Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 29, 1918.djvu/89

Rh and flooded him from top to toe, while the young boys left him without a feather to help him.

The cook then seized Medio-pollito and put him on a spit. "Fire, blazing fire," said the unhappy creature, you that are so powerful and so brilliant, take pity on my misery. Restrain your ardour, extinguish your flames, do not burn me." "You rascal," replied the fire, "how have you the face to come to me for help, after having smothered me under the pretext of never wanting my aid? Draw near, and you shall see what is for your good." And in fact, not content with browning him, the fire burned him up, till he was like a piece of charcoal. When the cook saw him in this condition, he seized him by the foot and threw him out of the window. Then the wind got possession of him. "O wind," cried Medio-pollito, "my dear and worshipful wind, that reignest over all, and obeyest no man, powerful amongst the powerful, have compassion on me, and leave me at peace on this dunghill." "Leave you!" roared the wind, snatching him up as in a whirlwind, and twisting him in the air like a top, "no, not as long as I live!" The wind then lodged Medio-pollito on the top of a bell-tower. St. Peter stretched forth his hand, and fixed him firmly there. Thenceforth he occupies this position, blackened and shrunken, and without a feather. Lashed by the rain, and buffeted by the wind, from which he ever carefully guards his tail. He is no longer called Medio-pollito, but a weather-cock, and you must all know that he stands there, paying the penalty of his faults and sins, his disobedience, his pride, and his wickedness.

The Legend of Le Roi Grallon and La ville d'ys.

At Quimper, between the towers of the cathedral, stands an equestrian statue of Le Roi Grallon. He reigned in the fifth century. At that time St. Corentin lived in a hermitage near a spring in the forest. Every morning a little fish used to come out of the well, and the saint, cutting off a piece of its flesh,