Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/355

 Miscellanea. 335

IX. Kasidiako. (Cassaba : from the same source as No. VIII.)

There was once upon a time a woman who had no children. One day she heard a man calling in the street " Big-belly apples," and she bought one, but instead of eating it at once, put it on the table. Her husband came and saw it, and ate it, and became pregnant in his thigh. He thought it was a boil, and when it grew very big he started off to find the doctor. On his way he had to pass through a thicket, and a briar scratched the place, and out fell the child. He did not notice this, but felt better at once, and went back and told his wife, " No need for a doctor, the boil has burst, and I am all right."

The eagle of God saw the baby (which was a girl), and picked her up, and carried her to its nest on a tall cypress-tree, and there brought her up till she was twelve years old.

Beneath the cypress-tree was a fountain, and there the prince happened to stop one day to water his horse. As the horse was going to drink, the girl peeped out from the nest, and the horse shied at her shadow, and the prince looked up and caught sight of her, and fell in love with her. He went home and took to his bed, and sent a crier to bid all the women of the town bring him soup to strengthen him. Among them came an old woman with her soup in a chipped basin, and her he chose to tell the secret of his sickness to. He implored her to find means to bring his love down from the tree. The old woman asked him to give her a caldron and a washing- trough and some sticks, and she bandaged her eyes and pretended to be blind, and went to the fountain to wash clothes. She lit the fire and put the caldron on upside down, and poured the water that she drew from the fountain into it, or rather on it. The girl was looking at her from the tree and could not help saying, " What in the world are you doing ? You will put the fire out." But the old woman said, " Dear me, dear me, I am blind and can't see. Won't you come and put things right ? " and the girl slid down the tree and set the caldron straight. At that moment the prince, who was in hiding, ran out and caught her, and carried her home and made her his wife.

A little while after their marriage the prince had to go to war, and when he was gone his mother took her daughter-in-law and