Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/35

 Presidential Address. 23

tower which had only one window and one iron door v/here no one could find it. And he put his daughter in it alone and by herself: every day her portion of food was sent to her, and she hung a plate out of the window and pulled it up." ^ This is a familiar scene, but we are nevertheless reminded of Danae.

From the same island comes another tale.^ Three friends, a monk, a carpenter, and a tailor, spent the night in a shepherd's hut. They kept watch by turns, and the first watch fell to the carpenter. He sat till he was tired ; then took a piece of wood, and with his tools carved it into a shape somewhat resembling a girl, and set it up in the sheepfold to frighten the tailor. The tailor's turn came : he sat until he began to nod, and then opening his eyes he suddenly caught sight of the figure. " To arms, comrades, here are the thieves ! " he cried, but seeing that the block did not move, he took courage, and threw a stone at the figure, which sounded with a dull thud. " Ha, a nice trick of that cursed carpenter, devil take him," he said, " and frightened me too. Well, he made it, what shall I do .-* " He found out a few scraps of cloth and made a smock for it, so that to look at her you would think she was a real girl. The priest's turn came now ; and seeing this figure of a woman except for the soul, he prayed to God with a pure heart, and God answered his prayer. Then follows the usual argument as to who had a right to her. Perhaps it is not too fanciful to see here a connexion with Pygmalion and Galatea ; the idea is the same. One Athenian story in- cluded in Miss Garnett's interesting collection,^ gives the incident topsy-turvy : here, a princess who did not wish to marry made herself a husband of sugar, whom God brought to life after she had prayed for forty days and forty nights. In the Peloponnesus, somewhere about where Theseus passed his childhood, we read of a lad

^Pio, p. 129. ^ Pio, p. 102. '^ Greek Folk Poesy, ii. 120.