Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/194

186 friend?" said he. Then the boy let him have the three yards more, for what do you think?—for a long, leather string, that would tie of its own accord, and a stick ("plochan") used for stirring brose, that beat of its own accord. "They will do to serve my mother out," said the stupid boy. When he got home, she began to be very angry at being cheated for the second time, but the tie soon held her, and the stick gave her such a thrashing that she was too ill and frightened to say another word.

Part II.—The Stupid Boy and the Three Laughs.

Now there lived in those days a rich man, who had an only daughter, and she was a very stupid girl; so stupid that she sat like a lump and thought, and never had laughed in her life. And the father said he would not give her in marriage to any one unless the bridegroom could make her laugh three times.

And it came to pass, when the stupid boy, who had grown to be a man, heard that, he asked his mother's leave to go and try if he could not make the stupid girl laugh. She said he might try, for the girl was to be rich, and he was stupid enough to make the cat laugh in the fire-comer. "Well, we will see that," and he went to the house where the girl lived. Soon after he came in he put the mouse and the bee down on the table, and whistled to them till the one began to pipe, and the other to dance, and when the grave girl (who was very pretty, with snow-white skin and eyes like sloes) saw them she clapped her hands and laughed for a quarter of an hour. Her father clapped his hands and cried, "Well done," and "Do it again."

Now, you must know, that though her father was vexed all his life to see her sit like a stone, her mother—who was rather a dull woman too—did not mind it, and was very anxious that she should marry a rich, fat old man, whom her father thought as stupid as the boy and the girl put together.

So it was, that next night, when the boy came to the house, he found the other lover sitting at the table, and the mother filling him with bread and cheese and fine words, and the girl sitting by like a stone. When our stupid boy saw him, he pulled the leather string