Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/353

 Miscellanea. 333

Folktales from the ^gean. Collected by W. R. Paton, Ph.D. (Continued from vol. xi., p. 119.)

VIII. The Bad Bishop.

(Told me in the convent of Kalloni, Lesbos, by a very clever and courteous old lady of about seventy-five, a member of that sisterhood, and an aunt of my friend, Mrs. Papps, of Kalloni. She had heard the story in her earlier years at Kassaba, Asia Minor. I am sorry that I cannot give her name at present. She told me this and other stories with infinitely more humour than I am capable of reproducing. — W. R. P.)

There was once a man who had a very pretty wife. When she went to church the bishop used to wave his censer towards her three times instead of once, and the priest and the deacon did the same.

She told her husband, and he said to her : " Next time, whisper to them that you want them to come and call on you. Tell the bishop to come at two, the deacon at three, and the priest at four o'clock at night." The wife did as her husband bade her, and the bishop arrived at two o'clock. She entertained him for an hour, and then there was a knock at the door. " Quick, get into the ampari,i " said she, " it is my husband," and the bishop scuttled in. She received the deacon and entertained him too, and at four o'clock there came tap, tap, tap at the door. " It is my husband," said she, "get into the ampari as quick as you can," and in he went, and groped about and caught hold of the bishop by the beard, and said to himself: " What on earth is this ? Do they keep goats here ? " but dared not utter a word. She went and opened the door and received the priest, and they sat talking, but all of a sudden there was tap, tap, tap at the door again ; and this time it was her husband. She shoved the priest, too, into the ampari, and let her husband in. " I want to whitewash the ceiling," he said. " Get me some boiling water." And when he had it, he poured it into the ampari ; and bishop, priest, and deacon were scalded to death.

' 'Afnrdpi, from Turkish and Persian anbar, store ; the dark store-room under the elevated sleeping-platform of a one-roomed house.