English Fairy and Other Folk Tales
by Edwin Sidney Hartland - 1892
THE HAUNTED WIDOWER
Robert Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England, 1st series, p. 264.
A LABOURING man, very shortly after his wife's death, sent to a servant girl, living at the time in a small shipping port, requesting her to come to the inn to him. The girl went, and over a "ha' pint" she agreed to accept him as her husband.
All went on pleasantly enough for a time. One evening the man met the girl He was silent for some time and sorrowful, but at length he told her his wife had come back.
"What do'st mean?" asked the girl; "have 'e seen hur?"
"Naw, I han't seed her,"
"Why, how do'st knaw it is her then?"
The poor man explained to her, that at night, when in bed, she would come to the side of it, and "flop" his face; and there was no mistaking her "flop."
"So you knawed her flop, did 'e?" asked the girl.
"Ay, it couldn't be mistook."
"If she do hunt thee," said the girl, "she'll hunt me; and if she do flop, she'll flop me,--so it must be off atween us."
The unfortunate flop of the dead wife prevented the man from securing a living one.
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