J. F. Campbell Collection > Popular tales of the West Highlands > Volume 2

THE THREE WIDOWS. 237
Piper my guardian, and which I lately found in another shape, in
an English translation of Master Owlglass.
The story, as I remember it, was this : — A sailor who had
got his money, and who knew that he would spend it all, went
to visit his friends. On his way he paid double, and generously,
for his board and lodging, and bargained that be should take off
a certain old bat as payment on bis way back.
A Jew accompanied him on his return, and seeing the effect
of the hat, begged for it, offered for it, and finally bought it for a
large sum. Then he tried it, got cudgelled by the innkeepers,
and cursed the clever tar who had outwitted him.
Here, then, is a story known in the Highlands for many years,
with incidents common to Gaelic, Norse, English, German, and
some African tongue, and with a peculiar character of its own
which distinguishes from all the others. I am indebted to the
author of Norse Tales for a loan of the rare book mentioned in the
following reference, which may throw some light on the story and
its history:—
In Le Piacevole Notte di Straparola, 1567, the story is told of
a priest and three rogues who outwit him and whom he outwits
in return.
First, they persuade him that a mule which he has bought is
an ass, and get it ; which incident is in another Gaelic story in
another shape. Then he sells them a bargain in the shape of a
goat, which is good for nothing.
Then he pretends to kill his house-keeper by sticking a knife
into a bladder filled with blood, and brings her alive again with
something which he sells to them for two hundred florins of gold,
and they kill their three wives in earnest.
They are enraged, catch the priest, and put him into a sack,
intending to drown him in a river. They set him down, and a
shepherd comes, who hears a lamentable voice in a sack saying,
" Me la vogliono pur dare, and io non la voglio " — They wish to
give her to me, and I don't want her. The priest explains that
the Lord of that city wants to marry him to his daughter, and by
that bait (not the bait of riches) entices the shepherd into the
sack. The shepherd is drowned. The priest takes the sheep, and
the rogues, when they find the priest with the sheep, beg to be
put into three sacks. They get in, are carried to the river by