plant their pieces against the castle and fire on it. Then the Prince has the cloth brought out, and humbly entreats him to stop the firing. So the tailor makes his men return to their quarters, goes home and lives very happily with his two brothers. In Zingerle, it is The Bag, the Hat, and the Horn, p. 143; and with peculiar variations, The Four Cloths, p. 61. The story of The Long Nose in Heinrich von Kleist and Adam Müller's Phoebus journal, 1808, 6th part, pp. 8–17, is an affected rendering of this. The conclusion has some resemblance to Fortunatus, and the whole story is allied to the story of Out of the sack, cudgel, No. 36; to the Robber's cave, in Wolf's Hausmärchen, p. 116; and to a story in Zingerle, p. 73. In Netherlandish, see Wolf's Wodana, No. 5. p. 69. In Danish, see Molbech, No. 37. For a Tartar story, see Relations of Ssidi Kur. Wallachian, see Schott, No. 54.
55.—Rumpelstilzchen.
From four stories collected in Hesse, which agree with, and in some particulars, complete each other. In one of them, however, the conclusion varies in that the Queen does not send out any emissaries to enquire about strange names; but on the third day the King loses himself when he is out hunting, and accidentally listens to what the mannikin is saying, and hears what he calls himself. A fifth story begins in the following manner: a bundle of flax was given to a little girl to spin into yarn, but what she span was always golden thread, and not flaxen yarn. On this she became very sad and seated herself on the roof, and span and span, but still never anything but gold. Then a little man came walking by, who said, "I will help thee out of thy difficulty; a young prince shall pass by, and shall take thee away with him, and marry thee, but thou must promise me thy first child." Afterwards the Queen's maid goes out and sees the little man riding round the fire on a ladle, and hears his name. When Rumpelstilzchen sees that his secret is discovered, he flies out of the window on the ladle. Besides this, a sixth variant from Hesse may be named, in which nothing is said about spinning. A woman is walking past a garden wherein beautiful cherries are hanging; longs for some of them, and climbs in and eat some; but a black man comes out of the earth, and for this theft she is forced to promise him her child. When it is born, he forces his way through all the guards who have been set by her husband, and will only consent to leave the woman the child, if she can get to know his name. Then the husband follows him and sees him clamber into a cave, which is hung on all sides with ladles, and hears him call himself Flederflitz. See the Little Staff in Carol. Stahl's Stories, p. 85. In Müllenhoff, No 8, the mannikin is called Rümpentrumper. In Kletke's Märchensaal, No. 3, he is
