er younger brother's care, and
plunged into a stream, where she became what we call a mermaid,--and all
because her husband had scolded her. In another American tale, where the
wife was a snake, she deserted him from jealousy. A Tirolese saga speaks
of a man who had a wife of unknown extraction. She had bidden him,
whenever she baked bread, to pour water for her with his right hand. He
poured it once with the left, to see what would happen. He soon saw, to
his cost; for she flew out of the house. The Queen of Sheba, according
to a celebrated Arab writer, was the daughter of the King of China and a
Peri. Her birth came about on this wise. Her father, hunting, met two
snakes, a black one and a white, struggling together in deadly combat.
He killed the black one, and caused the white one to be carefully
carried to his palace and into his private apartment. On entering the
room the next day, he was surprised to find a lovely lady, who announced
herself as a Peri, and thanked him for delivering her the day before
from her enemy, the black snake. As a proof of her gratitude she offered
him her sister in marriage, subject, however, to the proviso that he
should never question her why she did this or that, else she would
vanish, never to be seen again. The king agreed, and had every reason to
be pleased with his beautiful bride. A son was born to them; but the
lady put it in the fire. The king wept and tore his beard, but said
nothing. Then a daughter of singular loveliness--afterwards Balkis,
Queen of Sheba--was born: a she-bear appeared at the door, and the
mother flung her babe into its jaws. The king tore out not only his
beard, but the hair of his head, in silence. A climax, however, came
when, in the course of a war, he and his army had to effect a seven
days' march across a certain desert. On the fifth day came the queen, a
large knife in her hand, and, slitting the provision-bags and the
waterskins, strewed the whole of the food upon the ground, and brought
the king and his army face to face with death. Her husband could no
longer restrain himself from questioning her. Then she told him that his
vizier, bribed by the enemy, had poisoned the food and water in order to
destroy him and his army, and that his son had a constitutional defect
which would have prevented him from living three days if she had not put
him in the fire. The she-bear, who was no other than a trusty old nurse,
brought back his daughter at her call; but