Note 47 — Chapter I

In the sixty-fourth story of Asbjörnsen’s “Norske Folke-Eventyr,” (Ny Samling, 1871) the dispute between the husband and wife is about a cornfield—as to whether it should be reaped or shorn—and she tumbles into a pool while she is making clipping gestures “under her husband’s nose.” In the old fabliau of “Le Pré Tondu” (Le Grand d’Aussy, Fabliaux, 1829, iii. 185), the husband cuts out the tongue of his wife, to prevent her from repeating that his meadow has been clipped, whereupon she makes a clipping sign with her fingers. In Poggio’s “Facetiæ,” the wife is doubly aggravating. For copious information with respect to the use made of this story by the romance-writers, see Liebrecht’s translations of Basile’s “Pentamerone,” ii. 264, and of Dunlop’s “History of Literature,” p. 516.