Lays and Legends of Various Nations/Germany Part 3/Legends of Rubezahl/Rubezahl Makes a Fool of a Noble

by Johannes Praetorius, edited by Johann Gustav Gottlieb Büsching

For other English-language translations of this work, see Rübezahl narrt einen Junker.

RUBEZAHL MAKES A FOOL OF A NOBLE.—[B.]

In the year 1512, a man of noble family, who was a very tyrant and oppressor, had commanded one of his vassals or peasants to carry home with his horses and cart, an oak of extraordinary magnitude, and threatened to visit him with the heaviest disgrace and punishment if he neglected to fulfil his desires. The peasant saw that it was impossible he could execute the command of his lord, and therefore fled to the woods with great sorrow and lamentation.

There he was accosted by Rubezahl, who appeared unto him like a man, and enquired of him the cause of his so great grief and affliction. Upon this, the peasant related to him all the circumstances of the case. When Rubezahl heard them, he bade him be of good cheer and care not, but go home to his own house again; he would soon transport the oak which his lord and feudal master required into his court-yard.

Scarcely had the peasant got well home again, before Rubezahl took the huge and monstrous oak-tree, with its thick and sturdy boughs, and hurled it into the court-yard of the nobleman; and with its huge stem, and its many thick branches, so choked and blocked up the entrance that no one could get either in or out. And because the oak proved harder than their iron tools, and could in no manner or wise, and with no power which they could apply to it, be hewn and cut to pieces, the nobleman was compelled, by unavoidable necessity, to break through the walls in another part of the court-yard, and to have a new door made, which was not done but at great labour and expense.

Note.—Busching’s Volksmarchen, likewise from Prætorius.—(Th. 1, s. 275—277.)

‘This legend,’ says Busching, ‘is elsewhere related of the Devil, who took compassion upon a peasant similarly oppressed.’

 

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