MISCELLANEA.
The Three Precepts: a Norse Variant.—The notes appended to Mr. MacBain’s translation of the Gaelic tale of “The Baker of Beauly”, pp. 190-192, were written several years ago, and I had forgotten all about them until I saw the June number of Folk-Lore, and I may now add another version, which is of considerable interest. Mr. Jacobs, in the note on his Cornish version of the story of the “Three Precepts”, in his charming book, Celtic Fairy Tales, remarks that “a similar story is found in some versions of ‘The Forty Vazírs’ and in the ‘Turkish Tales’,” as if these were the names of different works: as I have already stated (pp. 191, 192), the Contes Turcs of Petis de la Croix are a partial French rendering of the Turkish Qirq Vazir.
The “Tale of Ivan”, which Mr. Jacobs gives in his book, is also given, in Cornish, Welsh, and English, by Price, in his Archæologia Cornu-Brittania, 1790, p. 55; and an abstract of it was contributed to Notes and Queries, April 28th, 1852 (First Series, vol. vi), the third “precept” and the incident connected with it being similar to those in Mr. MacBain’s version, with this important difference, that the hero’s son is not a grown man, as he is absurdly represented to be, after the hero’s absence of three years, in the Gaelic version, but a child asleep beside his mother. The same correspondent of N. and Q. also gives an abstract of a Norse variant, which, he says, “will be found in one of the tracts published by the University of Copenhagen, the printing of which forms part of the ‘Solemnia Academica’ of the King’s birthday.” As this version differs materially from those referred to by Mr. Jacobs, it may as well be transferred to the pages of Folk-lore, as follows:
Haco, having spent his own substance in Norway, takes service with the King of Denmark, who instructed him in the arts of the silversmith and the goldsmith, and finally in that of the “stonesmith”, or architect. He becomes the most skilful workman in the North, and, at the end of each year, asks from the king some piece of “wholesome rede”. The king gives him three good counsels:
(1) Never trust a little man, or one with a red beard.
(2) In whatever haste you may be, never leave a church before Mass is said fairly out.
(3) If thou art angry with thine enemy, and wouldst kill him, first say the Lord’s Prayer three times, and then kill him if thou wilt.
