[4] The apple is a symbolic gift, which a wooer offers to the maiden of his choice.
[5] It is the custom with Serbians, for one of her brothers to present the bride to her wooer.
[6] Beardless is used as the personification of craftiness and sharpness.
[7] This and the remaining stories in this chapter are reprinted from Serbian Folk-Lore, by Madame C. Mijatovitch, by kind permission of M. Chedo Miyatovich.
Chapter XV: Some Serbian Popular Anecdotes
St. Peter and the Sand
A townsman went one day to the country to hunt and came at noon to the house of a peasant whom he knew. The man asked him to share his dinner, and while they were eating, the townsman looked around him and noticed that there was but little arable land to be seen. There were rocks and stones in abundance, however. Surprised at this, the townsman exclaimed: “In the name of all that is good, my friend, how on earth can you good people of this village exist without arable land! and whence these heaps of rocks and stones?” “It is, indeed, a great misfortune!” answered the peasant. “People say that our ancestors heard from their fore-fathers that when our Lord walked on this earth, St. Peter accompanied Him carrying on his back a sack full of sand. Occasionally our Lord would take a grain of sand and throw it down to make a mountain, saying: ‘May this grain multiply!’ When they arrived here St. Peter’s sack burst and half of its contents poured out in our village.”