Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/104

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94
Miscellanea.

are sacrificed and buried, the plough-beam and yoke fixed in the ground and worshipped.

464. Impregnation by the Sun.

Folk-Tales.

420. The Banker and his Servant.—He used to put questions, and cut off the nose of all who failed to answer. How his man outwitted him.

422. Shaikh Chilli robs four blind beggars, and they fight and kill each other. He hires a man to throw away one; ere his return he has propped another against the wall and pretends the first has come back; so with the other two. On the last occasion, he threw the corpse into a tank; a brahmin who was bathing there comes up out of the water in affright. The man, thinking this is his lively corpse again, hales the brahmin before the Shaikh. [This episode occurs in a good many tales. I add one more reference to a Modern Greek collection: (Symbol missingGreek characters), Athens, 1884, No. 6, (Symbol missingGreek characters). Bishop, Priest, and Deacon all make love to a wife. She makes assignations with each, and her husband kills them for her; props the bodies one by one at a tavern door, knocks, and lets the keeper imagine he has killed them by opening it. The bodies are got rid of in a similar way, but the unlucky priest at the end is killed by the bearer.]

425. Witty answers.

427. Wicked Stepmother. Has her stepson murdered; changed into a parrot, he comes back and sings his fate. She wrings his neck. Where the body is thrown, a flower grows, and sings as before. She cannot pluck it. In the end, the son emerges from the petals, and the stepmother is killed.

428. The Clever Wife of the Wazir.—How she outwitted one who would have killed her husband and taken herself.

465. The Rabbit and the Monkey.—How the monkey cheated the rabbit, but the rabbit got the best of him at last. (An amusing tale told by a wild hillman.)

467. Tale of a bold man and a demon. (Rather good—Compare vol. ii. § 30.)

468. Girl conceives by smelling the bone of a dead scoundrel.

469. Banished wife; son takes service with his own father; task set: all's well that ends well.