Page:Grimm's Household Tales, vol.1.djvu/521

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NOTES—TALE 79.
439

and concludes

"das niemandts sein Elten verschmeht[1]
warnt treulich Jörg Brentel von Elbogen."

In Hans Sachs, see the Half Horse-cloth, 2. 2, 107, 108. Nuremberg edition. Wunderhorn, 2. 269. See an old German story, the Knight with the Rug, in Lassberg's Liedersaal, 1. 585. Another form of the story is to be found in the Kolotz MSS., p. 145, and in Hagen's Gesammtabenteuer, 2. 391. A third by Hufferer is in the same place, 3. 729. An old French Fabliau (Méon. 4. 479, 485) varies only slightly. The son, at the instigation of his wife, drives away his old father, who begs for a coat, which the son refuses; then for a horse-cloth as he is trembling with cold. The son orders his child to go with the old man into the stable and give him one. The grandson cuts it in half, of which the grandfather complains. The grandson, however, excuses himself to his father on the ground that he must keep half of it for him, when he drives him out of the house. Then the son reflects, and takes the grandfather back into the house with all honour. Some stories formed on this by Niccolo Granucci, Sercambi, and the Abbé Le Monnier are pointed out by Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer 2. lvii. In Pauli's Scherz und Ernst (1535, see chap. 412. Folio 77. In the Danish, Lystig Shiemt og Alvor, p. 73, the grandfather begs for a new coat, and the son gives him two yards of stuff to patch the old one with. Thereupon the grandson comes crying because he too wants two yards of stuff. The father gives them to him, and the child hides them under a lath in the roof, and then says he is storing them up for his father when he grows old. Then the other bethinks himself, and behaves better. The following lines from a poem of Walther's should be quoted:

"die jungen habent die alten sô verdrungen,[2]
nû spottent alsô dar der alten!
ez wirt in selben noch behalten;
beit unz iuwer jugent zergê:
swaz ir in tuot, daz rechent iuwer jungen."
23, 36.

79.—The Water-Nix.

From Hanau. It is a pursuit of the children by the witch, as in the story of Dearest Roland No. 56; she is at the same time Frau Holle, and the wicked one who makes people spin entangled

  1. Let no one despise his parents
    Is the faithful warning of Jörg Brentel von Elbogen.
  2. The young have so repressed the old, and now they scoff at the old. It will be stored up against you till your youth fades away. Whatever you do to them your young ones will avenge it.