So I said, "My mother has a cow and I have a goat, you shall have one of them." So eight dwarfs went with me, and as we got outside the door a great dog was lying there, and they made a stick of frog's teeth, and struck it on the mouth and made it go back. Then we went a long way onwards and came to a great piece of water, and the dwarfs made a rope of womens' beards, and fishes' hair, and with that they drew me over. We walked for a long time through the great forest, and they exactly knew the way along which the creature had dragged me. We went along the same road until we came to my mother's door, and I told her where I had been. She gave me the goat, and I set the dwarfs on in turn, the biggest first, and the smallest last; there they sat in a row like the pipes of an organ, and then I gave a push to the goat and it ran away, and as long as I have lived I have never seen them again. The journey into Schlauraffenland is also to be found in a collection of Swiss Kühreihen[1] (3rd edition, Bern. 1818, p. 77). The flea goes into Schlauraffenland, and cows walk on stilts, goats wear boots, an ass dances on a tight-rope, peasants sell their wives from Christmas till May, and cows fly up to the storks' nests and hatch the eggs. It is a hot summer and yet everything is frozen. Chairs and benches beat each other, the cupboard screams violently, the table is terrified; the stove says to the door, "Would that we were outside."
From Vieth's Chronik. Compare Alterthumszeitung, 1813, No. 6, p. 29. An old poem about a liar, in a manuscript at Vienna (No. 428, St. 181), is quite in this spirit. Compare Keller's Fastnachtspiele, p. 93, and following. There is a lying-tale from the Odenwald, in Wolf's Hausmärchen, p. 422; and one from Holstein, in Müllenhoff, No. 32; a Swabian in Meier, No. 76; and variants are to be found in Pröhle's Märchen für die Jugend, No. 40, and in Kuhn und Schwartz, No. 12. Compare No. 138.
160.—The Riddling Tale.
From a popular book on riddles of the beginning of the sixteenth century, communicated in Haupt's Zeitschrift, 3. 34. Being changed into a flower in the field occurs also in Dearest Roland, (No. 56). The deliverance here reminds us of the Queen of the Bees, who discovered the maiden who had eaten honey by lighting on her mouth (No. 62). There are other riddling-tales in Müllenhoff, pp. 503, 504.
- ↑ Ranz-des-vaches.
