48. The Beam

There was once a magician who was standing in the midst of a great crowd of people performing his wonders. He had a rooster brought in, which 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-leafed clover, and had therefore become so wise that no deception could stand out against 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 that the rooster is carrying, and no beam?”

Immediately the spell 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 revenge myself.”

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, which was very much swollen, and there was no bridge and no plank to cross it. Then the bride nimbly lifted her dress, and wanted to wade through it. And just as she was thus standing in the water, a man, and it was the magician, 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 likewise, and chased her away with ridicule and laughter.