106 COSSACK FAIRY TALES.

to lie down on his pillow. There was no sign of
his wife, but a huge serpent was just coiling itself
round and round and settling down in the middle of
the pillow. Then he called to mind how, once, his
wife had said to him: ‘ Beware, for Heaven’s sake, of
ever calling me a serpent. I will not suffer thee to
call me by that name, and if thou dost thou shalt
lose thy wife.” He called this to mind now, but it
was already too late; what he had said could not be
unsaid. Then he reflected what a yvood wife he had
had, and how she herself had sought him out, and
how she had waited upon him continually and done
him boundless good, and yet he had not been able to
refrain his tongue, so that now, maybe, be would be
without a wife for the rest of his days. His heart
grew heavy within him as he thought of all this,
and he wept bitterly at the harm he had done
to himself. Then the Serpent said to him: ‘ Weep
no more. What is to be, must be. Is it thy
standing corn thou art grieved about? Go up
to thy barn, and there thou wilt find all thy corn
lying, to the very last little grain. Have I not
brought it all home and threshed it for thee, and set
everything in order? And now I must depart to the
place where thou didst first find me.” Then she
crept off, and the man followed her, weeping and
mourning all the time as for one already dead.