Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 8, 1897.djvu/135

 Rh market to buy a zuz-worth of rice; his wife went to the market to buy the rice, and gave the shopman the zuz. On her taking the rice, the shopman says to her: 'Rice isn't eaten without sugar; possibly you have some?' She answers; 'No, I have none.' The shopkeeper says to her: 'If you will come with me into the shop, I will give you some sugar.' She replies: 'Give it me, and I will enter (the shop) in your company, for I am well aware of the craftiness of men.' So he weighed and gave it to her, and she bound the rice and the sugar together in her wrap, and gave it in charge of the shopboy, and then entered the shop in company with the shopkeeper. The boy rose there and then, untied the (bundle of) rice and sugar, and tied up dust in place of them. The woman came out, and not noticing anything that the boy had done, frightened and trembling, she took her wrap and went home. She gave her bundle of a wrap (lit. her wrap tied together) in charge of her husband, while she went to fetch the saucepan. Her husband loosened the knot of her cloak and saw the dust, and addressed her thus: 'Wife, is it dust or rice that you have brought us?' In an instant the woman saw it, let go the saucepan and brought a sieve, saying to her husband: 'Listen! as I was walking in the market, a calf kicked me from behind, and the money dropped from me. I looked for it, but found it not; so I brought the dust into which it had fallen. Take and sift it, perhaps the money may be found.' Her husband credited her story and began to sift, the sand going up into his beard, while she was laughing at him in her heart.

"And now, my sovereign, realise the baseness of women, that it is not to be overcome."

So the king gave orders that his son should not be killed.

.—Reply of the wicked woman:—On the fourth day, the wicked woman came and said to the king: "If you do not give me satisfaction for your son, I shall kill myself with a knife, but I have faith in God that he will give me victory over your wise men, as he