“Let’s go and divide the money, Pope,” said the old man.
So they went. They divided the money into three heaps. The Pope looked at them, and said:
“How’s this? There’s only two of us. For whom is this third share?”
“That,” says the old man, “is for him who ate my loaves.”
“I ate them, old man,” cries the Pope; “I did really, so help me Heaven!”
“Then the money is yours,” says the old man. “Take my share too. And now go and serve in your parish faithfully; don’t be greedy, and don’t go hitting Nicholas over the shoulders with the keys.”
Thus spake the old man, and straightway disappeared.
[The principal motive of this story is, of course, the same as that of “The Smith and the Demon,” in No. 13 (see above, p. [70]). A miraculous cure is effected by a supernatural being. A man attempts to do likewise, but fails. When about to undergo the penalty of his failure, he is saved by that being, who reads him a moral lesson. In the original form of the tale the supernatural agent was probably a demigod, whom a vague Christian influence has in one instance degraded into the Devil, in another, canonized as St. Nicholas.
The Medea’s cauldron episode occurs in very many folk-tales, such as the German “Bruder Lustig” (Grimm, No. 81) and “Das junge geglühte Männlein” (Grimm, No. 147), in the latter of which our Lord, accompanied by St. Peter, spends a night in a Smith’s house, and makes an old beggar-man young by first placing him in the fire, and then plunging him into water. After the departure of his visitors, the Smith tries a similar experiment on his mother-in-law, but quite unsuccessfully. In the corresponding Norse tale of “The Master-Smith,” (Asbjörnsen and Moe, No. 21, Dasent, No. 16) an old beggar-woman is the victim of the Smith’s unsuccessful experiment. In another Norse tale, that of “Peik” (Asbjörnsen’s New Series, No. 101, p. 219) a king is induced to kill his wife and his daughter in the mistaken belief that he will be able to restore them to life. In one of the stories of the “Dasakumáracharita,” a king is persuaded to jump into a certain lake in the hope of obtaining a new and improved body. He is then killed by his insidious adviser, who usurps his throne, pretending to be the renovated monarch. In another story in the same collection a king believes that his wife will be able to confer on him by her magic skill “a most celestial figure,” and under that impression confides to her all his secrets, after which she brings about his death. See Wilson’s “Essays,” ii. 217, &c., and 262, &c. Jacob’s “Hindoo Tales,” pp. 180, 315.]