WHEN AND WHY THE DEVIL INVENTED BRANDY.
A POPULAR TRADITION FROM THE DUCHY OF SAXE-MEININGEN;
TRANSLATED FOR
THE BENEFIT OF THE TEMPERANCE SOCIETIES.[30]
Many years ago, our village (Steinbach) and Winterstein (in the Duchy of Saxe-Gotha) disputed about the common boundaries. Witnesses were called from both sides; but the dispute could not be brought to an end, because each of them spoke in favour of his own village. Amongst these witnesses were two men,—the one a native of Steinbach, and the other of Winterstein,—who had been instructed in magic by the devil, to whom they had sold their souls.
These two men in one and the same night conceived a resolution to erect false boundary-stones, to which they intended to give an appearance of antiquity by the help of magic, so that people might suppose they had stood there, for many years. Both of them, in the figures of fiery men, went up the hill where was the boundary in dispute. Neither of them knew of the intentions of the other. When they met on the hill, he who arrived the last, asked the other,
"What he was doing there?"
"That is no concern of yours!" answered this; "tell me first what you are doing here?"
"I will place boundary-stones, and settle the limits as they ought to be."
"That I have done already, and there you see the stones; and, as the stones go, so goes the boundary."
"You are wrong, for the boundary goes this way; and my master told me that I was in the right."