Page:The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Volume 01.djvu/25

 material points are these. A king requires the people of a parish to answer three questions, or he will be the destruction of them all: What is the finest sound, the finest song, the finest stone? A poor warder is instructed by his daughter to reply, the ring of bells, the song of the angels, the philosopher's stone. Right," says the king," but that never came out of your head. Confess who told you, or a dungeon is your doom." The man owns that he has a clever daughter, who had told him what to say. The king, to prove her sagacity further, requires her to make a shirt and drawers of two threads, and she responds in the manner just indicated. He next sends her by her father an earthen pot with the bottom out, and tells her to sew in a bottom so that no seam or stitch can be seen. She sends her father back with a request that the king should first turn the pot inside out, for cobblers always sew on the inside, not on the out. The king next demanded that the girl should come to him, neither driving, nor walking, nor riding; neither dressed nor naked; neither out of the road nor in the road; and bring him something that was a gift and no gift. She put two wasps between two plates, stripped, enveloped herself in a fishing-net, put her goat into the rut in the road, and, with one foot on the goat's back, the other stepping along the rut, made her way to the king. There she lifted up one of the plates, and the wasps flew away: so she had brought the king a present and yet no present. The king thought he could never find a shrewder woman, and married her.

Of the same tenor are a tale in Zingerle's Tyrolese Kinder u. Hausmärchen, Was ist das Schönste, Stärkste und Reichiste?' No 27, p. 162, and another in the Colshorns' Hanoverian Märchen u. Sagen, Die kluge Dirne,' No 26, p. 79. Here a rich and a poor peasant [a farmer and his bailiff] have a case in court, and wrangle till the magistrate, in his weariness, says he will give them three questions, and whichever answers right shall win. The questions in the former tale are: What is the most beautiful, what the strongest, what the richest thing in the world? In the other, What is fatter than fat? How heavy is the moon? How far is it to-heaven? The answers suggested by the poor peasant's daughter are: Spring is the most beautiful of things, the ground the strongest, autumn the richest. And the bailiff's daughter answers: The ground is fatter than fat, for out of it comes all that 's fat, and this all goes back again; the moon has four quarters, and four quarters make a pound; heaven is only one day's journey, for we read in the Bible, "Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise." The judge sees that these replies are beyond the wit of the respondents, and they own to having been prompted by a daughter at home. The judge then says that if the girl will come to him neither dressed nor naked, etc., he will marry her; and so the shrewd wench becomes a magistrate's wife.

Die kluge Bauerntochter,' in the Grimms' K. u. H. märchen, No 94, and 'Die kluge Hirtentochter,' in Pröhle's Märchen für die Jugend, No 49, p. 181, afford another variety of these tales. A peasant, against the advice of his daughter, carries the king a golden mor- tar, as he had found it, without any pestle. The king shuts him up in prison till he shall produce the pestle [Grimms]. The man does nothing but cry, "Oh, that I had listened to my daughter!" The king sends for him, and, learning what the girl's counsel had been, says he will give her a riddle, and if she can make it out will marry her. She must come to him neither clothed nor naked, neither riding nor driving, etc. The girl wraps herself in a fish- ing-net [Grimms, in bark, Pröhle], satisfies the other stipulations also, and becomes a queen.*

Another story of the kind, and very well preserved, is No 25 of Vuk's Volksmärchen der Serben, Von dem Mädchen das an Weis- heit den Kaiser übertraf,' p. 157. A poor

245), as pointed out by the Grimms, notes to No 94, re- quires Kraka (Aslaug) to come to him clothed and not clothed, fasting and not fasting, alone and not without a companion. She puts on a fishing-net, bites a leek, and takes her dog with her. References for the very frequent oc- currence of this feature may be found in Oesterley's note to Gesta Romanorum, No 124, at p. 732.
 * Ragnar Lodbrók (Saga, c. 4, Rafn, Fornaldar Sögur, 1,