There are one or two quaint shoe stories of the olden time which may be of value to the collector. It befell once in the beginnings of Bohemia, that, according to Schafarik ("Slawische Alterthümer," vol. ii. p. 422), Lïbussa, queen of that land, found herself compelled by her council to wed. And the wise men, being consulted, declared that he who was to marry the queen would be found by her favourite horse, who would lead the way till he found a man eating from an iron table, and kneel to him. So the horse went on, and unto a field where a man sat eating a peasant's dinner from a ploughshare. This was the farmer Prschemischl. So they covered him with the royal robes and led him to the queen expectant. But ere going he took his shoes of willow-wood and placed them in his bosom and kept them to remind him ever after of his low origin. It will, of course, at once strike the reader, as it has the learned, that this is a story which would naturally originate in any country where there are iron ploughshares, horses, queens, and wooden shoes: and, as Schafarik shrewdly suggests, that it was all "a put-up job;" since, of course, Prschemischl was already a lover of the queen, the horse was trained to find him and to kneel before him, and, finally, that the ploughshare and wooden shoes were the prepared properties of the little drama. The only little flaw in this evidence is the name Prschemischl, which, it must be admitted, is extremely difficult to get over. The Seven League Boots and the shoes of Peter Schlemihl, which take one over the world at will, have a variation in a pair recorded in another tale. There was a beautiful and extremely proud damsel, who refused a young man with every conceivable aggravation of the offence, informing him that when she ran after him, and not before that, he might hope to marry her; and at the same time meeting a poor old gypsy woman who begged her for a pair of old shoes. To which the proud Princess replied:-- "Shoes here, shoes there; Give me a couple, I'll give thee a pair." To which the old gypsy, who was a witch, grimly muttered, "I'll give thee a pair which----" The rest of the expression was really too unamiable to repeat. Well, the youth and the witch met, and, going to the lady's shoemaker, "made him make" a superbly elegant pair of shoes, which were sent to the damsel as a gift. Such a gift! No sooner were they put on than off they started, carrying the Princess, malgré elle, over hill and dale. By and by she saw that a man--the man, of course, whom she had refused--was in advance of her. As in the song of the Cork Leg, "the shoes never stopped, but kept on the pace." And the young man led her to a lonely castle and reasoned with her. And as she had promised to marry should she ever run after him, and as she had pursued him a whole day, she kept her word. The shoes she sent to the witch filled with gold; and they were wedded, and all went as merry as a thousand grigs in a duck-pond.