IN these stories the word translated God, is KhudÁ. Excepting in “How king Burtal became a FakÍr” (p. 85), and in “RÁjÁ Harichand’s Punishment” (p. 224), in which MahÁdeo plays a part, the tellers of these tales would never specify by name the god they spoke of. He was always KhudÁ, “the great KhudÁ who lives up there in the sky.” In this they differed from the narrator of the Old Deccan Days stories, who almost always gives her gods and goddesses their HindÚ names—probably because, from being a Christian, she had no religious scruples to deter her from so doing.

When the heroes of these stories are called RÁjÁs, the word RÁjÁ has been kept: when they are called BÁdshÁhs, we have called them kings. The Ayahs say, “A BÁdshÁh is a much greater man than a RÁjÁ.” When bÁdshÁh (the Persian pÁdishÁh) in its corrupted form of bÁsÁ is tacked on to a proper name, such as AnÁr (AnÁrbÁsÁ), HÍrÁlÁl (HÍrÁlÁlbÁsÁ), the bÁsÁ has been preserved, because, DunknÍ says, in these cases bÁsÁ is no longer a title, but part of the proper name.

Old MÚniyÁ tells her stories with the solemn, authoritative air of a professor. She sits quite still on the floor, and uses no gestures. DunknÍ gets thoroughly excited over her tales, marches up and down the room, acting her stories, as it were. For instance, in describing the thickness of MahÁdeo’s hair in King Burtal’s story, she put her two thumbs to her ears, and spread out all her fingers from her head saying, “His hair stood out like this,” and in “Loving LailÍ,” after moving her hand as if she were pulling the magic knife from her pocket and unfolding it, she swung her arm out at full length with great energy, and then she said, “LailÍ made one ‘touch’” (here she brought back the edge of her hand to her own throat), “and the head fell off.” DunknÍ sometimes used an English word, such as the “touch” in the present case.

All these stories were read back in HindÚstÁnÍ by my little girl to the tellers at the time of telling, and nearly all a second time by me this winter before printing. I never saw people more anxious to have their tales retold exactly than are DunknÍ and MÚniyÁ. Not till each tale was pronounced by them to be thÍk (exact) was it sent to the press.

It is strange in these Indian tales to meet golden-haired, fair-complexioned heroes and heroines. Mr. Thornton tells me that in the PanjÁb when one native speaks of another with contempt, he says, “he is a black man,” ek kÁlÁ ÁdmÍ hai. Sir Neville Chamberlain tells me that if you wish to praise a native for his valour and brave conduct, you say to him, “Your countenance is red,” or “your cheeks are red,” and that nothing is worse than to tell him his “face is black.” And this is what Mr. Boxwell says about the expression “kÁlÁ ÁdmÍ” and our fairy tales:—

But I think the fact that the conquering races that invaded India from the north were fair and ruddier than the aborigines, and that their descendants, the high-caste natives, are to this day fairer than the aborigines, though it explains the phrases, “he is only a black man,” and “your cheeks are red,” does not account for the golden hair and fair skin of so many of our princes and princesses. I believe that they all owe their characteristics to the fact that such are the characteristics of the solar hero, although they cannot all lay claim to a solar origin for themselves. For this golden hair and white skin, at first the property of the shining sun-hero alone, would naturally in the course of time be given to other Indian folk-lore heroes on whose beauty and brightness it was necessary to lay a stress. Prince MajnÚn, for instance, certainly has nothing solar about him, yet his hair is described as red. DunknÍ, in answer to a half incredulous, half inquiring exclamation of mine when I heard this, asserted, “Red! yes, it was red: red like gold.”

The black-haired Maoris give their sea-nymphs yellow hair (Old New Zealand, p. 19); and Sir George Grey in his Polynesian Mythology, p. 295, writes thus of the Maori fairies: “Their appearance is that of human beings, nearly resembling an European’s; their hair being very fair, and so is their skin. They are very different from the Maoris, and do not resemble them at all.” But as the Maoris do not seem to have any myths of golden-haired solar heroes, these peculiarities of hair and complexion cannot be referred to the same cause as those of my little daughter’s Indian princes and princesses.

I.—PHÚLMATI RÁNÍ.

Tostory1. PhÚlmati is a garden rose, not a wild rose. It must be a local name for the flower. I can find it in no dictionary. DunknÍ says her heroine was named after a pink rose.

2. She has hair of pure gold. Compare in this book: Princess JahÚran, p. 43, the Monkey Prince, p. 50, SonahrÍ RÁnÍ, p. 54, JahÚr RÁnÍ, p. 93, Prince DÍmÁ-ahmad and Princess AtÁsa, Notes, p. 253. Also, HÍra Bai, the cobra’s daughter in Old Deccan Days, p. 35. So many princely heroes and heroines in European fairy tales are noteworthy for their dazzling golden hair that I will only mention one of them, Princess Golden-Hair, one of whose hairs rings if it falls to the ground—see Naake’s Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 100. And devils being fallen heroes or angels, the following references may be made to them. In Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, p. 171, in “Die beiden Fleischhauer in der Hoelle,” the devil’s grandmother gives the good brother a hair that had fallen from the devil’s head while he slept. The man carries it home and the hair suddenly becomes as big as a “Heubaum” and is “of pure gold.” Also in one of Grimm’s stories the hero is sent to fetch three golden hairs from the devil’s head—see Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. I. p. 175, “Der Teufel mit den drei goldenen Haaren.”

3. Her beauty lights up a dark room. In this shining quality she resembles many Asiatic and European fairy-tale heroes and heroines. See in this book HÍrÁlÍ, whose face shone like a diamond, p. 69; and the Princess LabÁm, who shone like the moon, and her beauty made night day, p. 158. In Old Deccan Days, p. 156, the prince’s dead body on the hedge of spears dazzles those who look at it till they can hardly see. PÁnch PhÚl RÁnÍ, p. 140, shines in the dark jungle like a star. So does the princess in Chundun RÁjÁ’s dark tomb, p. 229. In a DinÁjpur story published by Mr. G.H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for February 1875, vol. IV. p. 54, the dream-nymph, Tillottama, whenever she appears, lights up the whole place with her beauty. “At every breath she drew when she slept, a flame like a flower issued from her nostril, and when she drew in her breath the flower of flame was again withdrawn.” Her beauty lit up her house “as if by lightning.” See Appendix A. In Naake’s Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 96, is the Bohemian tale quoted above of Princess Golden-Hair. “Every morning at break of day she [the princess] combs her golden locks; its brightness is reflected in the sea, and up among the clouds,” p. 102. When she let it down “it was bright as the rising sun,” and almost blinded Irik with its radiance, p. 107. The golden children (Schott’s Wallachische Maerchen, p. 125) shine in the darkened room “like the morning sun in May.” Gubernatis in the 2nd vol. of his Zoological Mythology, mentions at p. 31 a golden boy who figures in one of Afanassieff’s stories; when this child’s body is uncovered on his restoration to his father, “all the room shines with light.” And at p. 57 of the same volume he quotes another of Afanassieff’s stories, in which the persecuted princess has three sons “who light up whatever is near them with their splendour.” Of Gerd in JÖtunheim, the beautiful giant maiden with the bright shining arms, Thorpe says (Northern Mythology, vol. I. p. 47), when she raised “her arms to open the door, both air and water gave such a reflection that the whole world was illumined.” The boar Trwyth (who was once a king, but because of his sons was turned into a boar) after his fall preserves some of his old kingly splendour; for “his bristles were like silver wire, and whether he went through the wood or through the plain he was to be traced by the glittering of his bristles” (Mabinogion, vol. II. p. 310). In the same work (vol. III. p. 279), in “The Dream of Maxen Wledig,” is a maiden, of whom it is told: “Not more easy than to gaze upon the sun when brightest was it to look upon her by reason of her beauty.” And in “Goldhaar” (Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, p. 61) when the hero’s cap fell off he stood there “in all splendour and his golden locks fell round his head, and he shone like the sun.”

In a Santhali tale published by the Rev. F.T. Cole in the Indian Antiquary for January 1875, p. 10, called “Toria the Goatherd and the Daughter of the Sun,” a beggar’s eyes are as dazzled by the Sun’s daughter’s beauty “as if he had stared at the sun.”

4. PhÚlmati RÁnÍ has on her head the sun, on her hands moons, and her face is covered with stars. Compare in these stories “The IndrÁsan RÁjÁ,” p. 1, “The boy who had a moon on his forehead and a star on his chin,” p. 119, and “Prince DÍmÁ-ahmad and Princess AtÁsa,” Notes, p. 253. In FrÄulein Gonzenbach’s Sicilian Fairy Tales, No. 5 (vol. I. p. 21), the king’s son’s children are born, the boy with a golden apple in his hand, the girl with a star on her forehead. In the Notes to this story (vol. II. p. 207) Herr KÖhler mentions a Tyrolean fairy tale, “Zingerle, II. p. 112,” where the king’s son’s daughter has a golden apple in her hand, and her brother a golden star on his forehead. In Milenowsky’s Bohemian Fairy Tales, p. 1, is the story “Von den Sternprinzen” in which the king’s son by the queen has a gold star on his forehead, and his son by the old woman has a silver star, p. 2. These princes’ children also are born with gold and silver stars on their foreheads, p. 30. In a Hungarian tale, “Die verwandelten Kinder,” the old man’s youngest daughter promises, and keeps her promise, to give the king, if he marries her, twin sons, who will be most beautiful, will have golden hair, and each a golden ring on his arm; further, one is to have a planet, the other a sun on his forehead—Stier’s Ungarische Volksmaerchen, p. 57. Also in the same author’s Ungarische Sagen und Maerchen in “Die beiden juengsten Koenigskinder,” the hero wins a bride (p. 77) who has a sun on her forehead, a moon on her right, and three stars on her left, breast. In “Eisenlaci” in the same collection the snake-king’s daughter has a star on her forehead (p. 109). Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 412) says, “In the seventh story of the third book of Afanassieff, the queen bears two sons; one has a moon on his forehead and the other a star on the nape of his neck. Her wicked sister buries them; a golden and a silver sprout spring up which a sheep eats and then has two lambs, one with a moon on its head, the other with a star on its neck. The wicked sister who has married the king orders them to be torn in pieces, and their intestines to be thrown into the road. The good, lawful queen eats them and again gives birth to her sons.” Gubernatis in the 2nd volume of the same work, p. 31, quotes another of Afanassieff’s stories, the thirteenth of the third book, in which a merchant’s wife has a son “whose body is all of gold, effigies of stars, moon, and sun covered it.” This is the gold boy mentioned in the preceding paragraph as lighting up the room when his body was uncovered. In “Das Schwarze Lamm,” the empress bears a son with a golden star on his forehead (Karadschitsch, Volksmaerchen der Serben, p. 177).

5. PhÚlmati RÁnÍ weighs but one flower: compare PÁnch PhÚl RÁnÍ in Old Deccan Days, p. 133.

6. IndrÁsan (= Indra + Ásana, Indra’s throne or home), says DunknÍ, is the name of the underground fairy country. Its inhabitants, the fairies (parÍ) are called the IndrÁsan people; they delight in all lovely things; everything about them is beautiful; they play exquisitely on all kinds of musical instruments; they dance and sing a great deal; they have wings and can fly. They taught the little Monkey Prince (p. 42), and King Burtal’s eldest son was taken to them as a pupil by the fakÍr GoraknÁth, p. 93. In IndrÁsan grows a tree of which no man can ever see the flowers or fruit, as the fairies gather them in the night and take them away. The Irish “good people” who live in clefts of rocks, caves, and mounds, and the Irish fairies who live in the beautiful land of youth under the sea, have many points in common with the Indian fairies. They, too, dance beautifully, are wonderful musicians, and have everything about them lovely and splendid. The “good people” also sometimes impart their knowledge to mortals. See pp. x, xii, and xviii of the Introduction to the Irische Elfenmaerchen translated into German by the brothers Grimm. Some of the Cornish fairies, the Small People, like the IndrÁsan people, live underground (Hunt’s Romances and Drolls of the West of England, pp. 116, 118, 125), aid those to whom they take a fancy and are very playful among themselves (ib. p. 81); they have the most ravishing music (ib. pp. 86, 98); their singing is clear and delicate as silver bells (ib. p. 100); everything about them is joyous and beautiful (ib. pp. 86, 99, 100); they are a tiny race (ib. p. 81), but can at pleasure take the size of human beings (ib. pp. 115, 122, 123); and their queen has hair “like gold threads” (ib. p. 102). The fair-haired New Zealand fairies are, too, a kindly happy race. See Grey’s Polynesian Mythology, pp. 287 to 295. Nothing is said about their dancing, but they are described as “merry, cheerful, and always singing like a cricket” (ib. p. 295), and from one of their fishing-nets left on the sea shore, when its fairy owners were surprised by the rising of the sun, the Maoris learnt the stitch for netting a net. Like the Indian fairies they appear to be as big as human beings.

7. PhÚlmati RÁnÍ is drowned in a tank and becomes a flower; she is killed and brought to life several times: compare in this collection the story of the “Pomegranate Children” and note to that story. In one of Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, “The Fiend,” p. 15, the heroine is killed through witchcraft: from her grave springs a flower which is herself transformed: she afterwards regains her human shape.

8. With PhÚlmati’s last transformation compare the last that the BÉl-Princess goes through (p. 148 of this collection), and that of a woman, who figures in a DinÁjpur story published by Mr. G.H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary of April 5th, 1872, vol. I. p. 115. She, though living in the Rakshas country, is not a Rakshas, but does not appear to be an ordinary mortal, and when cut to bits by a certain magic knife becomes a tree. “Her feet became a silver stem, her two hands golden branches, her head ornaments were diamond leaves, all her bracelets and bangles were pearly fruits, and her head was a peacock dancing and playing in the branches.” As soon as the magic knife is thrown to the ground she regains her human form.

Eisenlaci in Stier’s Ungarische Sagen und Maerchen (pp. 107-109) comes in the form of a horse to the twelve-headed dragon’s house. He is killed; the first two drops of his blood are thrown into the garden and from them springs a tree with golden apples: the tree is cut down, but the first two chips (which are flung into the pond) become a gold fish: the gold fish turns into Eisenlaci himself in human form.

9. Winning a wife by seizing her dress while she bathes is an incident common to fairy tales of many countries.

II.—THE POMEGRANATE KING.

Tostory1. Such is the story as told by DunknÍ in 1876; at that time, when it was read over to her, she said it was correct. On my asking her in 1878, when the story was going through the press, to explain some points in it, such as why the children said they had been brought to life three times, the boy having only died twice, and the girl once, she told me the following variation: After the attempt to get rid of the boy by making him into a curry had failed, the RÁnÍ SunkÁsÍ sent for a sepoy and bade him carry the two children to the jungle and there kill them; and as a proof of their death he was to bring her their livers. Once in the jungle with the children, the sepoy had not the heart to kill them; so he left them in it, and brought the livers of two goats to SunkÁsÍ RÁnÍ. She buried the livers in the garden and was content; but some months later as she was walking (literally “eating the air”) in the jungle she saw her step-children playing about; she returned to the palace, sent for the sepoy, and asked him why he had not killed the children. “I did kill them,” said the sepoy, “and brought you their livers.” “Those livers were not the children’s livers,” answered the RÁnÍ; “I have just seen the children alive and playing in the jungle.” “They must have been other people’s children that you saw,” said the sepoy, “yours I killed.” “Do not tell me lies,” said the RÁnÍ. “Now you must at once go to the jungle, kill the children, and bring me their eyes.” The sepoy went to find the children, but when he found them he could not kill them, so he took them to some people who lived in a hut, and said to these people, “Take great care of the two children. Be very kind to them.” He then killed two goats and took their eyes to the RÁnÍ, who was now satisfied for some time. But one day another of the Pomegranate RÁjÁ’s sepoys passed near the hut, and saw the children playing about. So he went to SunkÁsÍ RÁnÍ and told her the children were alive and well. At this the RÁnÍ was very angry, and she thought, “It is of no use my sending the first sepoy again to kill them. I will send this man.” She said, therefore, to the second sepoy, “If you will kill these children for me, you shall have a great reward.” The sepoy agreed, went to the little hut, and seized the children. The poor people who took care of the children begged and prayed him to have pity on them; but the sepoy said, “No.” He had the RÁnÍ’s orders to kill them, and they must and should be killed. And so he killed them and brought their livers to the RÁnÍ as she had bidden him. SunkÁsÍ RÁnÍ was very happy when she saw the livers, and she buried them close to a large tank that was in her garden.

Some three months later her servants came to her and told her a beautiful large bÉl-fruit was floating on the water of the tank. SunkÁsÍ RÁnÍ went at once with them to the tank, and when she saw the fruit she was seized with a great longing to have it. So she sent all her servants, one after the other, into the tank to fetch it; but all to no purpose, for as soon as any one of them got close to the fruit it floated away from him. Then the RÁnÍ herself went into the tank. She, however, was not a whit more able to get it: when she thought she had only to put out her hand to take it, the fruit rose up into the air, and fell into the water again as soon as she had come up out of the tank. She went to the MahÁrÁjÁ and told him of this lovely bÉl-fruit, and then went to her room while he came down to the tank. He said, “I should like to catch the fruit: I wonder if I can do so. What a lovely fruit!” As soon as he put his hand into the water the fruit came floating towards him, and floated into it. “I think this fruit is quite ripe,” said the MahÁrÁjÁ. “Quite ripe,” said the servants, and they struck it with a stone to break it open. “Oh, you hurt us! you hurt us!” cried little voices from inside the bÉl-fruit. “Gently, gently; don’t hurt us.” The MahÁrÁjÁ and all the servants were greatly surprised, and the MahÁrÁjÁ went to SunkÁsÍ RÁnÍ, and told her all about the little voices. She at once guessed her step-children were in the fruit, so she said to the MahÁrÁjÁ, “You had better take the fruit to the jungle and there break it open with a big stone, so that anything inside it may be crushed to bits.” “I will not do that,” said the MahÁrÁjÁ. Then he went back to his servants and made them cut the fruit’s rind very carefully cross-ways and the fruit broke into halves: in one half sat his little son, in the other his little daughter. As soon as the halves were laid on the ground the children stepped out, and at once grew to their natural size. Their father was very angry when he saw them. “Why, I thought you were at school,” said he. “The MahÁrÁnÍ told me you were at school. Why are you not there? What funny (DunknÍ’s own word) children you are to get into this bÉl-fruit! What made you like to live in a fruit?” But to all his questionings and scoldings the children said not one word. At last he sent them up to the palace, and there they stayed with him for some three months. But the MahÁrÁnÍ said to him, “These are not your children. Yours are at school.” “They are my children,” he answered.

All this time the MahÁrÁnÍ hated them more and more, and at last she went to them and said, “Now I really will kill you.” “Just as you please,” answered the children; “we don’t mind being killed. You may kill us three times, four times, as often as you like: it does not matter in the least; for God will always bring us to life again.”

At this SunkÁsÍ RÁnÍ flew into a rage and she called her servants and said, “Kill these children, cut them into mince-meat and throw them to the crows and kites. When the crows and kites have eaten them, they cannot come to life any more.” So the servants killed the children, and chopped them up very fine and fed the crows and kites with their flesh; and now the MahÁrÁnÍ was very happy.

Some months later, as she was walking in her garden, she saw two beautiful flower-buds on a large bÉl-tree that grew in it. She showed them to the gardener, and asked if he had seen them before. “Never,” said the man. “On this tree there have never been either flowers or fruit till now.” “Gather the flowers for me,” said the RÁnÍ, “I do so wish to have them.” The gardener said to her, “Wait till the buds are fully blown and then I will gather them for you.” At the end of three or four days the RÁnÍ SunkÁsÍ asked if the buds had grown into large flowers, and the gardener said, “Yes, to-day I will gather them for you.” He got a long, long bamboo cane, and tied a piece of wood cross-ways on one of its ends so as to make a sort of hook wherewith to catch hold of and break off the flowers. He tried and tried to get them, but all in vain. Then he made all the servants try. It was of no use, no one could make the hook touch the flowers. They always bent themselves just out of its reach. Then SunkÁsÍ RÁnÍ tried, but with no better success. She told the MahÁrÁjÁ, who said, “I will try to-morrow to gather these wonderful flowers.”

That night as the RÁnÍ lay in her bed she suddenly thought, “Those children are in the flowers,” and she determined to be with her husband when he gathered them, to get them into her own hands some way or other.

The next morning AnÁrbÁsÁ MahÁrÁjÁ and his wife went to the bÉl-tree, and as soon as he held out his hand towards the flowers, they dropped into it. “What lovely flowers! What beautiful flowers! Do give them to me,” said SunkÁsÍ RÁnÍ. “No,” said the MahÁrÁjÁ, “I will keep them myself.” Then he carried them to his room and laid them on the table while he shut the door and the venetians. Then he came and sat down before them: he took them in his hand, and looked at them and laid them again on the table; then he took them and smelt them, and they smelt, oh! so sweet. This he did many times. At last he held them to his ears, for the adventure of the bÉl-fruit had made him wise (hushyÁr), and he heard little tiny voices, saying, “Papa” (DunknÍ’s own word), “we want to stay with you; we should like to be with you.” The MahÁrÁjÁ looked very carefully at the flowers, and at last, in one of them he saw a little splinter of wood like a thorn sticking: he pulled this out, and his own little son stood before him. Then he looked at the other flower, and in that, too, was a little splinter of wood sticking. When he pulled it out his little girl stood there.

The MahÁrÁjÁ was vexed with his children, and asked them why they were so naughty, and why they liked to live in fruits and flowers instead of staying in the palace or going to school. The children answered, “We go to school sometimes, and then we come back and live in our flowers, and then we return to school, and then we come back to our flower-homes again.” “This is a lie you are telling me,” said their father. “You know quite well you have not been at school at all.” The MahÁrÁnÍ came in to hear what all this talking meant, and when she saw the children she said to AnÁrbÁsÁ MahÁrÁjÁ, “These are not your children, yours are at school.” “They are my children,” he answered, “and they have never been at school at all, and they are very naughty.” He then sent them away to play, and the RÁnÍ returned to her room. But he sat alone in his room, for he was angry and cross. As he sat there one of his chaprÁsÍs came to him and said, “MahÁrÁj, you do not know how ill the MahÁrÁnÍ treats your children, or you would not be angry with them. She has killed them several times, and sent them away into the jungle; and after they came out of the bÉl-fruit she killed them and chopped them into small pieces, and fed the kites and crows with their flesh.” When the MahÁrÁjÁ heard all this, he said to the chaprÁsÍ, “You must have a beautiful little house built for me; you must take care that it is chiefly made of wood; the flooring must be very thin and of wood; and the hollow place under the flooring must be filled with dry wood. Then you must put plenty of flowers inside the house, and plenty outside so as to make it very pretty.”

As soon as the house was ready the MahÁrÁjÁ went to his wife and asked her if she would go out with him to eat the air. “I should like to show you a new house I have had built for you,” he said. So she went with him and thought her new house lovely. While she was inside looking at the pretty flowers in the rooms, the MahÁrÁjÁ slipped out, and bolted the door so that she could not escape, and he told his servants to set fire to the wood under the flooring. When the flames began to rise the RÁnÍ got very frightened. She rushed to the window and called to the MahÁrÁjÁ and his servants, who were standing there looking on, to save her. No one said anything to her. “Save me,” she cried, “or I shall be burnt to death.” “If you are burnt, what does it matter?” said the MahÁrÁjÁ. “You ill-treated my children; you killed them; so, now burn.”

As soon as she was burnt to death the MahÁrÁjÁ had all her bones collected and put into four dishes, and he gave them to one of his servants to take to SunkÁsÍ RÁnÍ’s mother. When her mother uncovered dish after dish and found nothing but bones, she asked the servant, “Of what use are bones?” “These are your daughter’s bones,” said he: “therefore AnÁrbÁsÁ MahÁrÁjÁ sent them to you. SunkÁsÍ RÁnÍ ill-treated and killed his children, and so he burnt her.”

The rest of the story she pronounced exact (thÍk).

2. The bÉl-tree is the Ægle Marmelos of botanists.

3. With the different deaths and transformations of the children compare in this book: PhÚlmati RÁnÍ, pp. 3 and 4: the Kite’s Children, p. 22: the BÉl-Princess, pp. 144, 145, 148: and in Old Deccan Days Surya Bai, pp. 85, 86. In “Die goldenen Kinder” (Schott’s Wallachische Maerchen) the golden children are killed and buried (p. 122). From their hearts spring two apple-trees having golden leaves and apples. The trees are destroyed; but a sheep has eaten an apple and then has two golden lambs. The step-mother kills them at once and sends the maid to wash the entrails in the stream, intending to cook them for her husband to eat (compare the curry in the “Pomegranate King,” p. 8; the broth (Suhr) in Grimm’s “von dem Machandelboom,” Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. I. p. 271; and the stew in the Devonshire story, “The Rose-Tree,” told in Henderson’s Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England, p. 314). A piece of the entrail escapes, and as it floats away it swells and swells. On reaching the opposite bank it bursts, and out of it step the golden children. In a Hungarian story the children, one with a planet and one with a sun on his forehead, and each with a ring on his arm, are killed by a wicked woman who wants her daughter to take their mother’s place as queen. They turn first into two golden pear-trees. These are destroyed by fire, but one glowing coal from the fire is eaten by an old she-goat. The old goat then has two little golden-fleeced kids. They are killed, an old crow swallows a piece of the entrails as they are being washed in the brook; she flies to the seventy-seventh island in the ocean, builds a nest and lays two golden eggs. Out of the eggs come the golden-haired children with their planet, sun and golden rings. The old crow sends them for seven years to school to a hermit (here is the holy man again, see p. 283 of these notes), and then flies home with them to their father. The pillar of salt, into which their mother was changed, answers all the king’s questions. It is not said that she regained her human form (“Die verwandelten Kinder,” Stier’s Ungarische Volksmaerchen, p. 58). In a Siebenburg story, “Die beiden goldenen Kinder,” the children are killed by an envious woman who becomes queen in their mother’s place. From their remains spring two golden pine-trees which are burnt; a sheep eats two of the sparks and has two golden lambs that are killed; from two pieces of the entrails step forth the golden-haired children (Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, pp. 2, 3). In this tale the children are restored to their father, the king, by the intervention of God himself (p. 4), who in these Siebenbuergische Maerchen plays a part just as often as “KhudÁ” does in the Indian tales, taking for the purpose the form of a “good old man,” and often wearing a grey mantle that reminds one of Odin. In the Netherlandish story of “The knight with the swan” (Thorpe’s Northern Mythology, vol. III. p. 302), King Oriant’s mother persuades the king his wife gave him seven puppies instead of seven children (each born with a silver chain round its neck in “proof of their mother’s nobility”). She sends the children to the forest to be destroyed. They are left there alive, and are fostered by an old man. When the queen-mother learns this, she sends servants to kill them. These are content with depriving six of the children of their silver chains, on which the children instantly become swans. (The seventh child is absent and so is saved.) A goldsmith makes two beakers out of one of the chains, and keeps the others intact. When the chains are hung again round the five swans’ necks, and the beaker shown to the sixth, they regain their human forms. See also paragraph 8 of the notes to PhÚlmati RÁnÍ.

4. With the children in the fruit and flowers compare in these stories, PhÚlmati RÁnÍ, p. 3: Loving LailÍ, p. 81: the BÉl-Princess, p. 146, and paragraph 5 of the notes to that story, p. 283: and in Old Deccan Days, “Surya Bai,” p. 86: and “AnÁr RÁnÍ and her two maids,” p. 95. With these may be compared the Polish Madey (Naake’s Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 220). Madey is a robber who commits fearful crimes; he repents, and sticks his “murderous club” upright in the ground, swearing to kneel before it till the boy who has caused his repentance returns as a bishop. Years go by: the boy, now a bishop, passes through Madey’s forest. The club has become an apple-tree full of apples and he discovers Madey through their sweet odour. At Madey’s request the bishop confesses him; and as Madey confesses his crimes, the apples on the tree, one after another, become white doves and fly to heaven. They were the souls of those he had murdered.

In an unpublished story told by DunknÍ, the incidents of the children being in the fruit, and the fruit not letting itself be gathered by any but the rightful owner of its contents (as is the case also with the BÉl-Princess), again occur. In this story there is a prince called Aisab, who, as he wished very much to have children, married. At the same time he took an oath that if his child, when he had one, cried, he would kill it, and then if his wife cried he would kill her too. His first wife gave him a child who died; she cried and was killed by her husband. The same thing happened to the second wife. He then married a third wife, called GulÍanÁr. She had a little son, DÍmÁ-ahmad, and two or three years later another son, called KarÁmat. The first boy died, but GulÍanÁr did not cry—she only grieved for him in her heart. KarÁmat was unhappy from seeing other children playing with their brothers and sisters, and asked his mother “why he had no brother or sister to play with?” She said, “Once you had a little brother and he died.” Then KarÁmat began to cry, and his father killed him immediately with his sword because of his oath, though he loved KarÁmat dearly. The “mother was still sadder than before, but she never wept.” Then God took pity on her and sent down into Prince Aisab’s garden a big bÉl-tree, and on this bÉl-tree was a fruit. Every one tried to gather this fruit, even Prince Aisab tried, but each time their hands approached it the fruit rose into the air and returned again when the hands were withdrawn. Then GulÍanÁr stretched out her hand “and the fruit fell into it.” She took it into the house and tried to break it open with a stone, and a voice called out, “Mother, mother, not so hard; you hurt us.” She was very much frightened, thinking a Rakshas or a demon was in the fruit. Prince Aisab was equally alarmed, but his wazÍr, Mamatsa, broke the fruit open gently in obedience to the little voice that called out, “Don’t knock so hard, Mamatsa; you hurt us;” and out of it stepped the two little children DÍmÁ-ahmad and KarÁmat. DÍmÁ-ahmad was very beautiful. On his head was the sun, on his face the moon, and on his hands stars, and he had long golden hair. He married a princess, AtÁsa, who also had the sun on her head, the moon on her face, stars on her hands, and “her hair was of pure gold and reached down to the ground.” The idea that none but the rightful owner can catch the child is found too in Grey’s Polynesian Mythology at pp. 116, 117, in the story of Whakatau, who was fashioned in the sea from his mother Apakura’s apron by the god Rongota-kawiu. This child lived at the bottom of the sea; but one day he came on shore after his kite, and all who saw him tried in vain to catch him. Then said Whakatau, “You had better go and bring Apakura here; she is the only person who can catch me and hold me fast.” His mother then comes and catches him.

5. SunkÁsÍ’s bones are sent to her mother. In the Sicilianische Maerchen collected by Laura Gonzenbach, it is a common practice for husbands to punish their second wives’ treachery with death, and then to send their remains to their mothers, who feast on them, thinking they are eating tunny-fish, and die of grief on learning what they have really swallowed.

6. With GulÍanÁr’s change into a bird compare Laura Gonzenbach’s 13th Sicilianische Maerchen, vol. I. p. 82, where the real bride is transformed into a dove by a black-headed pin being driven into her head, and regains her human form when the pin is pulled out. Schott has a similar incident in his Wallachische Maerchen, p. 251. So has Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. II. p. 242) in a story from near Leghorn, where the woman is changed into a swallow (in all these stories it is the husband who pulls out the pin); and he says similar stories with a transformation into a dove are told in Piedmont, in other parts of Tuscany, in Calabria, and are to be found in the Tutiname. Ralston’s Princess Mariya (Russian Folk Tales, p. 183), and Thorpe’s second story of “The Princess that came out of the water” (Yule Tide Stories, p. 41), may also be compared.

7. The golden bird in the Siebenburg story drops pearls from its beak whenever it sings (“Der goldne Vogel,” Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, pp. 31, 35). The princess, its mistress, wears (p. 39) a golden mantle “adorned with carbuncles and pearls from the golden bird.”

III.—THE CAT AND THE DOG.

Tostory1. The Tiger promises not to eat the man who helps him and then tries to break his promise. Compare “The Brahman, the Tiger, and the six Judges,” Old Deccan Days, p. 159; and “Ananzi and the Lion” in Dasent’s Ananzi Stories, p. 490.

2. In a Slavonic story mentioned by Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. II. p. 111), a bear is about to kill a peasant in revenge. A fox appears, “shakes its tail and says to the peasant, ‘Man, thou hast ingenuity in thy head and a stick in thy hand.’ The peasant immediately understands the stratagem,” and persuades the bear to get into a sack he has with him that he may carry the bear three times round the field instead of doing penance, after which the bear is to do what he likes with him. The bear gets into the sack, the man “binds it strongly” together, and then beats the bear to death with his stick. Gubernatis at p. 132 of the same volume tells a similar story from Russia in which a wolf plays the part of the bear and of our tiger.

IV.—THE CAT THAT COULD NOT BE KILLED.

Tostory1. In an unpublished story told us by GangiyÁ, a hill-man from near Simla, a cat saves herself from being eaten by a jackal very much in the same way that this cat saved herself from the leopard. The jackal (in GangiyÁ’s story) ate anything it came across, whether it were dead or alive. One day he met a tiger and said to him, “I will eat you. I will not let you go.” “Very good,” said the tiger, “eat me.” So the jackal ate him up. He went a little further and met a leopard; he said to the leopard, “I will eat you.” “Very good,” said the leopard. So he ate the leopard. He went a little further and met a tiny mouse. “Mouse,” he said, “I have eaten a tiger and a leopard, and now I will eat you.” “Very good,” said the mouse. He ate the mouse. He went a little further and met a cat. “I will eat you,” said the jackal. The cat answered, “What will it profit you to eat me, who am so small? A little further on you will see a dead buffalo: eat that.” So the jackal left the cat and went to eat the buffalo. He walked on and on, but could find no buffalo; and the cat, meanwhile ran away. The jackal was very angry, and set off to seek the cat, but could not find her. He was furious.

VI.—THE RAT AND THE FROG.

TostoryCompare the Bohemian “Long-desired child,” Naake’s Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 226. This child is carved out of a tree-root by a woodman, who brings him home to his wife. They delight in having a child at last. The child eats all the food in the house; his father and mother; a girl with a wheelbarrow full of clover; a peasant, his hay-laden cart, and his cart-horses; a man and his pigs; a shepherd, his flock and dog; lastly, cabbages belonging to an old woman who cuts him in two with her mattock just as he tries to eat her. Out of him jump unhurt every thing and every one he has swallowed. In a story from the south of Siberia (Gubernatis’ Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 140) the hero vanquishes a demon, who tells him that in his stomach he will find a silver casket. He cuts the monster open and out of him come “innumerable animals, men, treasures, and other objects. Some of the men say, ‘What noble youth has delivered us from the black night?’” In two of the caskets the hero finds the eyes of an old woman who has befriended him, and money, “and from the last casket came forth more men, animals, and valuables of every kind.” In a Russian story quoted by Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. I. pp. 406, 407) the wolf eats the kids all but one. The mother goat persuades him to jump over a fire. The fire splits his belly open, out tumble all the little kids, lively as ever. There is a very similar story with fox, goat, and kid for actors in Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands, vol. III. p. 93; and Grimm has one also, “Der Wolf und die sieben jungen Geislein,” in his Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. I. p. 29. In the notes to this story, vol. III. p. 15, Grimm says, “In Pomerania this is told of a child who when his mother had gone out was swallowed by the child-spectre, resembling the varlet Ruprecht. But the stones which he swallows with the child make the spectre so heavy that he falls to the earth, and the child unhurt springs out of him.” See, too, the demons at p. 99 of these stories, who swallow the Princess ChampÁkÁlÍ’s suitors.

Tylor in his Primitive Culture, vol. I. p. 341, classes Little Red Riding Hood among these Day and Night myths. It is, he says, “mutilated in the English Nursery version, but known more perfectly by old wives in Germany, who can tell that the lovely little maid in her shining red satin cloak was swallowed with her grandmother by the wolf, but they both came out safe and sound when the hunter cut open the sleeping beast.” He also quotes among these myths (ib. p. 338) a story of the Ojibwas in which the hero is swallowed by a great fish and cut out again by his sister; and another belonging to the Basutos in which all mankind save the hero and his mother were devoured by a monster. The hero “attacked the creature and was swallowed whole, but cutting his way out he set free all the inhabitants of the world.” At the same page is the story of the Zulu Princess Untombinde who was carried off by a dreadful beast. “The king gathered his army and attacked it, but it swallowed up men, and dogs, and cattle, all but one warrior; he slew the monster, and there came out cattle, and horses, and men, and last of all the princess herself.” Mr. Tylor quotes, too (ib. p. 336), in connexion with this class of myths, the story of the death of the New Zealand sun-hero, Maui, which he tells more fully than does Sir George Grey in his Polynesian Mythology; and he goes on at pp. 338, 339, 340, to connect these myths with those of Perseus and Andromeda; Heracles and Hesione; the story of Jonah and his fish; the Greenland angakok swallowed by bear and walrus and thrown up again; and the legend of Hades.

Besides the angakok mentioned by Mr. Tylor, Dr. Rink, in his Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, has two other stories of escapes from the stomach of a dead animal when it is cut open. In the first, at p. 260, the boy is devoured by a gull; his sister kills the bird, takes her brother’s bones from its pouch and carries them home: on the way the boy comes to life again. The other tale, p. 438, tells how Nakasungnak jumped out of the hole his friends had made in the dead “ice-covered” bear’s side; but his hair as well as the skin of his face had come off, and he shivered from cold and ague. And in Ralston’s Songs of the Russian People, p. 177, is a story of a snake who steals “the luminaries of the night. A hero cuts off his head, and out of the slain monster issue the Bright Moon and the Morning Star.”

Tostory1. Foolish SachÚlÍ lives in many lands. In his Russian dress he figures in “The Fool and the Birch-tree,” Ralston’s Russian Folk Tales, p. 52. In the Sicilian “GiufÁ” we find him again (Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Maerchen, vol. I. p. 249). In England he appears in an out-of-the-way village in the south (see Pall Mall Budget, July 12, 1878, p. 11, Wild Life in a Southern Country, No. XIV.) with, to use his mother’s words, “no more sense than God had given him.” She wishing to have his testimony discredited when he bears witness against her, as she knows he will, goes upstairs and rains raisins on him from the window. So when asked to specify the time he speaks of, he says, “When it rained raisins,” and is of course disbelieved.

Note by Mr. J.F. Campbell: “This story of a stupid boy has a parallel in a Gaelic tale in my collection, where the boy dated an event which was true by a fall of pancakes or something of the kind which was not true, and was not believed though he told the truth.” [At p. 385, vol. II. of the Tales of the West Highlands a “half booby” is inveigled by his mother into dating his theft of some planks by a “shower of milk-porridge.”]

2. The magic gifts given by the fairies are a common incident in fairy tales: so is the adventure with the jar of ghee.

VIII.—BARBER HÍM AND THE TIGERS.

Tostory1. Forbes in his HindÚstÁnÍ Dictionary says Kans or Kansa was the name of a wicked tyrant whom Krish?a was born to destroy, and that the word now means a wicked tyrant. But RÁjÁ KÁns is an historical character. All that is known of him is told by the late Professor Blochmann in the Bengal Asiatic Society’s Journal for 1873, Pt. I. p. 264.

2. In the note (p. 380) to the XIXth Tale in the Sagas from the Far East, is a story in which Barber HÍm’s part is played by a he-goat, and that of his tigers by a lion. See, too, “How the three clever men outwitted the demons” in Old Deccan Days, pp. 273-278. In a SantÁlÍ tale, “Kanran and Guja,” sent by the Rev. F.T. Cole to the Indian Antiquary, vol. IV. September 1875, p. 257, two brothers, Kanran and Guja, climb into a tÁl tree. Here they are discovered by a tiger whom they have deprived of his tail, and who has brought a number of his friends to help him revenge himself on the brothers. The tailless tiger proposes they shall all stand one the top of the other, to reach the men in the tree. His friends agree provided he takes his stand at the bottom, and they climb as proposed till they almost reach the brothers. Then Kanran calls out to Guja, “Give me your axe. I will kill the tailless tiger.” The tigers in terror all tumble to the ground, crushing their tailless friend in their fall, and flee to their homes. In “The Leopard and the Ram” (Bleek’s Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 24) the ram and the leopard play the parts of the barber and his tigers. See, too, “The Lion and the Bushman,” p. 59 of the same collection.

Note by Mr. J.F. Campbell: “Compare the Irish story of two hunchbacks in Keightley. A version is in Mitford’s Japanese book; and far better versions are common in Japan.”

IX.—THE BULBUL AND THE COTTON-TREE.

Tostory1. Cotton-tree, in HindÚstÁnÍ Semal.

2. Koel, Indian cuckoo.

X.—THE MONKEY PRINCE.

Tostory1. BandarsÁ means like a monkey; DunknÍ in telling this husk-story just as often called the monkey-skin a husk (chhilka) as she called it a skin (chamrÁ).

2. Princess JahÚran throws mattresses to her drowning husband. In a ManÍpÚrÍ tale published by Mr. G.H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary, vol. IV. September 1875, p. 260, Basanta’s wife throws him a pillow that he may save himself when the envious merchant, on board whose boat they are, pitches the prince into the river that he may secure the princess for himself.

XI.—BRAVE HÍRÁLÁLBÁSÁ.

Tostory1. With this story all through compare “The Demon is at last conquered by the King’s Son,” p. 173 of this collection.

2. Rakshas means protector, and is, probably, an euphemistic term. The chapter on Mystic Animals in Swedish traditions (Thorpe’s Northern Mythology, vol. II. p. 83) gives a list of certain creatures that are not to be mentioned by their own but by euphemistic names for fear of incurring their wrath. This belief, Thorpe in the same chapter, p. 84, says, extends to certain inanimate things: water used for brewing, for instance, must not be called vatn (water) or the beer will not be so good; and fire occasionally is to be spoken of as hetta (heat). The girl in an Esthonian tale quoted by Gubernatis at p. 151 of the 1st vol. of his Zoological Mythology addresses a crow whose help she needs as “Bird of light.” Fiske says (Myths and Mythmakers, p. 223), “A Dayak will not allude by name to the small-pox, but will call it ‘The chief’ or ‘Jungle leaves;’ the Laplander speaks of the bear as ‘the old man with the fur coat;’ in Annam the tiger is called ‘Grandfather,’ or ‘Lord.’ The Finnish hunters called the bear ‘the Apple of the Forest, the beautiful Honey-claw, the Pride of the thicket’” (“The Mythology of Finnland,” Fraser’s Magazine, May 1857). The Furies, as every one knows, were called the Eumenides, or the gracious ones.

The Rakshases are a kind of huge demons who delight in devouring men and beasts. They can take any shape they please. The female Rakshas often assumes that of a beautiful woman. Compare the demon Mara as described by Fiske at p. 93 of his book above quoted.

The Rakshases do not travel in the way mortals do. See a DinÁjpur story told by Mr. G.H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary (February 1875, vol. IV. p. 54), where the hero, who has married both the Rakshas-king’s daughter and his niece, asks his father-in-law’s leave to return home with his Rakshas-wives. The King consents (p. 58), but says, “We Rakshases do not travel in pÁlkÍs (palanquins), but in the air.” Accordingly the prince, his two Rakshas wives and his mortal wife, all travel towards his father’s country through the air “along the sky.” One kind of jinn travel in the same way (Lane’s Arabian Nights, vol. I., “Notes to Introduction,” p. 29). So do the drakes and kobolds in Northern Germany. The drake is as big as a cauldron, “a person may sit in him,” and travel with him to any spot he pleases. Both drakes and kobolds look like fiery stripes. The kobolds appear sometimes as a blue, sometimes as a red, stripe passing through the air (Thorpe’s Northern Mythology, vol. III. pp. 155, 156).

3. DunknÍ says, “All Rakshases keep their souls in birds.” Those that do so resemble in this respect some of the Indian demons, and the giants, trolls, and such like noxious actors in the Norse, Scotch, and other popular tales.

Tylor (Primitive Culture, vol. II. pp. 152, 153) mentions the Tatar story of the giant who could not be killed till the twelve-headed snake in which he kept his soul was destroyed. This tale, he says, “illustrates the idea of soul-embodiment,” and “very likely” indicates the sense of the myths where giants, &c., keep their souls out of their own bodies. The civilized notion of soul-embodiment, he adds (quoting from “Grose’s bantering description of the art of laying ghosts in the last century,”) is that of conjuring ghosts into different objects: “one of the many good instances of articles of savage belief serving as jests among civilized men.” Possibly these giants, trolls, rakshases, demons, once belonged to that class of spirits who could, in popular belief, enter at pleasure into stocks and stones and other objects of idolatrous veneration.

But all Rakshases do not keep their souls in birds. Some have their souls in bees (see a DinÁjpur tale published by Mr. G.H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for April 6, 1872, p. 115): and in another DinÁjpur story printed by Mr. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for June 7, 1872, p. 120, a whole tribe of Rakshases dwelling in Ceylon kept theirs in one and the same lemon.

4. In the first quoted of these stories collected by Mr. Damant, that where the Rakshases keep their life in bees, the hero is a prince who starts in search of the wonderful tree mentioned in paragraph 8 of the note to PhÚlmati RÁnÍ (p. 244). In his wanderings he finds himself in the Rakshas country. There he meets with the woman who when cut up turns into the tree he seeks. When he first sees her she lies dead on a bed with a golden wand on one side of her, and a silver wand on the other. He accidentally touches her with the golden wand and she wakes. She tells him the Rakshases, every morning when they go out in search of food, make her dead by touching her with the silver wand, and wake her with the golden wand when they return at night. Mr. Damant has another story in the Indian Antiquary (July 5, 1872, vol. I. p. 219), from DinÁjpur, in which there is a prince Dalim who dies and is laid in a tomb above ground, not buried. Daily the Apsarases, the dancing-girls in the court of Indra, wake him from death by touching his face with a golden wand, and make him dead again by touching him with a silver wand. These wands they always leave lying beside him. His wife comes one day to mourn over him and accidentally discovers the secret of bringing him to life. He is, finally, restored to her by the Apsarases.

5. According to Gubernatis, “three and seven are sacred numbers in Aryan faith” (Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 6).

6. HÍrÁlÁlbÁsÁ addresses the Rakshas as “uncle.” The two brothers Kanran and Guja (in a SantÁlÍ fairy tale bearing their name printed by the Rev. F.T. Cole in the Indian Antiquary, September 1875, vol. IV. p. 257), address a tiger by the same propitiatory title. The tiger in return addresses them as nephews, and gives them the fire they want.

“Uncle” and “aunt” are used in a propitiatory sense over a great part of the world. Hunt at p. 6 of his introduction to the Romances and Drolls of the West of England says, “Uncle is a term of respect, which was very commonly applied to aged men by their juniors in Cornwall. Aunt ... was used in the same manner when addressing aged women.” “Mon oncle” and “ma tante” are sometimes used in the same way in France. Fiske in his Myths and Mythmakers, pp. 166, 167, tells how the Zulu solar hero Uthlakanyana outwits a cannibal: in this story the hero addresses the cannibal as “uncle,” and the cannibal in return calls him “child of my sister.” Fiske, quoting from Dr. Callaway, at p. 166, says, “It is perfectly clear that the cannibals of the Zulu legends are not common men; they are magnified into giants and magicians; they are remarkably swift and enduring; fierce and terrible warriors.” In the Hottentot story of the “Lion who took a woman’s shape,” the lion and the woman address each other as “my aunt,” and “my uncle” (Bleek’s Hottentot Fables and Tales, pp. 51, 52). In Siberia the Yakuts worship the bear under the name of their “beloved uncle” (Tylor’s Primitive Culture, vol. II. p. 231); and when the Russian peasant calls on the dreaded Lyeshy to appear he cries, “Uncle Lyeshy” (Ralston’s Songs of the Russian people, p. 159).

“Grannie” is the word used by DunknÍ herself.

7. The Rakshas queen is tricked to her death in the same way as the wicked step-mother in the “Pomegranate King,” p. 12 of this collection.

XII.—THE MAN WHO WENT TO SEEK HIS FATE.

Tostory1. Compare a Servian story, “Das Schicksal” (Karadschitsch, Volksmaerchen der Serben, p. 106), in which a man sets out to seek his fate, and on the road is commissioned by a rich householder to ask the fate why, though he gives abundance of food to his servants, he can never satisfy their hunger, and why his aged, miserable father and mother do not die: by another man, to ask why his cattle diminish instead of thriving: and, thirdly, by a river whose waters bear him safely across it, to ask why no living thing lives in it. His fate answers all these questions, and instructs him how to thrive himself. In FrÄulein Gonzenbach’s Sicilian Fairy Tales, “Die Geschichte von Caterina und ihrem Schicksal,” vol. I. p. 130, Caterina is persecuted by her fate, who wears the form of a lovely woman. At last she begs her mistress’s fate, to whom she daily carries a propitiatory offering, to intercede for her with her own fate. She is told in answer that her own fate is wrapped in seven veils and so cannot hear her prayer. Finally her mistress’s fate leads her to her own. In the same collection, in “Feledico und Epomata” (vol. I. p. 350), Feledico’s fate plays a personal part.

This Indian story looks like a relic of stock and stone worship (see Tylor’s Primitive Culture, vol. II. chapters XIV. and XV.). Compare the man’s beating his fate-stone with the treatment the Ostyak gives his puppet. If it is good to him he clothes and feeds it with broth; “if it brings him no sport he will try the effect of a good thrashing on it, after which he will clothe and feed it again” (ib. p. 170). Other examples are given at the same page. These spirits and gods, for whose dwelling-place stocks and stones and other objects had been supplied, were not supposed always to inhabit these abodes; but they did so at pleasure. Compare Elijah’s address to the priests of Baal, “Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth” (1 Kings xviii. 27), with Caterina’s seven-veiled fate, and the prostrate fate-stone in our story whose spirit-owner was evidently absent on some expedition. These fates may be compared with the patron or guardian spirits of whom Mr. Tylor speaks at pp. 199-203 of the same volume. He says (p. 202), “The Egyptian astrologer warned Antonius to keep far from the young Octavius, ‘for thy demon,’ said he, ‘is in fear of his.’” If one man’s demon or genius were at enmity with that of another man, it would probably be friendly to that of a third man, and would therefore be acquainted with its secrets and with its motives of behaviour to the man it guarded. Hence the advice given by her mistress to Caterina to inquire of her own fate from her mistress’s fate, and the questions to be put to their fates when found given to the men in the Indian and Servian stories. These questions remind one of those entrusted to the youths in European tales as they journey to the dragon or devil to whom they are sent for destruction. Like the fates in the Indian and Servian stories, these dragons and devils live at the end of a long and difficult journey. Caterina has to climb a mountain to visit her mistress’s fate.

2. Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 22), speaking of the three Ribhavas, says, “During the twelve days (the twelve hours of the night or the twelve months in the year) in which they are the guests of Agohyas,” &c. So possibly the twelve years in this and other stories in this collection may be the twelve hours of the night. In an unpublished story told by DunknÍ, “Prince HÚsainsÁ’s journey,” the prince journeys for twelve years. When he returns home he finds his parents as he had left them—fast asleep in bed. To them the twelve years had only been as one night.

XIII.—THE UPRIGHT KING.

Tostory1. The Boar is an avatÁr of Vish?u.

2. A ?om (the d is lingual) is a HindÚ of a very low caste.

3. Possibly this king is the same as the king Harichand in the last story but one in the collection, p. 224, and he may also be the HariÇchandra of the following letter from Mr. C.H. Tawney:—

“I have been looking up the story of ‘HariÇchandra.’ It is to be found in Muir, vol. I. He gives a summary of it from the Marka??eya PurÁ?a. It is also found in the ‘Chanda KauÇikam,’ and in Mutu Coomara Swamy’s ‘Martyr of Truth.’ The following is Muir’s summary summarized. HariÇchandra was a king who lived in the TretÁ age, and was renowned for his virtue, and for the universal prosperity, moral and physical, which prevailed during his reign. One day he heard a sound of female lamentation which proceeded from the Sciences who were becoming mastered by the austere Sage, ViÇvamitra, in a way they had never been before. He rushed to their assistance as a Kshatriya bound to succour the oppressed. By a haughty speech he provoked ViÇvamitra, and in consequence of his wrath the Sciences instantly perished. (In the ‘Chanda KauÇikam,’ as far as I remember, we are told that the anger of ViÇvamitra interfered with the success of his austerity.) The king says he had only done his duty as a king, which involves the bestowal of gifts on BrÁhmans and the succour of the weak. ViÇvamitra thereupon demands from the king as a gift the whole earth, everything but himself, his son, and his wife. The king gives it him. Then ViÇvamitra demands his sacrificial fee; the king goes to Benares, followed by the relentless Sage, the ruler of Çiva, and is compelled to sell his wife. She is bought by a rich old BrÁhman. The son cries and the BrÁhman buys him too. But HariÇchandra has not enough, even now, to satisfy ViÇvamitra, so he sells himself to a ChÁ??Ála, who is really Dharma, the god of righteousness. The ChÁ??Ála (man of the lowest caste), carries off the king, bound, beaten, and confused. The ChÁ??Ála sends him to steal clothes in a cemetery. There he lives twelve months. His wife comes to the cemetery to perform the obsequies of her son, who had died from the bite of a serpent. The two determine to burn themselves with the corpse of their son. When HariÇchandra, after placing his son on the funeral pyre, is meditating on the Supreme Spirit, the lord Hari NÁrÁya?a Krish?a, all the gods arrive headed by Dharma (righteousness) and accompanied by ViÇvamitra. Dharma entreats the king to desist from his rash enterprise, and Indra announces to him that he, his wife, and his son have gained heaven by their good works. Ambrosia and flowers are rained by the god from the sky, and the king’s son is restored to the bloom of youth. The king, adorned with celestial clothing and garments, and the queen, embrace their son. HariÇchandra, however, declares that he cannot go to heaven till he has received his master the ChÁ??Ála’s permission, and paid him a ransom. Dharma, the god of righteousness, then says that he had miraculously assumed the form of a ChÁ??Ála. The king requests that his subjects may accompany him to heaven, at least for one day. This request is granted by Indra; and after ViÇvamitra has inaugurated the king’s son, RohitaÇva, as his successor, HariÇchandra, his friends and followers, all ascend to heaven.”

XIV.—LOVING LAILÍ.

Tostory1. MajnÚn is a celebrated lover, whose love for LailÍ or LailÁ is the subject of many Eastern poems. In this story he does not play a brilliant part.

2. LailÍ’s knife is like the sun-hero’s weapon (the sun’s ray), which lengthens at its owner’s pleasure (Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. II. p. 147).

3. She cuts her little finger. See “the BÉl Princess,” p. 141, and paragraph 2 of the note to “Shekh FarÍd.” “The little finger, though the smallest, is the most privileged of the five. It is the one that knows everything.” A Piedmontese mother says, “My little finger tells me everything” (Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 166). We have a somewhat similar saying in England. In a Russian story quoted by the same author in the same work (vol. II. p. 151), an old woman while baking a cake, cuts off her little finger and throws it into the fire. From the little finger in the fire is born a strong dwarf who afterwards does many wonderful things. In the tale of the five fingers (“Die Maehr von den fuenf Fingern,” Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, p. 325), where each finger decides what it will do, the little one says, “I will help with wise counsel.” In consequence of this assistance, to this day, “when any one has a wise idea (Einfall), he says ‘that his little finger told him that’” (p. 327). In Finnish mythology we again find the little finger. “The Para, also originated in the Swedish Bjaeren or Bare, a magical three-legged being, manufactured in various ways, and which, says CastrÉn, attained life and motion when its possessor, cutting the little finger of his left hand, let three drops of blood fall on it, at the same time pronouncing the proper spell.” (“The Mythology of Finnland,” Fraser’s Magazine for May 1857, p. 532.)

In Rink’s Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 441, there is an account of Kanak’s visit to the man of the moon, where he meets a woman who, he is warned, will take out his entrails if she can only make him laugh. He follows the moon-man’s advice, which is to rub his leg with the nail of his little finger when he can no longer keep from smiling, and so saves himself from the old hag. Rishya SriÑga (to return to the land of our fairy tales) threw a drop of water from the nail of his little finger on a Rakshas who, in the form of a tiger, was rushing to devour him. The demon instantly quitted the tiger’s body, and asked the Rishi what he should do. He followed the holy man’s instructions and obtained mÔksha (salvation)—see Indian Antiquary for May 1873, p. 142, “The Legend of Rishya SriÑga,” told by V.N. Narasimmiyengar of Bangalor.

XV.—HOW KING BURTAL BECAME A FAKÍR.

Tostory1. The FakÍr strikes the dead antelope with his wand (chÁbuk), as in “Shekh FarÍd,” p. 98. In both cases DunknÍ says the wand used was a long, slender piece of bamboo. I do not know whether the bamboo is a lightning-plant. Possibly it is, being a grass (some grasses are lightning-plants, see Fiske’s Myths and Mythmakers, pp. 56, 61), and also because its long slender stems are lance-shaped. If it does belong to this class, naturally a blow from a bamboo (or lightning) wand would give life, for, says Fiske (ib. p. 60), “the association of the thunder-storm with the approach of summer has produced many myths in which the lightning is symbolized as the life-renewing wand of the victorious sun-god.”

2. The king tries to hide the ball in his hair. The wonderful power and strength of hair appears in tales from all lands: Signor de Gubernatis suggests that, in the case of solar heroes, their hair is the sun’s rays (Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 117, vol. II. p. 154); and it seems to me possible that, just as the colour of the solar hero’s hair has been appropriated by Indian fairy-tale princes who are not solar, the qualities of his hair may have been attributed to that of folk-lore heroes who are not solar, and may also have been the origin of some of the strange superstitions prevalent about human hair. This theory, if correct, would account for most of the strange things that I have hitherto met about hair. It must be remembered that the sun’s rays are also his weapons; they turn to thunderbolts when the sun is hidden in the rain-clouds (Gubernatis, ib. vol. I. pp. 9, 17), and also to lightning (see ib. vol. II. p. 10, where the sun under the form of a bull is spoken of as the fire which sends forth lightning).

First there is Samson, whose name, according to Gesenius, means “solar,” “like the sun.” Of the hero Firud, it is told “that a single hair of his head has more strength in it than many warriors” (Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 117). Conan was the weakest man of the FÉinn, because they used to keep him cropped. “He had but the strength of a man; but if the hair should get leave to grow, there was the strength of a man in him for every hair that was in his head; but he was so cross that if the hair should grow he would kill them all” (Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands, vol. III. p. 396). At p. 91 of Schmidt’s Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, is the story of a king, “Der CapitÄn Dreizehn,” who is “the strongest of his time,” and who has three long hairs, so long that they could be twisted twice round the hand on his breast. When these are cut off he becomes the weakest of men. When these grow again he regains his strength. The sun’s rays have most power when they are longest, i.e. when the sun is in apogee.

Possibly from this old forgotten myth about the solar hero’s hair came some superstition to which was due the Merovingian decree that only princes of the blood-royal should wear their hair long; cutting their long hair made them incapable of becoming kings. Their slaves were shaved. The barbarians ruled that only their free men should wear long hair, and that the slaves should be shaved. Professor Monier Williams, in the Contemporary Review for January 1879, p. 265, says that Govind, the 10th Guru and founder of the Sikh nationality, ordered the Sikhs to wear their hair long to distinguish themselves from other nations.

In the Slavonic story, “Leben, Abenteuer und Schwaenke des kleinen Kerza,” is a dwarf magician with a long white beard. With a hair from this beard Kerza binds the magician’s wicked wife, who has taken the form of a wooden pillar the better to carry out her evil ends. From that moment it was impossible for her to take again her own shape or to use her former magic powers (Vogl’s Volksmaerchen, p. 227). One of the tasks set by Yspaddaden Penkawr to Kilhwch before he will give him his daughter Olwen to wife, is to get him “a leash made from the beard of Dissull Varvawc, for that is the only one that can hold the two cubs. And the leash will be of no avail unless it be plucked from his beard while he is alive, and twitched out with wooden tweezers ... and the leash will be of no use should he be dead because it will be brittle,”—that is, when the sun is set (dead) his rays have no power (Mabinogion, vol. II. p. 288). The same idea lies at the bottom of the English superstition that “if a person’s hair burn brightly when thrown into the fire, it is a sign of longevity; the brighter the flame, the longer the life. On the other hand, if it smoulder away, and refuse to burn, it is a sign of approaching death” (Henderson’s Folk-lore of the Northern Counties of England, p. 84).

The Malays have a story of a woman, called Utahigi, in whose head grew a single white hair endowed with magic power. When her husband pulled it out a great storm arose and Utahigi went up to heaven. She was a bird (or cloud) maiden, and this hair must have been the lightning drawn from the cloud. The Servian Atalanta, when nearly overtaken by her lover, takes a hair from the top of her head and throws it behind her. It becomes a mighty wood (clouds are the forests and mountains of the sky, Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 11), Karadschitsch, Volksmaerchen der Serben, p. 25, in the story “von dem Maedchen das behender als das Pferd ist.” In Schmidt’s Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, p. 79, the king’s daughter as she flies with her lover from the Lamnissa throws some of her own hairs behind her, and they become a great lake (thunderbolts and lightning bring rain). At p. 98 of the same work is the story “Der Riese vom Berge.” When this giant wishes to enter his great high mountain, he takes a hair from his head and touches the mountain with it. The mountain at once splits in two (p. 101). The king’s daughter in her encounter with the Efreet, “plucked a hair from her head and muttered with her lips, whereupon the hair became converted into a piercing sword with which she struck the lion [the Efreet], and he was cleft in twain by her blow; but his head became changed into a scorpion” (Lane’s Arabian Nights, vol. I. p. 156). A Baba Yaga, in Ralston’s Russian Folk Tales, p. 147, plucks one of her hairs, ties three knots in it, and blows, and thus petrifies her victims. She is a personification of the spirit of the storm, ib. p. 164. In Old Deccan Days, at p. 62, the old Rakshas says to Ramchundra, “You must not touch my hair;” “the least fragment of my hair thrown in the direction of the jungle would instantly set it in a blaze.” Ramchundra steals two or three of the hairs, and when escaping from the Rakshas, flings them to the winds and fires the jungle. Chandra (p. 266 of the same book) avenges the death of her husband by tearing her hair, which burns and instantly sets fire to the land; all the people in it but herself and a few who had been kind to her and are therefore saved, were burnt in this great fire.

In these tales a single hair from the head of the Princess LabÁm (the lunar ray can pierce the cloud as well as a solar ray) cuts a thick tree-trunk in two, p. 163.

Hair has another property; it can tell things to its owners. See the three hairs the Queen gives Coachman Toms, saying, “They will always tell you the truth when you question them.” (Stier’s Ungarische Volksmaerchen, p. 176), and which, later in the story (p. 186) adjudge the king worthy of death. (See Grimm’s story Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. II. p. 174, “The clear sun brings day.”) Also “Das wunderbare Haar” (Karadschitsch Volksmaerchen der Serben, p. 180), which is blood-red, and in which when split open were found written a multitude of noteworthy events from the beginning of the world. (The sun’s rays have existed since the early ages of the world.) The girl from whose head the hair is taken threads a needle with the sun’s rays and embroiders a net made of the hair of heroes.

See, too, the Eskimo account of the removal of Disco Island in Rink’s Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 464, where one old man vainly tries to keep back the island by means of a seal-skin thong which snaps, while two other old men haul it away triumphantly by the hair from the head of a little child, chanting their spells all the time. Their success was, perhaps, due to the spells, not to the hair. In the notes to Der CapitÄn Dreizehn in Schmidt’s Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, there are some instances of the strength given by hair to those on whom it grows.

2. The lÍchÍ is Nephelium Litchi.

3. King Burtal’s eldest son’s name SazÁdÁ is perhaps the boy’s title ShahzÁdÁ (born of a king), prince. DunknÍ says it is his name.

XVI.—SOME OF THE DOINGS OF SHEKH FARÍD.

Tostory1. KhelÁparÍ means “playful fairy:” GulÁbsÁ, “like a rose.”

2. In another version told to me this year by DunknÍ, when Gursan RÁjÁ wakes and learns how long his wife has stood by him, he is horrified, and refuses the water, saying he does not want it. He tells her that as a reward for her patience and goodness, she shall know of herself everything that happens in other countries—floods, fires, and other troubles; that she shall be able to bring help; and should any one die from having his throat cut she shall be able to restore him to life, by smearing the wound with some blood taken from an incision in her little finger. KhelÁparÍ’s acquaintance with Shekh FarÍd begins in this version as follows:—She was standing at the door of her house looking down the road, when she saw coming towards her Shekh FarÍd, the cartman, and the bullock-cart laden with what once was sugar, but now, thanks to the fakÍr, is ashes. Through her gift KhelÁparÍ knows all that has happened, though the miracle was not performed in her sight; and Shekh FarÍd being a fakÍr, though his all-knowing talent does not equal hers, knows that she knows. The cartman is in despair when he discovers the ashes, and implores Shekh FarÍd to help him. The fakÍr sends him to KhelÁparÍ, saying he must appeal to her as her power of doing good excels his (the fakÍr’s); that though he could turn sugar to ashes, he could not turn the ashes to sugar. KhelÁparÍ at the cartman’s prayer performs this miracle. Their next encounter is by a tank in the jungle by which the holy man is resting. She is hurrying along to put out the fire at her father’s palace. The Shekh cannot understand how it is possible for any woman to know of herself what is happening twenty miles off, when he, a fakÍr, can only know what passes at a short distance, so he follows the RÁnÍ to test her truthfulness, and arrives in time to see her helping to put out the fire. The rest of the story is the same as the version printed in this collection.

3. This Shekh FarÍd was a famous SÚfÍ saint. He was a contemporary of NÁnak, and many of his sayings are embodied in the Granth. In Central India, there is a holy hill of his called Girur. The Gazetteer of the Central Provinces edited by C. Grant, 2nd edition, NÁgpur, 1870, says that articles of merchandise belonging to two travelling traders who mocked the saint passed before him, on which he turned the whole stock-in-trade into stones as a punishment. They implored his pardon, and he created a fresh stock for them from dry leaves, on which they were so struck by his power that they attached themselves permanently to his service, and two graves on the hill are said to be theirs. In the Pioneer for 5th August 1878, Pekin has a poem on a similar legend about the saint. Standing on his holy hill, one day Shekh FarÍd saw a packman pass and he begged for alms. The packman mocked him. Then the saint asked what his sacks contained. “Stones,” was the answer. The Shekh said, “Sooth—they are but worthless stones.” Whereupon all the sacks burst, and the contents, at one time different kinds of spices, fell stones to the ground. The owner implored the saint’s mercy. Shekh FarÍd told him to fill his sacks with leaves from the trees, which was done, and then the leaves became gold mohurs. The packman turned saint too and left his bones on Girur. A similar miracle is told of the Irish Saint, Brigit. “Once upon a time Brigit beheld a man with salt on his back. ‘What is that on thy back?’ saith Brigit; ‘Stones,’ saith the man. ‘They shall be stones then,’ saith Brigit, and of the salt stones were made. The same man again cometh to (or past) Brigit. ‘What is that on thy back?’ saith Brigit. ‘Salt,’ saith the man. ‘It shall be salt then,’ saith Brigit. Salt was made again thereof through Brigit’s word.” (Three Middle Irish Homilies, p. 81.)

4. FakÍrchand means the moon of fakÍrs. MohandÁs, the servant of the Mohan (Krish?a). ChampÁkÁlÍ is a necklace made in imitation of the closed buds of the champa or champak flowers.

5. The demons, in HindÚstÁnÍ dew (pronounced deo), god, are something like the Rakshases. They have wings, and have exceedingly long lips, one of which sticks up in the air, while the other hangs down. One of King Arthur’s warriors, “Gwevyl, the son of Gwestad, on the day that he was sad, he would let one of his lips drop below his waist while he turned up the other like a cap upon his head” (Mabinogion, vol. II. p. 266, “Kilhwch and Olwen”).

XVII.—THE MOUSE.

Tostory1. Unluckily, when KarÍm was with us, I neglected to write down the name of the grain that kills the mouse, and all the wonderful things he told us of the properties of this grain. His explanations were a kind of note given after he had finished the story.

2. The only parallel I can find to this story is one in Bleek’s Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 90, called “The unreasonable child to whom the dog gave its deserts; or a receipt for putting any one to sleep,” in which the child indulges in the uncalled for generosity and unreasonable rage of the mouse.

XVIII.—A WONDERFUL STORY.

Tostory1. AjÍt means unsubdued, invincible.

2. The wrestler’s mode of announcing his arrival at AjÍt’s house is, probably, the solitary result of many efforts to induce KarÍm himself to knock at the nursery door before he marched into the nursery. I never heard of natives knocking at each other’s house-doors.

3. With these wrestlers compare Grimm’s “Der junge Riese,” Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. II. p. 23, and “Eisenhans” in Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, p. 77.

4. AjÍt carries her house. Note by Mr. J.F. Campbell: “Compare an Irish story about Fionn and a giant who was told that the hero turned the house when the wind blew open the door.” [See, too, Campbell’s Tales of the Western Highlands, vol. III. p. 184]

5. When KarÍm was here I forgot to ask him how big were AjÍt’s cakes, can, and mice. Mr. Campbell of Islay, who read this story in manuscript, wrote in the margin where the mice were mentioned: “The fleas in the island of Java are so big that they come out from under the bed and steal potatoes. They do many such things. Compare [with AjÍt’s can] a Gaelic story about a man who found the Fenians in an island, and was offered a drink in a can so large that he could not move it.”

6. Mr. G.H. Damant, in the Indian Antiquary for September 1873, vol. II. p. 271, has a DinÁjpur story called “Two gÁnja-eaters” which is very like our Wonderful Story. In it a gÁnja-eater who can eat six maunds of gÁnja[7] hears of another gÁnja-eater who can eat nine maunds; so he takes his six maunds of gÁnja, and sets off for his rival’s country with the intention of fighting him. On the road he is thirsty and drinks a whole pond dry, but this fails to quench his thirst. Arrived at the nine-maund gÁnja-eater’s house, he learns from the wife that her husband has gone to cut sugar-cane, and decides to go and meet him. He finds him in the jungle, and wishes to fight there and then; but his rival does not agree to this, saying he has eaten nothing for seven days. The other answers he has eaten nothing for nine; whereupon the nine-maund gÁnja-eater suggests they shall wait till they get back to his country, as in the jungle they will have no spectators. The six-maund gÁnja-eater consents. So the nine-maund gÁnja-eater takes up all the sugar-cane he has cut during the last seven days and sets off for his country with his rival. On the way they meet a fish-wife, and call her to stop and see them fight; she answers she must carry her fish without delay to market, being already late, and proposes they should stand on her arm and fight, and that then she could see them as they go along. While they are fighting on her arm, down sweeps a kite which carries off “the gÁnja-eaters; fish and all.” They are thrown by a storm in front of a RÁjÁ’s daughter, who has them swept away thinking they are bits of straw.

XIX.—THE FAKÍR NÁNAKSÁ SAVES THE MERCHANT’S LIFE.

Tostory1. NÁnaksÁ, i.e. NÁnak ShÁh, is doubtless the first guru of the Sikhs (about A.D. 1460-1530).

2. With the transmigration of the souls of the merchant’s father, grandmother, and sister into the goat, the old woman and his little daughter, compare a DinÁjpur story published by Mr. G.H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for June 7, 1872, vol. I. p. 172, in which a king threatens to kill a BrÁhman if he does not explain what he means by saying to the king every day, “As thy liberality, so thy virtue.” By his new-born daughter’s advice the BrÁhman tells the king this child would explain it to him. Accordingly the king comes to the BrÁhman’s house and is received smilingly “by the two-and-a-half-days-old daughter. She sends the king for the desired information to a certain red ox, who in his turn” sends him to a clump of Shahara (Trophis aspera) trees. The trees tell him he has been made king in this state of existence, because in a former state of existence he was liberal and full of charity; that in this former state the child just born as the BrÁhman’s daughter was his wife: that the red ox was then his son, and that this son’s wife, as a punishment for her hardness and uncharitableness, had “become the genius of this grove of trees.”

3. JabrÁ’Íl is the Archangel Gabriel.

XX.—THE BOY WHO HAD A MOON ON HIS FOREHEAD AND A STAR ON HIS CHIN.

Tostory1. For these marks see paragraph 4 of the notes to PhÚlmati RÁnÍ. I think the silver chains with which King Oriant’s children are born (see the Netherlandish story, the Knight of the Swan, quoted in paragraph 3 of the notes to the Pomegranate King) are identical with the suns, moons, and stars that the hero in this and in many other tales possesses. They are his princely insignia and proofs of his royalty. When the boy in this tale twists his right ear his insignia are hidden, and so long as they remain concealed no one can guess he is a king’s son, unless he chooses to reveal himself, as he does, partially, through his sweet singing to the youngest princess. With this partial revelation compare the Sicilian “Stupid Peppe” revealing himself in part by means of the ring he gave to his youngest princess. This ring has the property of flashing brightly whenever he is near. (See the story “Von dem muthigen KÖnigssohn, der viele Abenteuer erlebte” quoted in paragraph 6 of the notes to this story, p. 280.) The shape of the insignia may have been destroyed, as in the case of the sixth swan’s chain, in the Netherlandish story, but its substance remains, and as soon as it reappears the hero clothes himself with his own royal form. Chundun RÁjÁ’s necklace (Old Deccan Days, p. 230) and Sodewa Bai’s necklace (ib. p. 236), in which lay their life, belong, perhaps, to these insignia. Their princely owners’ existence depends on their keeping these proofs of their royalty in their own possession, and is suspended whenever the proofs pass into the hands of others.

2. The gardener’s daughter promises to bear her husband a son with the moon on his forehead and a star on his chin. Compare “Die verstossene KÖnigin und ihre beiden ausgesetzten Kinder,” Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Maerchen, vol. I. p. 19, where the girl (p. 21) promises to give the king, if he marries her, a son with a golden apple in his hand, and a daughter with a silver star on her forehead. Also compare with our story “Truth’s Triumph” in Old Deccan Days, p. 50. In Indian stories, as in European tales, the gardener and his family often play an important part, the hero being frequently the son of the gardener’s daughter, or else protected by the gardener and his wife.

3. With the kettle-drum compare the golden bell given by the RÁjÁ to Guzra Bai in “Truth’s Triumph” (Old Deccan Days, p. 53); and the flute given by the nymph Tillottama to her husband in the “Finding of the Dream,” a DinÁjpur story published by Mr. G.H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary, February 1875, vol. IV. p. 54. See also paragraph 7, p. 287, of notes to “How the RÁjÁ’s son won the Princess LabÁm.”

4. Ka?ar (the t is lingual) means cruel, relentless. With this fairy-horse compare the Russian hero-horses in Dietrich’s collection of Russian tales, who remain shut up behind twelve iron doors, and often loaded with chains as well, till the advent of heroes great enough to ride them. They generally speak with human voices, are their masters’ devoted servants, fight for him, often slaughtering more of his enemies than he does himself, and when turned loose in the free fields, as Ka?ar was in his jungle, till they are needed, always staying in them and coming at once to their master when he calls. See in the collection by Dietrich (Russische Volksmaerchen) No. 1, “Von Ljubim Zarewitch,” &c., p. 3; No. 2, “Von der selbstspielenden Harfe,” p. 17; No. 4, “Von Ritter Iwan, dem Bauersohne,” p. 43; No. 10, “Von Bulat dem braven Burschen,” p. 133; Jeruslan Lasarewitsch in the story that bears his name (No. 17, p. 208) catches and tames a wonderful horse near which even lions and eagles do not dare to go, p. 214. And the Hungarian fairy horses (Zauberpferde) who, like the Servian hero-horses, become ugly and lame at pleasure, and speak with human voice, must also be compared to Ka?ar. One in particular plays a leading part in the story of “Weissnittle” (Stier’s Ungarische Volksmaerchen, p. 61). He saves the king’s son twice from death and then flies with him to another land. He speaks with human voice, advises him in all his doings, and marries him to a king’s daughter; Weissnittle obeying his horse as implicitly as our hero does Ka?ar. The heroes’ horses in Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen also speak with human voice and give their masters good counsel. See p. 35 of “Der goldne Vogel;” p. 49 of “Der Zauberross;” p. 101 of “Der Knabe und der Schlange.” These last two horses have more than four legs: like Odin’s Sleipnir, they each have eight. See, too, the dragon’s horse and this horse’s brother in “Der goldne Apfelbaum und die neun Pfauinnen” (Karadschitsch, Volksmaerchen der Serben, pp. 33-40). The “steed” in the “Rider of Grianaig,” pp. 14 and 15 of vol. III. of Campbell’s Tales of the Western Highlands, and the “Shaggy dun filly” in “The young king of Easaidh Ruadh,” at p. 4 of vol. I. of the same work, may also be compared; and, lastly, in a list of hero-horses CÚchulainn’s Gray of Macha deserves a place. On the morning of the day which was to see his last fight, CÚchulainn ordered his charioteer, Loeg, to harness the Gray to his chariot. “‘I swear to God what my people swears,’ said Loeg, ‘though the men of Conchobar’s fifth (Ulster) were around the Gray of Macha, they could not bring him to the chariot.... If thou wilt, come thou, and speak with the Gray himself.’ CÚchulainn went to him. And thrice did the horse turn his left side to his master.... Then CÚchulainn reproached his horse, saying that he was not wont to deal thus with his master. Thereat the Gray of Macha came and let his big round tears of blood fall on CÚchulainn’s feet.” The hero then leaps into his chariot, and goes to battle. At last the Gray is sore wounded, and he and CÚchulainn bid each other farewell. The Gray leaves his master; but when CÚchulainn, wounded to death, has tied himself to a stone pillar to die standing, “then came the Gray of Macha to CÚchulainn to protect him so long as his soul abode in him, and the ‘hero’s light’ out of his forehead remained. Then the Gray of Macha wrought the three red routs all around him. And fifty fell by his teeth and thirty by each of his hooves. This is what he slew of the host. And hence is (the saying) ‘Not keener were the victorious courses of the Gray of Macha after CÚchulainn’s slaughter.’” Then Lugaid and his men cut off the hero’s head and right hand and set off, driving the Gray before them. They met Conall the Victorious, who knew what had happened when he saw his friend’s horse. “And he and the Gray of Macha sought CÚchulainn’s body. They saw CÚchulainn at the pillar-stone. Then went the Gray of Macha and laid his head on CÚchulainn’s breast. And Conall said, ‘A heavy care to the Gray of Macha is that corpse.’” Conall himself, in the fight he has with Lugaid, to avenge his friend’s slaughter, is helped by his own horse, the Dewy-Red. “When Conall found that he prevailed not, he saw his steed, the Dewy-Red, by Lugaid. And the steed came to Lugaid and tore a piece out of his side.” (“CÚchulainn’s Death, abridged from the Book of Leinster,” Revue celtique, Juin 1877, pp. 175, 176, 180, 182, 183, 185.)

5. The prince makes his escape at five years old. Jeruslan Jeruslanowitsch at the same age sets out in search of his father, Jeruslan Lasarewitsch, equipped as a knight, at p. 250 of the 17th Russian Maerchen in the collection by Dietrich quoted above. He meets and fights bravely with his father, proving himself worthy of him (p. 251). Sohrab, Rustam’s famous son, gives proof of a lion’s courage at five, and at ten years old vanquishes all his companions (Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 115).

6. The princess chooses the ugly common-looking man. In Old Deccan Days, p. 119, so does the Princess Buccoulee. In the episode of Nala and DamayantÍ we have the assemblage of suitors, and the public choice of a husband by a princess (svayamvara). DamayantÍ recognizes the mortal Nala among the gods, (each of whom has made himself resemble Nala) from the fact that the flowers of which Nala’s garlands were composed had faded while the garlands of the gods were blooming freshly. In a story from ManÍpÚrÍ told by Mr. G.H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary, September 1875, vol. IV. p. 260, Prince Basanta, effectually disguised by misery, and travel-stained, arrives with the merchant at a certain place where the king’s daughter that day is to choose her husband. The merchant takes his seat among the princely suitors; Basanta a little way off. There is a general storm of scoffings when the princess hangs her garland of flowers round Basanta’s neck. In one of Laura Gonzenbach’s Sicilian stories, “Von einem muthigen KÖnigssohn, der viele Abenteuer erlebte,” vol. II. p. 21, we have three kings’ sons (brothers) and three princesses (sisters.) The two elder brothers marry the two elder sisters. At a tournament held on purpose that she may choose her husband, the youngest sister, to the general disgust, chooses the youngest prince (disguised as the dirty, ill-dressed servant of the court tailor), and who is not even present as a suitor. Her suitors, princes, have passed before her for three days. After the marriage the prince keeps up the disguise. His brothers by way of amusing themselves at his expense take “Stupid Peppe,” as they call him, to the wood to shoot birds; he shoots a great number, while they run here and there and cannot find one. They agree to let him brand them with black spots on their shoulders, on condition he gives them his birds. In the notes to this story, vol. II. p. 240. Herr KÖhler gives Spanish, Russian, South Siberian, and others parallels. And in Stier’s Ungarische Volksmaerchen, p. 61, in the story of “Weissnittle,” we have not only the hero-horse mentioned in paragraph 4 of these notes, but also the assemblage of suitors for the princess to choose her husband: her choice of a seemingly stupid gardener’s boy, who has partially revealed himself to her; the prince retaining his disguise, after his marriage, towards every one, even his wife: two brothers-in-law, who are kings’ sons and the wife’s elder sisters’ husbands; their hunting on three different days, each time meeting a handsome prince in whom they do not recognize their despised brother-in-law, Weissnittle, who sells them his game the first day for their wedding-rings, the second for leave to brand them with these rings on their foreheads, the third for permission to brand them with a gallows on their backs: lastly, we have Weissnittle, as a splendid young prince, publicly shaming his brothers-in-law by exposing their branding marks. In India this branding with red-hot pice was the punishment for stealing. Compare in Taylor’s Confessions of a Thug, p. 411, AmÍr Ali’s horror at being so branded by the RÁjÁ of Jhalone. It was, he says years later, a punishment worse than death, as the world would think him a thief, and he would carry to his grave “a mark only set on the vile and the outcasts from society.”

7. MÚniyÁ tells me that, in a variation of this story, the dog, cow, and horse each swallow the child three times, but for shorter periods, as he is only five years old when he escapes on Ka?ar. Then when the princess chooses her husband she rides three times round the assemblage of RÁjÁ’s, who all sit on a great plain, and each time she chooses the pretended old man; for in this version the boy loses his youth as well as his good looks. Instead of taking service with the grain merchant, the boy is told by his horse to go boldly to the king’s palace and ask for service there. The shaming of the brothers-in-law happens thus. The boy invites these princes, the king, all the king’s servants, and all the people in the king’s country, to a grand entertainment in the king’s court-house. When they are all assembled he has the six princes stripped and every one mocks at the pice-marks on their backs. These are the only variations in the other version.

Sir George Grey, in his Polynesian Mythology, p. 73, tells how the hero Tawhaki when he climbed into heaven in search of his lost wife “disguised himself, and changed his handsome and noble appearance, and assumed the likeness of a very ugly old man.” If fact, he looks such a thoroughly common old man that in the heavens he is taken for a slave instead of a great chief, and treated as such.

XXI.—THE BÉL-PRINCESS.

Tostory1. MÚniyÁ says that telling the prince he would marry a BÉl-Princess was equivalent to saying he would not marry at all, for these brothers’ wives knew she lived in the fairy-country, and that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for the prince to find her, and take her from it.

2. With the fakÍr’s sleep compare that of the dragon who sleeps for a year at a time in the Transylvanian story “Das Rosenmaerchen” (Siebenbuergische Maerchen, pp. 124, 126).

3. In a Greek story, “Das Schloss des Helios” (Schmidt’s Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, p. 106), the heroine is warned by a monk that as she approaches the magic castle voices like her brothers’ voices will call her; but if, consequently, she looks behind she will become stone. Her two elder brothers go to seek her, and, as they meet no monk to warn them, they become stone. The third brother meets the monk, obeys his warning, and thus, like his sister, escapes the evil fate. To save him from Helios, the sister turns him into a thimble till she has Helios’s promise to do him no harm. (Compare the Tiger and Tigress, p. 155 of this collection.) Helios gives him some water in a flask with which he sprinkles the stone brothers, whereupon they and all the other stone princes come to life. In these Indian tales the healing blood from the little finger plays the part of the waters of life and death, found in so many Russian and other European stories. When reading of the fate of all these princes, it is impossible not to think of Lot’s wife.

The danger of looking back, when engaged on any dealings with supernatural powers, is insisted on in the tales and practices of the Russians, Eskimos, Zulus, and the Khonds of Orissa. In Russia the watcher for the golden fern-flower must seize it the instant it blossoms and run home, taking care not to look behind him: whether through fear of giving the demons, who also watch for it, power over him, or whether through a dread of the flower losing its magic powers if this precaution is neglected, Mr. Ralston does not say (Songs of the Russian People, p. 99). When “the Revived who came to the under-world people” (Dr. Rink tells us in his Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 299) took the old couple to visit the ingnersuit (supernatural beings “who have their abodes beneath the surface of the earth, in the cliffs along the sea-shore, where the ordinarily invisible entrances to them are found” ib. p. 46), he warned “them not to look back when they approached the rock which enclosed the abode of the ingnersuit, lest the entrance should remain shut for them.... When they had reached the cliff, and were rowing up to it, it forthwith opened; and inside was seen a beautiful country, with many houses, and a beach covered with pebbles and large heaps of fish and matak (edible skin). Perceiving this the old people for joy forgot the warning and turned round, and instantly all disappeared: the prow of the boat knocked right against the steep rock and was smashed in, so that they all were thrown down by the shock. The son [the revived] said, ‘Now we must remain apart for ever.’” Mr. Tylor, in the 2nd volume of his Primitive Culture, at p. 147 mentions a Zulu remedy for preventing a dead man from tormenting his widow in her dreams; the sorcerer goes with her to lay the ghost, and when this is done “charges her not to look back till she gets home:” and he says the Khonds of Orissa, when offering human sacrifices to the earth-goddess bury their portions of the offering in holes in the ground behind their backs without looking round (ib. p. 377).

4. In most of the stories of this kind the command is to open the fruit or casket only near water, for if the beautiful maiden inside cannot get water immediately she dies. Such is the case in the “Drei Pomeranzen” (Stier’s Ungarische Maerchen und Sagen, p. 83), in “Die Schoene mit dem sieben Schleier” (Sicilianische Maerchen, vol. I. p. 73), and in “Die drei Citronen” (Schmidt’s Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, p. 71). “Die Ungeborene Niegesehene” (Schott’s Wallachische Maerchen, p. 248) must be compared with these, though the beautiful maiden does not come out of the golden fairy-apple. She appears suddenly and the prince must give her water to drink and the apple to eat, before he can take her and keep her. In all these stories the hero has a long journey, and encounters many dangers, in seeking his bride. In the Sicilian story he is helped by hermits; in the Greek story, by a monk—monks in Greek and hermits in Sicilian and Servian stories playing the part of the fakÍrs in these Indian tales. In all these stories, too, the maiden is killed or transformed by a wicked woman who takes her place. In the Wallachian and Sicilian fairy tales the rightful bride becomes a dove only. But in the Hungarian tale she is drowned in a well and becomes a gold fish; the wicked gipsy has no rest till she has eaten the fish’s liver: from one of its scales springs a tree; she has the tree cut down and burnt. The wood-cutter who hews down the tree makes a cover for his wife’s milk-pot from a piece of the wood, and they find their house kept in beautiful order from this moment. So to discover the secret, they peep through the keyhole one day and see a lovely fairy come out of the milk-jar. Then they enter their house suddenly and the girl tells her story: the wood-cutter’s wife burns the wooden lid to force her to keep her own form, and goes to the king’s son to tell him where he will find his Pomegranate-bride again. In the Greek story a Lamnissa eats the citron-girl, but a tiny bone falls unnoticed into the water and becomes a gold-fish. The prince not only takes the Lamnissa home with him, but he takes the gold-fish too, and keeps it in his room, “for he loved it dearly.” The Lamnissa never rests till he gives her the fish to eat. Its bones are thrown into a garden and from them springs a rose bush on which blooms a rose which the king’s old washerwoman wishes to break off to sell it at the castle. From out of the bush springs the beautiful citron-maiden, and tells the old woman her story. She also gives her the rose for the king’s son, and in the basket with the rose she lays a ring he had given her, but charges the old woman to say nothing about her to him. The next day he comes to the old woman’s cottage and finds his real bride.

5. The youngest prince alone can gather the lotus-flower and bÉl-fruit. Compare the Pomegranate-king, pp. 10 and 11, and paragraphs 1 and 4, pp. 245, 252, of the notes to that story. In his Northern Mythology, vol. I., in the footnotes at p. 290, Thorpe mentions a maiden’s grave from which spring “three lilies which no one save her lover may gather.” I think he must quote from a Danish ballad.

6. The princess after drowning is first in a lotus-flower; then in a bÉl-fruit again; and, lastly, her body is changed to a garden and palace. Signor de Gubernatis at p. 152 of the 1st volume of his Zoological Mythology mentions an Esthonian story where a girl (she who addressed the crow as “bird of light”—see paragraph 2, p. 259 of the notes to “Brave HÍrÁlÁlbÁsÁ”) while fleeing with her lover is thrown into the water by a magic ball sent after them by the old witch, and there becomes “a pond-rose (lotus-flower).” Her lover eats hogs’-flesh and thus learns the language of birds, and then sends swallows to a magician in Finnland to ask what he must do to free his bride. The answer is brought by an eagle; and the prince following the magician’s instructions helps the girl to recover her human form. And just as Surya Bai is born again in her mango (Old Deccan Days, p. 87) and the BÉl-Princess in her bÉl-fruit, so is the girl in the Hottentot tale of “The Lion who took a woman’s shape” born from her heart in the calabash full of milk in which her mother has put it. The lion had eaten the girl; but her mother burns the lion and persuades the fire in which she burns him to give her her daughter’s heart (Bleek’s Hottentot Fables and Tales, pp. 55 and 56). With the change into the garden and palace compare the Russian story of a maiden whose servant-girl blinds her and takes her place as the king’s wife. After some time the false queen learns her mistress is still living; so she has her murdered and cut to pieces. “Where the maiden is buried a garden arises, and a boy shows himself. The boy goes to the palace and runs after the queen, making such a din that she is obliged, in order to silence him, to give him the girl’s heart which she had kept hidden. The boy then runs off contented, the king follows him, and finds himself before the resuscitated maiden” (Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol. I. pp. 218, 219). See paragraphs 7 and 8 of the notes to “PhÚlmati RÁnÍ,” p. 244, and 1, 3 and 4, pp. 245, 250, 252, of those to “The Pomegranate-king.”

7. The commonplace fate of the wonderful palace is deplorable.

XXII.—HOW THE RÁJÁ’S SON WON THE PRINCESS LABÁM.

Tostory1. The “four sides” in this story (p. 153), the “four directions” (p. 156) which ought to have been translated four sides and the four sides in “The Bed,” p. 202, are the four points of the compass. They appear in a DinÁjpur story told by Mr. G.H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary, 5th April 1872, p. 115. In the first Russian fairy tale published by Dietrich, the hero’s parents give their elder sons permission “to go on the four sides” when they start on their journeys (Russische Volksmaerchen, p. 1). In another fairy tale in the same collection (No. 11, p. 144) the Prince Malandrach, when he has lost his way flying in the air and is over the sea, raises himself by a last effort and looks on all the “four sides” in search of a resting-place for his foot, p. 147. Of course, too, like orthodox Russians, the Russian heroes generally bow to all the “four sides,” before attempting their journeys and adventures.

2. HÍrÁman is the name of a kind of parroquet. Irik in the Bohemian tale “Princess Golden-Hair” (Naake’s Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 99) first hears of the princess’s existence from the chattering of birds.

3. “Aunty” was the word used in English by old MÚniyÁ.

4. With the stone bowl compare the pot in Grimm’s “Der suesse Brei,” Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. II. p. 104. 5. With the tigers’ coats compare the robes of honour wherewith the knights in the Mabinogion clothe themselves when they go to combat. “And he (Gwalchmai) went forth to meet the knight (Owain), having over himself and his horse a satin robe of honour sent him by the daughter of the Earl of Rhangyw; and in this dress he was not known by any of the host” (“The Lady of the Fountain,” Mabinogion, vol. I. p. 67). Peredur wears “a bright scarlet robe of honour over his armour” given him by the king’s daughter (ib. p. 363 of “Peredur the son of Evrawc”). And in “The Dream of Rhonabwy” a knight and his horse wear a robe of honour (ib. vol. II. p. 413).

6. With the tigers’ fight with the demons compare the combat of the grateful lion with the giant, in which the lion bears the brunt of the battle. On the giant’s saying, “Truly, I should find no difficulty in fighting with thee were it not for the animal that is with thee,” Owain shuts the lion up in the castle. “The lion in the castle roared very loud, for he heard that it went hard with Owain,” so he climbed to the top of the castle, sprang down and “joined Owain. And the lion gave the giant a stroke with his paw, which tore him from his shoulder to his hip, and his heart was laid bare. And the giant fell down dead” (“The Lady of the Fountain,” Mabinogion, vol. I. pp. 79, 80).

7. Gubernatis in vol. I. p. 160, of his Zoological Mythology, says, “The drum or kettle-drum thunder is a familiar image in Hindu poetry, and the gandharvas, the musician warriors of the Hindu Olympus, have no other instrument than the thunder.” “The magic flute is a variation of the same celestial instrument,” ib. p. 161.

8. For the hair, see note to “How King Burtal became a FakÍr,” paragraph 2, p. 268.

Tostory1. With the task of pulling out the needles, the purchase of the maid-servant, the sleep of the princess, the usurping of her place by the maid who makes the prince believe the princess is her servant-girl, compare “Der bÖse Schulmeister und die wandernde KÖnigstochter,” in Laura Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Maerchen, vol. I. p. 59. Here, too, the princess is driven forth from her home; she finds a prince lying dead with a tablet by him on which is written, “If a maiden will rub me seven years, seven months and seven days long with grass from Mount Calvary, I shall return to life, and she shall become my wife” (p. 61).

2. Sun-jewel box. The word thus translated is Rav-ratan-ke-pitÁrÁ. RavÍ, sun; ratan, jewel; pitÁrÁ, a kind of box.

3. In one of Grimm’s stories, “Die GÄnsehirtin am Brunnen,” Kinder und Hausmaerchen, vol. II. p. 419, a king asks his three daughters how much they love him (p. 425). The eldest loves him as much as the “sweetest sugar,” the second as much as her “finest dress,” and the third as much as salt. So her father in a rage has a sack of salt bound on her back, and makes two of his servants take her away to the forest. See also Auerbach’s BarfÜssele, Stuttgart, 1873, ss. 236, 237.

XXIV.—THE DEMON IS AT LAST CONQUERED BY THE KING’S SON.

Tostory1. The leading idea of this story is the same as that in “Brave HÍrÁlÁlbÁsÁ.”

2. With this demon as a goat, compare the Rakshas in the Pig’s Head Soothsayer in Sagas from the Far East, p. 63, and the Rakshas in a BengÁli story printed by Mr. G.H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary, 7th June, 1872, p. 120. This last story opens with seven labourers, brothers, six of whom go down to the water to drink and never return. The seventh goes to see what has happened to them, and finds, instead of his brothers, a goat which is really a Rakshas. This goat then turns into a beautiful woman who marries the king, first making him give into her hands the eyes of his queen, who is sent blind into the forest, where she bears a little son. The Rakshas wife learns this, and when the boy later takes service with the king she sends him three times to her people in Ceylon, with orders to them to kill him. He has to bring her foam from the sea, a wonderful rice which is sown, ripens, and can be boiled in one day, and a singular cow. With the help of a SannyÁsÍ (a BrÁhman of the fourth order, a religious mendicant), he does these errands safely. The Rakshases in Ceylon receive him as their sister’s son, show him his own mother’s eyes and the clay with which they can be set again in any human sockets, a lemon which contains the life of the tribe, and a bird in which is that of the Rakshas-queen. The boy cuts up the lemon, and thereby kills them all, carries her eyes to his mother, and kills the Rakshas-queen by killing the bird. In this story, as in “Brave HÍrÁlÁlbÁsÁ,” the Rakshas-queen takes her own fearful form on seeing her danger.

3. The Bargat, fig-tree, is the Ficus Bengalensis of LinnÆus.

4. MÚniyÁ sends her hero for a Garpank’s feather; Garpank I can find in no dictionary, but have ventured to translate it by eagle, as she says it is like a kite, only very much bigger; she sent us to see a statue of a garpank that stood over a gateway in a street in Calcutta, which might be that of an eagle or of a huge hawk. She said such birds did not exist in Bengal, and that it was not the Garu?a (the sovran of the feathered race and vehicle of Vish?u, Benfey). Gubernatis, in the 2nd volume of his Zoological Mythology, p. 189, tells a story from Monferrat where a king is blind, and can only be cured by “bathing his eyes in oil with a feather” of a griffin that lives on a high mountain. His third and youngest son catches and brings him one of the griffins and the king regains his sight.

5. Winning the gratitude of a bird by killing the snake or dragon that year after year devours its young birds is such a common incident in fairy tales, that I will only mention two instances. One occurs in a DinÁjpur tale published by Mr. G.H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for 5th April, 1872, p. 145, where the hero saves the young birds from the snake. They tell the old birds. He lies under the tree and listens to the old birds relating how he will find the tree with the silver stem and golden branches he has come to seek. The other occurs at pp. 119, 110, of a story collected by Vogl (Volksmaerchen [Slavonic], p. 79) called SchÖn-Jela. In this tale the hero is sheltered in the dreadful underground wilderness by a hermit. Here there is the gigantic bird, Einja, who every third year has a brood of four young birds which a dragon as regularly devours. The hero, Prince Milan, watches by the nest for the dragon and kills him. The young birds, overjoyed, fly out of the nest and cover the hero with their wings till the old bird on her return asks who has saved them. Then they unfold their wings and she sees Prince Milan. In return she carries him to the upper world.

6. The word translated “night-growing rice” is RÁt-vashÁ-ke-dhÁn; and the ayah’s description of this rice is given in the story. In this description she spoke of it as chÁwal, the common word for uncooked rice, and said the Rakshas wished to drink its kÁnjÍ-pÁnÍ (rice-water). As it is a fairy plant I am afraid it is hopeless trying to find its botanical name. Unluckily, Dr. George King says vashÁ is not rice at all. This is what he wrote to me on the subject: “VashÁ is, I suppose, the same as vasaka, and in that case is Justitia Adhatoda, a straggling shrub common over the whole of India [very unlike the RÁt-vashÁ-ke-dhÁn] and which was in the Sanscrit as it is in the native pharmacopoeias. It is not a kind of rice, but belongs to the natural order of AcanthaceÆ (the family to which Acanthus and Thunbergia belong).” This night-growing rice may be compared to the day-growing rice in paragraph 2, p. 288, of the notes to this story.

7. Compare with the paper boat the rolled-up burdock leaf given to the hero by the dwarf in the seventh Esthonian tale quoted by Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 155): whenever this hero wishes to cross water he unrolls his burdock-leaf. Gubernatis compares this leaf to the lotus-leaf on which the HindÚs represented their god as floating in the midst of the waters (ibid.).

8. With the great wind that comes from the demon, compare the following Swedish account of a giant in Thorpe’s Northern Mythology, vol. II. p. 85. He asks his road of a lad, who directs him: then “he went off as in a whirlwind, and the lad now discovered, to his no small astonishment, that his forefinger with which he had pointed out the way had followed along with the giant.” In the old Scandinavian belief the Giant HrÆsvelgr sat at the end of heaven in an eagle’s garb (arna ham). From the motion of his wings came the wind which passed over men (ib. vol. I. p. 8). It must be mentioned also that “in the German popular tales the devil is frequently made to step into the place of the giants” (ib. vol. I. p. 234), and that StÖpke or Stepke is in Lower Saxony an appellation of the devil or of the whirlwind, from which proceed the fogs which spread over the land (ib. p. 235). The devil sits in the whirlwind and rushes howling and raging through the air (Mark Sagen, ib. p. 377). The whirlwind is also ascribed to witches. If a knife be cast into it, the witch will be wounded and become visible (Schreiber’s Taschenbuch, 1839, p. 323; ib. vol. I. p. 235). Mr. Ralston, in his Songs of the Russian People, p. 382, says the Russian peasant attributes whirlwinds to the mad dances in which the devil celebrates his marriage with a witch, and at p. 155 of the same book tells us how the malicious demon Lyeshy not only makes use of the whirlwind as a travelling conveyance for himself and a means of turning intruders out of quarters he had selected for his own refuge, but sends home in it people to whom he is grateful. In Ireland we find a wind blowing from hell. King Loegaire tells Patrick, “I perceived the wind cold, icy, like a two-ridged spear, which almost took our hair from our heads and passed through us to the ground. I questioned BenÉn as to this wind. Said BenÉn to me, ‘This is the wind of hell which has opened before CÚchulainn.’” Lebar na huidre, p. 113 a. This “wind of hell” makes one think of the sweet-scented wind from the mid-day regions, and the evil-scented wind from the north, which in old Persian religious belief blew to meet pure and wicked souls after death (Tylor’s Primitive Culture, vol. II. pp. 98, 99). Mr. Tylor mentions also the Fanti negroes’ belief that the men and animals they sacrifice to the local fetish are carried away in a whirlwind imperceptibly to the worshippers (ib. p. 378).

8. Ábjhamjham-ke pÁnÍ is what has been translated by “water from the glittering well.” 9. The king had a great pit dug in the jungle. This is how Kai and Bedwyr plucked out the beard of Dillus Varvawc, which had to be plucked out during life. They made him eat meat till he slept. “Then Kai made a pit under his feet, the largest in the world, and he struck him a violent blow, and squeezed him into the pit. And there they twitched out his beard completely with the wooden tweezers; and after that they slew him altogether” (“Kilhwch and Olwen,” Mabinogion, vol. II. p. 304).

XXV.—THE FAN PRINCE.

Tostory1. The boat would not move because the king had forgotten to get the thing his youngest daughter had asked him to bring her. Signor de Gubernatis (Zoological Mythology, vol. II. p. 382) mentions an unpublished story from near Leghorn in which a sailor promises to bring his youngest daughter a rose. The eldest daughter is to have a shawl, and the second a hat. “When the voyage is over, he is about to return, but having forgotten the rose, the ship refuses to move; he is compelled to go back to look for a rose in a garden; a magician hands the rose with a little box to the father to give it to one of his daughters, whom the magician is to marry. At midnight, the father, having returned home, relates to his third daughter all that had happened. The little box is opened; it carries off the third daughter to the magician, who happens to be King Pietraverde, and is now a handsome young man.”

2. The princess’s ring recalls Portia and Nerissa.

3. A yogÍ is a HindÚ religious mendicant.

XXVI.—THE BED.

TostoryThe merchant’s son possibly was afraid of incurring the wrath either of an original spirit residing in the tree, or of some human soul who had been born again as its genius (see paragraph 1, p. 276, of note to “The fakÍr NÁnaksÁ saves the merchant’s life”). MÚniyÁ could give no reason for his asking each tree’s permission to cut it down.

XXVII.—PÁNWPATTÍ RÁNÍ.

TostorySee another version of this tale in the Baital PachÍsi, No. 1. There the heroine is called PadmÁvatÍ, and her father King DantavÁt.

XXVIII.—THE CLEVER WIFE.

Tostory1. The merchant’s wife tricks the four men into chests. UpakosÁ makes the like appointments, and plays a similar trick: compare her story translated from the KathÁpÍtha by Dr. G. BÜhler in the Indian Antiquary for 4th October, 1872, pp. 305, 306: and in “The Touchstone,” a DinÁjpur legend told by Mr. G.H. Damant at p. 337 of the Indian Antiquary for December, 1873, the hero-prince’s second wife, PrÁnnÁsinÍ, in order to regain the touchstone for her husband (like UpakosÁ and the Clever Wife) makes appointments with, and then tricks, the kotwÁl, the king’s councillor, the prime minister, and lastly the king himself.

2. She plays cards (tÁs). Forbes in his HindÚstÁnÍ and English Dictionary p. 543, says tÁs is the word used for Indian playing cards. The Indian pack, he says, contains eight suits, each suit consisting of a king, wazÍr, and ten cards having various figures represented on them from one to ten in number.

[A close parallel to this tale is Adi’s Wife, a BengÁli legend from Dinagepore, told by the late Mr. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for January, 1880, p. 2.]

XXIX.—RÁJÁ HARICHAND’S PUNISHMENT.

Tostory1. This king is probably the same as “The Upright King,” Harchand RÁjÁ, p. 68 of this collection.

2. The Kop ShÁstra. MÚniyÁ says kop is a HindÚstÁnÍ, not a BengÁli word, and has nothing whatever to do with demons. This is what Mr. Tawney writes on the subject: “It might mean kapi, or kapila if the woman is a BengÁli. Kapi is a name of Vish?u, possibly it might be the RÁmÁyana as treating of monkeys, but I really do not know. I see Monier Williams says that there are certain demons called kapa. But of course kÓpa is anger. I suppose you know that the natives of Bengal pronounce the short a as o in the English word hop.” MÚniyÁ pronounces kop like the English word cope. This ShÁstra seems as hopelessly mythical as the RÁt-vashÁ-ke-dhÁn.

XXX.—THE KING’S SON AND THE WAZÍR’S DAUGHTER.

TostoryIn a Servian story, “Des Vaters letzter Wille,” pp. 134, 135, 136, of the Volksmaerchen der Serben collected by Karadschitsch, the youngest brother has to take his brother-in-law’s horse over a bridge under which he sees an immense kettle full of boiling water in which men’s heads are cooking while eagles peck at them. He then passes through a village where all is song and joyfulness because, so the inhabitants tell him, each year is fruitful with them and they live, therefore, in the midst of plenty. Then he sees two dogs quarrelling which he cannot succeed in separating. He next passes through a village where all is sorrow and tears because each year comes hail, so the inhabitants “have nothing.” Next he sees two boars fighting together and cannot separate them any more than he could part the dogs. Lastly, he reaches a beautiful meadow. In the evening his brother-in-law expounds the meaning of all he has seen. The heads in the boiling vessel represent the everlasting torment in the next world. The happy villagers are good, charitable men, with whom God is well pleased. The dogs are his elder brothers’ wives. The sorrowing villagers are men who know neither righteousness, concord, nor God. The boars are his two wicked elder brothers. The meadow is paradise.

---