Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/84

 lxxviii Take another instance. Every one knows the story in the Arabian Nights, where the man who knows the speech of beasts laughs at something said by an ox to an ass. His wife wants to know why he laughs, and persists, though he tells her it will cost him his life if he tells her. As he doubts what to do, he hears the cock say to the house-dog, "Our master is not wise; I have fifty hens who obey me; if he followed my advice, he'd just take a good stick, shut up his wife in a room with him, and give her a good cudgelling." The same story is told in Straparola with so many variations as to shew it is no copy; it is also told in a Servian popular tale, with variations of its own; and now here we find it in Bornou, as told by Kölle.

"There was a servant of God who had one wife and one horse; but his wife was one-eyed, and they lived in their house. Now this servant of God understood the language of the beasts of the forest when they spoke, and of the birds of the air when they talked as they flew by. This servant of God also understood the cry of the hyæna when it arose at night in the forest, and came to the houses and cried near them; so, likewise, when his horse was hungry and neighed, he understood what it neighed, rose up, brought the horse grass, and then returned and sat down. It happened one day that birds had their talk as they were flying by above, and the servant of God understood what they talked. This caused him to laugh, whereupon his wife said to him, 'What dost thou hear that