Chapter II: Roumanian-Gypsy Stories (2)

Then his sister came out and said to him, ‘Why have you smashed the plum-trees? For the Unclean Spirit will come and kill you.’

Then he said, ‘I would not have you think ill of me; but kindly come and give me a draught of wine and a morsel of bread.’

Then she brought bread and wine. As she was handing him the bread and wine, she noticed her father’s colt, and recognised it. Then she said, ‘This must be my father’s horse.’

‘Take notice then that I also am his.’

Then she fell on his neck, and he on hers.

Then she said to him, ‘My brother, the Unclean Spirit will come from the Twelfth Region. And he will come and destroy you.’

Then the Unclean Spirit came, and hurled his mace; and it opened twelve doors, and hung itself on its peg. Then Cosmas took it, and hurled it twelve regions away from him. Then the Unclean Spirit took it, and came home with it in his hand, and asked, ‘Wife, I smell mortal man?’

(Meanwhile she had turned her brother into an ear-ring, and put him in her ear.)

Then she said, ‘You’re for ever eating corpses, and are meaning to eat me, too, for I also am mortal.’

Then he said to her, ‘Don’t tell lies; my brother-in-law has come.’

‘Well, then, and if your brother-in-law has come, will you eat him?’

Then he said, ‘I will not.’

‘Swear it on your sword that you will not eat him.’

Then she took him out of her ear, and set him at table. He ate at table with the Unclean Spirit.

Then the lad went outside, [54] and creeps into the fetlock of his colt, and hid himself there. Then the Unclean Spirit arose, and hunted everywhere, and failed to light on him. And he set his bugle to his mouth, and blew a blast, and summoned all the birds upon the horse, and they searched every hair of the horse. And just as he was coming to the fetlock, then the cocks crowed, and he fell.

Cosmas came forth, and went to him. ‘Good day, brother-in-law.’

Then he asked him, ‘Where were you?’

‘Why, I was in the hay, before the horse.’

Then Cosmas took leave of them, and went to his other sisters, and did with them just as with this one.

Then his little sister asked him, ‘Where are you going, my brother?’

‘I am going to tend the white mare, and get one of her colts, and I am going to win the Serpent-Maiden.’

Then she said to him, ‘Go, my brother, and if you get the colt, come to me.’

He went.

Now some peasants were hunting a wolf to slay it. The wolf said, ‘Cosmas, don’t abandon me. Send the peasants the wrong way, that they may not kill me; and take one of my hairs, [55] and put it in your pocket. And whenever you think of me, there I am, wherever you may be.’

Going further, he came on a crow that had broken its wing, and it said, ‘Don’t pass me by, Cosmas; bind my wing up; and I will give you a feather to put in your pocket, and whenever you are in any difficulty, I’ll be with you.’

Going still further, he came on a fish, which said, ‘Cosmas, don’t pass me by. Tie me to your horse’s tail, and put me in the water, for I will do you much good.’

He did so, and put it in the water.

Then he came to the old woman who owned the white mare; and she sat before her door; and he said to her, ‘Will you give me a colt of the white mare, old one?’

The old wife said, ‘If you can find her three days running, one of her colts is yours. But if you can’t find her, I will cut off your head, and stick it on yonder stake.’

‘I’ll find her,’ he said.

And she gave him the white mare, and away he went with her to try and find her. So the mare ran in among the sheep, and took and hid herself in the earth. And the lad arose and searched for the mare, and failed to light on her. And the wolf came into his mind; and he thought of him.

And the wolf came and asked him, ‘What’s the matter, lad?’

He said, ‘I can’t find the white mare.’

The wolf said, ‘Do you see this one, the biggest of the sheep? that is she. Go, and give her a taste of the stick.’

So the lad took and called her, and she became a horse. And he went with her to the old woman.

And the old woman said, ‘You have two more days.’

‘All right, old lady,’ said the lad.

So next day also he took and went off with the mare, to try and find her. (The old woman had thrashed the mare for not hiding herself properly, so that he could not have found her. And the white mare had said, ‘Forgive me, old woman. This time I will hide in the clouds, and he never will find me.’)

So the lad went off with her, to try and find her; and she went into the clouds. So the lad set to work, and searched from morning till noon. And the crow came into his mind; and, as he thought of it, the crow came and asked him, ‘What’s the matter, lad?’

‘Why, I have lost the white mare, and cannot light on her.’

So the crow summoned all the crows, and they searched upon every side, till they lighted on her. So they took her in their beaks, and brought her to the lad. So the lad took her, and led her to the old woman.

‘You have one day more,’ said the old woman.

So the day came when the lad had to find the mare once more. (That night the old woman had thrashed the white mare and pretty nigh killed it. And the mare had said to the old woman, ‘If he lights on me this time, old woman, you may know I have burst, for I will go right into the sea.’)

So when the lad departed with her, she went into the sea. And the lad searched for her, and it wanted but little of night. And the fish came into his mind. So the fish emerged before him and said, ‘What’s the matter, lad?’

‘I don’t know where the white mare has gone to.’

And the fish went and summoned all the fishes; and they gave up the white mare with her colt behind her. And the lad took her. He went with her to the old wife, and she said to him, ‘Take, deary, whichever pleases you.’

The lad chose the youngest colt.

And the old wife said, ‘Don’t take that one, my lad; it isn’t a good one. Take a handsomer.’

And the lad said, ‘Let be.’

And the lad went further; and the colt turned a somersault, [56] and became golden, with twenty-and-four wings. And the Serpent had none like his. And he went to his sisters, and took the three of them, and took too the Serpent-Maiden, and went with them home. Neither the Unclean Spirit nor the dragon could catch him. And he went home. So he made a marriage; and they ate and drank. And I left them there, and came and told my tale to your lordships.

A valuable story, but confused and imperfect. Who the dragon was is
left to conjecture; and the serpent-maiden—she must have been a
real old (serpent) maid—is barely mentioned. In no collection can I
find any exact parallel to this story; but it offers many
analogies, e.g. to ‘Childe Rowland’ (J. Jacobs’ English Fairy
Tales, i. 117–124, 238–245); and to Von Sowa’s Bohemian-Gypsy story
of ‘The Three Dragons’ (infra. No. 44). The ‘Apples of Pregnancy’
form the theme of another Roumanian-Gypsy story (No. 16). The
hurling the mace occurs in Miklosich’s Bukowina-Gypsy story,
‘Pretty-face’ (No. 29), and in ‘Sir Peppercorn’ (Denton’s Serbian
Folklore, p. 124). For ‘the cocks crowed, and he fell,’ cf.
Ralston, p. 316; and for blowing a blast and summoning all the
birds, the Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘The Green Man of Noman’s Land’
(No. 62). For the latter part of the story reference should be made
to Ralston, pp. 92, 98, 103–4; Krauss, i. 362; and especially the
close of the Bulgarian story of ‘The Golden Apples and the Nine
Peahens’ (Wratislaw’s Sixty Slavonic Folk-tales, pp. 193–198),
where we get the watching of a mare for three successive days, and
the finding of her by the help of a grateful fish, fox, and crow.
Cf. too, Wratislaw’s Croatian story, ‘The Daughter of the King of
the Vilas’ (No. 53, pp. 278–283).

NO. 11.—THE TWO THIEVES

There was a time when there was. There were two thieves. One was a country thief, and one a town thief. So the time came that the two met, and they asked one another whence they are and what they are.

Then the country thief said to the town one, ‘Well, if you’re such a clever thief as to be able to steal the eggs from under a crow, then I shall know that you are a thief.’

He said, ‘See me, how I’ll steal them.’

And he climbed lightly up the tree, and put his hand under the crow, and stole the eggs from her, and the crow never felt it. Whilst he is stealing the crow’s eggs, the country thief stole his breeches, and the town thief never felt him. And when he came down and saw that he was naked, he said, ‘Brother, I never felt you stealing my breeches; let’s become brothers.’

So they became brothers.

Then what are they to do? They went into the city, and took one wife between them. And the town thief said, ‘Brother, it is a sin for two brothers to have one wife. It were better for her to be yours.’

He said, ‘Mine be she.’

‘But, come now, where I shall take you, that we may get money.’

‘Come on, brother, since you know.’

So they took and departed. Then they came to the king’s, and considered how to get into his palace. And what did they devise?

Said the town thief, ‘Come, brother, and let us break into the palace, and let ourselves down one after the other.’

‘Come on.’

So they got on the palace, and broke through the roof; and the country thief lowered himself, and took two hundred purses of money, and came out. And they went home.

Then the king arose in the morning, and looked at his money, and saw that two hundred purses of money were missing. Straightway he arose and went to the prison, where was an old thief. And when he came to him, he asked him, ‘Old thief, I know not who has come into my palace, and stolen from me two hundred purses of money. And I know not where they went out by, for there is no hole anywhere in the palace.’

The old thief said, ‘There must be one, O king, only you don’t see it. But go and make a fire in the palace, and come out and watch the palace; and where you see smoke issuing, that was where the thieves entered. And do you put a cask of molasses just there at that hole, for the thief will come again who stole the money.’

Then the king went and made a fire, and saw the hole where the smoke issues in the roof of the palace. And he went and got a cask of molasses, and put it there at the hole. Then the thieves came again there at night to that hole. And the thief from the country let himself down again; and as he did so he fell into the cask of molasses. And he said to his brother, ‘Brother, it is all over with me. But, not to do the king’s pleasure, come and cut off my head, for I am as good as dead.’

So his comrade lowered himself down, and cut off his head, and went and buried it in a wood.

So, when the king arose, he arose early, and went there, where the thief had fallen, and sees the thief there in the cask of molasses, and with no head. Then what is he to do? He took and went to the old thief, and told him, ‘Look you, old thief, I caught the thief, and he has no head.’

Then the old thief said, ‘There! O king, this is a cunning thief. But what are you to do? Why, take the corpse, and hang it up outside at the city gate. And he who stole his head will come to steal him too. And do you set soldiers to watch him.’

So the king went and took the corpse, and hung it up, and set soldiers to watch it.

Then the thief took and bought a white mare and a cart, and took a jar of twenty measures of wine. And he put it in the cart, and drove straight to the place where his comrade was hanging. He made himself very old, and pretended the cart had broken down, and the jar had fallen out. And he began to weep and tear his hair, and he made himself to cry aloud, that he was a poor man, and his master would kill him. The soldiers guarding the corpse said one to another, ‘Let’s help to put this old fellow’s jar in the cart, mates, for it’s a pity to hear him.’

So they went to help him, and said to him, ‘Hullo! old chap, we’ll put your jar in the cart; will you give us a drop to drink?’

‘That I will, deary.’

So they went and put the jar in the cart. And the old fellow took and said to them, ‘Take a pull, deary, for I have nothing to give it you in.’

So the soldiers took and drank till they could drink no more. And the old fellow made himself to ask, ‘And who is this?’

The soldiers said, ‘That is a thief.’

Then the old man said, ‘Hullo! deary, I shan’t spend the night here, else that thief will steal my mare.’

Then the soldiers said, ‘What a silly you are, old fellow! How will he come and steal your mare?’

‘He will, though, deary. Isn’t he a thief?’

‘Shut up, old fellow. He won’t steal your mare; and if he does, we’ll pay you for her.’

‘He will steal her, deary; he’s a thief.’

‘Why, old boy, he’s dead. We’ll give you our written word that if he steals your mare we will pay you three hundred groats for her.’

Then the old man said, ‘All right, deary, if that’s the case.’

So he stayed there. He placed himself near the fire, and a drowsy fit took him, and he pretended to sleep. The soldiers kept going to the jar of wine, and drank every drop of the wine, and got drunk. And where they fell there they slept, and took no thought. The old chap, the thief, who pretended to sleep, arose and stole the corpse from the gallows, and put it on his mare, and carried it into the forest and buried it. And he left his mare there and went back to the fire, and pretended to sleep.

And when the soldiers arose, and saw that neither the corpse was there nor the old man’s mare, they marvelled, and said, ‘There! my comrades, the old man said rightly the thief would steal his mare. Let’s make it up to him.’

So by the time the old man arose they gave him four hundred groats, and begged him to say no more about it.

Then when the king arose, and saw there was no thief on the gallows, he went to the old thief in the prison, and said to him, ‘There! they have stolen the thief from the gallows, old thief. What am I to do?’

‘Did not I tell you, O king, that this is a cunning thief? But do you go and buy up all the joints of meat in the city. And charge a ducat the two pounds, so that no one will care to buy any, unless he has come into a lot of money. But that thief won’t be able to hold out three days.’

Then the king went and bought up all the joints, and left one joint; and that one he priced at a ducat the pound. So nobody came to buy that day. Next day the thief would stay no longer. He took a cart and put a horse in it, and drove to the meat-market. And he pretended he had damaged his cart, and lamented he had not an axe to repair it with. Then a butcher said to him, ‘Here, take my axe, and mend your cart.’ The axe was close to the meat. As he passed to take the axe, he picked up a big piece of meat, and stuck it under his coat. And he handed the axe back to the butcher, and departed home.

The same day comes the king, and asks the butchers, ‘Have you sold any meat to any one?’ They said, ‘We have not sold to any one.’

So the king weighed the meat, and found it twenty pounds short. And he went to the old thief in prison, and said to him, ‘He has stolen twenty pounds of meat, and no one saw him.’

‘Didn’t I tell you, O king, that this is a cunning thief?’

‘Well, what am I to do, old thief?’

‘What are you to do? Why, make a proclamation, and offer in it all the money you possess, and say he shall become king in your stead, merely to tell who he is.’

Then the king went and wrote the proclamation, just as the old thief had told him. And he posted it outside by the gate. And the thief comes and reads it, and thought how he should act. And he took his heart in his teeth and went to the king, and said, ‘O king, I am the thief.’

‘You are?’

‘I am.’

Then the king said, ‘If you it be, that I may believe you are really the man, do you see this peasant coming? Well, you must steal the ox from under the yoke without his seeing you.’

Then the thief said, ‘I’ll steal it, O king; watch me.’ And he went before the peasant, and began to cry aloud, ‘Comedy of Comedies!’

Then the peasant said, ‘See there, God! Many a time have I been in the city, and have often heard “Comedy of Comedies,” and have never gone to see what it is like.’

And he left his cart, and went off to the other end of the city; and the thief kept crying out till he had got the peasant some distance from the oxen. Then the thief returns, and takes the ox, and cuts off its tail, and sticks it in the mouth of the other ox, and came away with the first ox to the king. Then the king laughed fit to kill himself. The peasant, when he came back, began to weep; and the king called him and asked, ‘What are you weeping for, my man?’

‘Why, O king, whilst I was away to see the play, one of the oxen has gone and eaten up the other.’

When the king heard that, he laughed fit to kill himself, and he told his servant to give him two good oxen. And he gave him also his own ox, and asked him, ‘Do you recognise your ox, my man?’

‘I do, O king.’

‘Well, away you go home.’

And he went to the thief. ‘Well, my fine fellow, I will give you my daughter, and you shall become king in my stead, if you will steal the priest for me out of the church.’

Then the thief went into the town, and got three hundred crabs and three hundred candles, and went to the church, and stood up on the pavement. And as the priest chanted, the thief let out the crabs one by one, each with a candle fastened to its claw; he let it out.

And the priest said, ‘So righteous am I in the sight of God that He sends His saints for me.’

The thief let out all the crabs, each with a candle fastened to its claw, and he said, ‘Come, O priest, for God calls thee by His messengers to Himself, for thou art righteous.’

The priest said, ‘And how am I to go?’

‘Get into this sack.’

And he let down the sack; and the priest got in; and he lifted him up, and dragged him down the steps. And the priest’s head went tronk, tronk. And he took him on his back, and carried him to the king, and tumbled him down. And the king burst out laughing. And straightway he gave his daughter to the thief, and made him king in his stead.

Good as this version is, the last episode is much better told in
the Slovak-Gypsy variant from Dr. Rudolf von Sowa’s Mundart der
Slovakischen Zigeuner (Gött. 1887), No. 8, p. 174:—

NO. 12.—THE GYPSY AND THE PRIEST

There was a very poor Gypsy, and he had many little children. And his wife went to the town, begged herself a few potatoes and a little flour. And she had no fat.

‘All right,’ she thought; ‘wait a bit. The priest has killed a pig; I’ll go and beg myself a bit of fat.’

When she got there, the priest came out, took his whip, thrashed her soundly. She came home, said to her husband, ‘O my God, I did just get a thrashing!’

And the Gypsy is at work. Straightway the hammer fell from his hand. ‘Now, wait a bit till I show him a trick, and teach him a lesson.’

The Gypsy went to the church, and took a look at the door, how to make the key to the tower. He came home, sat down at his anvil, set to work at once on the key. When he had made it, he went back to try to open the door. It opened it as though it had been made for it.

‘Wait a bit, now,’ he thinks to himself; ‘what shall I need next?’

He went straight off to the shop, and bought himself some fine paper, just like the fine clothes the priests wear for high mass. When he had bought it, he went to the tailor, told him to make him clothes like an angel’s; he looked in them just like a priest. He came home, told his son (he was twenty years old), ‘Hark’ee, mate, come along with me, and bring the pot. Catch about a hundred crabs. Ha! they shall see what I’ll do this night; the priest won’t escape with his life.’

All right!

Midnight came. The Gypsy went to the church, lit all the lights that were in the church. The cook goes to look out. ‘My God! what’s the matter? the whole church is lighted up.’

She goes to the priest, wakes him up. ‘Get up! Let’s go and see what it is. The whole church is blazing inside. What ever is it?’

The priest was in a great fright. He pulled on his vestment, and went to the church to see. The Gypsy chants like a priest performing service in the great church where the greatest folks go to service. ‘Oh!’ the Gypsy was chanting, ‘O God, he who is a sinful man, for him am I come; him who takes so much money with him will I fetch to Paradise, and there it shall be well with him.’

When the gentleman heard that, he went home, and got all the money he had in the house.

All right!

The priest came back to the church. The Gypsy chants to him to make haste, for sooner or later the end of all things approaches. Straightway the Gypsy opened the sack, and the priest got into it. The Gypsy took all the priest’s money, and hid it in his pocket.

‘Good! now you are mine.’

When he closed the sack, the priest was in a great fright. ‘My God! what will become of me? I know not what sort of a being that is, whether God Himself or an angel.’

The Gypsy straightway drags the priest down the steps. The priest cries that it hurts him, that he should go gently with him, for he is all broken already; that half an hour of that will kill him, for his bones are all broken already.

Well, he dragged him along the nave of the church, and pitched him down before the door; and he put a lot of thorns there to run into the priest’s flesh. He dragged him backwards and forwards through the thorns, and the thorns stuck into him. When the Gypsy saw that the priest was more dead than alive, he opened the sack, and left him there.

The Gypsy went home, and threw off his disguise, and put it on the fire, that no one might say he had done the deed. The Gypsy had more than eight hundred silver pieces. So he and his wife and his children were glad that they had such a lot of money; and if the Gypsy has not died with his wife and his children, perhaps he is living still.

In the morning when the sexton comes to ring the bell, he sees a sack in front of the church. The priest was quite dead. When he opened it and saw the priest, he was in a great fright. ‘What on earth took our priest in there?’ He runs into the town, made a great outcry, that so and so has happened. The poor folks came and the gentry to see what was up: all the candles in the church were burning. So they buried the parson decently. If he is not rotten he is whole. May the devils still be eating him. I was there, and heard everything that happened.

The briefest epitome will serve of our third Gypsy version, from
Hungary, Dr. Friedrich Müller’s No. 1, which is very coarse and
very disconnected:—‘Somewhere was, somewhere was not, lucky, Golden
God! somewhere was, somewhere was not, a poor Gypsy.’ An old woman
tells him, ‘Go into yonder castle, and there is the lady; and take
from her the ring, and put it on thine own hand, and turn it
thrice, then so much meal and bread will be to thee that thou wilt
not know what to do with it.’... He wins twenty-four wagon-loads of
money for seducing the nobleman’s wife, which he achieves by luring
away the nobleman with a corpse. The Gypsy then kills his children
and his wife; cheats an old woman of her money; cures and marries
the king’s daughter; leaves her, because she will not go and sell
the nails he manufactures; and finally marries a Gypsy girl, who
pleases him much better.

Our next version, ‘Jack the Robber,’ is from South Wales, told to
Mr. Sampson by Cornelius Price. It is as good as the last one is
bad, but like it somewhat Rabelaisian. The following is a summary
of the first half, the latter (our No. 68) being a variant of
Dasent’s ‘Big Peter and Little Peter’:—A poor widow has a son,
Jack, who ‘took to smoking when he was twelve, and got to robbing
the master’s plough-socks to take ’em to the blacksmith’s to sell
’em to rise bacca.’ So the farmer makes the mother send Jack away
from home; and Jack comes to a big gentleman’s hall. This gentleman
is the head of eleven robbers, and Jack, after cunningly relieving
one of them of £11, joins the band, and in six months ‘got a
cleverer robber than what the master hisself was.’ So, with the
money he has made, he sets off for his mother’s, meets the farmer,
tells him he has been prentice to a robber, and, to test his skill,
is set to steal two sheep in succession. He does so by the familiar
expedients of, first, a boot here and a boot there, and, next,
baaing like a lost sheep. Then Jack is set to take the middlemost
sheet from underneath the farmer and his missus, and achieves it by
‘loosing a dead body down the chimley,’ which the farmer shoots
dead, as he fancies, and goes off to bury.

The fifth and last version, ‘The Great Thief,’ is from North Wales,
told by Matthew Wood, and is thus summarised by Mr. Sampson:—‘Hard
by a parson lived a thief. The parson told the thief, “To-morrow my
man goes to the butcher with a sheep. Steal it, and you shall have
such and such money.” Thief gets a pair of new boots, and places
one on one stile, the other on another further on. Man sees first
boot and leaves it, finds other, ties up sheep, and goes back for
the first. Thief steals sheep. The parson says again, “I want you
to steal my wife’s ring from her finger and the sheet from under
her. If you can’t, I shall behead you.” Thief makes dummy man, and
props it against wall. Parson shoots it, comes out, and buries it
in well. Meanwhile thief visits wife, pretending to be parson, and
takes her ring and sheet for safety. Parson returns and discovers
the trick.’

Though not, at least but very conjecturally, a Gypsy version, the
following version is still worth citing. It is from Henry Mayhew’s
London Labour and the London Poor, vol. iii. (1861), pp.
388–390:—‘An intelligent-looking boy, aged 16, a native of Wisbech
in Cambridgeshire; at 13 apprenticed to a tailor; in three months’
time ran away; went home again for seven months, then ran away
again, and since a vagrant. Had read Windsor Castle, Tower of
London, etc. He gives account of amusements in casual wards:—

‘“We told stories sometimes, romantic tales some; others blackguard
kind of tales, about bad women; and others about thieving and
roguery; not so much about what they’d done themselves, as about
some big thief that was very clever and could trick anybody. Not
stories such as Dick Turpin or Jack Sheppard, or things that’s in
history, but inventions. I used to say when I was telling a
story—for I’ve told one story that I invented till I learnt it. [I
give this story to show what are the objects of admiration with
these vagrants [57]]:—

‘“You see, mates, it was once upon a time, and a very good time it
was, a young man, and he runned away, and got along with a gang of
thieves, and he went to a gentleman’s house, and got in because one
of his mates sweethearted the servant, and got her away, and she
left the door open. And the door being left open, the young man got
in, and robbed the house of a lot of money, £1000, and he took it
to their gang at the cave. Next day there was a reward out to find
the robber. Nobody found him. So the gentleman put two men and a
horse in a field, and the men were hidden in the field, and the
gentleman put out a notice that anybody that could catch the horse
should have him for his cleverness, and a reward as well; for he
thought the man that got the £1000 was sure to try to catch that
there horse, because he was so bold and clever, and then the two
men hid would nab him. This here Jack (that’s the young man) was
watching, and he saw the two men, and he went and caught two live
hares. Then he hid himself behind a hedge, and let one hare go, and
one man said to the other, ‘There goes a hare,’ and they both ran
after it, not thinking Jack’s there. And while they were running he
let go t’other one, and they said, ‘There’s another hare,’ and they
ran different ways, and so Jack went and got the horse, and took it
to the man that offered the reward, and got the reward; it was
£100; and the gentleman said, ‘D—— it, Jack’s done me this time.’
The gentleman then wanted to serve out the parson, and he said to
Jack, ‘I’ll give you another £100 if you’ll do something to the
parson as bad as you’ve done to me.’ Jack said, ‘Well, I will’; and
Jack went to the church and lighted up the lamps and rang the
bells, and the parson he got up to see what was up. Jack was
standing in one of the pews like an angel; when the parson got to
the church, Jack said, ‘Go and put your plate in a bag; I’m an
angel come to take you up to heaven.’ And the parson did so, and it
was as much as he could drag to church from his house in a bag; for
he was very rich. And when he got to church Jack put the parson in
one bag, and the money stayed in the other; and he tied them both
together, and put them across his horse, and took them up hill and
through water to the gentleman’s, and then he took the parson out
of the bag, and the parson was wringing wet. Jack fetched the
gentleman, and the gentleman gave the parson a horsewhipping, and
the parson cut away, and Jack got all the parson’s money and the
second £100, and gave it all to the poor. And the parson brought an
action against the gentleman for horsewhipping him, and they were
both ruined. That’s the end of it. That’s the sort of story that’s
liked best, sir.”’

Dasent, ‘The Master Thief’ (Tales from the Norse, p. 255). He takes
service with robbers. Steals three oxen, the first one by a shoe
here and a shoe there, the third by imitating lost ox. He steals
the squire’s roast, first catching three hares alive. He steals
Father Laurence in a sack, but not out of church, posing as an
angel, and bidding him lay out all his gold and silver. N.B. No
crabs, no lighting of candles.

Grimm, No. 192, ‘The Master Thief’ (ii. 324). He steals horse from
under rider. Steals sheet from under count’s wife, first luring
count away by means of corpse. Disguised like monk, he steals
parson and clerk out of church in sack, bumping them against steps,
and dragging them through puddles—‘mountains’ and ‘clouds.’ No
mention of plate or money. Neither of these two versions can be the
original of Mayhew’s English vagrant one.

Straparola (Venice, 1550), No. 2, ‘The Knave.’ First, he steals
from the provost the bed on which he is lying; next, horse on which
stable-boy is sitting; and thirdly, an ecclesiastical personage in
sack.

De Gubernatis (Zool. Myth., i. 204) alludes to the famous robber
Klimka, in Afanasief, v. 6, who, by means of a drum (in Indian
tales a trumpet) terrifies his accomplices, the robbers, and then
steals from a gentleman his horse, his jewel-casket, even his wife.

‘Les Deux Voleurs’ (Dozon’s Contes Albanais, p. 169) has two
thieves with the same mistress, as in Barbu Constantinescu. One of
them, posing as the angel Gabriel, steals the cadi in a chest at
the instigation of a pasha whom the cadi has ridiculed.

Much more striking are the analogies offered by ‘Voleur par Nature’
(Legrand’s Contes Grecs, p. 205) from Cyprus. Here we get the
stealing of two sheep, first by a boot here and a boot there, and
next by baaing like a lost sheep. Then we have the stealing of one
of a yoke of oxen, the robbery of the king’s treasure-house, the
consulting a robber in prison, a caldron of pitch, the headless
robber, the exposure of his corpse, and, lastly, the marriage of
the surviving thief and the princess.

For heroic form of ‘The Master Thief’ see Hahn’s No. 3, ‘Von dem
Schönen und vom Drakos.’ Hero has to steal winged horse of the
dragon, coverlet of dragon’s bed, and the dragon himself. He steals
him in a box, and marries the king’s daughter. In Laura
Gonzenbach’s most curious Sicilian story, No. 83, ‘Die Geschichte
von Caruseddu’ (ii. 142–145), the hero steals the horse of the
‘dragu’ (? dragon, rather than cannibal), next his bed-cover, and
lastly the ‘dragu’ himself; with which compare the Bukowina-Gypsy
story, ‘Tropsyn,’ No. 27. In Hahn, ii. p. 182, we have mention of
sack, in variant 4 of ring of the dragon. Cf. infra, p. 109.

Finally, three little points connecting the Gypsies and the ‘Master
Thief’ may be noted. Mrs. Carlyle’s ‘mother’s mother was a
grand-niece of Matthew Baillie,’ a famous Scottish Gypsy, who, as
she said, ‘could steal a horse from under the owner, if he liked,
but left always the saddle and bridle.’ John MacDonald, travelling
tinker, ‘knew the story of the “Shifty Lad,” though not well enough
to repeat it’ (Campbell’s Tales of the West Highlands, i. 142,
356). An English Gypsy once said to me, ‘The folks hereabouts are a
lot of rátfalo heathens; they all think they’re going to heaven in
a sack.’

Dr. Barbu Constantinescu’s ‘Two Thieves’ is so curious a
combination of the ‘Rhampsinitus’ story in Herodotus and of Grimm’s
‘Master Thief,’ that I am more than inclined to regard it as the
lost original which, according to Campbell of Islay, ‘it were vain
to look for in any modern work or in any modern age.’ The
‘Rhampsinitus’ story and the ‘Master Thief’ have both been made
special subjects of study—the former by Reinhold Köhler in Orient
und Occident, 1864, pp. 303–316, by Clouston in his Popular Tales
and Fictions (1887, ii. 115–165), and by Sir George Cox in Fraser’s
Magazine (July 1880, pp. 96–111); the latter by M. Cosquin in
Contes Populaires de Lorraine (1887; ii. 271–281, 364–5). With
their help and that of the above jottings, we can analyse the Gypsy
story of the ‘Two Thieves’ detail by detail, and see in how many
and how widely-separated non-Gypsy versions some of those details
have to be sought:—

(1) A town thief meets a country thief, and is challenged by him to
steal the eggs of a magpie without her noticing it.—Grimm, No. 129,
and Kashmir and Kabyle versions. (2) Whilst doing so, he is himself
robbed unawares of his breeches by the country thief. The stealing
of the labourer’s paijámas in Kashmir version is analogous. (3)
They enter into partnership, and have one wife.—Albanian version.
(4) They go to the king’s palace, and, making a hole in the roof,
descend and steal money. The king, discovering his loss, takes
counsel with an old robber in prison.—So in Dolopathos, modern
Greek, and Cypriote versions. (5) By his advice the king finds out
hole by lighting a fire in the treasure-house, and noticing where
the smoke escapes.—Dolopathos, Pecorone, old French, Breton, old
Dutch, Danish, Kabyle. (6) Under the hole he sets a cask of
molasses.—Snare in ‘Rhampsinitus,’ Tyrolese, Kabyle; pitch in old
English, modern Greek, Cypriote, old French, Gaelic, old Dutch,
Danish. (7) The country thief is caught, and his comrade cuts off
his head.—‘Rhampsinitus,’ Pecorone, old English, old French,
Breton, Gaelic, Tyrolese, Danish, Kabyle, Tibetan, Cinghalese. (8)
The headless trunk is exposed, and the comrade steals it by
intoxicating the guards.—‘Rhampsinitus,’ Sicilian, Breton, Gaelic,
old Dutch, Russian. (9) He further cheats them of 400 groats as
payment for his horse, which he pretends the dead thief has
stolen.—Wanting elsewhere. (10) The king then puts a prohibitive
price on all the meat in the city, thinking the thief will betray
himself by alone being able to pay it; but the thief steals a
joint.—Italian (Pecorone, 1378, ix. 1; and Prof. Crane’s Italian
Popular Tales, p. 166). (11) The king finally makes a proclamation,
offering his daughter to the thief, who plucks up courage and
reveals himself.—‘Rhampsinitus,’ Pecorone, Sicilian, modern Greek,
Tyrolese, Kabyle. (12) To exhibit his skill, he steals one of a
yoke of oxen.—Russian (De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, i. 186,
from Afanasief). (13) As a further test he steals the priest out of
the church in a sack, out of which he has just let 300 crabs, each
with a lighted taper fastened to its claw. According to Cosquin,
the complete crab episode occurs only in Grimm (he of course knows
nothing of our Gypsy version). But herein he for once is wrong,
since we find it also in Krauss’s Croatian version of the ‘Master
Thief’ (No. 55), which bears the title of ‘The Lad who was up to
Gypsy Tricks’; its hero, indeed, is generally styled ‘the Gypsy.’
He is a Gypsy in Dr. Friedrich Müller’s Gypsy variant, and in Dr.
von Sowa’s. In the latter version, as in several non-Gypsy ones,
the hero, it will be noticed, catches crabs, but makes no use
whatever of them afterwards.

NO. 13.—THE WATCHMAKER

There was once a poor lad. He took the road, went to find himself a master. He met a priest on the road.

‘Where are you going, my lad?’

‘I am going to find myself a master.’

‘Mine’s the very place for you, my lad, for I’ve another lad like you, and I have six oxen and a plough. Do you enter my service and plough all this field.’

The lad arose, and took the plough and the oxen, and went into the fields and ploughed two days. Luck [58] and the Ogre came to him. And the Ogre said to Luck, ‘Go for him.’ Luck didn’t want to go for him; only the Ogre went. When the Ogre went for him, he laid himself down on his back, and unlaced his boots, and took to flight across the plain.

The other lad shouted after him, ‘Don’t go, brother; don’t go, brother.’

‘Bah! God blast your plough and you as well.’

Then he came to a city of the size of Bucharest. Presently he arrived at a watchmaker’s shop. And he leaned his elbows on the shop-board and watched the prentices at their work. Then one of them asked him, ‘Why do you sit there hungry?’

He said, ‘Because I like to watch you working.’

Then the master came out and said, ‘Here, my lad, I will hire you for three years, and will show you all that I am master of. For a year and a day,’ he continued, ‘you will have nothing to do but chop wood, and feed the oven fire, and sit with your elbows on the table, and watch the prentices at their work.’

Now the watchmaker had had a clock of the emperor’s fifteen years, and no one could be found to repair it; he had fetched watchmakers from Paris and Vienna, and not one of them had managed it. The time came when the emperor offered the half of his kingdom to whoso should repair it; one and all they failed. The clock had twenty-four tunes in it. And as it played, the emperor grew young again. Easter Sunday came; and the watchmaker went to church with his prentices. Only the old wife and the lad stayed behind. The lad chopped the wood up quickly, and went back to the table that they did their work at. He never touched one of the little watches, but he took the big clock, and set it on the table. He took out two of its pipes, and cleaned them, and put them back in their place; then the four-and-twenty tunes began to play, and the clock to go. Then the lad hid himself for fear; and all the people came out of the church when they heard the tunes playing.

The watchmaker, too, came home, and said, ‘Mother, who did me this kindness, and repaired the clock?’

His mother said, ‘Only the lad, dear, went near the table.’

And he sought him and found him sitting in the stable. He took him in his arms: ‘My lad, you were my master, and I never knew it, but set you to chop wood on Easter Day.’ Then he sent for three tailors, and they made him three fine suits of clothes. Next day he ordered a carriage with four fine horses; and he took the clock in his arms, and went off to the emperor. The emperor, when he heard it, came down from his throne, and took his clock in his arms and grew young. Then he said to the watchmaker, ‘Bring me him who mended the clock.’

He said, ‘I mended it.’

‘Don’t tell me it was you. Go and bring me him who mended it.’

He went then and brought the lad.

The emperor said, ‘Go, give the watchmaker three purses of ducats; but the lad you shall have no more, for I mean to give him ten thousand ducats a year, just to stay here and mind the clock and repair it when it goes wrong.’

So the lad dwelt there thirteen years.

The emperor had a grown-up daughter, and he proposed to find a husband for her. She wrote a letter, and gave it to her father. And what did she put in the letter? She put this: ‘Father, I am minded to feign to be dumb; and whoso is able to make me speak, I will be his.’

Then the emperor made a proclamation throughout the world: ‘He who is able to make my daughter speak shall get her to wife; and whoso fails him will I kill.’

Then many suitors came, but not one of them made her speak. And the emperor killed them all, and by and by no one more came.

Now the lad, the watchmaker, went to the emperor, and said, ‘Emperor, let me also go to the maiden, to see if I cannot make her speak.’

‘Well, this is how it stands, my lad. Haven’t you seen the proclamation on the table, how I have sworn to kill whoever fails to make her speak?’

‘Well, kill me also, Emperor, if I too fail.’

‘In that case, go to her.’

The lad dressed himself bravely, and went into her chamber. She was sewing at her frame. When the lad entered, he said, ‘Good-day, you rogue.’

‘Thank you, watchmaker. Well, sit you down since you have come, and take a bite.’

‘Well, all right, you rogue.’

He only was speaking. [59] Then he tarried no longer, but came out and said, ‘Good-night, rogue.’

‘Farewell, watchmaker.’

Next evening the emperor summoned him, to kill him. But the lad said, ‘Let me go one more night.’ Then the lad went again, and said, ‘Good-evening, rogue.’

‘Welcome, watchmaker. And since you have come, brother, pray sit down to table.’

Only he spoke, so at last he said, ‘Good-night, rogue.’

‘Farewell, watchmaker.’

Next night the emperor summoned him. ‘I must kill you now, for you have reached your allotted term.’

Then said the lad, ‘Do you know, emperor, that there is thrice forgiveness for a man?’

‘Then go to-night, too.’

Then the lad went that night, and said, ‘How do you do, rogue?’

‘Thank you, watchmaker. Since you have come, sit at table.’

‘So I will, rogue. And see you this knife in my hand? I mean to cut you in pieces if you will not answer my question.’

‘And why should I not answer it, watchmaker?’

‘Well, rogue, know you the princess?’

‘And how should I not know her?’

‘And the three princes, know you them?’

‘I know them, watchmaker.’

‘Well and good, if you know them. The three brothers had an intrigue with the princess. They knew not that the three had to do with her. But what did the maiden? She knew they were brothers. The eldest came at nightfall, and she set him down to table and he ate. Then she lay with him and shut him up in a chamber. The middle one came at midnight, and she lay with him also and shut him up in another chamber. And that same night came the youngest, and she lay with him too. Then at daybreak she let them all out, and they sprang to slay one another, the three brothers. The maiden said, “Hold, brothers, do not slay one another, but go home and take each of you to himself ten thousand ducats, and go into three cities; and his I will become who brings me the finest piece of workmanship.” So the eldest journeyed to Bucharest, and there found a beautiful mirror. Now look you what kind of mirror it was. “Here, merchant, [60] what is the price of your mirror?” “Ten thousand ducats, my lad.” “Indeed, is that not very dear, brother?” “But mark you what kind of mirror it is. You look in it and you can see both the dead and the living therein.” Now let’s have a look at the middle brother. He went to another city and found a robe. “You, merchant, what is the price of this robe?” “Ten thousand ducats, my son.”’

‘What are you talking about, watchmaker? A robe cost ten thousand ducats!’ [61]

‘But look you, you rogue, what sort of robe it is. For when you step on it, it will carry you whither you will. So you may fancy he cries “Done!” Meanwhile the youngest also arrived in a city and found a Jew, and bought an apple from him. And the apple was such that when a dead man ate it he revived. He took it and came to his brothers. And when they were all come home they saw their sweetheart dead. And they gave her the apple to eat and she arose. And whom then did she choose? She chose the youngest. What do you say?’

And the emperor’s daughter spoke. And the watchmaker took her to wife. And they made a marriage.

This story, though well enough told, is very defective. Of course,
by rights the eldest brother looks in his mirror, and sees the
princess dead or about to die; then the middle brother transports
the three of them on his travelling robe; and only then can the
youngest brother make use of his apple of life. ‘The Watchmaker’ is
a corrupt version of ‘The Golden Casket’ in Geldart’s Folk-lore of
Modern Greece, pp. 106–125, which should be carefully compared with
it, to render it intelligible. Compare also Clouston’s chapter on
‘The Four Clever Brothers’ (i. 277–288), where he cites with others
a Sanskrit version, and Grimm’s No. 129 (ii. 165, 428). Apropos of
the magic mirror here, and of the telescope in European folk-tales,
Burton has this note on the ivory tube bought by Prince Ali in the
Arabian tale of ‘Prince Ahmad and the Peri Bánú’:—‘The origin of
the lens and its applied use to the telescope and the microscope
“are lost” (as the Castle guides of Edinburgh say) “in the gloom of
antiquity.” Well-ground glasses have been discovered amongst the
finds in Egypt and Assyria; indeed, much of the finer work of the
primeval artist could not have been done without such aid. In
Europe the “spy-glass” appears first in the Opus Majus of the
learned Roger Bacon (circa A.D. 1270); and his “optic tube” (whence
his saying, “All things are known by perspective”) chiefly
contributed to make his widespread fame as a wizard. The telescope
was popularised by Galileo, who, as mostly happens, carried off and
still keeps amongst the vulgar all the honours of the invention.’
With the travelling robe compare the saddle in the Polish-Gypsy
‘Tale of a Girl who was sold to the Devil’ (No. 46) and the wings
in the Bukowina-Gypsy ‘Winged Hero’ (No. 26); and with the apple of
life, which occurs also in the Icelandic version of this story, the
other-world apple in the Roumanian-Gypsy ‘Bad Mother’ (No. 8). See
also Clouston on ‘Prince Ahmad’ in his Variants of Sir R. F.
Burton’s Supplemental Arabian Nights, pp. 600–616.

NO. 14.—THE RED KING AND THE WITCH

It was the Red King, and he bought ten ducats’ worth of victuals. He cooked them, and he put them in a press. And he locked the press, and from night to night posted people to guard the victuals.

In the morning, when he looked, he found the platters bare; he did not find anything in them. Then the king said, ‘I will give the half of my kingdom to whoever shall be found to guard the press, that the victuals may not go amissing from it.’

The king had three sons. Then the eldest thought within himself, ‘God! What, give half the kingdom to a stranger! It were better for me to watch. Be it unto me according to God’s will.’

He went to his father. ‘Father, all hail. What, give the kingdom to a stranger! It were better for me to watch.’

And his father said to him, ‘As God will, only don’t be frightened by what you may see.’

Then he said, ‘Be it unto me according to God’s will.’