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The 15th story tells of how Eulenspiegel staged a play for Easter Mass so that the priest and his housekeeper would fight with the farmers
As Easter drew nigh, the priest said to his sexton, Eulenspiegel: "It is here customary that, each Easter night, the farmers stage a play about the resurrection of our Lord." He was to help with it since it was also the custom that the sexton prepare and direct it. So Eulenspiegel thought to himself: "How can an Easter play be made with farmers?" And he said to the priest: "But there is no learned villager here. You will have to lend me your maid for it. She can read and write." The priest said: "Yes, yes, just take anyone who can help you, man or woman; my maid has also played in it many a time." The housekeeper was pleased with this arrangement. She wanted to be the angel in the sepulchre because she knew the words by heart. So Eulenspiegel looked for two villagers and took them with him. They and he should be the Marys coming to visit the grave. And Eulenspiegel taught the farmers their words in Latin. The priest was our Lord God and was to rise from the grave.
When Eulenspiegel and his two farmers came before the grave, dressed as women, the housekeeper spoke her piece as the angel in the sepulchre, in Latin: "Quem quaeritis? Whom do you seek?" So the farmer in front, the first Mary, replied as Eulenspiegel had taught him: "We seek an old, one-eyed priest's whore." When the maid heard that she was being teased because of her one eye, she became venomous and irate at Eulenspiegel, sprang out of the grave and wanted to hit him in the face. She struck out randomly and caught one of the farmers in the eye so badly it swelled up. When the other farmer saw that, he also started punching with his fist and hit the housekeeper on the head so hard that her wings fell off. When the priest saw that, he dropped his banner and came to his maid's aid. He launched himself at one of the farmers and fought with him in front of the sepulchre. When the other farmers saw that, they came running and there was a great commotion. The priest and the cook lay underneath and so did the farmers who were playing the women and they lay in such a way that the other farmers had to disentangle them from each other.
Eulenspiegel, in the meantime, had grasped the opportunity and made off in time. He ran out of the church, left the village and did not return. God only knows where they got a new sexton!
English translation created for E2 from the original by Hermann Bote at the German project Gutenberg.