Page:Folk-lore of the Holy Land.djvu/257

when he called to the old woman to ask whether her work for him was done. Hearing Thalijyeh singing as she turned the spinning-wheel, he peeped through a crack in the door in order to see who it was that sung so sweetly; and finding that the maiden was alone, he went away, sorry for his rash vow the previous evening, to the dyer’s, where he found the grandmother. She handed him the thread, and when he asked her who was the maiden singing in the cave, she answered, “Your bride.” “What do you mean?” replied he in surprise. “Tt is the girl to whom the shoe which you picked up last night belongs, and whom you swore thrice by Allah that you would marry,” said the old woman. The youth was delighted. His father made no objection to the marriage, seeing that Thaljiyeh was of good family. By the kindness of the jinniyeh in the cistern, all the jewellery belonging to the bride was found one morning at the head of her bed in her grandmother’s cave, and the cruel stepmother and her daughters had the bitterness of listening to the “Zagharit”^[1] and the shouting, as the veiled bride, the beautiful Snow-maiden, whom they had so despised and ill-treated, seated upon the bridal camel, was led in joyful procession to her husband’s house.

It is not likely that any reader will fail to recognise in this tale a local version of “Cinderella.”