Lays and Legends of Various Nations/Germany Part 3/Legends of Rubezahl/Rubezahl Sells Pigs

by Johannes Praetorius, edited by Johann Gustav Gottlieb Büsching

RUBEZAHL SELLS PIGS.—[C.]

Once upon a time, Rubezahl made, from what materials is not known, a quantity of pigs, which he drove to the neighbouring market and sold to a peasant, with a caution, that the purchaser should not drive them through any water.

Now, what happened? Why these same swine having chanced to get sadly covered with mire, what must the peasant do but drive them to the river, which they had no sooner entered, than the supposed pigs suddenly became wisps of straw, and were carried away by the stream. The purchaser was moreover obliged to put up with his loss, for he neither knew what was become of, nor from whom he had purchased the pigs.

Note.—From Busching, who has derived it from Prætroius.—(1 Theil. s. 284—5.

A similar trick is related of the celebrated Bohemian Conjuror, Zytho, of whom we shall have more to say in the ‘Lays and Legends of Bohemia.’

The universally current superstition, that running water has the power to dissolve the spells of necromancy, appears prominently in the foregoing legend, where the seeming pigs are, upon entering it, instantly restored to their original form.

 

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