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Katarina Srimpf
Protagonists in humorous tales of the Lembergs consist of individuals who em¬
body the definition of fools. The behavior of these characters is absurd, inappropri¬
ate, stupid, and lacking in judgment, while at the same time their actions appear
comical and amusing. One of the most well-known humorous tales relates a story
of how the Lembergs stretched the church (ATU 1326) (ill. 230).
“There was a subsidiary of St. Pancracius on a hill over Lemberg and it is still
there to this day. The Lembergs realized that the church became too low and too
narrow for their needs and decided to enlarge it. How did they go about this? They
started at the outside wall. Alongside it, they drew a line pretty high up from the
ground. Then they piled manure all around the church and up to the line. They
wanted to fertilize it to make it grow. It took a few days for the manure to reduce,
leaving the line much higher. ‘Look, said the Lembergs, ‘this is how much the
church grew since we were wise enough to fertilize it!’ They skillfully removed the
manure and set about their second task, since the church was not only too low but
also too narrow. It needed stretching. This, too, they undertook in their own unique
fashion. They agreed to push the church asunder. They gathered around the church
and first decided how far it should be pushed out. They took off their fur coats
and laid them down alongside the wall to mark the desired width. “When the wall
reaches the fur coats, then we stop!’ No sooner said than done, they all went inside
the church, arranged themselves along the wall and leaned against it with their
backs. They pushed and pushed until sweat poured down their faces and they were
almost out of breath. During this time, a vagrant came by and saw the fur coats
lying on the ground. Bold as brass, he picked them up and ran away to the forest.
Meanwhile, the men inside the church grew tired. One of them stepped out of the
church to see how far they managed to push the wall. Because no coats were to be
seen, he jumped for joy and screamed, ‘Stop, you men, stop, it’s enough, there are no
coats to be seen!’ The Lembergs stepped out of the church and saw with their own
eyes that they stretched the church wall well beyond the fur coats” (Kuret 1954: 7).
There are many more such stories, from how the Lembergs built a windowless
town hall and then brought in sacks of light (ATU 1245), how they swam in flax
because they believed it to be the ocean (ATU 1290 + 1287), how they shot at
a sausage because they thought they were facing an alien being (ATU 1339), and
many more.
Here are some possible explanations why the Lemberg market town and its in¬
habitants came to be treated as village idiots and a laughing stock. As research on
humorous stories in Slovenia started in the 1950s, Niko Kuret attempted to explain
the existence of such stories about Lemberg. He was of the opinion that small towns
and town squares became “home to narrow-minded, comfortable, petty and selfish
provincial life. Provincials and townsmen with a narrow mind view wanted to live
well and become rich fast without sacrificing much effort or risk. For this reason,
they tried to make the sovereign give them various prerogatives that they later used
for their own profiteering aims. Farmers from the countryside were among the most