me.' The father cried out, 'Gate and
door, chamber and cupboard, shall all be opened to you now.'

"Thus the son was well received, and had a soft bed prepared for him by
his sister and mother, and the latter called out to her daughter, 'Run,
fetch a bolster and a soft cushion.' That was put under his arm and
laid near the warm stove, and he waited in comfort till the meal was
prepared. It was a supper for a lord; finely minced vegetables with
good meat, a fat goose as large as a bustard, roasted on the spit,
roasted and boiled fowls. And the father said, 'If I had wine it should
be drunk to-day; but drink, dear son, of the best spring that ever
flowed out of the earth.'

"The young Helmbrecht then unpacked his presents for his father, a
whetstone, a scythe, and an axe, the best peasant-treasures in the
world; for his mother, a fur cloak, which he had stolen from a priest;
to his sister, Gotelind, a silk sash and gold lace, which would have
better suited a lady of distinction,--he had taken it from a pedlar.
Then he said, 'I must sleep, I have ridden far, and rest is needful for
me to night.' He slept till late the next day in the bed over which his
sister Gotelind had spread a newly washed shirt, for a sheet was
unknown there.

"So the son abode with his father.

"After a time the father inquired of his son what were the court
customs where he had been living. 'I also,' he said, 'went once when I
was a boy, with cheese and eggs to court. The knights were then very
different from now, courteous, and with good manners; they occupied
themselves with knightly games, they danced and sang with the ladies;
when the musician came with his fiddle, the ladies stood up, the
knights advanced to them, took them elegantly by the hand, and danced
featly; when that was over, one of them read out of a book about one
_Ernst_;[9] all was carried on then with cheerful familiarity. Some
shot at a mark with bow and arrows, others went out hunting and deer
shooting; the worst of them would now be the best. For now those are
esteemed who are liars and eaves-droppers, and truth and honour are
changed for falsehood; the old tournaments are no longer the custom,
others are in vogue instead of them. Formerly one heard them call out
in the knightly games "Hurrah, knight, be joyful!" There now only
resounds through the air, "Hunt knight, hunt; stab, strike, and
mutilate this one, cut off this man's foot for me, and the hands of
that one, and h