Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 6 1888.djvu/217

Rh her and departed in anger. From that time forth he had no settled abode, no rest; he knew neither day nor night, but merely mourned over the lost beauty of his wife, and nothing could comfort him.

Thus, agitated and melancholy, he was walking one day in the garden. Here, as he roamed about at haphazard, a beautiful white dove flew on to his hand from a high tree, and looked with mournful gaze into his bloodshot eyes. "Ah, my dove! why are you so sad? has your mate been transformed like my beautiful wife?" said the young king, talking to it, and caressingly stroking its head and back. But, feeling a kind of protuberance on its head, he blew the feathers apart, and beheld the head of a pin! Touched with compassion, the king extracted the pin; that instant the beautiful mourning dove was changed into his beautiful wife. She narrated to him all that had happened to her, and how it had happened; how the gipsy had deluded her, and how she had struck the pin into her head. The king immediately caused the gipsy and the old woman to be apprehended and burnt without further ado.

From that time nothing interfered with his happiness neither the might of his enemies nor the spite of wicked people; he lived with his beautiful wife in peace and love: he reigned prosperously, and is reigning yet, if he be yet alive.

(Rev.).

26, Market Place, Rugby.

NOTES AND QUERIES.

Folk-lore of Whistling.—In some districts of North Germany, the villagers say that if one whistles in the evening it makes the angels weep. Speaking, however, of ladies in connection with whistling, it is a widespread superstition that it is at all times unlucky for them to whistle; which, according to one legend, originated in the circumstance that while the nails for Our Lord's cross were being forged a woman stood by and whistled. Curiously enough, however, one very seldom hears any of the fair sex indulging in this recreation, although there is no reason, as it has been often pointed out, why they should not whistle with as much facility as the opposite sex. One