Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/295

 BIBLIOGKAPHY OF FOLK-LORE. 287

Story No. 4. — A merchant left his home for a year, and, mean- while, his wife turned into a public prostitute. When her husband returned it was too late in the evening to go home, so he put up in the inn {sardi)^ and sent for a woman for the night. They brought him his own wife. She recognized him, and immediately set upon him, saying, " I have found you out, and proved you now: you are still running after strange women." Whereon he became very much ashamed of himself, and took her home with him.

Story No. 5. — A labourer had a very ready-witted wife. One day as she was taking him his usual meal in the fields, she met a young man, whom she seduced. After this she laid down her dish and went aside, whereon the young man uncovered it, made an elephant out of the meal in it, and covered it up again without the wife knowing any- thing of it. When her husband saw the elephant in the dish he asked her what it meant. She replied at once that she had had a very bad dream in the night, that her husband was being trampled on by an elephant, and that the priest (pandit^ had told her that the best way of preventing its coming true was to make an elephant of his mid-day meal for him to eat. With this he was satisfied.

Story No. 6. — One night a wife was sleeping with her paramour, and in the next room her husband and his father were sleeping. Her father-in-law happened to awake, and finding her and her paramour together asleep, removed her anklet by way of proof. She awoke, and finding her anklet gone guessed what happened. So she sent her paramour away, and went to her husband and made him come to her. After a while she awakened him, and told him that while he was sleeping his father had come and removed her anklet. Whereon he got into a great rage with his father, and utterly scouted the father's story, making the poor father apologise.

Story No. 7. — A woman was with her paramour when her husband knocked at the door. She put her paramour into a fowl-house, and let loose her goat. When she opened the door her husband enquired as to her dishevelled appearance, and she said she had been after her goat, which had got loose. The husband went after it with his sword, and striking at it hit the fowl-house and cut open the roof, which