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The Three Thieves    (Die drei Diebe)    1809

The reader is advised not to believe everything that appears in this story. However, it is described in a beautiful book and put into verse.

From their youth, Harry Tinder and Freddy Tinder practised the craft of their father, who had already copulated with the rope maker's daughter at the Auerbach gallows, namely with rope; and a schoolmate, Dodgy Dieter, also joined in and was the youngest. But they did not murder or attack people, they only visited chicken coops at night, and when the opportunity arose, kitchens, cellars and attics, and sometimes even money boxes, and they always bought the cheapest goods at the markets. But when there was nothing to steal, they practised all kinds of tasks and daring feats among themselves in order to improve their skills. Once in the forest, Harry sees a bird sitting on a nest in a tall tree, thinks it has eggs, and asks the others: ‘Who is capable of getting the eggs out of the nest without the bird noticing?’ Freddy, like a cat, climbed up, quietly approached the nest, slowly drilled a small hole in the bottom, let one egg after another fall into his hand, patched the nest back up with moss, and brought the eggs. ‘But who can put the eggs back under the bird,’ said Freddy, ‘without the bird noticing?’ So Harry climbed up the tree, but Freddy climbed up after him, and while Harry slowly slipped the eggs under the bird without it noticing, Freddy slowly pulled Harry's trousers down without Harry noticing. There was a great deal of laughter, and the other two said, ‘Freddy is the master.’ But Dodgy Dieter said, ‘I can see that I can't do it with you at the same time, and if things go wrong and misfortune befalls us, I'm not afraid for you, but for myself.’ So he left, became honest again, and lived with his wife, working hard and keeping house. In late autumn, not long after the other two had stolen a little horse from the horse market, they visited Dieter and asked him how he was doing, for they had heard that he had slaughtered a pig and wanted to take a little look at where it was. It hung on the wall in the chamber. When they had gone, Dieter said, ‘Wife, I will carry the little column into the kitchen and cover it with the trough, otherwise it will no longer be ours tomorrow.’ During the night, the thieves came and broke through the wall as quietly as they could, but the booty was no longer there. Dieter noticed something, got up, went around the house and took a look. Meanwhile, Harry sneaked around the other corner into the house to the bed where his wife was lying, took on his husband's voice and said, ‘Wife, the pig is no longer in the chamber.’ The woman said, ‘Don't talk nonsense! Didn't you carry it into the kitchen yourself?’ ‘Yes,’ said Harry, ‘that's why I'm half asleep,’ and he went and fetched the pig and carried it away without making a sound, not knowing where his brother was in the dark night, thinking he would come to the agreed place in the forest. And when Dieter came back into the house and reached for the little column, he cried, ‘Wife, now they've brought the gallows ropes after all.’ But he did not give up so quickly, instead chasing after the thieves, and when he caught up with Harry (who was already far from home) and realised that he was alone, he quickly assumed the voice of the peacemaker and said, ‘Brother, let me carry the little column now, you must be tired.’ Harry thought it was his brother and gave him the pig, saying he wanted to go ahead into the forest and make a fire. But Dieter turned back behind him, said to himself, ‘I've got you back, my dear little pig,’ and carried it home. Meanwhile, Freddy wandered around in the night until he saw the fire in the forest, came over, and asked his brother, ‘Do you have the pig, Harry?’ Harry said, ‘Don't you have it, Freddy?’ They looked at each other with wide eyes, and would not have needed such a crackling fire of beech chips for cooking at night. But the fire crackled all the more beautifully now at home in Dieter's kitchen. For the pig was slaughtered immediately upon their return home, and the boiled meat was placed over the fire. For Dieter said, ‘Wife, I am hungry, and what we do not eat in time, the rogues will take.’ But when he lay down in a corner and dozed off a little, and his wife turned the meat with an iron fork and looked to the side because her husband was sighing in his sleep, a pointed pole slowly came down through the chimney, speared the best piece in the pot, and pulled it up; and as the man whimpered more and more anxiously in his sleep, and the woman looked after him more and more diligently, the pole came a second time; and when the woman woke Dieter, saying, ‘Husband, now let's serve dinner,’ the cauldron was empty, and no big fire had been necessary for cooking dinner. But just as they were both about to go to bed hungry, thinking, ‘If the executioner wants to take the little column, we can't lift it anyway,’ the thieves came down from the roof, through the hole in the wall into the chamber, and from the chamber into the parlour, and brought back what they had stolen. Now a merry life began. They ate and drank, joked and laughed as if they knew it was the last time, and were in good spirits until the last quarter moon passed over the little house, the roosters crowed for the second time in the village, and the butcher's dog barked in the distance. For the knitted horsemen were on their trail, and when the wife of Dodgy Dieter said, ‘It's time for bed now,’ the knitted horsemen came because of the stolen horse and took Harry Tinder and Freddy Tinder to the tower and to prison.