Household stories from the Land of Hofer

“Road-sweepings?” repeated the hag, incredulously. “Belike you don’t mean it?”

“But I do mean it,” retorted the boy.

“Oh, well, if you mean it, no doubt it is so. You will see when you get to your journey’s end!” and she went on washing and singing her ditty that was all out of tune.

“There’s mischief in her tone,” said the boy to himself, “that’s clear. But at all events I’m all right: I haven’t even let her look at the fruit with her evil eye, so there’s no harm done.” But he felt perplexed and uneasy, so it was no good taking rest, and he went on to the end of his journey.

Though he was only a country lad, the Kaiser was so fond of pears that he had only to say he had brought some to obtain immediate admittance to his presence.

“You have brought me some pears, have you, my boy?” said the Kaiser, in a tone of satisfaction; and he licked his lips with pleasurable expectation.

“Yes, your majesty; and some of the finest golden pears in your majesty’s whole empire.”

The Kaiser was so delighted to hear this that he removed the covering of leaves himself. But proportionately great was his fury when he found that under the leaves was nothing but offensive sweepings off the road! The attendants who stood by were all equally indignant, and waited not for an order from the Kaiser to carry the boy off to close prison, in punishment for so great an insult as he appeared to have offered.

“It is all that old hag by the fountain,” he said to himself, the first day and the second; but when the penitential discipline of the prison led him to think more closely over his own conduct, he acknowledged that he had himself been in the wrong in telling a falsehood.

Meantime, his father, finding he did not return, said to his other sons, “You see what it is to be as wide-awake as your elder brother; he has obviously taken care of his basket of golden pears, and so pleased the Kaiser that he has given him some great office near his person, and made him a rich man.”

“I am just as sharp as he,” said the second brother: “give me a Krattle of the pears, and let me take them to the Kaiser, and become a rich man too; only I won’t keep it all for myself. I will send for you, and make you a rich man too.”

“Well said, my son,” replied the father; “for I have worked hard for you all my life, and it is meet that in my old age you should share your ease, which I helped you to attain, with me.”

And as the season for pears had just come round again, he plaited another Krattle, like the first, and lined it with fresh leaves, and laid in it a goodly show of the golden pears.

The second son took the basket, and went his way even in better spirits than his elder brother, for he had the conviction of his success to encourage him. But the sun was as hot as it had been the previous year, and when, in the middle of the third day, he came to the fountain by the wayside he was glad to sit down to rest and refresh himself.

The doubled-up old woman stood washing her rags at the fountain and singing her ditty all out of tune. She stopped her croaking, however, to ask him the same question as she had asked his brother; and, as he and his brother had agreed together on what they considered a clever answer, he now gave her the same, which she received by repeating the menace she had ejaculated the first time. And when he brought his basket to the Kaiser it also was found to be filled with street-sweepings instead of pears! With even more of indignation they hurried him off to prison, putting him in the next cell to his brother.

Meantime the year was wearing away, and the promised tidings of good fortune not reaching the father, he got very uneasy. The third son had no pretension to the sharpness his brothers boasted. He was a very dull boy, and often had to endure being laughed at by the others for his slow parts.

“What a pity it is you are so heavy and stupid!” his father now would often say. “If I only dared trust you, how glad I should be to send you to see what has befallen your brothers!”

The lad was used to hear himself pronounced good-for-nothing, and so he did not take much notice of these observations at first, but seeing his father really in distress, his affectionate heart was moved, and he one day summoned courage to say he would go and see if he could not find his brothers.

“Do you really think you can keep yourself out of harm’s way?” exclaimed his father, glad to find him propose to undertake the adventure.

“I will do whatever you tell me,” replied the lad.

“Well, you shan’t go empty-handed, at all events,” said the father. And, as the pears were just ripe again, he laid the choicest of the year’s stock in another Krattle, and sent him on his way.

The boy walked along, looking neither to right nor left, but with his heart beating, lest he should come across the “harm” out of the way of which he had promised to keep himself. All went smoothly, however, except that he got terribly scorched by the sun, and when he reached the fountain, he was glad to sit down to rest and refresh himself.

The old wife was washing her rags in the water, and singing, as she patted the linen, a ditty all out of tune. “Here comes a third of those surly dogs, I declare!” she said to herself, as she saw him arrive with another lot of the magnificent pears. “I suppose he’ll be making game of me too – as if I didn’t know the scent of ripe golden pears from road-sweepings! a likely matter! But if they enjoy making game of me, I have a splendid revenge to enjoy upon them, so I oughtn’t to complain.”

“Good-morrow, little mother!” said the boy, in his blunt way, ere he sat down, at the same time not omitting to doff his cap, as he had been taught, because she happened to be old and ugly – matters of which he had no very nice appreciation.

“He’s better mannered than the other louts, for all he doesn’t look so bright-faced,” said the hag to herself; and she stopped her discordant song to return his greeting.

“May I sit down here a bit, please, good mother? asked the boy, thinking in his simplicity the fountain must belong to her.

“That you may, and take a draught of the cool water too,” replied the dame, wondrously propitiated by his civility.

“And what may it be with which you are so laden, my pretty boy?” she continued. “It ought to be a precious burden to be worth carrying so far as you seem to have come. What have you in your Krattle?”

“Precious are the contents, I believe you,” replied the simple boy; “at least, so one would think from the store my father sets by them. They are true golden pears, and he says there are no finer grown in the whole kingdom; and I am taking them to the Kaiser because he is very fond of them.”

“Only ripe pears, and yet so heavy?” returned the old wife; “one would say it was something heavier than pears. But you’ll see when you come to your journey’s end.”

The boy assured her they were nothing but pears, and as one of his father’s injunctions had been not to lose time by the way, he paid the old dame a courteous greeting and continued his journey.

When the servants saw another peasant boy from Bürs come to the palace with the story that he had pears for the king, they said, “No, no! we have had enough of that! you may just turn round and go back.” But the poor simple boy was so disappointed at the idea of going back to be laughed at for not fulfilling his message, that he sank down on the door-step and sobbed bitterly, and there he remained sobbing till the Kaiser came out.

The Kaiser had his daughter with him, and when she saw the boy sobbing, she inquired what ailed him; and learnt it was another boy from Bürs come to insult the Kaiser with a basket of road-sweepings, and asked if they should take him off to prison too.

“But I have got pears!” sobbed the boy; “and my father says there are no finer in the empire.”

“Yes, yes; we know that by heart. That’s what the others said!” replied the servants, jeering; and they would have dragged him away.

“But won’t you look at my pears first, fair lady? the pears that I have brought all this long way for the Kaiser? My father will be so sorry!” for he was too ignorant to feel abashed at the presence of the princess, and he spoke to her with as much confidence as if she had been a village maiden.

The princess was struck by the earnestness with which he spoke, and decided to see the contents of his basket. The moment he heard her consent, he walked straight up with his Krattle, quite regardless of the whole troop of lacqueys, strong in the justice of his cause.

The princess removed the covering of leaves, and discovered that what he had brought were golden pears indeed, for each pear, large as it was, was of solid shining metal!

“These are pears indeed worthy to set before the Kaiser!” she said, and presented them to her father.

The Kaiser was pleased to see his favourite fruit so splendidly immortalized, and ordered the pears to be laid up in his cabinet of curiosities; but to the boy, for his reward, he ordered that whatever he asked should be given.

“All I want is to find my two brothers, who hold some great office at court,” said the boy.

“Your brothers hold office in prison, if they are those I suspect,” said the Kaiser, and commanded that they should be brought. The boys immediately ran to embrace each other; and the Kaiser made them each recount all their adventures.

“You see how dangerous it is to depart from the truth!” he said, when they had done. “And never forget that, with all your cleverness, you might have remained in prison to the end of your days but for the straightforward simplicity of him you thought so inferior to yourselves.”

Then he ordered that the tree which brought forth such excellent pears should be transplanted to his palace; and to the father and his three sons he gave places among his gardeners, where they lived in plenty and were well content.

HOW THE POOREST BECAME THE RICHEST99

There was once a poor peasant, named Taland, who lived in a poor cottage in the Walserthal, a valley of Vorarlberg. He was as poor in wits as in fortune, so that he was continually making himself the laughing-stock of his neighbours; yet, as he possessed a certain sort of cunning, which fortune was pleased to favour, he got on better in the long run than many a wiser man.

Plodding along steadily, and living frugally, Taland, in process of time, laid by enough money to buy a cow; and a cow he bought without even stopping to consider that he had no means of pasturing it.

The cow, however, provided for that by her own instinct; there were plenty of good pastures in the neighbourhood, and the cow was not slow to discover them. Wherever the grass was freshest and sweetest, thither she wandered, and by this token Taland had no difficulty in finding her out at milking time; and in the whole country round there was no sleeker or better-favoured animal.

But the neighbours at whose expense she fed so well in course of time grew angry; and finding remonstrance vain, they met together and determined to kill the cow; and, that none might have to bear the blame of killing her more than another, every one of them stuck his knife into her. By this means, not only was poor Taland’s cow destroyed, but even the hide was riddled with holes, and so rendered useless.

Nevertheless, Taland skinned his cow, and plodded away with the hide to the nearest tanner, as if he had not the sense to be conscious that it was spoilt. The tanner was not at home, but his wife was able to decide without him, that there was no business to be done with such goods, and she sent him away with a mocking laugh, bidding him remember she dealt in hides, and not in sieves.

Taland, however, had come a long way, and having no money to buy food, he begged so piteously for a morsel of refreshment, that the good wife could not refuse, and having spread a table before him with good cheer, went on about her business.

Taland, delighted with the spread, determined to do justice to it; and as he sat and ate he saw the tanner’s son, an urchin full of tricks, hide himself, while his mother’s back was turned, in an old corn-bin which stood before the door. He went on eating and drinking, and watching the corn-bin, and still the boy never came out, till at last, he rightly judged, he had fallen asleep. Meantime, having finished his meal, he turned to take leave of the tanner’s wife; and then, as he went away, he said, quite cursorily, “If you have no use for that old corn-bin yonder – it’s just the thing I want – you may as well give it to me, and you won’t have sent me away empty-handed.”

“What! you want that lumbering, rotten old corn-bin?” cried the tanner’s wife; and she laughed more heartily than even at the riddled cow-hide. “And you would carry it all the way home on your shoulders?”

The peasant nodded a stupid assent, without speaking.

“Then take it, pray, and be welcome; for I just wanted to get rid of the unsightly old rubbish!”

Taland thanked her, and loaded the chest on his shoulder, but carefully, lest he should wake the child too soon. And carefully he continued to walk along with it till the tan-yard was left far, far out of sight. Then he stopped short, and, setting the corn-bin down with a jerk calculated to wake its inmate, he holloaed out, —

“I be going to fling the old corn-bin down the precipice!”

“Stop, stop! I’m inside!” cried the child, but with a tone of conviction that he had only to ask, to be let out. This was not Taland’s game, who wanted to give him a thorough frightening; so he shouted again, taking no heed of the child’s voice, —

“I be going to fling the old corn-bin down the precipice!”

“Stop! stop! I tell you; I’m inside it!” repeated the boy, in a louder tone, thinking he had not made himself heard before.

“Who be you? and what be you to me?” replied Taland, in a stupid tone of indifference. “I be going to chuck the old corn-bin down the precipice.”

“Oh, stop! for heaven’s sake, stop!” screamed the now really affrighted child; “stop, and spare me! Only let me out, and mother will give you ever such a heap of gold!”

“It’s a long way back to ‘mother,’” replied the peasant, churlishly. “I’d much rather chuck the old thing over, and have done with it. You’re not worth enough to repay the trouble.”

“Oh, but I am though!” answered the boy, in a positive tone. “There’s nothing mother wouldn’t give to save my life, I know!”

“What would she give, d’you think? Would she give five hundred thalers, now?”

“Ay, that she would!”

“Well, it’s a longsome way; but if you promise I shall have five hundred thalers, I don’t mind if I oblige you.”

“You shall have them, safe enough, never fear!”

On this promise, Taland took the boy home, and made up a story of his surprise at finding him at the bottom of the old chest, and how hardly he had saved his life. The mother, overjoyed at the idea of her son being restored to her under such circumstances, readily counted out the five hundred thalers, and sent Taland home a richer man than when his fortune consisted of a cow.

Elated with his good fortune, our hero determined to have a bit of fun with his spiteful neighbours, and accordingly sat himself down in an arbour, where there was a large round table, in front of the Wirthshaus, and spreading his heap of gold before him, amused himself with counting it out. Of course the sight attracted all the peasants of the place, who were just gathering for a gossip on their way home from work.

“And where did you get such a heap of gold from?” asked a dozen excited voices at once.

“From the sale of the cow-hide, to be sure,” replied Taland, in an inanimate voice.

“What! the cow-hide all riddled with holes?” vociferated his interlocutors, in a chorus of ridicule.

“To be sure; that’s just what made it so valuable,” persisted Taland, confidently.

“What! the tanner gives more for a hide all full of holes than for a sound one?”

“What’s the use of asking so many silly questions?” returned the imperturbable peasant “Do you see the money? and should I have got such a sum for an ordinary cow-hide? If you can answer these two questions of mine, you can answer your own for yourselves;” and gathering up his gold, he walked away with a stolid look which defied further interrogations.

The village wiseacres were all struck with the same idea. If riddled cowhides fetched five hundred thalers apiece, the best way to make a fortune was to kill all the cows in the commune, pierce their skins all over with holes, and carry them to the tanner. Every one went home to calculate what he would make by the venture; and the morning was all too long coming, so eager were they to put their plan into execution.

Taland, having now plenty of money, had nothing to do next day but to dress himself in his feast-day clothes and play at dominoes in the Bier-garten; but though this was a favourite enjoyment, far sweeter was that of observing the running hither and thither of his spiteful, mocking neighbours, slaughtering their sleek kine – the provision of their future lives – skinning them, and destroying the very skins out of which some small compensation might have been earned.

Taland hardly knew how to contain his inclination to laugh, as he saw them caught in his trap so coarsely baited; and the good landlord, as he saw the irrepressible giggle again and again convulse his stupid features, thought that the gain of the five hundred thalers had fairly turned his weak head.

The peasants had gone off to the tan-yard with their riddled cow-hides, merrily shouting and boasting; and Taland sat at home, drinking and laughing. But it was a different story by-and-by. There was a sound like the roar of a wild beast, which stopped even Taland’s inclination to laugh, and made him shrink in his chair. It was the lament of the long file of peasants returning from the tan-yard from their bootless errand, filling the air as they went along with yells of fury at their ruin, and imprecations and threats of vengeance on him who had led them into the snare.

Taland had meant to have had his laugh over their discomfiture, but finding them in this mood, he thought his wisest course was to keep out of their sight, lest they should take summary vengeance on him. So he found a corner to hide himself in; and he thus overheard their debate on the means of punishing their deceiver.

“He’s such shifts for getting out of every thing, that one doesn’t know where to have him,” said the noisiest speaker; and the rest re-echoed the sentiment.

“Ay; it’ll never do to let him get scent of what we’re up to!”

“But how to avoid it?”

“Take him asleep.”

“Ay; take him when he’s asleep; that’s the way!”

“Go up the stairs and rattle at his window, and when he comes out, knock him on the head!”

“And every one have a go at him, as we did at his cow.”

“That’s the plan!”

“And the sooner the better.”

“This very night, before we go to bed!”

“To be sure; we won’t sleep tamely upon such an affront.”

“No; we’ll make an end of it, that we will!”

“And it’s time we did.”

“Another day would be unbearable!”

“Another hour is bad enough; but we must keep quiet till he’s well asleep.”

“Yes; there’s nothing to be done till midnight.”

“We’ll meet again at midnight, then.”

“All right; we shall all be there!”

“Good-bye, then, till midnight!”

“Good-bye, till midnight; good-bye!”

They all spoke at once, and the whole dark plan was concocted in a few minutes; then they dispersed to their homes with resolute steps.

Taland listened to the sound with beating heart, and as soon as silence once more prevailed, he stole stealthily homewards.

His wife was sitting over her spinning-wheel.

“I’ve caught a cold wearing these holiday clothes out of their turn,” said Taland; “will you do me the favour to sleep in the window-sill, and keep that flapping shutter close, good wife?”

“With all my heart,” responded the compliant spouse; and thus disposed, they went to rest.

At midnight the villagers came, faithful to their appointment, in a strong body, and mounted the stairs100 as quietly as might be. The foremost pushed open the shutter, and exclaimed, “Why, here’s the old idiot lying ready for us, across the window-sill!”

“Then we’re spared the trouble of hunting for him,” exclaimed the next.

“So here goes!” cried all together; and they showered their blows on the devoted body of the old wife, while Taland, comfortably enveloped in his coverlet, once more laughed at the success of his deceit, and the discomfiture of his foes.

Towards morning he rose, and taking up the dead body, placed it in a chair, and bore it along, together with the old spinning-wheel, a good distance down the high road; and there he left it, while he sat behind a bush to see what would happen.

Presently a fine lord came along the road driving a noble chariot.

“Holloa, good woman! get out of the way!” shouted the lord, while yet at a considerable distance; for he thought the old woman was silly, spinning in the roadway. But the corpse moved not for his shouting.

“Holloa! holloa, I say! you’ll be killed! move, can’t you?” he cried, thinking she was deaf, and hadn’t heard his first appeal. But still the corpse moved not.

“Get out of the way! get out of the road! can’t you?” at last fairly screamed the lord; for, never dreaming but that the woman would move in time, he had not reined in his fiery steeds – and now it was all too late! On one side went the old lady in the chair, and on the other side the fragments of the spinning-wheel, while the chariot dashed wildly on between them.

“What have I done?” said the lord, alighting from his chariot as soon as he could stop, and looking round him in wild despair.

“Why, you’ve run over and killed my old mother! that’s what you’ve done!” said Taland, emerging from his hiding-place. “And now you must come with me before the judge.”

“Really, I meant no harm,” pleaded the good lord; “I called to her to get out of the way, and I couldn’t help it if she was deaf. But I’ll make you what compensation you like. What do you say to accepting my chariot full of gold, and the horses and all, to drive home with?”

“Why, if you say you couldn’t help it, I suppose you couldn’t,” replied Taland. “I don’t want to hurt you; and since you offer fair terms, I’m willing to accept your chariot full of gold, and the horses to drive it home. I’ll square the account to your satisfaction.”

So the lord took him home to his castle and filled up the chariot with gold, and put the reins in his hands, and sent him home richer and merrier than if the neighbours had never attempted his life.

When these same envious neighbours, however, saw him coming home in the chariot full of gold, driving the prancing horses quite gravitêtisch101, they knew not what to make of it. And that, too, just as they were congratulating themselves that they had made an end of him!

“It must be his ghost!” they cried. There was no other way of accounting for the reappearance. But as he drove nearer, there was no denying that it was his very self in flesh and blood!

“Where do you come from? where did you get all that heap of money from? and what story are you going to palm off on us this time?” were questions which were showered down on him like hail.

Taland knew how easily they let themselves be ensnared, and that the real story would do as well this time as any he could make up, so he told them exactly what had happened, and then whipped his horses into a canter which dispersed them right and left, while he drove home as gravitêtisch as before.

Nor was he wrong in expecting his bait to take. With one accord the peasants all went home and killed their wives, and set them, with their spinningwheels before them, all along the road. Of course, however, no lucky chance occurred such as Taland’s – no file of noblemen driving lordly chariots, and silly enough to mistake the dead for the living, came by; and while Taland was rich enough to marry the best woman in the place, they had all to bury their wives and live alone in their desolated homes.

To have been so tricked was indeed enough to raise their ire; and the only consolation amid their gloom was to meet and concoct some plan for taking signal and final vengeance. This was at last found. They were to seize him by night, as before; but this time they were not to beat him to death in the dark, but keep him bound till daylight, and make sure of their man, then bind him in a sack and throw him over the precipice of the Hoch Gerach.