So it was done, and an hour before sunrise the woman was up, loading the donkey with the best of her stores—­ham, macaroni, flour, cheese, and wine.  All this she committed to the pilgrim, saying, “You’ll send the donkey back, won’t you?” “Of course I would send him back,” he replied; “he’d be of no use to me out there.  But I shan’t get out again myself for another hundred years or so, and I fear he won’t find his way back alone, for it’s no easy way to find.”  “To be sure not; I ought to have thought of that,” replied the widow.  “Ah, well, so as my poor husband gets a good meal, never mind the donkey.”  So the pretended pilgrim from the other world went his way.  He hadn’t gone a hundred yards before the widow called him back.  “Ah, she’s beginning to think better of it,” said he to himself, and he continued his way, pretending not to hear.  “Good pilgrim,” shouted the widow, “I forgot one thing:  would money be of any use to my poor husband?” “Oh dear, yes,” said he, “all the use in the world.  You can always get anything for money anywhere.”  “Oh, do come back, then, and I’ll trouble you with a hundred scudi for him.”  He went back, willingly, for the hundred scudi, which the widow counted out to him.  “There’s no help for it,” said he to himself as he went his way:  “I must go back to those at home.”

From sunny Italy to bleak Norway is certainly a “far cry,” yet the adventure of the “Pilgrim from Paradise” is also known to the Norse peasants, in connection with the quest of the greatest noodles:  A goody goes to market, with a cow and a hen for sale.  She wants five shillings for the cow and ten pounds for the hen.  A butcher buys the cow, but doesn’t want the hen.  As she cannot find a buyer for the hen, she goes back to the butcher, who treats her to so much brandy that she gets dead-drunk, and in this condition the butcher tars and feathers her.  When she awakes, she fancies that she must be some strange bird, and cries out, “Is this me, or is it not me?  I’ll go home, and if our dog barks, then it is not me.”  Thus far we have a variant of our favourite nursery rhyme: 

  There was an old woman, as I’ve heard tell,
  She went to market her eggs for to sell;
  She went to market, all on a market-day,
  And she fell asleep on the king’s highway.

  There came a pedlar, whose name was Stout,
  He cut her petticoats all round about;
  He cut her petticoats up to the knees,
  Which made the old woman to shiver and freeze.

  When the little woman first did wake,
  She began to shiver and she began to shake;
  She began to wonder, and she began to cry,
  “Lauk-a-mercy on me, this is none of I!”

  “But if this be I, as I do hope it be,
  I’ve a little dog at home, and he’ll know me;
  If it be I, he’ll wag his little tail,
  And if it be not I, he loudly bark and wail.”

  Home went the little woman all in the dark,
  Up got the little dog, and began to bark;
  He began to bark, and she began to cry,
  “Lauk-a-mercy on me, this can’t be I!”