Hermann Hesse Tells Fairy Tales: The Drinking Horn

From the Gesta Romanorum: The Drinking Horn

There is a small mountain in the kingdom of England (also known as land of the Angles) that looks like the shape of a man reaching for the pinnacle. Knights and huntsmen often sought this place as a refuge when they were exhausted from heat or thirst.  Indeed, once it happened that a solitary wanderer who had been separated from his comrades climbed this mountain. He spoke to himself as if in the company of another: “I am really quite thirsty!” And immediately a cupbearer appeared at his side and in his extended hand he held a large drinking horn decorated with gold and precious stones. This is the type of drinking horn some people used instead of a cup. The cupbearer offered him this vessel filled with an unknown but extremely sweet nectar. Immediately after he drank from it, the heat and fatigue faded from his body and it seemed that he hadn’t exerted himself at all but rather should now take up the task at hand with renewed vigor. After he had sipped the drink the servant gave him a clean linen cloth to dry his lips. And upon finishing this service he vanished without expecting a reward for his assistance nor was there another request or demand. The wanderer did this for many years until he reached an advanced age and it had become a well known and daily occurrence. Finally a certain knight was out hunting and arrived at the very spot and demanded a drink. When he received it he did not return the drinking horn after he sipped, as was the custom, but rather he kept it for his own further use. When his lord discovered this matter he condemned the thief to death and gave the drinking horn to an English King, Henry the Old, so that no one would think that he had approved such an enormous transgression.