The Ditmarsch Tale of Wonders (Grimm)
Division into sections is editorial.
Impossible sights and the paradoxical hare hunt
A storyteller began recounting a series of impossible wonders he claimed to have witnessed. He described extraordinary sights that defied all natural laws and logic.
I saw two roasted fowls flying; they flew quickly and had their breasts turned to heaven and their backs to hell, and an anvil and a millstone swam across the Rhine
The narrator continued his tale of wonders, describing how a frog sat on ice during Whitsuntide, consuming a ploughshare as if it were ordinary food. These impossible visions set the stage for an even more remarkable story about a peculiar hunting expedition.
The most extraordinary tale involved a group of disabled men who attempted to catch a hare despite their physical limitations. The hunting party consisted of four fellows, each with a different disability that should have made their quest impossible.
Three fellows who wanted to catch a hare, went on crutches and stilts; one of them was deaf, the second blind, the third dumb, and the fourth could not stir a step.
Despite their apparent handicaps, these men accomplished their goal through a series of paradoxical actions. The blind man somehow managed to spot the hare running across the field.
The dumb man, who supposedly could not speak, called out to alert his companions.
The lame man, who could not move properly, somehow managed to seize the hare by the neck and capture it successfully.
First, the blind man saw the hare running across the field, the dumb one called to the lame one, and the lame one seized it by the neck.
This impossible hunt demonstrated the narrator's talent for creating tales where physical limitations became advantages, and the natural order of things was completely reversed. The successful capture of the hare by these unlikely hunters exemplified the topsy-turvy world the storyteller had created, where impossibility became reality and contradictions resolved themselves through sheer narrative magic.
Sailing on dry land and final wonders
The narrator's tale continued with even more impossible scenarios. He described men who decided to sail without water, setting their course across solid ground instead of the sea.
There were certain men who wished to sail on dry land, and they set their sails in the wind, and sailed away over great fields.
These peculiar sailors managed to navigate across vast fields using only the wind to propel them forward. Their journey took them over increasingly challenging terrain, including mountainous regions where their unusual voyage met a tragic end. Despite sailing on dry land, they somehow managed to drown while crossing a high mountain, adding another layer of impossibility to their fate.
The narrator concluded his collection of wonders with a series of brief but equally impossible visions. A crab was observed chasing a hare at full speed, reversing the natural predator-prey relationship and defying the physical capabilities of both creatures. High above on a rooftop, a cow had somehow climbed up and made itself comfortable, demonstrating another violation of natural behavior and physical possibility.
The storyteller ended his remarkable recitation with observations about the strange country he described, where even the insects defied normal proportions and behavior. In this topsy-turvy land, flies grew to enormous sizes, comparable to goats in the narrator's own homeland. With a final flourish of whimsy, he addressed his audience directly, suggesting they open a window to let these impossibly large flies escape, as if his words had somehow brought these creatures into the very room where his tale was being told.
In that country the flies are as big as the goats are here. Open the window, that the lies may fly out.
Through this final wordplay between 'lies' and 'flies,' the narrator cleverly acknowledged the fictional nature of his entire account while maintaining the playful spirit that characterized his entire collection of impossible wonders.