Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/333

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[Compare this rhyme with the ditty sung by the wife in the Welsh story told in Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands, vol. iv, p. 295.]

But his stepmother had given him a sleeping-drink, so he never heard her. … Then on the second night she came to his door again, and sat combing her hair, and sang:—

And this time he turned in his bed and groaned, but his stepmother's sleeping-drink hindered him knowing that he heard his wife's voice. … Then on the third night it was her Ia.st chance, and she sat outside the threshold of his door, and combed her hair, and sang: —

And he started up and opened his chamber door; and so the stepmother's spells were all broken. He had his shape again by day and by night like other men, and they lived with their three children in peace and quietness ever after.

The invocation, "Bare bull of Orange," commencing the night-song of the wife, has always puzzled me; but if the story is of Irish origin, it is possible that the words represent the sound rather than the sense of some phrase difficult to render out of Erse, when the story was put into English form.

Another legend relating to the "Bull of Orange" is to be