NO. CLX. The Welling Silver.
“In February of the year 1605, in the reign of Henry Julius, Duke of Brunswick, at a mile’s distance from Quedlinburg, where it is called at the Dale, it happened that a poor peasant sent his daughter into the next shaw to pick up sticks for fuel. The girl took for this use a larger basket upon her head, and a smaller in her hand; and when she had filled them both and was going home, a mannikin clad all in white came towards her, and asked:—
“‘What art carrying there?’
“‘Gathered sticks,’ the girl made answer, ‘for heating and cooking.’
“‘Empty the wood out,’ said further the little manling, ‘take thy basket and follow me. I shall show thee something that is better and more profitable than thy sticks.’
“He then took her by the hand, and led her back again to a knoll, and showed her a place which might be of two ordinary tables’ breadth of a fair pure silver, being smaller and larger coins of a moderate thickness, with a image stamped like a Virgin Mary, and all round an impress of exceedingly old writing. As the silver welled up, as it were, abundantly out of the ground, the little girl was terrified and drew back, neither would she empty out the sticks from her small hand-basket. Accordingly, the little man in white himself did so, filled the basket with the money, and gave it back to the little damsel with saying, ‘That shall be better for thee than thy sticks.’ She was confounded and took it; but upon the mannikin’s requiring that she should likewise empty out her larger basket and take silver therein, she refused and said—‘That she must carry fuel home too; for there were little children at home who must have a warm room, and there must be wood ready likewise for cooking.’ This contented the manling, who said, ‘Well, then, go; take it all home,’ and thereupon disappeared.
“The girl carried the basket of silver home, and told what had happened to her. The boors now ran flocking with pickaxes and other tools, and would have their share of the treasure, but none of them was able to find the spot where the silver had welled out.
“The Prince of Brunswick had a pound of the coined silver brought him, as did moreover a burgess of Halberstadt, N. Everkan, purchase the like.”
The quick-sighted reader will not easily have missed detecting the sudden effect produced upon the two spirits by the truthful right-mindedness of the two little girls.
Correspondingly, James Grimm, from surveying collectively the Teutonic traditions of bewitched or mysteriously hidden treasure, says—