[23] The south wind is the most dreaded local wind in the Pays Basque. It is always hot, and sometimes very violent. After two or three days it usually brings on a violent thunderstorm and rain.
[24] The lad here calls his snuff-box affectionately “Que quieres,” as if that were its name.
[25] The likeness and the variation of this tale from Campbell’s Gaelic one, “The Widow’s Son,” etc., Vol. II., pp. 293–303, prove that both must be independent versions of some original like Aladdin’s lamp, but not mere copies of it.
[26] This doubling of a price is to get a thing more quickly done—in half the usual time. At least, that was the narrator’s explanation.
[27] These three clever men are found in Gascon (Bladé’s “Armagnac Tales,” p. 10), in Spanish, in Campbell’s “The King of Lochlin’s Three Daughters,” Vol. I., p. 238, and in many others. Cf. Brueyre, pp. 113–120, and notes.
[28] Cf. The tale from the Servian, in Naaké’s “Slavonic Fairy Tales,” p. 7.
[29] i.e., the piece of “braise,” or glowing ember from the wood fire, which is always nearly on a level with the floor in a Basque house.
[30] Through the whole of the South of Europe, in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, etc., the firing of guns, pistols, crackers, is universal at all kinds of “fêtes,” especially religious ones; the half-deafened foreigner often longs for some such law as that infringed by “Mahistruba;” but cf. “Juan de Kalais,” p. 151.
[31] Cf. supra, p. 38, “The Serpent in the Wood.”
[32] This tale is somewhat like Campbell’s “Three Soldiers,” with the variations, Vol. I., p. 176. It is said to be very widely spread.