Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/356

 336 Miscellanea.

shaved her head, and dressed her as a boy, and sent her to feed geese. The other boys called the goose-herd " Kasidiako " {Scurfy). When the prince came home his mother told him that his wife had died. The prince was very sorry. To dispel his grief he used to sit at his window and listen to the boys of the town singing songs to each other, for just outside were some logs of wood on which they used to sit of an evening. One day Kasidiako came too, and when all the boys had sung they asked him for a song, and he sang this :

An apple was I,

An old wife did me buy ; An old man did eat me, I swelled in his thigh. I was born in the brambles ;

An eagle did fly, And took me, and took me To his eyry on high.

I descended deceived

By an old woman sly ; A king then secured me

For his own serai ; His mother did beat me,

And forced me to fly ; Kak-kak-kak, kik-kik-kik.

Now a goose-girl am I.

Then the prince knew it was his wife and went down and claimed her.

X. The Clever Frificess.

(Mytilene : told by Mersini, see No. V.)

There were two kings in the same city, and the one had three daughters and the other had three sons. One day when he who had the three daughters went to the cafe, the other king said to him, " Good morrow. Sir King, who hath sows but no boars." He went home very glum, and his eldest daughter said, " What are you looking so thoughtful about ? " " Oh, nothing," said he. " But there must be something," she said. " Well, to tell you the truth, the other king said to me in the cafe, ' Good morrow, Sir King, who hath sows but no boars.' " " Is that all ? " said she. " I thought at least you were thinking about getting me a new dress," and she gave her father one in the mouth, and knocked