Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/504



And mind the words that you and I said,

By the fountain cool in the greensward shade!”

She opens the door, and, after the frog has supped off a golden plate, he sleeps on her couch till morning, when he goes away. This happens three nights in succession, but when the princess awakes, on the third morning, she is astonished to see, instead of the frog, a handsome young prince, gazing on her with the most beautiful eyes she had ever seen, and standing at the head of her bed. He then explains how he had been enchanted by a spiteful fairy, and so on.

Robert Chambers, in his collection of Scottish songs, gives a curious variant, as told by an old Annandale nurse. A young girl is sent by her mother “to the well at the world’s end” with a wooden dish to fetch water. When the lassie cam’ to the well, she fand it dry; but there was a padda [i.e., a frog] that cam’ loup-loup-loupin’, and loupit into her dish. Says the padda to the lassie: “I’ll gie ye plenty o’ water if ye’ll be my wife.” The lassie didna like the padda, but she was fain to say she wad tak’ him, just to get the water; and, ye ken, she never thought the puir brute wad be serious, or wad ever say ony mair about it. Sae she got the water, and took it hame to her mother; and she heard nae mair o’ the padda till that night, when, as she and her mother were sitting by the fireside, what do they hear but the puir padda at the outside o’ the door, singing wi’ a’ his micht:

Says the mother: “What noise is that at the door, dauchter?” “Hout!” says the lassie, “it’s naething but a filthy padda.” “Open the door to the puir padda,” says the mother. Sae the lassie opened the door, and the padda