And that same was done. John married the daughter of the king of the Green Isle, and they made a great rich wedding that lasted seven days and seven years. And thou couldst but hear Leeg, leeg, and Beeg, beeg, solid sound and peg-drawing. Gold a-crushing from the soles of their feet to the tips of their fingers, the length of seven years and seven days.
A variant clearly of John Roberts’ Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘An Old King and his Three Sons in England’ (No. 55, pp. 220–234), but I expect that Matthew Wood’s variant, ‘The Bottle of Black Water,’ would come closer still. Some day Mr. Sampson must give us that with its fellows. Which is the better story—that of John Roberts, the Welsh harper, or this of John MacDonald, the travelling tinker—is hard to determine; in some respects each is immeasurably superior. John Roberts’ is the more coherent and intelligible; but it lacks that splendid wrestling match, with which compare the much poorer one in the Bohemian-Gypsy story of ‘The Three Dragons’ (No. 44, p. 152). And then while it preserves the handkerchief ordeal, it has not the inexhaustible [[278]]whisky-bottle, loaf, and cheese. The occurrence of a bear in each version, though with marked differences, can hardly be accidental. For a long while after I got John Roberts’ story, I believed that its close was largely of his own invention; but that belief now seems to be inadmissible. The Polish-Gypsy story of ‘The Golden Bird and the Good Hare’ (No. 49, pp. 182–8), and its Scottish-Tinker version, ‘The Fox’ (No. 75), should be carefully studied.
No. 74.—The Tale of the Soldier
There was an old soldier once, and he left the army. He went to the top of a hill that was at the upper end of the town-land, and he said, ‘Well, may it be that the Mischief may come and take me with him on his back the next time that I come again in sight of this town.’
Then he was walking till he came to the house of a gentleman that was there. John asked the gentleman if he would get leave to stay in his house that night.
‘Well, then,’ said the gentleman, ‘since thou art an old soldier, and hast the look of a man of courage, without dread or fear in thy face, there is a castle at the side of yonder wood, and thou mayest stay in it till day. Thou shalt have a pipe and baccy, a cogie full of whisky, and a Bible to read.’[3]
When John got his supper, he took himself to the castle. He set on a great fire, and when a while of the night had come, there came two tawny women in, and a dead man’s kist between them. They threw it at the fireside, and they sprang out. John arose, and with the heel of his foot he drove out its end, and he dragged out an old hoary bodach. And he set him sitting in the great chair; he gave him a pipe and baccy, and a cogie of whisky; but the bodach let them fall on the floor.
‘Poor man,’ said John, ‘the cold is on thee.’
John laid himself stretched in the bed, and he left the bodach to toast himself at the fireside; but about the crowing of the cock he went away.