Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/108

92 woman still survives in story and saying all over Europe. In Servia, for example, we find:—"Where the devil cannot cause a mischief, there he sends an old woman, and she does it," and "Woman has long hair but short brains."

In Piedmont many proverbs in current use share this mediæval characteristic, although the songs of the winter courtship meetings in the stables are couched in extravagant eulogy of the beauty and good qualities of woman, or rather of a woman. From a number of these unprinted songs of young people in love written out for me by a peasant, I select the following:—

which may be very freely translated as