“Very well,” says the cook.
Well, the wedding-day came, and they was married. And after they was married all the company sat down to their vittles. When they began to eat the meat, that was so tasteless they couldn’t eat it. But Cap o’ Rushes’ father he tried first one dish and then another, and then he burst out crying.
“What is the matter?” said the master’s son to him.
“Oh!” says he, “I had a daughter. And I asked her how much she loved me. And she said, ‘As much as fresh meat loves salt.’ And I turned her from my door, for I thought she didn’t love me. And now I see she loved me best of all. And she may be dead for aught I know.”
“No, father, here she is!” says Cap o’ Rushes. And she goes up to him and puts her arms round him.
And so they was happy ever after.
[Discovered by Mr. E. Clodd in the Suffolk Notes and Queries of the “Ipswich Journal.” Reprinted in “Longman’s Magazine”, vol. xiii. Told by an old Servant to the Writer when a Child.]
IV. The Story of Kate Crackernuts.
Once upon a time there was a king and a queen, as in many lands have been. The king had a dochter, Kate, and the queen had one. The queen was jealous of the king’s dochter being bonnier than her own, and cast about to spoil her beauty. So she took counsel of the henwife, who told her to send the lassie to her next morning fasting. The queen did so, but the lassie found means to get a piece before going out. When she came to the henwife’s she asked for eggs, as she had been told to do; the henwife desired her to “lift the lid off that pot there” and see. The lassie did so, but naething happened. “Gae hame to
