Page:Folklore1919.djvu/517

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Bonfires in Norway.
151

dance, eat and make merry under the auspices of their parents and elders, who seem to take delight in the merriment. Traces are also to be found of a feast on the old mounds in the evening. On the whole there seems to have been a connection between the feast-making of St. John’s Eve and an ancient festival in honour of the dead.

Kristian Bugge,
Lektor at the Gymnasium of Aalesund, Norway.



Some Experiments on the Reproduction of Folk-Stories.

(Folk-lore, vol. xxxi. p. 30.)

Apropos of Mr. F. C. Bartlett’s “Experiments on the Reproduction of Folk-stories,” may I tell, in an abbreviated form, a story also told to me by my friend Samson. I will presently explain its relevancy to Mr. Bartlett’s experiments. (The story as I now tell it has acquired a quasi-moral shape, and I head it with the moral title “Waste not, want not.”)

Once upon a time, a blind man and a hunchback were great friends, and used to to out begging together. When they had exhausted the charity of their native village, they set out together into a far country. As they were plodding along, the blind man, setting foot on something that felt like a snake, cried alound in fright. But the hunchback said, “That is only a frayed old elephant-tether. Come along, you fool!” The blind man, however, said “Waste not, want not. Put the rope in my wallet.” So said, so done.

Presently, when the friends were fording a river, the blind man trod on something hard and round in the water, and begged the hunchback to pick it up. The hunchback dived into the current and produced a small tortoise, which he was for throwing away. “Not so,” said the blind man; “waste not, want not. Put that too in my wallet.” So said, so done.

A little further on, the travellers came to where some cowherd lads were amusing themselves in the shade of a peepul tree by dancing to the sound of a drum. “Ah,” said the hunchback, “If only we had a drum wherewith to amuse ourselves