Sunday, February 8, 2015

Week 5, Extra Reading Diary: Welsch (Thomas) (Second Half)

Welsch (Thomas) 2nd Half

Owen Goes a-Wooing
This story is very short, but very interesting. Owen is on his way to see his sweetheart and gets lost and falls into a lake. He can't swim, so he sinks and sinks until he comes to the bottom. He miraculously can breath and when he lands, there is green fields and trees. An old fat man asks him to stay so he does for a couple of hours. He then realizes that his sweetheart will be worried about him since he is a couple of hours late so he asks to leave. When he leaves, he ends up coming out from underneath the hearth of his sweetheart, who is sitting there weeping. He finds out that he had been gone a month.

The Devil's Bridge
In this story, there is an old woman who has lost her only source of income, her cow, to the other side of a very rapid river. Suddenly a monk appears and offers to build a bridge so she can retrieve her cow, on one condition. He says he wants to keep the first living thing to crosses the bridge. The old lady goes home while the monk builds the bridge. After thinking it over, she realizes that the monk is probably the devil trying to steal her soul. She decides to sacrifice her dog so that she and her cow will be okay. She tricks the devil by getting her dog to cross first by throwing some bread on the bridge. The devil is so annoyed that he leaves and never comes back.




Devil's Bridge in Bulgaria. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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