Wit-contests in verse, the motive of love or marriage having probably dropped out. Polish. Five examples are cited by Karłowicz, Wisła, III, 267 ff.: Kolberg, Krakowskie, II, 149, and Mazowsze, II, 149, No 332, Zbiór wiad. do antrop., X, 297, No 217, and two not before printed. Moravian examples from Sušil, p. 692 f., No 809, p. 701 ff., No 815: make me a shirt without needle or thread, twist me silk out of oaten straw; count me the stars, build me a ladder to go up to them; drain the Red Sea, make me a bucket that will hold it; etc. Zapolski, White Russian Weddings and Wedding-Songs, p. 35, No 19. Wisła, as before, III, 532 ff.
Polish tales of The Clever Wench are numerous: Wisła, III, 270 ff.
13 b. A fragment of a riddle given by a wise man to the gods is preserved in a cuneiform inscription: [What is that] which is in the house? which roars like a bull? which growls like a bear? which enters into the heart of a man? etc. The answer is evidently air, wind. George Smith, The Chaldean Account of Genesis, 1876, p. 156 : cited by J. Karłowicz, Wisła, III, 273.
15–20, 484 f., II, 495 f. Communicated by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould. “From the north of Cornwall, near Camelford. This used to be sung as a sort of game in farm-houses, between a young man who went outside the room and a girl who sat on the settle or a chair, and a sort of chorus of farm lads and lasses. Now quite discontinued.” The dead lover represents the auld man in I.
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A fair pretty maiden she sat on her bed,
The wind is blowing in forest and town
She sighed and she said, O my love he is dead!
And the wind it shaketh the acorns down
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