Grimm's Household Tales

There was once an enchanter who was standing in the midst of a great crowd of people, performing his wonders. He had a rooster brought in, and it lifted a heavy beam and carried it as if it were as light as a feather. But a girl was present who had just found a bit of four-leaf clover and had thus become so wise that no deception could withstand her, and she saw that the beam was nothing but a straw. So she cried, “You people, do you not see that it is a straw the rooster is carrying, and not a beam?” Immediately the enchantment vanished, and the people saw what it was, and drove the magician away in shame and disgrace. He, however, full of inward anger, said, “I will soon take my revenge.”

After some time the girl’s wedding day came, and she was decked out and went in a great procession over the fields to the place where the church was. All at once she came to a stream that was very much swollen, and there was no bridge and no plank to cross it. Then the bride nimbly lifted up her clothes and wanted to wade through it. And just as she was standing like that in the water, a man—it was the enchanter—cried mockingly close beside her, “Aha! Where are your eyes, that you take that for water?” Then her eyes were opened, and she saw that she was standing with her clothes lifted up in the middle of a field that was blue with the flowers of blue flax. Then all the people saw it too and chased her away with ridicule and laughter.