anything now?"

"Yes," he replied, "I see a great flame of fire."

The bride took her wand, struck it three times, and said: "I change
thee, Great Wind, into a garden, myself into a pear-tree, and my
husband into a gardener."

The transformation had hardly been effected when the master of the
castle and his wife came up with them.

"Ha, my good man," cried he to the seeming gardener, "has any one on
horseback passed this way?"

"Three pears for a sou," said the gardener.

"That is not an answer to my question," fumed the old wizard, for such
he was. "I asked if you had seen any one on horseback in this
direction."

"Four for a sou, then, if you will," said the gardener.

"Idiot!" foamed the enchanter, and dashed on in pursuit. The young
wife then changed herself, her horse, and her husband into their
natural forms, and, mounting once more, they rode onward.

"Do you see anything now?" asked she.

"Yes, I see a great flame of fire," he replied.

Once more she took her wand. "I change this steed into a church," she
said, "myself into an altar, and my husband into a priest."

Very soon the wizard and his wife came to the doors of the church and
asked the priest if a youth and a lady had passed that way on
horseback.

"Dominus vobiscum," said the priest, and nothing more could the wizard
get from him.

Pursued once more, the young wife changed the horse into a river,
herself into a boat, and her husband into a boatman. When the wizard
came up with them he asked to be ferried across the river. The boatman
at once made room for them, but in the middle of the stream the boat
capsized and the enchanter and his wife were drowned.

The young lady and her husband returned to the castle, seized the
treasure of its fairy lord, and, says tradition, lived happily ever
afterward, as all young spouses do in fairy-tale.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] _Roman de Rou_, v. 6415 ff.

[21] Consult original ballad in Vicomte de la Villemarque's _Chants
populaires de la Bretagne_.

[22] MacCulloch, _The Religion of the Ancient Celts_, p. 116
(Edinburgh, 1911).

[23] See _Ballads and Metrical Tales, illustrating the Fairy Mythology
of Europe_ (anonymous, London, 1857) for a metrical version of
this tale.

[24] Lib. III, cap. vi.

[25] Paris, 1670. Strange that this book should have been seized upon
by students of the occult as a 'text-book' furnishing
longed-for details of