Foreign Tales and Traditions/Volume 1/Legends of Rubezahl/The Coach-Wheel
No. II. THE COACH WHEEL.
A coachman had one day, with great exertion, rolled a wheel across the mountain. He had just got it conveyed to the top of a considerable eminence, and, feeling himself much fatigued, had placed the wheel against a tree, and laid himself down under another, where he soon fell asleep. In the meantime, Rubezahl bewitches the wheel. The coachman awoke much refreshed from his slumber, and attempted to renew his task; but the obstinate wheel resisted every effort to set it again in motion. Long he toiled, and struggled, and panted in vain; at last, by one convulsive exertion, he tore it from the tree; but it now fell with the weight of a ton to the ground, and by no effort could he succeed in raising it again. At the moment, however, that the coachman, quite out of breath and imprecating a thousand curses upon the obstinate wheel, had renounced in despair the attempt to move it, up it started, and after poising itself for a moment, without any assistance from its exasperated guide, bounded away with amazing velocity down the rocky declivity of the mountain! Poor coachee hastened after it, and saw with infinite astonishment that it ran as easily up the ridge of the mountain as down. After a long and toilsome chase the wheel seemed to slacken its course, and coachee began to hope he might overtake it; but just as he came up to it, and was extending his arm to lay hold of it, away it sprung from him with redoubled rapidity! Thus the wheel continued to run, and the coachman after it, over many a weary mile, up hill and down dale. At last, its pursuer succeeded in grasping it firmly, and wheel and coachman fell to the ground together; again it started up—again its tenacious pursuer sprung after, and away they flew till both fell together on a dunghill at the stable-door, whither the exhausted coachman had at first designed to conduct the wheel.
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.
| Original: |
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
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| Translation: |
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
