‘Then when thy mother brought thee forth, ’twas deep and bitter winter, Eleven days o’ the year had run when anguish came upon her. Thereon[287] I robed me and did on this raiment that thou seëst, And had it in my heart to cry “Long life to thee and riches.” Ah, but the night was deep and dark, yea wrappèd thick in darkness, And hail and snow were driving hard, and angry rain was lashing; From mire to mud, from mud to mire, so lay my road before me, And as I went,--a murrain on’t,--against your well I stumbled; Nay, sirrah, an thou believest not, scan well the scars I carry. Two cursed hounds ye had withal, hounds from the Lombard country, And fierce upon me sprang the twain, and fierce as wolves their baying. Then cursèd I thee full bitterly, a curse of very venom, That no bright day should ever cheer thy miserable body, That thou shouldst burn, that thou shouldst burn, and have no hope of riddance, That joy should ever ’scape thy clasp, and sorrow dog thy goings, That thine own kin should slander thee and thy friends rail upon thee, Nor strangers nor thy countrymen know aught of love toward thee. Yet, hapless man, not thine the sin; thy parents’ was the sinning, That chainèd not those hounds right fast to a corner of their dwelling; Well is it said by men of old, well bruit they loud the saying, “The fathers eat of acid things, and the bairns’ teeth fall aching.” Have patience then, O hapless man, a year or twain of patience, And there shall come a happy day when all thy woes shall vanish; For all thy bitterness of soul thou shalt find consolation, Thy dreams of beauty and of wealth thou shalt at last encompass[288].’ The Fates, it has been already said, are three in number; why so, it seems impossible to determine. It may be that the functions discharged by them fell readily into a three-fold division; thus in the district of Zagorion in Epirus, one Fate ‘spins the thread’ (κλώθει τὸ γνέμα) which determines the length of life, the second apportions good fortune, and the third bad[289]. Or again, the division may have been made in such a way that one Fate should preside over each of the three great events of human experience, birth, marriage, and death. The term ‘fate’ (μοῖρα)[290] is often used by women as a synonym for marriage (γάμος)--in curious contrast with the man’s more optimistic description of his wedding as χαρά, ‘joy’; and a Greek proverb, used of a very ignorant man, δὲν ξέρει τὰ τρία κακὰ τῆς Μοίρας του, ‘he does not know the three evils of his Fate,’ to wit birth, marriage, and death, carries the connexion of fate with these three events a little further. But such distributions of functions are probably posterior to the choice of the number. Three was always a sacred number, and the ancients delighted in trinities of goddesses[291].