We give these tales simply as specimens of a literature which in mediæval times rivalled in popularity and interest all other kinds of literature put together. That even yet it is not without attraction, and that to minds which in some aspects seem most opposed to its influence, the preface of the late Charles Kingsley to “The Hermits” conclusively shows. Such tales have, too, a deeper interest to all who study the manner in which at a certain stage of intellectual cultivation the human mind seems alone able to take hold upon religious truth; or, at least, the side on which it is then most susceptible to its impressions. It is easy enough to laugh at these legends, and to throw them aside in contempt, as alternately irreverent or superstitious; but their very existence has an historical value which no ecclesiastical historian should neglect. Their grossness and rudeness to a great extent hide from us their real tenderness and true religious feeling; but they were, doubtless, to those who first heard them, and are still to those who now recite them, fully as instructive, and have quite as beneficial, purifying, and ennobling influence on them as the most polished and refined of the religious tales of the present day have on the young of our own generation.
Fourteen.[1]
Like many others in the world, there was a mother and her son. The lad was as strong as fourteen men together, but he was also obliged to eat as much as fourteen men. They were poor, and on that account he often suffered from hunger. He said one day to his mother, that it would be better for him to try and go somewhere else to see if he could be any better off; that he could not bear it any longer like this; that he was pained to see how much it cost her to feed him.
The mother with regret allows him to depart. He goes off then far, far, far away, and comes to a large house. He asks if they want a servant there, and they answer that they will speak to the master. The master himself comes and says to him, “I employ experienced labourers generally, but I will take you nevertheless.”
The lad answers, “I must forewarn you, that I eat as much as fourteen men, but I do work in proportion.”
He asks him, “What do you know how to do?”
He says to him, “I know a little of everything.”
The next day the master takes him into a field, and says to him:
“You must mow all this meadow.” He says to him, “Yes.”