VARIANT OF THE THREE NOODLES.
Told in 1862 (and afterwards) by a nursemaid then aged sixteen, a native of Houghton, near Stafford.
NCE upon a time there was a farmer and his wife who had one only daughter, and she was courted by a gentleman. Every evening he used to come and see her, and stop to supper at the farmhouse, and the daughter used to be sent down into the cellar to draw the beer for supper. So one evening she was gone down to draw the beer, and she happened to look up at the ceiling while she was drawing, and she saw an axe stuck into one of the beams,[1] It must have been there a long, long time, but somehow or other she had never noticed it before, and she began a-thinking. And she thought ii was very dangerous to have that axe there, for she said to herself, "Suppose him and me was to be married, and we was to have a son, and he was to grow up to be a man, and come down into the cellar to draw the beer, like as I'm doing now, and the axe was to fall on his head and kill him, what a dreadful thing it would be!" And she put down the candle and the jug, and eat herself down and began a-crying.
Well, they began to wonder upstairs how it was that she was so long drawing the beer, and her mother went down to see after her, and she found her sitting on the setluss crying, and the beer running over the floor. "Why, whatever is the matter?" said her mother. "Oh, mother!" says she, "look at that homd axe! Suppose we was to be married, and was to have a son, and he was to grow up, and was to come down into the cellar to draw the beer, and the axe
- ↑ I cannot feel certain whether it was not a hammer or some other tool in my nurse's story, and whether I may not have unconscionsly borrowed the axe from Grimm's Kluge Else.
