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In Christian and Mediæval Times: Look

Then he took him home, prepared for him a bath of water, put him in it, gave into his hand a mirror, and said, "Look therein!"

And he sat by his side and read in a book and spake unto him, "Look in the mirror; what seest thou there?" He in the bath replied, - "I see in my house one who places a waxen image on the wall and goes away and takes the cross-bow and bends it and is about to shoot at the image!"

The stranger replied, "If thou valuest thy life, plunge under the water when he is about to shoot."

The man did so. The other read farther in the book and said, "Look, what seest thou?"

The man replied, "I see that he has failed and is very sad, and my wife with him."

The travelling scholar, having prepared to shoot another arrow, standing only half as far away as before, the stranger again warned the man in the bath at the right moment, and he, plunging beneath the water, escaped the fatal shaft. "Look, what seest thou?" inquired the stranger as before, and the man in the bath replied, "I see that he has again failed, and is very sad and says to my wife, 'If I fail the third time, I am a dead man."

The scholar made ready and went close to the image that he might not fail.

Then he who read in the book said, "Plunge!"

The man plunged before the shot. ' Look," said the other, "now what dost thou see?"

He replied, "I see that he has failed for the third time, and the arrow has gone into himself and he is dead and my wife is burying him under the house."

The stranger said, "Now get up and go thy way."

The man wished to reward his saviour, but the latter would not allow it and said, "Pray to God for me."

When the rescued man went home again his wife wished to receive him in a friendly manner, but he would not be agreeable to her and called in her relatives and told them the whole story. The woman denied it, whereupon he took the people to the place where she had buried the scholar and dug him up. Then they took the woman and burned her, which was her just reward.

Similar stories are found in abundance in Germany, Poland, Finland, and other northern countries.