Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 4, 1893.djvu/49

Rh XLIV.—

The devil made his nest, the Evil One his lair in the house of a landed proprietor, before the dwelling of a judge, on the rafter of a sheriff, on the floor of jurymen, in the long sleeves of a bishop, the shirt-collar of a priest. There he engendered his children, begat his offspring to become sources of law-suits for the rich, to become law-courts for the poor [v. as a means for landed proprietors to become rich, as a means for destroying the poor].

XLV.—

A pearl dropped from the Lord, fell with a crash from the Omnipotent, from the sky above, from the hollow of Jesus' hand down on the edge of Osmo's [v. a holy] field, the unploughed edge of Pellervoinen's. Afterwards a birth took place from it, a family was bred, bent grass grew from it, a husk of chaff was formed. It rose from the earth like a strawberry, grew like a three-branched one, being formed to branch by cleared land on which fir branches lie, made to grow by land that has been cleared, rocked to-and fro by a whirl of wind, suckled by bitter frost, drawn up by its top by the Creator, nourished by the Almighty.

XLVI.—

A cold-throated old wife of the North slept a long time in the cold, in a mossy swamp. When she awoke from sleep she caused her petticoat to flap, the bottom of her dress to twirl, rubbed together her two palms, scrubbed both of them. From that blood dropped, rolled down to the mossy