Page:Select Popular Tales from the German of Musaeus.djvu/176

162 this cognomen. To have any chance, therefore, of being kindly treated by the gnome, it was necessary, above all things, to avoid this name, and to salute him respectfully as the “Lord of the Mountain.”

Tradition tells, that there was once a physician who went to gather herbs on the Riesengebirg, and who was frequently joined by Rübezahl, sometimes in one guise, sometimes in another, and was very courteously assisted by him in his botanical researches. One day he appeared as a woodcutter, and began by professing to instruct the doctor in the properties and uses of various herbs, of which the latter had never before heard. The learned physician, however, did not quite relish the idea of a poor woodcutter knowing more of these subjects than himself, and he exclaimed, with some warmth, “Sirrah, do you pretend to teach a physician the knowledge of herbs? Well, now, since you are so wise, tell me whether came first—the oak or the acorn?” “The oak,” answered the gnome, “for the fruit proceeds from the tree.” “Fool,” cried the physician, “how then came the first oak if not from an acorn, which is the germ of the tree?” “That,” replied the woodcutter, very humbly, “is a question beyond me, and which I leave to wiser heads to resolve. But let me also put a question to you. Who is the proprietor of this piece of ground where we now are? The King of Silesia or the Lord of the Mountain?” “The ground,” replied the doctor, “belongs of course to the King of Silesia. As to him you call the Lord of the Mountain, or, as I call him, Rübezahl, the Turnip Counter, there is, I assure you, no such person; he is a mere bugbear; a name to frighten children and ignorant people with, and nothing more.” Scarcely had he spoken when the form of the woodcutter rose into gigantic proportions, and the redoubtable spirit himself appeared before the astonished physician, and roared in a furious tone, “Rübezahl! scoundrel—I’ll teach thee to talk of Rübezahl;” and with this he laid hold of the unlucky doctor by the neck, shook him and beat him till life was hardly left in him, and then let him find his way home from the Giant Mountains as he best could. The poor fellow never fully recovered the effects of his drubbing, and as long as he lived he was never found botanizing again on the domains of the Lord of the Mountain.

We must give an instance, however, of the benevolent way in which the gnome could conduct himself when he chose. A countryman of Richenberg was once reduced from various causes to a state of great poverty, and even disposed of his farm and his flocks; and, to add to his distress, he had a wife and six children to support. “If we could contrive to borrow,” said he one day to his disconsolate wife, “a hundred dollars, we might purchase another farm, and thus retrieve our circumstances. You have wealthy relations on the other side of the mountains, what if I should go to them and ask them for assistance;—perhaps they may