Rennt damid af Hollabrun[1]
Findt a Kindl in de Sunn.
Wiä soll's hoassen
Kitzl oda Goassl?
See the story of Puss in Boots as treated by Straparola, Basile, Perrault, and Ludwig Tieck, with twelve etchings by Otto Speckter, Leipzig, 1843, 4to. Straparola, 11. 1. Pentamerone, 2. 4. In Norwegian, Asbjörnsen, p. 200. In Swedish, Cavallius, No. 12.
5.—The Wicked Step-mother.
There was once on a time a wicked old queen, who, while her son was at the wars, caused her daughter-in-law and her two children to be imprisoned in a cellar. Then one day she said to the cook, "Go and kill one of the children and cook it for me, I want to eat it." "What kind of a sauce will you have? " "I'll have a brown one," said the wicked woman. The cook could not find it in his heart to kill the lovely child, and its mother begged so piteously that he took a little pig and cooked it, and the old woman ate the food with great relish. Not long afterwards, she again summoned the cook and said, "Child's flesh tastes so delicate, do cook the other child for me." "With what kind of sauce?" "With white sauce," said the woman. The cook, however, did as he had done the first time, and set a sucking-pig before her, which she ate with still greater pleasure. Finally, the old woman wanted to eat the young queen as well, and the cook killed a hart in her stead.
And now the young queen had hard work to keep her children from screaming so that the old woman might not hear that they were still alive.
The Italian and French stories of Briar-Rose in Perrault and Basile (Pentamerone, 5. 5), have the same conclusion as this, but the German story lacks it. Comp. Notes to No. 50.
- ↑ A market-town in Lower Austria.
