ping up there? You'd better come and help me carry water. I must
work here, and you dawdle about above!"

Suddenly the Moon came down from above, but he seized the woman and took
her with him into the sky. There she still stands with her two pails as
a warning to everybody not to work too late in the evening on holidays.
But the Moon knows no rest, and can never dawdle about, for he must
wander from land to land, and everywhere illumine the darkness of night
with his light.[22]

[Footnote 22: Compare the _Kalevipoeg_, Canto 1.]

POLYPHEMUS.

(JANNSEN.)

In the Esthonian version the Devil visits a locksmith, who promises to
cast him new eyes. When the Devil calls for them, he binds him to a
bench on his back, telling him that his name is Myself. He then pours
molten tin into his eyes, and the Devil jumps up with the pain, and
rushes out with the bench on his back, telling his companions that
"Myself" has done it. He dies miserably, and the dog, fox, rat, and wolf
bury him under the dung of a white mare. "Since this," adds the
narrator, "there has been no devil more." There is a very similar story
from Swedish Lappmark, in which the man who outwits and blinds a giant
tells him that his own name is "Nobody."[23]

[Footnote 23: Poestion, _Lapplaendische Maerchen_, p. 122. Another Lapp
version, almost identical with Homer's, is given by Latham,
_Nationalities of Europe_, i. p. 237.]

RED RIDING-HOOD.

One of the most fantastic stories of this series is "The Devil's Visit"
(Jannsen: Veckenstedt), which, notwithstanding its subject, has an
absurd resemblance in some of its details to "Little Red Riding-Hood."

Two men and their wives lived together in a cottage; one couple had
three children, the others were childless. One day, both husbands were
absent, and the Devil and his son knocked at the door in their
semblance, and sat down to supper. But the eldest child said secretly,
"Mother, mother, father's got long claws!" The second said, "Mother,
mother, he's got a tail too!" And the youngest added, "Mother, mother,
he's got iron teeth in his mouth." The woman comforted the children, and
while the childless woman went with one of the devils, the mother put
the children to bed on the stove, laid juniper twigs in front, and made
the sign of the cross over them.

She then gave the Devil the end of her girdle to hold, by which to draw
her to him, but she fastened the other end to a log of wood, and climb