So the peasant cut off the left lappet from the shroud and gave him back the coffin lid. Then the dead man went back into the grave and laid himself down in it. Then the cocks crowed and he could not lock it down properly: one corner of the coffin lid would perk upwards. The peasant noticed all this. Day was breaking, so he yoked his horse and went into the village.
In a certain house he could hear the sound of lamentation and cries of grief: he went in there, and two youths lay dead. “Do not weep: I can revive them.”
“Do revive them, kinsman: half of our goods we will give you,” said the relations.
So the peasant did as the corpse had told him, and the lads revived. The parents were delighted, and they seized hold of the peasant, and they pinioned him with ropes. “Now, doctor, we are going to take you up to the authorities: if you can revive them it must be you who killed them!”
“What, good Christians! Have some fear for God!” the peasant shrieked: and he told what he had seen at night.
Soon the news spread through the village, and the people assembled and rushed up to the cemetery, looked at the grave out of which the corpse had come, tore it up and dug into the dead man’s heart an oaken stake, so that he should never rise up and kill folks. And they rewarded the peasant greatly and led him home with honour.
A TALE OF THE DEAD
Once a carpenter was going home late at night from a strange village: he had been at a jolly feast at a friend’s house. As he came back an old friend met him who had died some ten years before.
“How do you do?”
“How do you do?” said the walker, and he forgot that his friend had long ago taken the long road.