There I saw that when I rushed in pell-mell with the flying enemy, they had dropped the portcullis (a heavy falling door, with sharp spikes at the bottom, let down suddenly to prevent the entrance of an enemy into a fortified town) unperceived by me, which had totally cut off his hind part, that still lay quivering on the outside of the gate.  It would have been an irreparable loss, had not our farrier contrived to bring both parts together while hot.  He sewed them up with sprigs and young shoots of laurels that were at hand; the wound healed, and, what could not have happened but to so glorious a horse, the sprigs took root in his body, grew up, and formed a bower over me; so that afterwards I could go upon many other expeditions in the shade of my own and my horse’s laurels.

THE BARON’S COLD DAY

By Rodolph Eric Raspe

Success was not always with me.  I had the misfortune to be overpowered by numbers, to be made prisoner of war; and, what is worse, but always usual among the Turks, to be sold for a slave.  In that state of humiliation my daily task was not very hard and laborious, but rather singular and irksome.  It was to drive the Sultan’s bees every morning to their pasture grounds, to attend them all the day long, and against night to drive them back to their hives.  One evening I missed a bee, and soon observed that two bears had fallen upon her to tear her to pieces for the honey she carried.  I had nothing like an offensive weapon in my hands but the silver hatchet which is the badge of the Sultan’s gardeners and farmers.  I threw it at the robbers, with an intention to frighten them away, and set the poor bee at liberty; but by an unlucky turn of my arm, it flew upwards, and continued rising till it reached the moon.  How should I recover it? how fetch it down again?  I recollected that Turkey beans grow very quick, and run up to an astonishing height.  I planted one immediately; it grew, and actually fastened itself to one of the moon’s horns.  I had no more to do now but to climb up by it into the moon, where I safely arrived, and had a troublesome piece of business before I could find my silver hatchet, in a place where everything has the brightness of silver; at last, however, I found it in a heap of chaff and chopped straw.  I was now for returning:  but, alas! the heat of the sun had dried up my bean; it was totally useless for my descent; so I fell to work, and twisted me a rope of that chopped straw, as long and as well as I could make it.  This I fastened to one of the moon’s horns, and slid down to the end of it.  Here I held myself fast with the left hand, and with the hatchet in my right, I cut the long, now useless, end of the upper part, which, when tied to the lower end, brought me a good deal lower:  this repeated splicing and tying of the rope did not improve its quality, or bring me down to the Sultan’s farm.  I was four or five miles from the earth at least when it broke; I fell to the ground with such amazing violence that I found myself stunned, and in a hole nine fathoms deep at least, made by the weight of my body falling from so great a height:  I recovered, but knew not how to get out again; however, I dug slopes or steps with my finger nails (the baron’s nails were then of forty years’ growth), and easily accomplished it.