In the
matter of recurring numbers, we have the eternal--

"Trois belles filles
L'y en a'z une plus belle que le jour,"

who appear in old French ballads, as well as the "Three Sailors," whose
adventures are related in the Lithuanian and Provencal originals of
Thackeray's _Little Billee_. Then there is "the league, [v.03 p.0266] the
league, the league, but barely three," of Scottish ballads; and the [Greek:
tria poulakia], three golden birds, which sing the prelude to Greek
folk-songs, and so on. A more curious note of primitive poetry is the
lavish and reckless use of gold and silver. H. F. Tozer, in his account of
ballads in the _Highlands of Turkey_, remarks on this fact, and attributes
it to Eastern influences. But the horses' shoes of silver, the knives of
fine gold, the talking "birds with gold on their wings," as in
Aristophanes, are common to all folk-song. Everything almost is gold in the
_Kalewala_ (_q.v._), a so-called epic formed by putting into juxtaposition
all the popular songs of Finland. Gold is used as freely in the ballads,
real or spurious, which M. Verkovitch has had collected in the wilds of
Mount Rhodope. The Captain in the French song is as lavish in his treatment
of his runaway bride,--

"Son amant l'habille,
Tout en or et argent";

and the rustic in a song from Poitou talks of his _faucille d'or_, just as
a variant of Hugh of Lincoln introduces gold chairs and tables. Again, when
the lover, in a ballad common to France and to Scotland, cuts the
winding-sheet from about his living bride--"il tira ses ciseaux d'or fin."
If the horses of the Klephts in Romaic ballads are gold shod, the steed in
_Willie's Lady_ is no less splendidly accoutred,--

"Silver shod before,
And gowden shod behind."

Readers of Homer, and of the Chanson de Roland, must have observed the same
primitive luxury of gold in these early epics, in Homer reflecting perhaps
the radiance of the actual "golden Mycenae."

Next as to talking-birds. These are not so common as in _Maerchen_, but
still are very general, and cause no surprise to their human listeners. The
omniscient popinjay, who "up and spoke" in the Border minstrelsy, is of the
same family of birds as those that, according to Talvj, pervade Servian
song; as the [Greek: tria poulakia] which introduce the story in the Romaic
ballads; as the wise birds whose speech is still understood by
exceptionally gifted Zulus; as the wicked dove that whispers