Which is the maid without a tress? A-D, G.
And which is the tower without a crest? A-D, F, G.
(Maid-child in the cradle; tower of Babel.)
Which is the water without any sand? A, B, C, F, G.
And which is the king without any land? A, B, C, F, G.
(Water in the eyes; king in cards.)
Where is no dust in all the road? A-G.
Where is no leaf in all the wood? A-G.
(The milky way, or a river; a fir-wood.)
Which is the fire that never burnt? A, C-G.
And which is the sword without a point? C-G.
(A painted fire; a broken sword.)
Which is the house without a mouse? C-G.
Which is the beggar without a louse? C-G.
(A snail's house; a painted beggar.)[11]
A ballad translated in Ralston's Songs of the Russian People, p. 356, from Buslaef's Historical Sketches of National Literature and Art, I, 31, resembles very closely German A. A merchant's son drives by a garden where a girl is gathering flowers. He salutes her; she returns her thanks. Then the ballad proceeds:
'Shall I ask thee riddles, beauteous maiden?
Six wise riddles shall I ask thee?'
'Ask them, ask them, merchant's son,
Prithee ask the six wise riddles.'
'Well then, maiden, what is higher than the forest?
Also, what is brighter than the light?
Also, maiden, what is thicker than the forest?
Also, maiden, what is there that's rootless?
Also, maiden, what is never silent?
Also, what is there past finding out?'
'I will answer, merchant's son, will answer,
All the six wise riddles will I answer.
Higher than the forest is the moon;
Brighter than the light the ruddy sun;
Thicker than the forest are the stars;
Rootless is, O merchant's son, a stone;
Never silent, merchant's son, the sea;
And God's will is past all finding out.'
'Thou hast guessed, O maiden fair, guessed rightly,
All the six wise riddles hast thou answered;
Therefore now to me shalt thou be wedded,
Therefore, maiden, shalt thou be the merchant's wife.'[12]
Among the Gaels, both Scotch and Irish, a ballad of the same description is extremely well known. Apparently only the questions are preserved in verse, and the connection with the story made by a prose comment. Of these questions there is an Irish form, dated 1738, which purports to be copied from a manuscript of the twelfth century. Fionn would marry no lady whom he could pose. Graidhne, "daughter of the king of the fifth of Ullin," answered everything he asked, and became his wife. Altogether there are thirty-two questions in the several versions. Among them are: What is blacker than the raven? (There is death.) What is whiter than the snow? (There is the truth.) 'Fionn's Questions,' Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands, III, 36; 'Fionn's Conversation with Ailbhe,'Heroic Gaelic Ballads, by the same, pp. 150, 151.
The familiar ballad-knight of A, B is converted in C into an "unco knicht," who is the devil, a departure from the proper story which is found also in 2 J. The conclusion of C,
As soon as she the fiend did name,
He flew awa in a blazing flame,
reminds us of the behavior of trolls and nixes under like circumstances, but here the naming amounts to a detection of the Unco Knicht's quiddity, acts as an exorcism, and simply obliges the fiend to go off in his real character. D belongs with C: it was given by the reciter as a colloquy between the devil and a maiden.
The earlier affinities of this ballad can be better shown in connection with No 2.
Translated, after B and A, in Grundtvig's Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 181: Herder, Volkslieder, I, 95, after A d.