Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/72

 62 and carried it home, where he baked it over the fire and put it in a mortar and ground it to powder, and that powder he tied up in a piece of cloth and placed it in a chest. Now the King had a daughter who chanced to find the powder in the chest, and, not knowing what it was, she sniffed it and then replaced it in the chest. But thereby she was presently with child. To her father’s questions as to how she came to be with child, she replied it was owing to the powder. Then the King caused a boat to be built for her, and in it he placed food and drink, together with his daughter, and launched the boat upon the sea so that the sea might carry her away, for he was afraid of the words of the skull. In the boat, the King’s daughter gave birth to a child; and the boat drifted far away to the coast of an unknown country, where it was washed ashore. There the King’s daughter landed and brought up her child, and then they began to wander along the coast. The mother wished to build a house so that they might settle down, but the son declared that he would not build a house anywhere until they had come to the place of evil upon evil. As they journeyed thus, they came to Stamboul (Constantinople) and there they saw a snake which was biting a thorn-bush, and the thorn-bush was pricking the snake so that it was all covered with blood. “See, mother, this is the place of evil upon evil,” said the son, “and here will we build our house.” Then there came to them the Plague—in the shape of a woman—who said to the youth: “Take me to be your true love and I will build you a town as it were Nature’s own work.” And he promised he would do as she wished so that she might build the town for him. Then the Plague bade him mount his horse and ride before her towards the place where his town should stand. He obeyed, and wherever he passed, the walls arose and grew up behind him. When he came back to the place where he had started, he looked back; but now the walls of his town would not join up.