resists the temptation to answer and restores her brother and sister with the Leaping Water.[1] In the Kabyle story of the children and the bat, the brothers, one after the other, are sent to find the bat. "What wild beast comes here?" asks the bat from the top of the tree. "Go to sleep, old head," answers each lad, with the result that the bat changes their guns to pieces of wood, and renders each of them in turn "microscopic." Their sister is more circumspect; she does not answer the bat, but waits until it is asleep, climbs the tree, seizes the bat creature, and compels it to restore her brothers. In a story from Mirzapur, those who answer when addressed by the nightingale are turned to stone.[2] A Lincolnshire man whose wife was bewitched went out to gather "wicken." "On the way he met a woman belonging to the village, who said, "Mr. W———, what time is it?" but he would not reply, because he knew it was the witch."[3] It is very dangerous to answer questions addressed to you by strangers or suspicious persons.[4] But sometimes Greek meets Greek. In another story, a Moor, who finds the second brother stretched on the grass, asks him,—"What do you want here?" He replies "Nothing." The Moor spits on him, and turns him to stone. The youngest brother, when confronted with the Moor, replies with another question,—"What are all these many stones I see around me?" The Moor answers that they were men whom his spittle had turned to stone, and threatens him with the same fate. Thereupon the magic nightingale with which the hero was returning began to sing, and
- ↑ Hartland, The Legend of Perseus, vol. iii., p. 97.
- ↑ Hartland, op. cit., pp. 99, 97.
- ↑ County Folklore, vol. v. (Lincolnshire), p. 99.
- ↑ e.g. at night when evil spirits are about, (Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, pp. 140, 201, 365), or on your marriage day, when enemies may seek to cast a spell, (Doutté, Magie et Religion dans l'Afrique du Nord, p. 290).
