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NOTES TO THE FOLK-TALES.
"Croo! pee! croo!
"Gillivirens and Jackdaws lay eight or ten eggs to my poor two."
It is very interesting to compare a Finnish fragment entitled "The Dove's Cooing " with the foregoing. A dove and a hen had each a nest, but the dove had ten eggs and the hen only two. Then the hen began to try and make the dove change with her. At last the dove consented, and gave the hen her ten eggs and took her two. Soon the dove saw she had lost, and began to repent her foolish bargain, and she still laments it, for as soon as you hear her voice you hear her sad song,
"Kyy, Kyy, Kymmenen munaa minä,
waiwainen waihdoin tanan, kahteen munaan."
"I've foolishly bartered my ten eggs
For the hen's two!"[1]
- ↑ S. ja T. in. "Pienempiä Eläin-jutun katkelmia," p. 37. The whole of the Finnish beast stories are most interesting, and the resemblance in many cases to the negro variants in Uncle Remus very striking.
