Schliest die Thur ein.
This is in reference to St. Katharine’s day closing the door of the Christian year.
I must find space for one story related by Faber on New Year’s Day.
A farmer once told a wise man that he was daily becoming poorer; whereupon he received from the wise man a casket, with the advice to take it daily into his kitchen, his garden, his storehouse, his vineyard, his cellar, his stable, and his field; and then, on the condition that the box was not opened till the year’s end, the sage promised wealth to the farmer. The husbandman obeyed implicitly: in the kitchen he found the cook wasting the meat, in the cellar the vats leaking, in the fields the labourers idling, in the garden the vegetables unhoed. All these disorders were rectified, and by the year’s end the man’s fortune was doubled. Then he opened the casket, and found in it a slip of paper, on which was written:—
“Wills du Dag dir reichlich geling
Solves taglich zu deinem Ding.”
Which, Faber adds, is like the German saying, The best soil for a field is that in the farmer’s shoe.