houses and trees toppled over, the mountains trembled, rocks rolled
into the sea, the sky was pitch black, and it thundered and lightened,
and the sea came in with black waves as high as church-towers and
mountains, and all with crests of white foam at the top. Then he cried,
but could not hear his own words,
“Flounder, flounder in the sea,
Come, I pray thee, here to me;
For my wife, good Ilsabil,
Wills not as I’d have her will.”
“Well, what does she want, then?” said the Flounder. “Alas,” said he,
“she wants to be like unto God.” “Go to her, and you will find her back
again in the dirty hovel.” And there they are living still at this very
time.
20 The Valiant Little Tailor
One summer’s morning a little tailor was sitting on his table by the
window; he was in good spirits, and sewed with all his might. Then came
a peasant woman down the street crying, “Good jams, cheap! Good jams,
cheap!” This rang pleasantly in the tailor’s ears; he stretched his
delicate head out of the window, and called, “Come up here, dear woman;
here you will get rid of your goods.” The woman came up the three steps
to the tailor with her heavy basket, and he made her unpack the whole
of the pots for him. He inspected all of them, lifted them up, put his
nose to them, and at length said, “The jam seems to me to be good, so
weigh me out four ounces, dear woman, and if it is a quarter of a pound
that is of no consequence.” The woman who had hoped to find a good
sale, gave him what he desired, but went away quite angry and
grumbling. “Now, God bless the jam to my use,” cried the little tailor,
“and give me health and strength;” so he brought the bread out of the
cupboard, cut himself a piece right across the loaf and spread the jam
over it. “This won’t taste bitter,” said he, “but I will just finish
the jacket before I take a bite.” He laid the bread near him, sewed on,
and in his joy, made bigger and bigger stitches. In the meantime the
smell of the sweet jam ascended so to the wall, where the flies were
sitting in great numbers, that they were attracted and descended on it
in hosts. “Hola! who invited you?” said the little tailor, and drove
the unbidden guests away. The flies, however, who understood no German,
would not be turned away, but came back again in ever-increasing
companies. The little tailor at last lost all patience, and got a bit
of cloth from the hole under his work-table, and saying, “Wait, and I
will give it to you,” struck it mercilessly on them. When he drew it
away and counted, there lay before him no fewer than seven, dead and
with legs stretched out. “Art thou a fellow of that sort?” said he, and
could not help admiring his own bravery. “The whole town shall know of
this!” And the little tailor hastened to cut himself a girdle, stitched
it, and embroidered on it in large letters, “Seven at one stroke!”
“What, the town!” he continued, “The whole world shall hear of it!” and
his heart wagged with joy like a lamb’s tail. The tailor put on the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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