Within a few months I took down from the verbal narration of a young Armenian woman a folk-tale called "My Son Ali," with which she had been familiar from her childhood. To me it seems the most interesting form I have yet found of this tale, so widely disseminated, whose heroine is a girl or woman who weeps violently over some hypothetical disaster that is to happen to a child as yet unborn. The incident narrated in "My Son Ali" of a horse being gotten away from its owner, in order to carry necessaries to some one in heaven, occurs in "Not a Pin to Choose" between them, one of Dasent's "Popular Tales from the Norse," also in Grimm's "Wise Folks."
MY SON ALI.
Once upon a time there was a girl whose name was Fatima, who lived with her mother and brother, for her father was dead. Not far from the house there flowed a river. Twice each day, early in the morning and at evening, Fatima took a large copper vessel, and went to the river to bring fresh drinking-water to the house. Early one beautiful morning she went as usual to bring her kettle of fresh water. She sat down under a great mulberry-tree which overhung the river. It was full of ripe fruit which hung far above her head. As she sat there enjoying the beautiful early morning and looking up into the tree laden with fine fruit which she, being a girl, could not reach, since she could not climb the tree, she fell a-thinking.
She thought how some day perhaps she would be married and perhaps would have a little son and his name would be Ali, and after a time he would grow to be eight years old, and that then he could go to the river to bring fresh water in the morning. Then she thought how, when Ali had come to the mulberry-tree, he would climb up into the tree to pluck the delicious berries, and how at last the poor little boy would fall from the tree into the river and be drowned.
Then Fatima sprang up crying, "Oh! Ali! Ali! My son! My son Ali!" and she ran home crying aloud, "My son Ali, my son Ali is dead!"
As she ran along the street the people came out calling to her and asking what was the matter. She did not stop, but ran on crying, "Ali! Ali! My son Ali! My son Ali is dead!" until she reached her own home.
Her mother, seeing the water vessel empty, and hearing her daughter crying aloud, said, "What is the matter? Why are you weeping? Why have you brought no fresh water this morning?"
Then the girl told her mother how she had sat under the mulberry-tree, and had thought that perhaps some day she would be married and would have a little son and his name would be Ali, and when he
