Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/480

466 people say, "Whatsoever God sees us doing, that we shall have to go on doing."

1. St. Joseph in the Forest is in reality the story of the Three Little Men in the Wood (No. 13).

2. The twelve Apostles is allied to the saga of the hero who lies sleeping inside the mountain, and will only awake again at the appointed time. Compare Die drei Telle, in the Deutsche Sagen, 1. 297.

3. The Rose. A rose, especially a white one, is elsewhere also regarded as the emblem of death, and its opening as that of everlasting life; compare Die Sage von dem Dom zu Lübeck, in the Deutsche Sagen, 1. 24.

4. Poverty and Humility lead to Heaven. The patient drudge who lies beneath the stairs gains for himself the eternal happiness of heaven. This story is framed on the legend of St. Alexis, which can best be learnt from Massmann's Zusammenstellungen.

5. God's Food. This reminds us of the ballad. Von zwei unbarmherzigen Schwestern in Brabant. Similar stories are to be found in Deutsche Sagen, No. 240; Wolf's Niederländische Sagen, Nos. 153, 362, 363; and in Müllenhoff, p. 145.

6. The three green Twigs. According to the well-known poem, Tannhauser also was to have expiated his sins when a white wand began to cover itself with foliage.

7. Our Lady's little Glass. Here, as in many other stories, we see love and kindness rewarded.

8. The aged Mother. From Hesse, it is allied with the story of the Geisterkirche (Deutsche Sagen, 1. 175).

9. The Heavenly Wedding. From Mecklenburg; but it is also known in the province of Münster. It has a remarkable resemblance to an Indian saga of an image which ate what an innocent boy set before it (Polier, 2. 302, 303). A similar story is told in Switzerland of a pious boy who served in a monastery. He was ordered to carry water in a sieve, and, as he was innocent, he did it without a single drop falling through. In the same way the Indian Mariatale, as long as her thoughts are pure, carries water without any vessel whatsoever, but rolled up in the form of a ball.

10. The Hazel-Branch. From Vonbun's Volkssagen aus Vorarlberg, p. 7.

Some visitors came to an old woman's house late in the evening, and she had no food left, and did not know what to cook for them, so she went to the gallows where a dead man was hanging, cut out his liver, and roasted it for the strangers, who ate it.