Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 15, 2025
The children are discovered near the Ilsenstein, among the fir-trees, making garlands, listening to the cuckoos, and mocking them in a beautiful duet with echo accompaniment.
In place of the fir-trees they discover the witch's house at the Ilsenstein, with an oven on one side and on the other a cage, both joined to the house by a curious fence of gingerbread figures. The house itself is constructed of sweets and creams.
In the story of the Forty Thieves, the mere name of the plant sesame serves as a talisman to open and shut the secret door which leads into the robbers' cavern; and when the avaricious Cassim Baba, absorbed in the contemplation of the bags of gold and bales of rich merchandise, forgets the magic formula, he meets no better fate than the shepherd of the Ilsenstein.
All this is changed, however, when the father, inquiring after his children, learns that they have gone into the woods. He tells his wife the legend of the Witch of the Ilsenstein and her dreadful practices, while the orchestra builds up a gruesome picture out of fragments from the innocent song which had opened the act.
The springwort, whose marvellous powers we have noticed in the case of the Ilsenstein shepherd, is obtained, according to Pliny, by stopping up the hole in a tree where a woodpecker keeps its young. The bird flies away, and presently returns with the springwort, which it applies to the plug, causing it to shoot out with a loud explosion. The same account is given in German folk-lore.
The forked streak of light is the archetype of the divining-rod in its oldest form, that in which it not only indicates the hidden treasures, but, like the staff of the Ilsenstein shepherd, bursts open the enchanted crypt and reveals them to the astonished wayfarer. Hence the one thing essential to the divining-rod, from whatever tree it be chosen, is that it shall be forked.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking