A valuable story, but confused and imperfect. Who the dragon was is left to conjecture; and the serpent-maiden—she must have been a real old (serpent) maid—is barely mentioned. In no collection can I find any exact parallel to this story; but it offers many analogies, e.g. to ‘Childe Rowland’ (J. Jacobs’ English Fairy Tales, i. 117–124, 238–245); and to Von Sowa’s Bohemian-Gypsy story of ‘The Three Dragons’ (infra. No. 44). The ‘Apples of Pregnancy’ form the theme of another Roumanian-Gypsy story (No. 16). The hurling the mace occurs in Miklosich’s Bukowina-Gypsy story, ‘Pretty-face’ (No. 29), and in ‘Sir Peppercorn’ (Denton’s Serbian Folklore, p. 124). For ‘the cocks crowed, and he fell,’ cf. Ralston, p. 316; and for blowing a blast and summoning all the birds, the Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘The Green Man of Noman’s Land’ (No. 62). For the latter part of the story [[41]]reference should be made to Ralston, pp. 92, 98, 103–4; Krauss, i. 362; and especially the close of the Bulgarian story of ‘The Golden Apples and the Nine Peahens’ (Wratislaw’s Sixty Slavonic Folk-tales, pp. 193–198), where we get the watching of a mare for three successive days, and the finding of her by the help of a grateful fish, fox, and crow. Cf. too, Wratislaw’s Croatian story, ‘The Daughter of the King of the Vilas’ (No. 53, pp. 278–283).
No. 11.—The Two Thieves
There was a time when there was. There were two thieves. One was a country thief, and one a town thief. So the time came that the two met, and they asked one another whence they are and what they are.
Then the country thief said to the town one, ‘Well, if you’re such a clever thief as to be able to steal the eggs from under a crow, then I shall know that you are a thief.’
He said, ‘See me, how I’ll steal them.’
And he climbed lightly up the tree, and put his hand under the crow, and stole the eggs from her, and the crow never felt it. Whilst he is stealing the crow’s eggs, the country thief stole his breeches, and the town thief never felt him. And when he came down and saw that he was naked, he said, ‘Brother, I never felt you stealing my breeches; let’s become brothers.’
So they became brothers.
Then what are they to do? They went into the city, and took one wife between them. And the town thief said, ‘Brother, it is a sin for two brothers to have one wife. It were better for her to be yours.’
He said, ‘Mine be she.’