[470] In the Pentameron of Basil, i. 9, we read: "Passaie lo tiempo che Berta filava; mo hanno apierto l'huocchie li gattille."
[471] Afanassieff, vi. 2.
[472] Cfr. Simrock, the work quoted before, p. 409, and the ninth of the Novelline di Santo Stefano di Calcinaia, in which the luminous maiden disguised as an old woman is uncovered by the geese, when she puts down the dress of an old woman.
[473] Simrock, the work quoted before, p. 410.
[474] Wuotan also saves him whom he protects upon a mantle;—this is the flying carpet or mantle, hood, or hat, which renders the wearer invisible, and for which the three brothers disputed, which is also represented as a tablecloth that lays itself. Thus the poor man who goes to sell his cow's hide finds the pot of abundance and riches. The dispute for the tablecloth is the same as the dispute for riches, for the beautiful princess who is afterwards divided, or else carried off by a third or fourth person who takes the lion's share. We must not forget the fable of the animals who wish to divide the stag among themselves, of which the lion takes all, because he is named lion. In the Nibelungen, Schilbung and Nibelung dispute with each other for the division of a treasure; they beg Sîfrit to divide it; Sîfrit solves the question by killing them both and taking to himself the treasure, and the hood that makes its wearer invisible (Tarnkappe).
[475] The romance of Berta continues in the Reali di Francia in harmony with the popular stories of an analogous character; the false wife really causes King Pepin to marry her, and sends Berta into the forest to be killed; the hired murderers pity her, and grant her her life. Berta, whilst in the forest bound to a tree (like the Vedic cow), is found by a hunter; out of gratitude she works (she, no doubt, spins and weaves), in order that the hunter may sell her work at Paris for a high price. Meanwhile her father and mother dream that she is beset by bears and wolves who threaten to devour her, that thereupon, throwing herself into the water, a fisherman saves her (in the dream, the water has taken the place of the forest, and the fisherman that of the hunter). King Pepin goes into the forest, finds her, recognises and marries her, whilst Elizabeth is burnt alive. The change of wives also occurs in a graceful form (with a variation of the episode of the beauty thrown into the fountain) in the twelfth of the Contes Merveilleux of Porchat, Paris, 1863.
[476] Histoire de la Vie de Charlemagne et de Roland, par Jean Turpin, traduction de Alex. de Saint-Albin, Paris, 1865, preceded by the Chanson de Roland, poème de Théroulde.—Cfr. the Histoire Poétique de Charlemagne, par Gaston Paris.
[477] Uhland's Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung und Sage, iii. 77.
[478] "Seigneur, bénissez ce lit et ceux qui s'y trouvent; bénissez ces chers enfants, comme vous avez béni Tobie et Sara; daignez les bénir ainsi, Seigneur, afin qu'en votre nom ils vivent et vieillissent et multiplient, par le Christ notre Seigneur.—Ainsi soit-il." Villemarqué, Barzaz Breiz, Chants Populaires de la Bretagne, sixième édition, Paris, 1867, p. 423.
[479] Uhland, the work quoted above, p. 81.—In the French romance of Renard, on occasion of the apparent death of the fox, the gospel is read, on the contrary, by the horse. In the German customs the bull also appears as a funeral animal, and is fastened to the hearse. If, while he is drawing the hearse, he turns his head back, it is considered a sinister omen. According to a popular belief, the bulls and other stalled animals speak to each other on Christmas night. A tradition narrates, that a peasant wished on that night to hide himself and hear what the bulls were saying; he heard them say that they would soon have to draw him to the grave, and died of terror. This is the usual indiscretion and its punishment.—Cfr. Rochholz, Deutscher Glaube und Brauch, Berlin, 1867, i. 164, and Menzel, Die Vorchristliche Unsterblichkeits-Lehre, Leipzig, 1870.—We have the speaking oxen again in Phædrus's fable of the stag who takes refuge in the stable, ii. 8, where the master is called "ille qui oculos centum habet."