Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/452

 414 her bundle for her. He told her, too, before starting on their journey to bathe her eyes in the well. This she did; and she found her eyes come back to her, and she could see as well as ever. So the young man and the little girl went along together until they arrived at her father's cottage; and when the bag was opened there was all sorts of money in it, and when the bundle was opened there was all sorts of fine clothes in it. And the little girl married the young man, and they lived happy ever after.

Now, when the other girl saw all the fine things her sister had got, she came to her father and said: "Father, give me a cake and a bottle of beer, and let me go and seek my fortune." Her father gave her a cake and a bottle of beer, and the same things happened to her as to her sister. But when the old man asked her for some dinner she said: "I haven't enough for myself, so I can't give you any;" and when she was at the green lady's house she didn't make the dust fly, and the green lady was cross with her; and when she went to the well and the fish got into her pails of water, she said the fishes were wet, sloppy things, and she wasn't going to mess her hands and clean frock with them, and she threw them back roughly into the well; and she said she wasn't going to drink nasty cold water for her supper when she could have nice bread and milk; and when the green lady took out her eyes for looking through the keyhole she didn't get a bag of money and a bundle of clothes for her wages, because she hadn't made the dust fly, and she had no one to help her and take her home. So she wandered about all night and all day, and she died; and no one knows where she was buried or what became of her.

''Told to me in childhood by Mary Ann Smith, nursemaid, a Hertfordshire woman, from what village or town I do not know. There should be another rhyme said when the girl is to bathe her eyes at the well, but I have no remembrance of it. The previous one said by the fish at the well is not complete; there were, I think, two or three more lines. Neither do I think the story is quite correct or its its original form; but this is as I learnt it as nearly as I can remember.''

A Variant(?) from Norfolk.

Once upon a time there was a poor old man who had three daughters, and the eldest said: "Father, give me a cake and a