“What are you about?” asked his wife, “why will you not come to bed?”
“I met a stranger in the forest,” replied her husband, “and she begged me of my charity to make her a cradle for her newborn child.”
When morning broke, the woodcutter went back to his work, and as he passed the pool he set down the cradle upon its mossy bank; and that same evening when he came by again, he heard the cradle rocking under water, and the sweet voice called to him a second time, and said; “Of what use to me is a cradle except I know a lullaby also? Good master woodcutter, I pray you teach me a lullaby.” So the woodcutter went home and said to his wife; “Tell me now, wife, what are the words of the cradle-song which you sing to our little son?”
“They are but an idle jingle,” returned his wife.
“Tell me them notwithstanding,” persisted her husband, “for the tune runs in my head, but the words I have forgotten.”
“These are the words then,” said she.
“The hermit has tolled his bell,
And the wizard moon rides high;
Ah me, the bell and the moon!
Bye, bye, little sweeting, bye, bye;