The Girl Who Got Up The Tree

A girl who was leaving her master's service at a farm in the country told her sweetheart that she would meet him near a stile where they had met many times before. This stile was overhung by a tree. The girl got there before him and found a hole dug underneath the tree, and a pickaxe and spade lying by the side of the hole. She was much frightened at what she saw, and got up the tree. After she had been up the tree awhile her sweetheart came, and another man with him. Thinking that the girl had not yet come, the two men began to talk, and the girl heard her sweetheart say, "She will not come to-night. We'll go home now, and come back and kill her to-morrow night." As soon as they had gone the girl came down the tree and ran home to her father. When she had told him what she had seen, the father pondered awhile and then said to his daughter: "We will have a feast and ask our friends, and we will ask thy sweetheart to come and the man that came with him to the tree." So the two men came along with the other guests. In the evening they began to ask riddles of each other, but the girl who had got up the tree was the last to ask hers. She said:  

I'll rede you a riddle, I'll rede it you right,  

Where was I last Saturday night?  

The wind did blow, the leaves did shake,  

When I saw the hole the fox did make. 

When the two men who had intended to murder the girl heard this they ran out of the house.