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FOLK-LORE OF THE HOLY LAND
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he was fond of them. So, for love, she filled all his pockets with peas. Soon after, the priest was seen in distress of spirit, beating his forehead and exclaiming: “According to the peas there will be no feast.”

One day during a fast,[1] a monk who was strolling through the market came upon a _peasant woman with some eggs for sale. Sick to death of eating nothing but vegetables, he bought a few of them, carried them secretly to his cell in the convent, and there hid them till late at night, when all the brethren had gone to bed. Then he got up and prepared to cook and eat them. Having nothing to boil them in, he took one of the eggs in a pair of tongs and held it over the flame of a candle till he judged it done. Presently, as he thus treated one after another, a smell of burning egg-shells spread through the monastery. It reached the cell of the Abbot, who at once arose and, candle in hand, repaired to the convent kitchen. It was empty. He then went up and down the passages, sniffing at door after door, till he reached the culprit’s cell, where, peeping through the keyhole, he beheld the monk in the act of roasting the last of his eggs.

Still with his eye at the keyhole, he knocked at the door. The monk caught up the eggs, hid them under his pillow, blew out the light, and snored

  1. ↑ The fast days of the Orthodox Eastern Church amount to more than a third of the whole year. Abstinence is enjoined from all animal food, including eggs, milk, and butter, and everything cooked with those ingredients.
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