Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/113

Rh Then the king called two of his wives, and when they came he was ashamed to tell them what he wanted, so he said to them that their hair had grown too much, and that they must cut it down. Then the two women went into their own room and cut the hair, and the king came behind them and gathered some of it and gave it to Spider and Kwaku Tse, together with the two heads and the two hearts of the cows.

Spider and Kwaku Tse departed from the king and carried all the things to the house wherein they lodged, and they told the house-master that they wished to marry and to give a wedding feast. The house-master said that there was no meat in the town, and though people passed by driving cows to other towns yet they would not sell them. Then Spider and Kwaku Tse took the two cows' heads, and went into the road where the people used to pass driving their cows, and there was much mire at a certain part of the road, and they took the two heads and planted them in the mire so that the severed necks were hidden.

By and by some people came driving cows, and Spider and Kwaku Tse called to them, and said: "We were passing here with our cows, and lo! this mire has swallowed them up, and we can not draw them out. Can ye take them out for us?" The people said "Yes"; and they left their own cows, and went and laid hold of the horns of the cows' heads that were in the mire, and pulled hard to pull the cows out, and when they pulled the two heads came up out of the mire. Then Spider and Kwaku Tse cried aloud and said: "See what ye have done! See what ye have done! Ye have pulled the heads off our cows and left the bodies still in the mire. Ye must pay us for our two cows." Then the people were obliged to give them two of their own cows, and they took the two heads and cast them among the bushes.

Spider and Kwaku Tse take the heads from the bushes and play the same trick upon some other passers-by, after which they make a medicine with the hair of the king's wives, and by means of it compel the two wives to come to them at night, and in the end deprive the king of his wives altogether.

This tale furnishes the material for two of the stories of Uncle Remus. The notion of entering a cow and cutting meat from its inside is to be found in No. XXXIV—The Sad Fate of Mr. Fox. Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox enter a cow and cut meat, and Brer Rabbit, through disregarding Brer Fox's injunction and cutting into the "haslet," kills the cow, so that they can not make their way out again. Then one hides in the maul and the other in the gall when the cow is cut open. The trick of planting the cows' heads in the mire and pretending that the animals had foundered appears in No. XX—How Mr. Rabbit saved his Meat—where Brer Rabbit plants a cow's tail in the earth and tells Brer Fox