Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/284

278 They said to one, “Where have you been to-day?” And he said, “I found a Jew and a Gentile, and I had my joke with them, and I gave false evidence in favour of the Gentile.” And they said to the second, “Where have you been to-day?” And he said, “I have been preventing the daughter of the emperor and king from giving birth to a child; it is already seven days that she has been in labour; if they only took some grass, and put it on her nose, she would instantly give birth.” They asked the third demon where he had been? He said, “I have stopped the spring of a certain country, and all the animals there are perishing from thirst. If they would take a black ox and kill him on the well, the water would come again.” Now the Jew kept the matter in his heart, got up in the morning, and went to the emperor’s country. He found his daughter still in labour. They asked him if he had any medicine. He showed them the root of the tree, and they pressed it on her nose, and she gave birth. The king gave him much money, for this was his only child. Afterwards he went to the country where the waters were stopped. They asked him if he could do something. He said, “Take a black ox and sacrifice it on the well, and the water will come up.” They did so, and the water did come up, and they gave him a lot of money. On the following day, the Gentile who had taken away all his money found the Jew, and wondered how he had got so much money. He asked him: “I have taken all your money, whence have you got such riches?” And he told him the whole story. He also did likewise, and passed the night in the ruin. But the three demons came and killed him. In order that Prov. xi, 8, may be fulfilled.

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[This is evidently a variant of Grimm’s “The Two Travellers” (No. 107), parallels to which have been enumerated by R. Köhler in his notes to the first of Widter and Wolf’s Venetian folk-tales in ''Jahrb, d. rom. und eng. Philologie, vii, pp. 6-n, to which add those by E. Cosquin in his Contes de Lorraine'', i, 87 seq.—J. J.]

FOLK-LORE EXTRACTS.

Snake with Jewelled Head.—“Among others” [stones possessed and prized by the Cherokees, and used, in their conjuring ceremonies], “there is one in the possession of a conjurer, remarkable for its brilliancy and beauty, but more so for the extraordinary manner in which it was found. It grew, if we may credit the Indians, on the head of a monstrous serpent, whose retreat was by its brilliancy discovered; but a great number of snakes attending him, he being, as I suppose by his diadem, of a superior rank among serpents, made it dangerous to attack him. Many were the attempts made by the