Chapter Jericho to Jew of J by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Another legend is that Jesus, pressed down by the weight of His cross, stop ped to rest at the door of a cobbler named Ahasuerus, who pushed Him away, saying, “Get off! Away with you! away!” Our Lord replied, “Truly, I go away, and that quickly; but tarry thou till I come.”

(This is the legend given by Paul von Eitzen, bishop of Schleswig in 1547.—Greve: Memoirs of Paul von Eitzen, 1744.)

A third legend says that it was the cobbler Ahasuerus who haled Jesus to the judgment-seat; and that as the Man of Sorrows stayed to rest awhile on a stone, he pushed Him, saying, “Get on, Jesus! Here you shall not stay!” Jesus replied, “I truly go away, and go to rest; but thou shalt go away and never rest till I come.”

Signor Gualdi, who had been dead 130 years, appeared in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and had his likeness taken by Titian. One day he disappeared as mysteriously as he had come.—Turkish Spy, ii. (1682).

Dr. Croly, in his novel called Salathiel (1827), traces the course of the Wandering Jew; so does Eugène Sue, in Le Juif Errant, (1845); but in these novels the Jew makes no figure of importance.

(G. Doré, in 1861, illustrated the legend in folio wood engravings.)

N.B.—The legend of the Wild Huntsman, called by Shakespeare “Herne the Hunter,” and by Father Matthieu “St. Hubert,” is said to be a jew who would not suffer Jesus to drink from a horsetrough, but pointed out to Him some water in a hoof-print, and bade Him go there and drink.—Kuhn von Schwarz: Nordd. Sagen, 499.

(Poetical versions of the legend have been made by A. W. von Schlegel, Die Warnung; by Schubert, Ahasuer; by Goethe, Aus Meinem Leben, all in German. By Mrs. Norton, The Undying One, in English; etc. The legend is based on St. John’s Gospel xxi. 22, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” The apostles thought the words meant that John would not die, but tradition has applied them to some one else.)