‘Sold them for twelve pauls!’ cried the widow, tearing her hair, ‘Why, it was a fortune all in gold coin.’
‘Can’t help it, mama,’ replied the booby; ‘you told me they were rusty nails.’
Another day she told him to shut the door of the cottage; but as he went to do it he lifted the door off its hinges. His mother called after him in an angry voice, which so frightened him that he ran away, carrying the door on his back.
As he went along, some one to tease him, said, ‘Where did you steal that door?’ which frightened him still more, and he climbed up in a tree with it to hide it.
At night there came a band of robbers under the tree, and counted out all their gains in large bags of money. The booby was so frightened at the sight of so many fierce-looking robbers, that he began to tremble and let go of the door.
The door fell with a bang in the midst of the robbers, who thinking it must be that the police were upon them, decamped, leaving all their money behind.
The booby came down from the tree and carried the money home to his mother, and they became so rich that she was able to appoint a servant to attend to him, and keep him from doing any more mischief.
[After the boys, the girls come in for their share of hard jokes; here is one who figures both as a daughter and a wife. Grimm has the same, with a slight variation, as ‘Rumpelstilzchen,’ p. 219, and the Italian-Tirol Tales give it as ‘Tarandandò;’ the incident on which these two hinge of a supernatural being giving his help on condition of the person he favours remembering his name, is of frequent occurrence. I have met it in two German-Tirolese stories, ‘The Wilder Jäger and the Baroness,’ and in ‘Klein-Else’ in ‘Household Stories,’ and in a local tradition told me at Salzburg, which I have given in ‘Traditions of Tirol,’ No. XVI. in ‘Monthly Packet,’ each time the sprite gets a new name; in this one it was ‘Hahnenzuckerl.’ The supernatural helper delivering the girl from future as well as present labour occurs in the Spanish equivalent, ‘What Ana saw in the Sunbeam,’ in ‘Patrañas,’ but in favour of a good, instead of a lazy or greedy girl; and so with the girl in the Norse tale of ‘The Three Aunts.’ ‘Die faule Spinnerin,’ Grimm, p. 495, helps herself to the same end without supernatural aid.]