‘Since they did not obey me,’ replied his father, ‘it is right that God should punish them.’
This youngest prince dwells with his wife, and they live with the help of the good, golden God.
This opens like a Bulgarian story, ‘The Golden Apples and the Nine Peahens,’ No. 38 of Wratislaw’s Sixty Slavonic Folk-tales, p. 186, also somewhat like the Roumanian-Gypsy tale of ‘The Red King and the Witch’ (No. 14). Laura Gonzenbach’s Sicilian story, No. 51, ‘Vom singenden Dudelsack,’ may also be compared. But it is essentially identical with our Scottish-Tinker story of ‘The Fox’ (No. 75), and with Wratislaw’s Serbian story of ‘The Lame Fox,’ No. 40, pp. 205–217, with Grimm’s No. 57, ‘The Golden Bird’ (i. 227, 415), and with Campbell of Islay’s No. 46, ‘Mac Iain Direach,’ on which see Reinhold Köhler in Orient und Occident, ii. 1864, pp. 685–6. Kopernicki’s Gypsy story is plainly very defective. The lame hare should first meet the two elder brothers, and his stealing the steed and the bird is as lame as himself. The concluding phrase, ‘golden God,’ occurs often in Hungarian and in Slovak-Gypsy stories; so I am inclined to question Kopernicki’s footnote that ‘ “with the help of God” (or “of the good God”), a phrase frequently occurring in the Polish-Gypsy stories is borrowed from the popular speech of Poland.’ Dja Devlésa, ‘go with God,’ is of constant occurrence in Turkish-Romani (Paspati, p. 205), and in most, if not all, of the other European Gypsy dialects.
No. 50.—The Witch
There was once a nobleman who had a very handsome son. The nobleman wished that his son should marry, but there was nobody whom he would wed. Young ladies of every kind were assembled, but not one of them would he have. For ten years he lived with his father. Once in a dream he bethought himself that he should go and travel. He went away far out into the world; and for ten years he was absent from his home. He reflected, and ‘What shall [[189]]I do?’ he asked himself; ‘I will return to my father.’ He returned home in rags, and all lean with wretchedness, so that his father was ashamed of him. He remained with him three months.
Once he dreamt that in the middle of a field there was a lovely sheet of water, and that in this little lake three beautiful damsels were bathing. Next morning he arose and said to his father, ‘Rest you here with the help of the good God, my father; for I am going afar into the world.’
His father gave him much money, and said to him, ‘If you do not wish to stay with me, go forth with the help of God.’
He set out on his way; he came to this little lake; and there he saw three beautiful damsels bathing. He would have captured one of them, but these damsels had wings on their smocks, by means of which they soared into the air and escaped him. He went away, this nobleman’s son, and said he to himself, ‘What shall I do now, poor wretch that I am?’ and he began to weep bitterly.
Then he sees an old man approaching him, and this old man asks him, ‘Why do you weep, my lad?’