The Catalan ballad seems to have been softened at the end. Here again a mother hates her daughter-in-law. She comes to the sick woman, "com qui no 'n sabès res," and asks What is the matter? The daughter says, You have poisoned me. The mother exhorts her to confess and receive the sacrament, and then make her will. She gives her castles in France to the poor and the pilgrims [and the friars], and to her brother Don Carlos [who, in one version is her husband]. Two of the versions remember the Virgin. "And to me?" "To you, my husband [my cloak, rosary], that when you go to mass you may remember me." In one version the mother asks the dying woman where she will be buried. She says At Saint Mary's. Milà, Observaciones, p. 103 f, No 5, two versions: Briz y Saltó, II, 197 f, two also, the first nearly the same as Milà's first. Poisoning by giving a snake as food, or by infusing the venom in drink, is an incident in several other popular ballads. Donna Lombarda attempts, at the instigation of a lover, to rid herself of her husband by pounding a serpent, or its head, in a mortar, and mixing the juice with his wine [in one version simply killing the snake and putting it in a cask]: Nigra, Canzoni del Piemonti, in Rivista Contemporanea, XII, 32 ff, four versions; Marcoaldi, p. 177, No 20; Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, p. 46, No 72; Righi, Canti popolari veronesi, p. 37, No 100*; Ferraro, C. p. monferrini, p. 1, No 1; Bernoni, C. p. veneziani, Puntata V, No 1. In three of Nigra's versions and in Ferraro's the drink is offered when the husband returns from hunting. The husband, rendered suspicious by the look of the wine, or warned of his danger, forces his wife to drink first. So in a northern ballad, a mother who attempts to destroy her sons [step-sons] with a brewage of this description is obliged to drink first, and bursts with the poison: 'Eiturbyrlunar kvæði,' Íslenzk Fornkv., II, 79, No 43 A; 'Fru Gundela,' Arwidsson, II, 92, No 89; 'Signelill aa hennes synir,' Bugge, p. 95, No XX, the last half.