Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review Volumes 32 and 33.djvu/381

Rh teases her husband Bassanio after the trial, and other little details, all very nearly the same as in Shakespeare.

The first tale, A Drachma of Tongue, is a Serbian tale from Bosnia, taken down by Jukic, Kolo, 1847, and translated into French by L. Léger in his Recueil de contes populaires slaves (No. 1), and into German by Leo in Shakespeare's Jahrbuch (21, p. 305). I give it here in an abridged form.

Once upon a time, there was a young and handsome youth called Omer, who fell in love with the beautiful Meira. He was poor and merry of heart, and often went of an evening to sing and play serenades beneath the window of the young maiden. One evening, as he was singing, Meira opened her window and told him that he was merely wasting his time in vain, and she would never marry him, Omer was poor, and so was Meira, but she had decided to wed no one who was not rich enough to keep her, together with her aged parents. "Open a shop and become a merchant," she said to her lover, and shut the window in his face. Next day Omer went to Issachar, the Jew, and asked him for the necessary sum to open a shop. Issachar gave him thirty purses, but on the understanding, that if Omer should fail to repay the thirty purses at the end of seven years, then Issachar be entitled to cut a drachma in weight from off his tongue, before the Court, and the debt shall be thus discharged. At the end of a month Meira was led to the dwelling of Omer, who was now a rich man. They lived happy and without care; but Omer's trade fell off more and more each year, and at the approach of the end of the seventh year he found himself without the means of discharging his debt to the Jew. In his distress he confided his secret to his wife, and she set forth to see the Cadi, or judge. "Cadi," quoth she, "grant me the favour to take thy place for one hour, next Friday, in thy seat in the Court." The Cadi consented, and when Friday came, he lent her his robes, placed the turban on