Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/359

 Miscellanea. 339

waiting for him as usual, he asked her, " Won't you tell me now about the three bushels of salt ? "

"I've rubbed them all in now," said she. Then the husband said, " I am going to be married again," and he threw the princess into a hole, and off he went. Her three children were being reared by her mother. She sent for them and made Soultado wear the dagger, and Halepi the ring, and little Babylonitsa her cavadi, and she told them to go to the house where the wedding- feast was in progress and to march up-stairs, and when they were outside the banqueting room, Soutado was to say, " Take care, Halepi, that Babylonitsa does not spoil her cavadi, or our mother will be angry." So they did, and when the prince heard this he pricked up his ears and went out to see what children they were. Then he saw the tokens, and went straight off back to his wife with the children, and the other bride and the wedding-guests are going on dancing still, waiting for him to come back.

XL The Laurel Girl. (Mytilene : told by Mersini.)

Once there was a woman who had no children. One day she saw some boys carrying laurel boughs, and she said, "Ah, that God would send me a child, were it but a laurel-berry." She con- ceived, and in due time was delivered of a laurel-berry. She kept her bed for two or three days, but then she said to herself, " What is the use of lying here all for the sake of a laurel-berry, I will get up and go to church " Before she went she told her servant to look well after the baby, and put it to sleep if it cried. The ser- vant went into her mistress's room, but no baby could she see. She made the bed and shook the bed-clothes out of the window, and the laurel-berry fell into the street. A gardener was passing by collecting the sweepings, and he swept up the laurel-berry. The poor mother was very disconsolate when she came home and found out what had happened, but there was nothing to be done.

Next morning, when the gardener woke up, he saw to his astonishment a beautiful laurel-tree growing in the place where he had thrown the sweepings.

Now let us leave him, and go to three young men who had made a plan of coming to picnic in the garden. They brought a lamb with them, and lighting a fire near the laurel, set it on to boil, and z 2