of sleeping. When her husband asked her to make pancakes, she would say, "You thief, you don't deserve a pancake!" If he said, "Don't make any pancakes, wife, if I don't deserve them," she would cook a two-gallon pot full, and say, "Eat away, you thief, till they're all gone!"

One day, after having had his trouble and bother with her, he went into the forest to look for berries and distract his grief; and he came to where there was a currant-bush, and in the middle of that bush he saw a bottomless pit. He looked at it for some time and considered, "Why should I live in torment with a bad wife? Can't I put her into that pit? Can't I teach her a good lesson ? »

<< Wife, don't go into the woods for berries." "Yes, you bugbear, I shall go!"

"I've found a currant-bush: don't pick it."

"Yes, I will; I shall go and pick it clean: but I won't give you a single currant!"

The husband went out, his wife with him. He came to the currant-bush, and his wife jumped into the middle of it, and went flop into the bottomless pit.

The husband returned home joyfully, and remained there three days; on the fourth day he went to see how things were going on. Taking a long cord, he let it down into the pit, and out from thence he pulled a little demon. Frightened out of his wits, he was going to throw the imp back again into the pit, but it shrieked aloud and earnestly entreated him, saying:

"Don't send me back again, O peasant! Let me go out into the world! A bad wife has come and absolutely devoured us all, pinching us and biting us - we're utterly worn out with it. I'll do you a good turn if you will."

So the peasant let him go free-at large in Holy Russia.

THE

HANGMAN'S ROPE

Russian variant of the superstition. Reported March 27th, 1880

HE hangman is permitted to trade upon the superstition still current in Russian society, respecting the luck conferred upon gamesters by the possession of a morsel of the rope with which a human being has been strangled, either by the hand of justice or by his own. Immediately after young M'Cadetzky had been hanged, only the other day, Froloff was surrounded by members of the Russian jeunesse dorée, eager to purchase scraps of the fatal noose; and he disposed of several dozen such talismans at from three to five roubles apiece, observing with cynical complacency that "he hoped the Nihilists would yet bring him in plenty of money."

MAY-DAY SONG

From J. G. Frazer's Golden Bough.' Abingdon in Berkshire. Variant of folk rhymes that survive from the old Aryan tree-worship, associated with May Day.

OLD ENGLISH CHARMS AND FOLK CUSTOMS
From Herrick's 'Hesperides.' Devonshire: Seventeenth Century

From A Pleasant Treatise on Witchcraft.' English variant of the almost

A

universal folk-tale

CERTAIN woman having put out her child to nurse in the country, found, when she came to take it home, that its form was so much altered that she scarce knew it; nevertheless, not knowing what time might do, took it home for her own. But when after some years it could neither speak nor go, the poor woman was fain to carry it, with much trouble, in her arms; and one day, a poor man coming to the door, "God bless you, mistress," said he, "and your poor child: be pleased to bestow something on a poor man."-"Ah! this child," replied she,

"is the cause of all my sorrow," and related what had happened; adding, moreover, that she thought it changed, and none of her child. The old man, whom years had rendered more prudent in such matters, told her, to find out the truth she should make a clear fire, sweep the hearth very clean, and place the child fast in his chair-that he might not fall - before it, and break a dozen eggs, and place the four-and-twenty half shells before it; then go out, and listen at the door; for if the child spoke, it was certainly a changeling; and then she should carry it out, and leave it on the dunghill to cry, and not to pity it, till she heard its voice no more. The woman, having done all things according to these words, heard the child say, "Seven years old was I before I came to the nurse, and four years have I lived since, and never saw so many milk-pans before." So the woman took it up, and left it upon the dunghill to cry and not to be pitied, till at last she thought the voice went up into the air; and on going there found her own child safe and sound.

Β ́

son.

THE MAGIC SWORD (MIMUNG, OR BALMUNG)

Norse variant of the common Aryan sword-myths (Carlyle's version)

Y THIS Sword Balmung also hangs a tale. Doubtless it was one of those invaluable weapons sometimes fabricated by the old Northern Smiths, compared with which our modern Foxes and Ferraras and Toledos are mere leaden tools. Von der Hagen seems to think it simply the Sword Mimung under another name; in which case Siegfried's old master, Mimer, had been the maker of it, and called it after himself, as if it had been his In Scandinavian chronicles, veridical or not, we have the following account of that transaction. Mimer was challenged by another Craftsman, named Amilias, who boasted that he had made a suit of armor which no stroke could dint, to equal that feat or own himself the second Smith then extant. This last the stout Mimer would in no case do, but proceeded to forge the Sword Mimung; with which, when it was finished, he, "in presence of the King," cut asunder "a thread of wool floating on water." This would have seemed a fair fire-edge to most smiths; not so to Mimer: he sawed the blade in places, welded it in "a red-hot fire for three days," tempered it "with milk and oatmeal," and by much other cunning brought out a sword that severed

a ball of wool floating on water." But neither would this suffice him; he returned to his smithy, and by means known only to himself produced, in the course of seven weeks, a third and final edition of Mimung, which split asunder a whole floating pack of wool. The comparative trial now took place forthwith. Amilias, cased in his impenetrable coat of mail, sat down on a bench, in presence of assembled thousands, and bade Mimer strike him. Mimer fetched of course his best blow, on which Amilias observed that there was a strange feeling of cold iron in his inwards. "Shake thyself," said Mimer: the luckless wight did so, and fell in two halves, being cleft sheer through, never more to swing hammer in this world.