Grimm's Household Tales

In ancient times a giant was once traveling on a great highway when suddenly an unknown man sprang up before him and said, “Halt, not one step farther!” “What!” cried the giant. “A creature whom I can crush between my fingers wants to block my way? Who are you, that you dare to speak so boldly?” “I am Death,” answered the other. “No one resists me, and you also must obey my commands.” But the giant refused and began to struggle with Death. It was a long, violent battle; at last the giant got the upper hand and struck Death down with his fist, so that he dropped beside a stone. The giant went his way, and Death lay there conquered and so weak that he could not get up again. “What will be done now,” he said, “if I stay lying here in a corner? No one will die in the world, and it will get so full of people that they won’t have room to stand beside each other.” In the meantime a young man who was strong and healthy came along the road, singing a song and glancing around on every side. When he saw the half-fainting man, he went compassionately to him, raised him up, poured a strengthening drink out of his flask for him, and waited until he came to. “Do you know,” said the stranger, while he was getting up, “who I am, and who it is that you have helped back onto his feet?” “No,” answered the youth, “I do not know you.” “I am Death,” he said. “I spare no one, and I can make no exception with you; but so that you may see that I am grateful, I promise you that I will not fall upon you unexpectedly, but will send my messengers to you before I come and take you away.” “Well,” said the youth, “it is something gained that I will know when you come, and at any rate be safe from you for so long.” Then he went on his way and was lighthearted, and enjoyed himself, and lived without thought. But youth and health did not last long; soon sicknesses and sorrows came that tormented him by day and took away his rest by night. “I will not die,” he said to himself, “for Death will send his messengers before that, but I do wish these wretched days of sickness were over.” As soon as he felt well again, he began once more to live merrily. Then one day someone tapped him on the shoulder. He looked around, and Death stood behind him and said, “Follow me; the hour of your departure from this world has come.” “What,” replied the man, “will you break your word? Did you not promise me that you would send your messengers to me before coming yourself? I have seen none!” “Silence!” answered Death. “Have I not sent one messenger to you after another? Did not fever come and strike you, and shake you, and cast you down? Has dizziness not bewildered your head? Has not gout pinched you in all your limbs? Did not your ears ring? Did not toothache bite into your cheeks? Was it not dark before your eyes? And besides all that, has not my own brother Sleep reminded you of me every night? Did you not lie at night as if you were already dead?” The man could make no answer; he yielded to his fate and went away with Death.

178 Master Pfriem (Master Cobbler’s Awl)

Master Pfriem was a short, thin, but lively man, who never rested a moment. His face, of which his turned-up nose was the only prominent feature, was marked with smallpox and pale as death; his hair was gray and shaggy, and his eyes were small, but they glanced perpetually about on all sides. He saw everything, criticized everything, knew everything best, and was always in the right. When he went into the streets, he moved his arms about as if he were rowing; and once he struck the pail of a girl who was carrying water so high in the air that he himself was soaked all over by it. “Stupid thing,” he cried to her while he was shaking himself, “could you not see that I was coming behind you?” By trade he was a shoemaker, and when he worked, he pulled his thread out with such force that he drove his fist into everyone who did not keep far enough away. No apprentice stayed with him more than a month, for he always had some fault to find with even the very best work. At one time it was that the stitches were not even; at another, that one shoe was too long, or one heel higher than the other, or the leather not cut large enough. “Wait,” he said to his apprentice. “I will soon show you how we make skins soft.” And he brought a strap and gave him a couple of strokes across the back. He called them all sluggards. He himself did not get much work done, for he never sat still for a quarter of an hour. If his wife got up very early in the morning and lit the fire, he jumped out of bed and ran barefoot into the kitchen, crying, “Will you burn my house down on me? That is a fire one could roast an ox by! Does wood cost nothing?” If the servants were standing by their washtubs, laughing and telling each other all they knew, he scolded them and said, “There stand the geese, cackling and forgetting their work to gossip! And why fresh soap? Disgraceful extravagance and shameful idleness into the bargain! They want to save their hands and not rub the things properly!” And out he would run and knock a pail full of soap and water over, so that the whole kitchen was flooded. Someone was building a new house, so he hurried to the window to look on. “There, they are using that red sandstone again that never dries!” he cried. “No one will ever be healthy in that house! And just look how badly the fellows are laying the stones! Besides, the mortar is good for nothing! It ought to have gravel in it, not sand. I will live to see that house tumble down on the people who are in it.” He sat down, put a couple of stitches in, and then jumped up again, unfastened his leather apron, and cried, “I will just go out and appeal to those men’s consciences.” He came upon the carpenters. “What’s this?” he cried. “You are not working by the line! Do you expect the beams to be straight? One mistake will put everything wrong.” He snatched an axe out of a carpenter’s hand and wanted to show him how he ought to cut; but as a cart loaded with clay came by, he threw the axe away and hastened to the peasant who was walking beside it. “You are not in your right mind,” he said, “to yoke young horses to a heavily laden cart. The poor beasts will die on the spot.” The peasant did not give him an answer, and Pfriem, in a rage, ran back into his workshop. When he was setting himself to work again, the apprentice handed him a shoe. “Well, what’s that again?” he screamed. “Haven’t I told you that you ought not to cut shoes so broad? Who would buy a shoe like this, which is hardly anything but a sole? I insist on my orders being followed exactly.” “Master,” answered the apprentice, “you may well be quite right about the shoe being a bad one, but it is the one that you yourself cut out and yourself set to work on. When you jumped up a while ago, you knocked it off the table, and I have only just picked it up. An angel from heaven, however, would never make you believe that.”

One night Master Pfriem dreamed that he was dead and on his way to heaven. When he got there, he knocked loudly at the door. “I am surprised,” he said to himself, “that they have no knocker on the door; one knocks one’s knuckles sore.” The apostle Peter opened the door and wanted to see who was demanding admission so noisily. “Ah, it’s you, Master Pfriem,” he said. “Well, I’ll let you in, but I warn you that you must give up that habit of yours and find fault with nothing you see in heaven, or you may fare badly.” “You might have spared your warning,” answered Pfriem. “I already know what is seemly, and here, thank God, everything is perfect, and there is nothing to blame, as there is on earth.” So he went in and walked up and down the wide expanses of heaven. He looked around him, to the left and to the right, but sometimes shook his head or muttered something to himself. Then he saw two angels who were carrying away a beam. It was the beam that someone had had in his own eye while he was looking for the splinter in the eye of another. They did not, however, carry the beam lengthwise but obliquely. “Did anyone ever see such a piece of stupidity?” thought Master Pfriem; but he said nothing and seemed satisfied with it. “It comes to the same thing after all, whichever way they carry the beam, straight or crooked, if they only get along with it; and truly I do not see them knock against anything.” Soon after this he saw two angels who were drawing water out of a well into a bucket, but at the same time he observed that the bucket was full of holes and that the water was running out of it on every side. They were watering the earth with rain. “Hang it!” he exclaimed, but he luckily caught himself and thought, “Perhaps it is only a pastime. If it is an amusement, then it seems they can do useless things of this kind even here in heaven, where people, as I have already noticed, do nothing but idle about.” He went farther and saw a cart that had stuck fast in a deep hole. “It’s no wonder,” he said to the man who stood by it. “Who would load so unreasonably? What have you there?” “Good wishes,” replied the man. “I could not go along the right way with it, but still I have pushed it safely up here, and they won’t leave me stuck here.” In fact, an angel did come and harness two horses to it. “That’s quite right,” thought Pfriem, “but two horses won’t get that cart out; it must have at least four.” Another angel came and brought two more horses; she did not, however, harness them in front of it but behind. That was too much for Master Pfriem. “Clumsy creature,” he burst out, “what are you doing there? Has anyone, since the world began, ever seen a cart drawn in that way? But you, in your conceited arrogance, think that you know everything best.” He was going to say more, but one of the inhabitants of heaven seized him by the throat and pushed him out with irresistible strength. Beneath the gateway Master Pfriem turned his head around to take one more look at the cart and saw that it was being raised into the air by four winged horses.

At this moment Master Pfriem awoke. “Things are certainly arranged in heaven differently from the way they are on earth,” he said to himself, “and that excuses much; but who can look with patience at horses harnessed both behind and in front? To be sure, they had wings, but who could know that? It is, besides, great folly to fix a pair of wings to a horse that already has four legs to run with! But I must get up, or else they will make nothing but mistakes for me in my house. It is a lucky thing for me, though, that I am not really dead.”