Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/470

or

"What are you doing, my dear little cat?"
 "I'm sitting here, warming each pit-a-pat;"

afterwards

Away the little cat she went,
With her little tail so bent,
Away she went upstairs.
"Mistress Fox, what a beautiful beast is here,
In shape it is like the most beautiful deer!"

"Alas, no," answered Mrs. Fox, and made a complimentary discourse upon her former lord, in which she spoke of his many virtues, and howsoever highly the other animals might be gifted, some other thing that the Fox had was always more admired.

39.— The Elves.

All three from Hesse. There is a Holstein story like the third in Miillenhoff, p. 313, a Lithuanian in Schleicher, pp. 104, 105. Of the verse in the third story, it should be remarked that in Dähnert's Platt-deutsches Wörterbuch, p. 556, very old things are said to be "Old as de Bremer wold" (as old as the forest of Bremer). Schütze, in the Holstein Jdioticon, 3. 173, 373, has "So oold as de Bremer Woold." In Müllenhoff—

"ik bün so alt^[1]
as Bernholt (Brennholz)
in den Wolt."

In Transylvania they say "Alt wie der Kokelfluss," as old as the river Kokel; see Haltrich, p. 72. In Hungary, according to Weinhold, "old as the Hungarian forest;" see Deutsche Mythologie, pp. 437, 438. The third story is also in Colshorn, p. 224, and in a Breton song, Barzas-Breiz, 1. 50. The Danes have it likewise, see Thiele's Dänische Sagen, 1. 49; where the little fellow says, "Nu har jeg seet tre gang ung Skov paa Tiis Söe"—(I have now thrice seen young trees upon Tiis Söe.) In the Tyrol, he says,

"Ich bin grad nett jetzt so viel Jahr schon alt,^[2]
Als Nadeln hat die Tanne da im Wald."
"Vonbun. Vorarlberg. Volkssagen," p. 4.

---

1. "As old am I,
   As the logs that lie
   Ripe for the fire,
   In the forest hard by."
   
   
2. "My years are as many at this very minute,
   As that pine in the forest has needles in it."