165.—The Griffin.
We owe this excellent version to Friedrich Schmid, a Swiss, from whom we have received it by the intervention of Wackernagel. Its contents are peculiar to itself, and yet it resembles The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs, No. 29. No. 13, in Müllenhoff, is still more nearly related to it, and so is a Danish story in Etlar, p. 129. In Holstein there is, as Etlar remarks, a characteristic tradition of a boat which can sail both on water and land; but in Finland, too, we hear of a golden boat which sails of its own accord over land and sea, see Schiefner, p. 611. Perhaps this was originally intended to point out the course of the sun.
166.—Strong Hans.
Written down by a Swiss named Hagenbach, and communicated by Wackernagel. It is allied to the Elves (No. 91), and also to a story from Lusatia in M. Haupt's Zeitschrift, 2. 358-360, and in Leopold Haupt's Lausitzische Magazin, 19. 86-90; here the strong man carries a large smith's hammer instead of the iron bar. It is a widely-spread tradition, and is found in Sommer, p. 108; in Stöber's Alsatia, 1852, p. 77, 88; in Meier, No. 1; in Müllenhoff, No. 16; always with variations in some particulars, but the super-natural strength, and the higher nature is, as with Siegfried, never to be mistaken. In a Wallachian story, Schott, No. 119, the woman falls into the power of a bear. A part only of a Slavonian story, No. 6, in Vogl, is like ours.
167.—The Peasant in Heaven.
Taken down by Friedrich Schmid, in the neighbourhood of Aarau, and excellently told.
168.—Lean Lizzie.
From Kirchhof's Wendunmut (Frankf. 1581), p. 131b-132b. Allied to Lazy Harry (No. 164).
169.—The Hut in the Forest.
This story was taken down from oral tradition by Karl Gödeke, at Deligsen, near Alefeld, and communicated by him to us. The picture so often set before us in the old animal stories, of human beings and domestic animals dwelling together under the same roof, is here well painted. The animals are regarded as part of the family, and cared for as such. That this should be done because it was seen that they were transformed human beings, was a motive which only had weight afterwards, and the old man who plays the
