In Germany there are many tales of entire kingdoms of dwarfs who, offended by mortal individuals, or by encroaching towns and industries, packing their homes and treasures up and moving away to lands untold. By the last century it was very rare for even single dwarfs to be spotted, where once they were very common.
The Dwarf-people went by Warnstadt, a village not far from Quedinburg, still going toward the east. Since that time the Dwarfs have disappeared out of this country; and it is only now and then that a solitary one may be seen. The Dwarfs on the south side of the Hartz were, in a similar manner, detected plundering the corn-fields. They also agreed to quit the country, and it was settled that they should pass over a small bridge near Neuhof, and that each, by way of transit-duty, should cast a certain portion of his property into a cask to be set there.
The peasants, on their part, covenanted not to appear or look at them. Some, however, had the curiosity to conceal themselves under the bridge, that they might at least hear them departing. They succeeded in their design, and heard during several hours, the trampling of the little men, sounding exactly as if a large flock of sheep was going over the bridge. Other accounts of the departure of the Dwarfs relate as follows:— The Dosenberg is a mountain in Hesse on the Schwalm, in which, not far from the bank of the stream, are two holes by which the Dwarfs used to go in and out.
One of them came frequently in a friendly way to the grandfather of Tobi in Singlis, when he was out in his fields. As he was one day cutting his corn he asked him if he would the next night, for a good sum of money, take a freight over the river. The farmer agreed, and in the evening the Dwarf brought him a sack of wheat as an earnest. Four horses were then put to the waggon, and the farmer drove to the Dosenberg, out of the holes of which the Dwarf brought heavy, but invisible loads to the waggon, which the farmer then drove through the water over to the other side.
He thus kept going backwards and forwards from ten at night till four in the morning, by which time the horses were quite tired. Then said the Dwarf, “It is enough, now you shall see what you have been carrying!” He bade him look over his right shoulder, and then he saw the country far and near filled with the Dwarfs. “These thousand years,” then said the Dwarf, “have we dwelt in the Dosenberg; our time is now up, and we must go to another land. But the hill is still so full of money that it would suffice for the whole country.” He then loaded Tobi’s waggon with money and departed.
The farmer had difficulty in bringing home so heavy a load, but he became a rich man. His posterity are still wealthy people, but the Dwarfs have disappeared out of the country for ever.
