THE COW THAT SPOKE FOR SEPPL and Other Alpine Tales

You are a pig and I am a man and I'll take you to the butcher next week,"" says the Wiedner peasant to the pig his daughter has dubbed Louise; ""I look like a witch, I sound like a witch, and I sleep like a witch. Let them believe I'm a witch,"" insists the old woman at the lower inn to Anders. Things are seldom what they seem in this bracing collection of tales clustered around an Alpine town and its inhabitants. The mayor who cats a wisdom grape stops trying to think of something important to say; Seppl and his cow confirm the greater wisdom of saying nothing at all; so does the professor determined to cure the Figle peasant of superstition. In another vein, the Alpine flowers insult the lately-arrived edelweiss and ostracize it as a weed; they perish, it perseveres and flourishes. Like Natalic Savage Carlson's French-Canadian stories (though Jess subtle), most of these make good-natured fun of local foibles and find wisdom among the unprepossessing. After the sweet cream of Heidi and The Sound of Music, sausage and dumplings, nicely garnished.