The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various CountriesKeightley, Thomas
General
The Fairy Mythology: Illustrative of the Romance and Superstition of Various Countries
Keightley, Thomas
Fairies; Fairy tales; Folk literature; Folklore
John discovered himself to his parents, and Elizabeth to hers, and the
wedding-day was soon fixed, and such a wedding was never seen before
or since in the island of Rügen; for John sent to Stralsund and
Greifswald for whole boatloads of wine, and sugar, and coffee, and
whole herds of oxen, sheep, and pigs were driven to the wedding. The
quantity of harts, and roes, and hares that were shot on the occasion,
it were vain to attempt to tell, or to count the fish that was caught.
There was not a musician in Rügen and Pomerania that was not engaged,
for John was immensely rich, and he wished to display his wealth.
John did not neglect his old friend Klas Starkwolt, the cowherd. He gave
him enough to make him comfortable the rest of his days, and insisted on
his coming and staying with him as often and as long as he wished.
After his marriage, John made a progress through the country with his
beautiful Elizabeth, and they purchased towns, and villages, and
lands, until he became master of nearly half Rügen, and a very
considerable count in the country. His father, old James Dietrich, was
made a nobleman, and his brothers and sisters gentlemen and
ladies--for what cannot money do?
John and his wife spent their days in doing acts of piety and charity.
They built several churches, and they had the blessing of every one that
knew them, and died universally lamented. It was Count John Dietrich
that built and richly endowed the present church of Rambin. He built it
on the site of his father's house, and presented to it several of the
cups and plates made by the underground people, and his own and
Elizabeth's glass shoes, in memory of what had befallen them in their
youth. But they were all taken away in the time of the great Charles the
Twelfth of Sweden, when the Russians came on the island, and the
Cossacks plundered even the churches, and took away everything.
_The Little Glass Shoe._
A peasant, named John Wilde, who lived in Rodenkirchen, found one time
a glass shoe on one of the hills where the little people used to
dance. He clapped it instantly into his pocket and ran away with it,
keeping his hand as close on his pocket as if he had a dove in it; for
he knew that he had found a treasure which the underground people must
redeem at any price.
Others say that John Wilde lay in ambush one night for the underground
people, and gained an opportunity of pulling off one of their shoes,
by stretching himself there with a brandy-bottle beside him, and
acting like one that was dead drunk; for he was a very cunning man,
not over scrupulous in his morals, and had taken in many a one by his
craftiness, and, on this account, his name was in no good repute among
his neighbours, who, to say the truth, were willing to have as little
to do with him as possible. Many hold, too, that he was acquainted
with forbidden arts, and used to carry on an intercourse with the
fiends and old women that raised storms, and such like.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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