Page:The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Volume 01.djvu/26

 10 2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

man had a wise daughter. An emperor gave lose his goods and head. The knight can

him thirty eggs, and said his daiighter must make nothing of these questions, which are,

hatch chickens from these, or it would go hard What is that which needs help least and gets

with her. The girl perceived that the eggs most ? What is worth most and costs least ?

had been boiled. She boiled some beans, and What costs most and is worth least ? The

told" her father to be ploughing along the road, girl, who is but fourteen years old, observing

and when the emperor came in sight, to sow her father's heavy cheer, asks him the reason,

them and crj', " God grant my boiled beans and obtains his permission to go to court with

may come up ! " The emperor, hearing these him and answer the'^juestions. He was to say

ejaculations, stopped, and said, "My poor to the king that he had deputed her to an-

fellow, how can boiled beans grow?" The swer, to make trial of her wits. The ansvv^er

father answered, according to instructions, to the first question is the earth, and agrees

" As well as chickens can hatch from boiled in the details with the solution of the query,

eggs." Then the emperor gave the old man What is fatter than fat ? in the Tyrolese and

a bundle of linen, and bade him make of it, the Hanoverian tale. Humility is the answer

on pain of death, sails and everything else to the second, and pride the third answer,

requisite for a ship. The girl gave her father The king admires the young maid, and says

a piece of wood, and sent him back to the he would marry her if her father were noble ;

emperor with the message that she would per- but she may ask a boon. She begs for her

form what he had ordered, if he would first father an earldom which had lately escheated ;

make her a distaff, spindle, and loom out of and, this granted, she reminds the king of

the wood. The emperor was astonished at the what he had said ; her father is now noble,

girl's readiness, and gave the old man a glass. The king marries her.

with which she was to drain the sea. The girl In all these seven tales a daughter gets her

dispatched her father to the emperor again father out of trouble by the exercise of a su-

with a pound of tow, and asked him to stop perior understanding, and marries an emperor,

the mouths of all the rivers that flow into a king, or at least far above her station. The

the sea ; then she would drain it dry. Here- Gi'imms' story has the feature, not found in

upon the emperor ordered the girl herself be- the others, that the father had been thrown

fore him, and put her the question, " What into prison. Still another variety of these

is heard furthest ? " " Please your Majesty," stories, inferior, but preserving essential traits,

she answered, " thunder and lies." The em- is given by Schleicher, Litauische Marchen,

pei'or then, clutching his beard, turned to his p. 3, ' Vom schlauen Madchen.'

assembled counsellors, and said, " Guess how A Turkish tale from South Siberia will

much my beard is worth." One said so much, take us a step further, ' Die beiden Fiirsten,'

another so much. But the girl said, " Nay, Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der tiirk-

the emperor's beard is worth three rains in ischen Stiimme Siid-Sibiriens, I, 197. A

summer." The emperor took her to wife. prince had a feeble-minded son, for whom he

With these traditional tales we may put the wished to get a wife. He found a girl gath-

story of wise Petronelle and Alphonso, king ering fire-wood with others, and, on asking her

of Spain, told after a chronicle, with his usual questions, had reason to be pleased with her

prolixity, by Gower, Confessio Amantis, Pauli, superior discretion. He sent an ox to the

I, 145 If. The king valued himself highly for girl's father, with a message that on the third

his wit, and was envious of a knight who hither- day he would pay him a visit, and if by that

to had answered all his questions. Determined time he had not made the ox drop a calf and

to confound his humbler rival, he devised give milk, he would lose his head. The old

three which he thought unanswerable, sent man and his wife fell to weeping. The daugh-

for the knight, and gave him a fortnight to ter bade them be of good cheer, killed the ox,

consider his replies, which failing, he would and gave it to her parents to eat. On the