The Ironclad Trunk.

Country of Origin: Austria
Original Language: German
Published in: Sagen aus Österreich
Published by: Ueberreuter

The Ironclad Trunk. Life’s not easy for an apprentice lad in this world! That’s something little Martin Mux knew too well. Many centuries ago he’d been apprenticed to a capable master locksmith in Vienna. Work started early in the morning and the days inside the workshop seemed endless to Martin. He’d really have liked to sleep late in the morning, to idle and to play with his friends but his master was strict and you can easily guess that not everything went well all the time and that the master locksmith pulled his apprentice by his ear quite ungently from time to time.
One of these days the locksmith sent the boy away with a handcart, to the clay pit outside the city. Martin was just too glad not to have to see the workshop for a few hours and merrily whistling a tune, he sauntered along, pushing his handcart and enjoying the warm sunrays on his back. Outside the city he found some other boys and soon he started fooling around with them and forgot about the handcart, the clay and his master. Time passed by so quickly that he didn’t even notice how the shadows got longer and how it grew dark soon. Only when his mates returned to the city one after another, he remembered his assignment. But now it was to late, he didn’t have the time anymore to fill the handcart with clay because he had to return to the city before they’d close the gates.
Anxiously he took his handcart and trotted back. But as he reached the city gates, panting, it was already closed. The boy didn’t have a single coin in his pockets and couldn’t pay the transit penny, he grew desperate and began to cry. What was he supposed to tell his master the next morning? Where was he supposed to spend the night?
Martin sat on his handcart, sobbed silently for a while and then, thoughtless as children sometimes are, he burst out: “If only I knew what I was supposed to do! If I could get into the city, I’d willingly consign my soul to the devil, I wouldn’t mind!”
Just as he’d finished speaking these words, a little man wearing a red doublet appeared in front of him. On his head he wore a pointed hat with a crimson rooster’s feather attached to it that was nodding up and down.
“Why are you crying, dear boy?” the little man asked in a raspy voice.
Startled, Martin stared at the odd-looking creature. “Oh,” he wailed, “I have to return to the city and I don’t have any money. And, aside from that, I’m sure that I’ll get a beating from my master if I return so late and with no clay”.
The devil – because that’s who the little man was – calmed the boy and said: “You shall get your transit penny and I shall fill your cart with clay. Tonight you won’t get beaten, Martin! And how would you like it if I’d make you one of the best master locksmithes it Vienna to boot? Don’t be afraid, I’ve only got one little condition. Should you ever fail to go to mass on a Sunday, your soul shall be mine. Don’t look so fearfully! What of it! All you have to do is go to mass every Sunday and nothing will happen to you.”
This couldn’t be too dangerous, thought the boy. Going to mass every Sunday? That wasn’t difficult. He certainly wouldn’t be enough of a fool to miss it. So he agreed and gave the little man three drops of blood as a pledge. In exchange he got a shiny new penny and miraculously his cart was filled with the finest clay. Merrily the boy passed through the city gates and as he reached the workshop it wasn’t only that he didn’t get a beating but his master even commended him for being so diligent.
The next morning the little man with the red doublet entered the master locksmith’s workshop and commissioned something quite strange. As a last remain of the large ancient forests of the area there stood the trunk of an old oak tree at the corner of the Graben and the Karntner Strasse. For that trunk the little man wanted a supporting ring made of iron. The ring should also have an extremely complicated lock. Neither the master locksmith nor his assistants dared to take on that strange and difficult assignment.
“What?” the stranger shouted indignantly. “You call yourself a master of your trade and still you’re not able to accomplish something so simple? Your apprentice here could do it easily!”
“If my apprentice manages to make that lock,” the locksmith replied sourly, “then I’ll give him his apprenticeship diploma and he shall be free.”
“I’m in!” the boy shouted perkily as he recalled the little man’s promise from the previous evening. And really, within a few hours he had completed both ring and key and he found the work quite easy, he didn’t know himself why. The little man had been waiting in the workshop and went to the oak tree with the boy, put the ring around the trunk and locked it. Then the stranger took the key and disappeared without leaving a trace. Since that time the trunk, and the place where it stands, is called “The Ironclad Trunk”.
Martin Mux got his apprenticeship diploma from his master and thus he became free. Following the old craftsmen’s tradition he took to the road, worked here and there and one day he also got to Nuremberg. The master locksmith, for whom he started working as an assistant there was smitten with amazement. Elaborate grilles that took his other assistants a week to make, he completed within hours and then he even stretched the anvil to grillwork. The locksmith found that quite a bit appalling and so he got rid again of his new assistant soon.
Martin decided to move back to his hometown and after a few months he reached Vienna. And of course he didn’t fail a single time to go to mass on Sunday! He wasn’t afraid of the devil and he was determined to cheat the little guy in the red doublet. In Vienna he heard that the magistrate was looking for a locksmith who could make a key that would fit into the lock of the oak trunk at the Graben. The one who would be able to make that key would be declared a master craftsman and an honourable citizen of Vienna. Many had tried it already but no one had been able to make a key that would fit.
As soon as Martin Mux had heard about that he started working. The little man that had disappeared with the key, however, didn’t like that too much. He made himself invisible and sat at the flue and whenever Martin held his key into the fire, he turned the key bit around. Martin Mux soon understood what the matter was, he smiled shrewdly and joined the bit to the key the other way round before he held it into the fire. So he outsmarted the guy with the red doublet who, blind with rage, had turned the key bit again. Laughing at the little man, Martin ran out of the workshop and the devil shot angrily up and out of the chimney.
All the masters and honourable people of the city had gathered as Martin Mux inserted his key into the lock and opened it. Solemnly Martin was declared master craftsman and honourable citizen of Vienna and filled with elation he threw the key high into the air; but – what a miracle! – it never fell down again.
Now Martin was a master locksmith in Vienna and the good reputation of his craftsmanship soon brought him many customers. The years went by. He lived quietly and happily and never failed to go to mass on Sundays. Now he regretted that he’d made a deal with the devil when he’d still been a boy.
The guy with the red doublet didn’t find it to his liking that his partner was living such an decent lifestyle – because the devil never wants to lose a soul unnecessarily. He spent years waiting for a chance – but master Mux was working diligently on weekdays and always went to church on Sundays.
Martin Mux became richer and richer and soon he was one of the wealthiest citizens of Vienna. What the master craftsman didn’t know, however, was that the guy in the red doublet had had a hand in this. The devil was trying to corrupt his partner with wealth and to make him careless and before long Martin took to gambling and drinking.
One Sunday morning Martin sat with his companions in the tavern called “Zum steinernen Kleeblatt”. As the clock stroke ten, he set down the dice-box and wanted to get up and go to church.
“You’ve still got time!” his friends called. “Do you already want to leave us? You can still go to the 11 o’clock mass.”
Martin Mux was easily persuaded to stay and so he continued drinking and throwing the dices and as the clock stroke eleven, he and his friends were so engrossed in the game that they didn’t even want to think about stopping. “The last mass is only at half eleven”, they shouted merrily, “you’ve still got time!” Once again Martin stayed and continued with the game. Suddenly the clock stroke half eleven. His face turned deathly pale with shock, he dashed up the stairs and ran to the church. In front of the Stephansdom, the cathedral of St. Stephen, he didn’t see anyone, the square was absolutly empty. There was only an old hag leaning on a gravestone, a witch that had been sent there by the devil.
“By God,” he called, out of his breath, “is the last mass over already?”
“The last mass?” the old woman asked wonderingly. “The last mass is long over. It’s almost one o’clock.” Martin Mux didn’t hear the old witch’s snickering anymore – it wasn’t even noon yet – and desperately he ran back to the tavern where he tore the silver buttons off his doublet and gave them to his friends so that they wouldn’t forget him and that his fate would be a warning to them. Only now the bells of the city began to strike noon. As soon as the sound of the bells had died away the little man with the red doublet stood in the entranceway of the tavern. “Hey, master Mux,” he called in his raspy voice, “don’t miss the mass! Don’t you hear the bells striking twelve?”
Desparately Martin Mux ran up the stairs again and to the Stephansdom. The little man followed him upon his heels and grew bigger and bigger. As they reached St. Stephen’s cemetary it was a huge, fire-spitting creature that stood behind the poor craftsman while inside the church the priest was issuing the final blessings. It was the end of the mass.
And it was also the end of master Martin Mux. The fiery beast grabbed him, flew high up into the air and disappeared. In the evening the citizens of Vienna found Martin Mux lying dead on Mt. Rabenstein.
From that time on, every locksmith in his travel years who came through Vienna hammered, in rememberance of the unfortunate master, a nail into the oak trunk in the centre of the city which soon actually became an ‘ironclad trunk’.