Petit Jean, the fiddler from Yhig, was once on his way home from a village fair. On the road he met a distinguished gentleman on a splendid horse. Seeing that Jean was a musician, the gentleman asked whether he would not like to come along with him to make music throughout the night.

“Why not?” said Petit Jean.

“And what must I give you to play the whole night through?”

“One pistole,” came the reply.

The gentleman handed him the gold coin and took him up onto the horse, and off they went—whoosh!—like the wind. Petit Jean wondered: “Where on earth are we going?”

All at once they stopped, and the fiddler was led into a great, glittering hall, where he was shown to an elevated platform and began to play his dance tunes. After a while, when everyone in the hall was cheerfully dancing, a lady passed by the fiddler in whom he thought he recognized his wife. Astonished, he cried out:

“Jesus, Mary, Joseph! That lady there looks just like my wife!”

Suddenly everything was pitch-dark, and poor Petit Jean found himself sitting on the beam of a gallows. He managed to climb down safely and said several times on his way home:

“Never again onto a horse!”

Reported by the schoolmaster Brandenburg of Burglinster.