The Sphinx will recur to the recollection of the reader, who tore to pieces those who could not answer its riddles. At last Creon, King of Thebes, offered his sister, Jocasta, to anyone who could solve the enigmas propounded by the Sphinx. Œdipus ventured, and when asked by the monster, “What animal is four-footed in the morning, two-footed at noon, and three-footed in the evening?” answered: “Man, who as a babe crawls, and as an old man leans on a crutch.” The Sphinx was so distressed at hearing its riddle solved, that it precipitated itself from a precipice and was dashed to pieces. The Persian hero, Sal, who was brought up by the gigantic bird Simorg, appears before Mentuscher, Schah of Iran. The latter, forewarned that Sal will be a danger to him, endeavours to get rid of him. However, he first tests him with hard questions. If he answers these, he is to be allowed to live. The first question is: “There stand twelve cypresses in a ring, and each bears thirty boughs.” Sal replies, “These are the twelve months, each of which has thirty days.” Another question is--“There were two horses, one black, the other clear as crystal.” “They are Day and Night,” replied Sal. In English and Scottish Ballads a whole class has reference to the importance of riddle answering. A girl is engaged to a young man who dies. He returns from the grave and insists on her fulfilling her engagement to him and following him to the land of the dead. She consents on one condition, that he will answer her riddles, or else she pleads to be spared, and the dead lover agrees on condition that she shall answer some riddles he sets. Such is a ballad which was formerly enacted in the farmhouses in Cornwall. The girl sits on her bed and sighs for her dead lover. He reappears and insists on her following him. Then she sets him tasks, and he sets her tasks. Those he sets her are:-- “Thou must buy me, my lady, a cambrick shirt Whilst every grove rings with a merry antine (antienne = anthem), And stitch it without any needle work, O, and thou shalt be a true love of mine. “And thou must wash it in yonder well Where never a drop of water fell. “And thou must hang it upon a white thorn That never has blossomed since Adam was born.” Those she sets him are:-- “Thou must buy for me an acre of land Between the salt ocean and the yellow sand. “Thou must plough it over with a horse’s horn, And sow it all over with one pepper corn. “Thou must reap it too with a piece of leather, And bind the sheaf with a peacock’s feather.” “In all stories of this kind,” says Mr. Child, in his monumental work on English Ballads, “the person upon whom a task is imposed stands acquitted if another of no less difficulty is desired, which must be performed first.”