Hans Entender. In Albert Ludwig Grimm's Kindermärchen (2nd edit. Heidelberg, 1817) it appears also, but in prose. The fisherman Hans Dudeldee lives with his wife in a hut, and is so poor that they have no window, but are forced to look through a hole, where there has been a knot in the wood. He first begs the fish to give him a house, and so on until he is emperor; at last he desires to be able to make sunshine and rain as God does, whereupon they find themselves sitting in the hut again, looking through the hole in the planks. It is much more meagre as a whole. See De Kossät und siine Fruu, in Kuhn, No 6. The Golden Fish in Firminich's Völkerstimmen, p. 377.
The beginning of the story strikingly reminds us of a story in the 1001 Nights (1. 107, Histoire du Pêcheur), as well as of the Welsh saga of Taliesin (compare Altd. Wälder, 1. 70). A story from Finland also, given in the Freimüthiger, 1834, No. 253-256, has a similar opening, but the development is different. The feature of the wife inciting her husband to seek high dignities is ancient in itself, from Eve and the Etruscan Tanaquil (Livy, i. 47), down to Lady Macbeth.
The first half is taken from two stories from Hesse, which complete each other. The second from the place where the Tailor leaves the giants, and betakes himself to the King's court, is from a somewhat rare little book, Wegkürzer, a very amusing and unusually diverting little book by Martinus Montanus of Strasburg (1557, in 12mo. p. 18-25). This part can stand alone, but as it fits naturally to what has gone before, it is here joined to it, and therefore re-written. In the first edition may be seen the unaltered copy. Allusion is made to the story by Fischart, in Gargantua (254b), "I will kill you like the midges, nine at one blow, as the tailor did," and in Flohhatz (Dornavius), 39b.
"Horst nicht vom tapfern Schneiderknecht,[1]
Der drei in einem Streich zu todt schlecht."
Also in Simplicissimus (chap. ii. 28), "and has surpassed the tailor's title, 'seven at one blow.'" And in Fabelhans (16, 3) "five at one blow." The number naturally changes; we likewise hear of " nine-and-twenty at one blow." If the giant here squeezes water out of a stone, it perhaps has some reference to a passage in Bruder Wernher (M.S. 2. 164b):
- ↑ Hast thou not heard of the bold tailor's apprentice who killed three at one blow?
