Page:Lays and Legends of Germany (1834).djvu/251

 so, however, before the roguish sprite carried off the spear and transformed himself into a similar one, and took its place.

When the messenger, after taking his rest, set forth again with his spear, and had got some little way on his journey, it began slipping forward every now and then, in such wise that the messenger kept pitching forward into the most intolerable filth, and getting himself sadly befouled. For indeed so often did it happen, that the churl at last could not tell for the soul of him, what had come to the spear, or why he kept slipping forward with it, instead of seizing fast hold of the ground.

He looked at it longways and sideways, from above, from underneath, but in spite of all his attempts, no change could he discover.

In the meanwhile, he went forward a little way, when suddenly he was once more plunged into the morass, to cry, ‘woe is me, and wala wa,’ at his spear, which led him to such scrapes, but did nothing to release him from them. At length, he got himself once more to rights, and then turned the spear the wrong way upwards. But no sooner had he done so, than he was driven backwards instead of forwards, into the mud, and so got into a worse plight than ever.

After this, the silly fellow took the spear across his shoulder like a pikeman, when he found it was of no use to trail it upon the earth, and in this fashion he started forth like a true knight. But still the merry knave Rubezahl continued his vexatious tricks, by pressing on the messenger, as though he had got a pair of heavy yokes upon his back, and throwing his troublesome burden first on one shoulder and then on the other, until at last,