Upon this they all laughed, and derided him still more.
“Then let every one believe that what I say is true,” cried the gipsy, and from his bosom he took out a small brown bowl and waved it in the air, “and here is the cup to prove it.” And the potter’s heart almost stood still, for he recognized the cup which the gipsy girl had made for him years before.
The other man laughed scornfully. “That proves nothing,” he said. “I might take the mat out from the cart and ask it to say if I spoke the truth; but mats and cups have no tongues to speak with, though my mat can say more than your cup, for there is a rhyme on it with a pattern of a cup; moreover, the rhyme is about a gipsy too.”
“Let us see it,” cried they all.
Then the man went out to his cart and fetched in a white and brown straw mat, covered with a pattern made of cups, and he read the rhyme which was written upon it—
“From the gipsy’s cup I drank for love,
From the gipsy’s cup I drank for hate,
And when she gave me that cup again
My love was gone and I drank too late.”
On hearing this the potter jumped up, and dashed into their midst, and seized the cup.