Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/474

 452 Miscellanea.

the other a Campbell party, or he would say the one a fairy-dog and the other an anti-fairy-dog party. Another feature appeared to be that because Mrs. Mackay had migrated to Holm from the other side of the island some thirteen years ago, this select and exclusive community in Holm resisted the intrusion. He found the charge not proven, but severely admonished the accused for her abusive and most offensive language. He concluded with a few words of advice as to the manner in which the people of the township should conduct themselves towards one another.

Folktales from the ^gean.

(Continued from p. 344.)

XHI. The Water-selkt^s Son.

(Mytilene : told by Mersini.)

There was once a poor man who sold water. He had only one child, a boy, and he died when it was quite a baby. When the boy grew up, his mother took him and apprenticed him to a grocer ; but every day when he went to the shop he heard the other boys say, "There goes the water-seller's son ; he is going to be a grocer." So he went and asked his mother, " What was my father's trade ? I want to be the same as he." His mother told him, " Your father was a grocer." " No," said he. " Well, then," said his mother, " if you will know, he was a cafeji ; " and she took and apprenticed him to a cafeji. But the other boys still kept on saying when he went to his work, " There goes the water- seller's son." So he came back to his mother and questioned her again, and she was obliged to tell him the truth. Then he said, " I will go out and learn my father's business."

His mother cried very much, but had to let him go. On the road he met a Jew, who asked him where he was going. " I am going," said the boy, " to learn my father's trade." The Jew said, " Come along, and I will teach you." The Jew took him to an avenue of huge cypresses, so tall and thick that it was impossible to climb them. These were the trees on which the birds, whose eggs were precious stones, built their nests. The Jew helped the boy, by some means, to cHmb up, and then called out to him, " What do you see in the nests ? " "I see beautiful shining