Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 11, 1900.djvu/378

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358 Ca Irene Folklore.

' Yes I saw him, poor fellow, naked and hungry.' When she heard that she cried exceedingly, and went and got some clothes, and bread, and money, and gave them to him, saying: 'Give these to my son Mohammed along with many remembrances from me ' The fellow took the clothes and "vsent away, saying to himself : * It's not my wife only who is a fool, all women are the same.' Pre- sently the (Turkish) soldier (who was the woman's husband) came home and finds his wife crying, so he asks : ' What's the matter, Fatuna ? ' She replied : ' A man has come from hell, who has seen my son Mohammed (there) miserable, and naked, and hungry ; so I have given him some linen clothes and some food to take to my son Mohammed.' The soldier cried : ' You are a fool, no one ever comes back from hell! Where's the fellow?' She said : ' He is gone in such and such a direction.' The soldier mounted his horse and rode off in order to overtake the fellah and recover from him the linen clothes. The fellah saw him coming in the distance and hid the clothes in the well of a water-wheel and said to the irrigator : ' Take a piastre and bring a stick from the garden (yonder).' The lad jumped over the walls ; the soldier came and asks the fellow : ' Good Sir, has no one passed this way with a bundle of clothes?' He replied: 'Yes, soldier, he has just jumped over into the garden.' The soldier said : ' Hold the horse till I come (back).' He mounted the horse and took the clothes and went off. The soldier searches and searches ; there is no one (to be seen). When he returns from the garden he cannot find the horse. He took his departure and returned home ; his wife came to him: 'Where's the horse?' He answered: ' I have sent it to Mohammed in order that he may ride it in hell.' " ^

' Kan fi wahid ragil fellah ; za'al min meratoh, fatlah el-beled umishi ; rah fi beled tani, rah 'ala wahid bet, yishhat : es-sitte gatlo : " enta gai min en?" 'allah "ana gai min gehennam ! " 'aletlo : " mashiiflish Mohammed ibni ? "