The king says to her—
“What! Did you not make me promise that she should never be killed? How is it you ask me that?”
The witch considered that one her greatest enemy; and, as she left him no peace, he sent a servant to fetch the cows. He finds them all seven by the precipice; they were lowing, and he tried to drive them to the house, but he could not do it in any way; and he hears a voice, which says,
“It is not for myself that I grieve so much, but for my child, and for my husband, and for my dearly-loved cows. Who will take care of them?”
The lad could not succeed (in driving them), and goes and tells to the king what is taking place. The king himself goes to the precipice, and hears this voice. He quickly throws a long cord down, and, when he thinks that she has had time to take hold of it, he pulls it up, and sees that they have got the princess there. Judge of the joy of the king! She relates to her husband all that the witch had done to her, both formerly and now. The king goes to the witch’s bed, and says to her,
“I know your villanies now; and, if you do not immediately change these cows, as they were before, into fine boys, I will put you into a red-hot oven.”
The witch makes them fine men, and, notwithstanding that, the king had her burnt in a red-hot oven, and threw her ashes into the air. The king lived happily with his wife, and her seven brothers married ladies of the court, and sent for their mother, and they all lived happily together.
Louise Lanusse.
We have also, in Basque, a version of Madame d’Aulnoy’s “Abenan.” It seems to be a mixture of various legends strung together by this fanciful writer; but we do not think it worth either our own or our readers’ while to try to disentangle its separate parts. The pretty little tale of “The Faded Roses” has been told us from two quite different sources. This tale, though without doubt derived from the French, we can trace up in Basque further than any other. It was told us by a lady of between seventy and eighty, who heard it as a child from an old nurse, whom she distinctly remembers to have told her that she learnt it as a child from her mother. It must thus have existed in Basque over a century.