120, for a variant.
Remarks.–According to Mr. Hartland, the story is designed as a satire on pedantry, and is as old in Italy as Straparola (sixteenth century). In passionate Sicily a wife disgusted with her husband’s pedantry sets the house on fire, and informs her husband of the fact in this unintelligible gibberish; he, not understanding his own lingo, falls a victim to the flames, and she marries the servant who had taken the message.
XLIII. THE THREE HEADS OF THE WELL.
Source.–Halliwell, p. 158. The second wish has been somewhat euphemised.
Parallels.–The story forms part of Peele’s Old Wives’ Tale, where the rhyme was
A Head rises in the well,
Fair maiden, white and red,
Stroke me smooth and comb my head,
And thou shalt have some cockell-bread.
It is also in Chambers, l.c., 105, where the well is at the World’s End (cf. No. xli.). The contrasted fates of two step- sisters, is the Frau Holle (Grimm, No. 24) type of Folk-tale studied by Cosquin, i. 250, seq. “Kate Crackernuts” (No. xxxvii.) is a pleasant contrast to this.
