Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 1 1883.djvu/155

Rh will be beforehand with her at the shrine, and she shall have an answer.'

"The next night I hid myself in the shrine, and when my wife came and prayed as usual I answered her, 'O woman, for a long time you have prayed to me, this time your prayer is answered. Go home, and feed your husband with sweet pudding in the morning, and with roast fowl in the evening, and in a week he will be blind.' I then got away home as fast as I could run, and when my wife returned I asked her, 'Where have you been?' 'I have been in the village giving out the clothes,' answered she.

"The next morning my wife said to me, 'Husband, see I have here some buttermilk and oil, let me wash your head.' I accordingly undressed. But when my wife saw my body, she cried, 'Why, husband, how thin you have become! you are all skin and bone. I must feed you up.' To this I answered 'Good.' So my wife went and made me sweet pudding, which I enjoyed. And in the evening she gave me roast fowl, which I enjoyed too. After three or four days I said to her, 'Wife, I don't know what has happened, my eyes are getting quite dim,' Though she affected to console me I could easily perceive that she was glad. After the seventh day I said to her, 'Wife, I am stone blind, I can't see a thing.' She, hearing this, set up a hypocritical howl, and, going out, she visited this saint and that, and offered up prayers for my recovery.

"I now took to a stick and acted the blind man to the life. But one day my wife said to herself, 'This may be all a deceit; I must put his blindness to the test.' So she said to me, 'I am going out a-visiting; if I put some barley to dry, will you take care of it?' To this I replied, 'How can I? Still, if you will put it on some matting within my reach so that I can feel it from time to time, I will try.' This then she did, and I sat by it with my stick in my hand. In a short time I saw my wife slyly creeping towards the grain, and when she got near she felt it. Lifting my stick, I gave her such a violent blow on the head that she fell almost senseless, crying out, 'Ah, you have killed me!' 'Wife, wife,' said I, 'how could I tell it was you? Did I not say I was blind? I thought there was a bullock or a goat here.' This quite convinced my wife that I must be entirely blind, and she continued to feed me as before.

"Now the truth was that she was intriguing with another man, whom she used to visit, though at great risk, whenever she found the oppor-