Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/453

Rh bottle of water that I may go to seek my fortune." Her father gave her a cake and bottle of water; and when she had gone a little way she met a little old man who asked her where she was going. She replied: "To seek service." "Oh," said he, "give me your cake and bottle of water, and go and knock at the house with the green door, and there you'll find your fortune." So she knocked at the door and a lady opened it, and asked her what she wanted. She told her, and the lady asked her what she could do. She made a dob (curtsey) and said: "I can bake, and I can brew, and I can make an Irish stew." So the lady said she would take her, but she must never look up the chimney or into the clock. The next morning the lady's daughter rode downstairs on a black cat and asked her to cut some bread and butter. The girl said she would as soon as she had finished washing the hearth. Whereupon the young lady ran up in a rage, and her mother came down, cut off the girl's head, stuck it up the chimney, and put her body in the clock.

The second daughter then started to seek her fortune, and met with precisely the same adventures.

The third daughter followed in her sisters' footsteps until the young lady asked for bread and butter, when she jumped up and cut it for her immediately, whereupon they were extremely pleased. In the afternoon they went for a ride on the black cats, leaving the maid alone in the house. She immediately looked up the chimney, and in the clock, and discovered her sisters' heads and bodies. She took them in her arms and ran away with them as fast as ever she could, calling on the gooseberry bushes to cover her flight. When the lady and her daughter returned they were very angry at the loss of the maid and the bodies, so they took choppers in their hands, and, still riding the black cats, went into the garden. They asked all the bushes which way the girl had gone, but they would not answer, so they chopped them down. When they came to the gooseberry bushes the first one said: "This way, that way, and I don't know which way." But the other said: "She went straight on across the river." So they rode on into the river and were drowned.

''Told by an old Norfolk woman, ninety-five years of age, who had heard the tale told "score o' times" in her youth, but had never seen it in print. She died in 1895, aged ninety-six. To the best of my belief the story was called "The Green Lady."''