book 3. Fab. 76), and from it Eyering has taken the race between the hare and the snail in his Sprichwörter, 3. 154.

Waldis probably did not derive the story from oral tradition, but from some old writer of fables. The incident of the swift hare being misled by its own indifference and natural inclination for sitting quiet and falling asleep, and leaving the slow snail time enough to reach the goal before him, is excellent.

In another story (Waldis, p. 306$b$ 4. 79), which is rather different in its development, the crab reappears, and is ridiculed