The Folk-Lore Journal/Volume 4/The Outcast Child

THE OUTCAST CHILD.

ILLUMINATED by the genius of Shakspeare, consecrated by the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures, told by word of mouth in humbler fashion by mother to babe from the Himalayas to the forests of Brazil, from the Siberian steppes to the shores of the Mediterranean, the story of the child rejected by his father and family for a slight offence more apparent than real, who yet from an outcast becomes a prince and compels the parent who has treated him so cruelly to acknowledge his wrong, has charmed the ears and enthralled the hearts of many a tribe in the Old World, and has been carried by some of them across the ocean. The story of King Lear has been written down for seven centuries; that of Joseph and his Brethren probably four times that period. Until recent years there was little reason to suspect that these two stories had any fundamental connection; but the publication of collections of folk-tales, which has increased so rapidly during the last three decades, now enables us to determine their relation, and to show that they are but two of the forms assumed by a narrative essentially the same, when told in widely distant countries and among peoples sundered as far by difference of manners, faith and social organization, as of land and climate. I propose in these pages to examine some of the forms thus assumed, and to attempt a classification of them.

They fall into five distinct types. Three of these are examples of that series of myths in which the hero is the youngest of several children, and which are commonly known to folk-lore students as Youngest-best stories.

In the first the conduct of the elder children is strongly contrasted with that of the youngest. This I call the King Lear type. Its specimens are all occupied with the adventures of a king's three daughters.

In the second type the story of the elder children is dropped. In both these types the catastrophe is brought about by the heroine's reply to her father on being asked how much she loves him. In this, the Value of Salt Type, we are still concerned with a band of sisters.

In the third type the catastrophe is due to the father's wrath being excited by a different cause from that in the two foregoing types,—usually by the hero's dream. I have ventured to give this genus the title of the Joseph type. It deals sometimes with sons, at other times with daughters.

The fourth and fifth types record the career of an only son who has fallen without reasonable cause under his father's anger. From one of the stories in the English version of The Seven Wise Masters we may give the former the name of The Ravens type. The latter may be denominated The Language of Beasts type. These two types, though distinguishable, are nearly related.

I.

We owe the story of King Lear to Geoffrey of Monmouth,^[1] whose narrative has been closely followed by Shakspeare. Its outlines run as follows:—Leir, the son of Bladud, king of Britain, having governed sixty years and being without male issue, was desirous of dividing his kingdom between his three daughters, Gonorilla, Regan, and Cordeilla, and of marrying them to fit husbands. To make trial which of them was worthy to have the best part of his kingdom, he went to each of them to ask which of them loved him most. Gonorilla, in answer, called heaven to witness that she loved him more than her own soul. Regan replied with an oath that she loved him before all creatures. Cordeilla, the youngest and his best-beloved, setting at their true value her sisters' protestations, and regretting the ease with which her father was deceived by them, answered that she had always loved him as a father, and whoever pretended to do more must be disguising her real sentiments beneath a veil of flattery: if, however, he still insisted on a further pledge, she would tell him—"Look how much you have, so much is your value, and so much do I love you," Her father angrily excluded her from any share of the kingdom, half of which he gave in possession to his other two daughters, marrying them respectively to the dukes of Cornwall and Albania, and settling the remainder of the whole monarchy of Britain upon them after his own death. The king of the Franks, having heard of Cordeilla's beauty, sent to demand her in marriage, and accepted her without any dowry. After a time the husbands of the two elder daughters rebelled and deprived Leir of his kingdom; the duke of Albania, who had married Gonorilla, agreeing to allow him a maintenance at his own house, with sixty soldiers who were to be kept for state. Then follow the quarrels between Leir and his daughter Gonorilla as to the number of his retainers, his flight to Regan, the other daughter, his quarrel with her, and return to Gonorilla, who will not receive him back unless he dismisses all his retainers, with the result that he takes ship for Gaul and seeks Cordeilla. Cordeilla, taking pity on him, provides him with a retinue; and her husband, raising an army, invades Britain with king Leir, and restores him to the throne of the whole kingdom. The old monarch reigns for upwards of two years, and on his death Cordeilla succeeds him.

This is the substance of the tale as written down in the middle of the twelfth century; but whence it was then derived there is not a trace beyond internal evidence to show. The originals which Geoffrey professes to have had before him in writing his Romances are no longer extant. It seems likely he really had a collection of folk-tales, either Welsh or Armorican, made, either by himself, or (as he asserts) by another person and brought to him by the Archdeacon Walter; but, if so, such collection has utterly disappeared. What is still more extraordinary is that, so far as we have the means of judging, not only has the collection as an entirety gone, but the separate and individual items of which it was composed have nearly, if not quite, all likewise vanished. There can be little doubt that in the composition of the Mabinogion use was made, to say the least, of genuine Welsh traditions. In these stories mention is frequently made of Lear. But he is surrounded by a totally different set of circumstances from those by which Geoffrey had encircled him; and if Cordelia is referred to, her wicked sisters have departed nobody knows whither. The tales of the Mabinogion are in fact on a distinct plane from those of Geoffrey of Monmouth. It is not only that they have a less historical and more chivalric air, but they are not the same tales. On the other hand, if we turn to the Welsh, to the Cornish, or to the Breton folk-lore of the present day, we are equally at fault in our searca for anything corresponding to Geoffrey's originals. No story has, so far as I am aware, yet been discovered in the mouths of the people which can be identified with the contents of those mysterious manuscripts. What makes this the more strange is that Geoffrey of Monmouth's tales have in several instances been shown to be part of the general Aryan inheritance, if not of the common property of mankind. In Wales, indeed, the märchen has to all appearance been almost destroyed: it would be remarkable to find any indigenous example of that form of folk-tale there at all. But stories often become affixed to the soil, or cluster round the names of historic dead, and thus in saga-form preserve their vitality for many centuries. Some transformation of this kind seems to have been imminent, if it had not actually taken place, in these tales when they fell under Geoffrey's hands and received from him a literary shape and immortality. And if the märchen no longer exists in Wales, sagas, at any rate, are happily not wanting. But I do not think I am going beyond the facts in saying that no research has yet found, even in saga-form, any of Geoffrey's narratives. I speak with some diffidence, as I do not, of course, pretend to have seen or heard all Welsh, Breton, and Cornish tales; nor is it important now to determine whether any of these narratives have been met with. The one fact with which we have now to concern ourselves is that the story of king Lear and his three daughters has never been met with.

The Gesta Romanorum was probably compiled originally in England at the end of the thirteenth century, or about one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty years after Geoffrey of Monmouth's Romances. This work was composed of tales having a more or less remotely popular origin, fitted with applications which treated them as parables suitable to be introduced into the discourses of mediæval preachers. One of these tales, which is only found in the English manuscripts of the Gesta, is practically identical with that of king Lear and his three daughters.^[2] It runs to this effect:—Theodosius, Emperor of Rome, had three daughters, of whom he enquired how much they loved him. His eldest daughter declared she loved him more than herself. Therefore he married her to a rich and mighty king. His second daughter averred she loved him as much as herself. So he married her to a duke. But his third daughter told him she loved him as much as he was worthy, and no more. The emperor, offended, only married her to an earl. After that he went to war with the king of Egypt, who drove him out of the empire. He wrote for help to his eldest daughter, who refused him more than five knights for fellowship while he was out of the empire. Then he wrote to his second daughter, who, however, would do no more than "find him meat and drink and clothing honestly as for the state of such a lord during the time of his need." As a last resource he wrote to the third, telling her of her sisters' replies. She at once induced her husband to gather a great host, and go with the emperor to battle against his enemies, with the result that the latter were defeated, and the emperor was restored to his throne, to which his youngest daughter succeeded after his death.

Looking at the coincidences between this story and that given by Geoffrey, and at the fact that the latter's work had been circulating and well-known for upwards of a century in this country, among the very classes in the midst of which the Gesta Romanorum was produced, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the gest of the emperor Theodosius owes its existence to Geoffrey's account of king Lear. But, if so, it seems likely that the parentage is not immediate, but that the story was verbally transmitted for some time before it was again put into writing.

Although, however, this tale is not now found among the Cymric tribes as a living organism, it is given by Bladé, with some variation, as still heard from the peasants of the south-west of France.^[3] As told by them it runs as follows:—A widowed king, who loves salt, and has three daughters to marry, determines, against the advice of a confidential servant, to test their love by the usual enquiries. The youngest replies that she loves him as much as he loves salt. Enraged beyond measure at this answer, he compels the servant in question to take her into the wood for the purpose of putting her to death, and divides his land between his two elder daughters, reserving to himself the right to live with each of them for six months of each year. The servant takes the heroine, with her royal robes in a wallet, to a neighbouring king, whose service she enters, and is employed to look after the turkeys. On his way back he kills his bitch, and takes her tongue to the king, his master, in proof of his having fulfilled the unnatural command with which he was entrusted. Meantime, the elder daughters have bribed the notary who was summoned to draw the deed of gift of the kingdom; and by their instructions the reservation of the king's right to board and lodging with his daughters has been carefully left out of the instrument. The king, turned out of doors, is housed and supported by the faithful servant out of the moneys given him by the heroine's father and sisters for her supposed slaughter. The heroine, still living, falls in love with her new master's son. When the carnival arrives, she secretly dresses herself in her robes, takes a horse from the stable, and attends a ball where she meets this royal youth; but she is punctual in leaving at midnight. The next night she repeats the adventure in more gorgeous apparel. The third night, still more resplendent, she goes to the ball again, but in quitting it loses the red slipper from her right foot. The slipper is found by the prince, and a proclamation is made that he will marry her whom it fits. After all have tried, it fits none but the little turkey-herd. She, however, refuses to marry without her father's consent. Her father, having learnt the truth about his youngest daughter from his servant, goes in search of her, and arrives at the castle where she is in service. She still refuses to marry until her father has been reinstated in his rights by her lover and his father. When this is done she yields; and the faithful servant is also rewarded with a suitable marriage.

In this story Peau d'Âne has got inextricably mixed with King Lear and his daughters; or rather, this is the story of Peau d'Âne with the motive of the heroine's flight and disguise attributed to Lear's senile folly. Nothing could have been better adapted to exhibit the Proteus-like character of folk-tales, or to make it clear that a classification of incidents is of equal importance to the student with a classification of tales. It is not, however, for this purpose that I have given this story from Agenais so much at length, but in order to distinguish it from some other versions which we shall meet with presently, and which Dr. Köhler in a note to this story brings into comparison with it. All I desire now to observe is that the wickedness of the elder daughters is insisted upon as fully as in the typical story itself, and their punishment is brought about by the heroine after her father has recognised his former injustice to her.

In a Corsican variant^[4] the connection with the story of Peau d'Âne is, if possible, rendered more obvious by the actual introduction of the ass' skin. There the king's family is varied by the substitution of a son for the second daughter. He and the elder daughter reply to their father's enquiry in terms of the utmost extravagance and blasphemy; while the heroine, on the other hand, simply answers that she loves her father as a submissive and devoted daughter ought to love a father like him. For this reply he expels her from home, and, taking her robes, embroidered in gold and silver, she sets forth. Having found a dead ass by the roadside she flays it, and, clad in the hide, she enters a nobleman's service as goatherd. One day she leads her flock to a retired place and dresses herself in her royal garb. She is seen by the king's son, who has lost his way while hunting; and she flies, leaving behind a little shoe. By this she is discovered, but refuses to wed the prince until her father has been brought to see his mistake in regard to her, and is willing to be present at the marriage. The messengers sent to him find that his two elder children have dethroned him, and pent him in a dungeon into which no one can penetrate. The heroine then requires of her lover the restoration of her father to his throne. This is accomplished after a short war; but the old king has become insane. By the heroine's incessant care and devotion he is at the end of a year restored to his senses, and only then she consents to be married.

II.

In the next type the adventures of the elder daughters are dropped, the heroine tells her father that she loves him like salt, and, after adventures more or less relevant to the main plot, she compels him to admit his injustice towards her. The simplest form of the tale is found in Miss Busk's collection of The Folk-Lore of Rome,^[5] and is entitled "The Value of Salt." Here a king, after many tests, asks his three daughters separately how much they love him. The eldest answers "As much as the bread we eat"; the second, "As much as wine"; the youngest, "As much as salt." The king, angered with the reply of the last, shuts her up in a wing of the palace by herself, resolved never to see her again. But she finds means to speak to the cook, whom she induces one day to serve up to the king a dinner without salt. The king cannot eat anything, and in this way he learns to understand the value of salt, and how great was the love of his youngest child. Similarly, in a Swabian anecdote, a fragment of a folk-tale, given by Meier,^[6] a king makes the usual enquiry of his daughter—only one is mentioned—and is told in reply that she loves him like salt. He is offended, but does not expel the heroine. Soon after, at a feast, she contrives that the dishes shall all be sent up unseasoned with salt, and so convinces her father of the wisdom of her answer.

Most of the variants of this type, however, take the heroine through a series of adventures before she is able to prove herself right. Probably the greater number follow the stories already cited from Agenais and Corsica in grafting a version of Peau d'Âne upon the trunk of the tale. Dr. Köhler has brought several of these together in a note above mentioned to the variant of the King Lear type given by Bladé.^[7] I have already cited that story so much at length that I need now only mention the differences of a few of these variants; premising, however, that the elder daughters' histories being dropped after the heroine's expulsion in all the forms of this type, there is no illtreatment by them of the father, and, consequently, no intervention by the heroine to vindicate him. In the Venetian tale,^[8] the king orders the heroine to be taken into a desert place and put to death, her heart and eyes being brought to him in proof of the execution of his command. The servant entrusted with the foul work deceives him with the heart and eyes of a bitch, having let his daughter go. The maiden meets an old crone, by whom we are doubtless to understand a white witch, or an Italian "Fata." This personage gives her a berry, which, put into her bosom, turns her into a little old woman. Thus disguised she takes service as a henwife at a king's palace; but the king's son watches and discovers her real character. He marries her, and her father is bidden to the wedding feast. She arranges that salt is omitted from all the dishes put before him. He cannot eat, and in remorse tells the story of his conduct towards his youngest daughter, confessing that he was wrong. I have not had the opportunity of examining the Spanish, Flemish, and Hungarian tales mentioned by Köhler, but from his analysis they seem to follow the general course of the Venetian tale. In the first of these the executioners carry back to the king one of the heroine's toes and a phial full of a chicken's blood as guarantees of their fidelity, and she becomes a gooseherd. In the Flemish and Hungarian tales the answers of the two elder daughters differ slightly, and the heroine is not ordered to death but simply expelled; and in the former the plot follows a well-known variation of the Peau d'Âne story. There the heroine, taking service at a castle, appears thrice at religious worship clad as a princess, leaving behind her each time a different article, by which at last she is recognised. The articles dropped in the tale in question are a shoe, a glove, and a ring. In a Tuscan tale published by Signor Nerucci,^[9] the heroine is cursed and driven away by her father. Her nurse accompanies her for a while, and buys the skin of an old woman recently dead as a disguise for her. The maiden enters the service of another king; but she is, as in the Venetian variant, discovered by his son.

In the Sicilian version^[10] several interesting variations occur. It is the elder sisters who contrive the heroine's escape from the death to which her father has condemned her. They provide a bitch, which is killed, and the heroine's shift, bearing the marks of blows, is dipped in its blood, and carried back to the king, together with the beast's tongue. Meantime the girl falls in with a "Savage Man," to whom she tells her story. He takes her home and feeds her. The next morning as she dresses she hears a turkey-cock on the windows of a royal palace opposite, warning her that in vain she adorns herself, for the savage man will eat her. This she tells her patron, and the following day, according to his advice, when the turkey repeats his song, she replies that she will make a pillow of his feathers and a mouthful of his flesh, for she will marry his master. The turkey, hearing this, starts with fear, and his feathers fall out. The king's son, seeing him naked, is astonished, and watches. The day after he witnesses a repetition of the scene, and falls in love with the heroine, whom he marries with her patron's consent. The savage man, by his own directions, is put to death before the wedding, and his flesh and blood strewn about his dwelling, where they turn to gold and jewels. The heroine's father attends the feast, with the usual result.

The brothers Grimm^[11] give an Austrian story, which wears a somewhat more literary shape. Here the heroine's father exclaims, "If thou love me like salt, thy love shall be rewarded with salt!" Dividing the kingdom between the two elder daughters, he therefore binds a sack of salt on the back of the youngest, and drives her forth into the forest. She is there found by an old woman, and taken as her gooseherd, and is provided with an old woman's skin as a disguise. After a while she is discovered by a nobleman's son as she washes at the well, and with the connivance of her mistress; but her father and mother have to come and fetch her, after confessing the wrong that has been done.

A Hindoo variant^[12] brings the outcast princess through an entirely different series of events. She is carried out by her father's orders into the jungle, and there abandoned. God sends her food miraculously, and at length she arrives at a place in which lies a king's son dead, his body stuck full of needles. She pulls them out. When she has partly got through her task she buys a slave, whom she leaves to watch the body while she rests. The work is now all but completed, the needles in the prince's eyes only remaining. The slave pulls them out, in spite of the heroine's injunctions to the contrary, and the youth at once comes to life again. The slave pretends to have herself accomplished his deliverance, and he weds her instead of the heroine, who becomes degraded to slavery. The real facts, however, are ultimately made known to the prince by means of some puppets that come out of a "sun-jewel box," procured for the heroine by him. He accordingly puts the slave away and weds his true deliverer. She invites her father and mother to the wedding, and compels recognition of her real character as in the European tales. But it should be noticed that in most of the latter the heroine's identity is not disclosed to her father until he has made his confession under the belief that she is dead: whereas, in the story now under consideration, there is no attempt at concealment.

Among the Basques^[13] a king's son proposes to marry one of the three daughters of another king. The latter king asks his daughters how much they love him; but none of their answers please him. The eldest says, "As much as I do my little finger; "the second," As much as my middle finger; "the youngest," As much as the bread loves the salt." The king, in a rage, orders the youngest to death; but the servants entrusted with the duty kill a horse and carry its heart to him. The maiden lives in ihe forest "on the plants which the birds brought her, and on the flowers which the bees brought her." This is perhaps a less direct expression of the statement in the Hindoo tale that God sent her food. The king's son (apparently the one before referred to) finds the girl while hunting, and marries her. At the wedding-feast she gives her father bread without salt, and then discovers herself. The two elder sisters suffer poetical justice by remaining old maids.^[14]

In a Tirolese variant^[15] a king requires his three daughters to bring him each, as a birthday present, some very necessary thing. The youngest presents him with a little salt, whereupon he drives her away. She has her revenge, however, for, after a while, becoming her father's cook, she serves up his food without salt; and this, of course, leads to explanations. The termination of this story approximates closely to the one I have taken as the type of this class; but the catastrophe differs. The latter has more resemblance to a tale found in the south of Italy,^[16] where a king going to a fair asks his three daughters what he shall bring them back. One chooses a handkerchief, another a pair of boots, this being possibly the only opportunity a king's daughters would have of indulging in such articles of adornment; but the youngest demands a quantity of salt. The two elder are envious of her, and persuade their father that the salt is to salt his heart; whereupon he drives her from home. She disguises herself in a skin, and takes service at a farmhouse, her duty being to take care of the turkeys. While she is pasturing them, she takes off her disguise, and the turkeys cry out in rhymes with astonishment. She is annoyed, and strikes one of them dead. This happens more than once, and her mistress' suspicions are aroused. She accordingly watches her, and, on discovering what really happens, she tells the king's son, who arrives in the nick of time. He insists on taking the heroine into his service, and, of course, catches her performing her toilette, and marries her. Her father comes to the wedding feast, where, deprived of salt, he is brought to reconciliation with the heroine, and punishes her jealous sisters.

The Cinderella episode reappears in a Portuguese tale^[17] in a form not quite so common as some of those already cited, but somewhat better fitted to the framework. The two elder sisters in this tale respond, as usual, satisfactorily to their father's question. The youngest and best beloved, on the contrary, declares that she loves him as food loves salt; whereupon he drives her from the palace. She takes service as cook at another royal residence, and there slily puts a very small ring of great price into a pie. This ring, when found, will fit nobody but herself; and the king's son falls in love with her, suspecting she is of noble family. This leads him to watch; and one day his suspicions become certainties, by finding her dressed in the garb of a princess. He now obtains his father's leave to marry her, but she stipulates that she shall herself cook the wedding feast. Her father attends the marriage; and she renders his food unpalatable by cooking it without salt. On her revealing herself, he confesses his fault in the usual edifying manner.^[18]

III.

If in the foregoing types we deem the heroine innocent and ill-used, still more strongly will our sympathies be excited in the same direction by the type on whose consideration we are now entering. I have ventured to call it the Joseph type; but the propriety of that designation is not, perhaps, beyond question. The Biblical story of Joseph and his Brethren does undoubtedly belong to this genus, and is by far its best-known example. It is not, however, the simplest; for, as in many of the variants cited under the two preceding types, other folk-tales have been pieced into it and become, in the memories of all who are familiar with it, an inextricable portion of its beauty and pathos. Unlike King Lear in this particular, it resembles it in being itself wrought into and forming part of a longer narrative. Whether the early Hebrew traditions underwent this fate at the hands of an artist as conscious as Geoffrey of Monmouth I do not now care to enquire. If the real character of the imbedded legends be recognized, this further question may be left to be debated by students of literature and theologians. Meantime, our familiarity with the story must be my justification for treating it as the type of this division of the subject. Divested of all episodes it runs thus:—The youngest^[19] of a band of brethren falls under the displeasure of his father and brothers on account of a dream, in which they have appeared to bow down and make obeisance to him. His father sends him to his brethren, and they, having first of all conspired to slay him, abandon that intention and sell him as a slave. Like the executioners in some of the stories already examined, they kill a beast (in this case, a kid), and, dipping his coat in the blood, they bring it home to their father in proof of the hero's death. The hero himself, sold into a far country, goes through adventures there which end in his becoming the ruler of the land, and seeing his dream accomplished, when his own family are driven, by stress of famine, to bow before him, and practically to accept their life at his hands.

It is related among the Turanian tribes of South Siberia,^[20] that the three sons of a poor man and woman go upon a mountain to dream. The two eldest dream of riches, but the third dreams that his father and mother are lean camels, his two brothers hungry wolves running towards the mountains, while he himself, between the sun and moon, wears the morning star upon his forehead. The father orders the brothers to kill the youngest. They dare not do so, but only expel him from home, killing the dog instead, the blood of which they take to their father to show their compliance. The hero wanders about, and at length comes to a hut, where a lame old man and a blind old woman dwell, by whom he is adopted as their son. Mounted on the old man's wonderful horse, he vanquishes a demon, and cuts him open. From the monster's stomach come forth innumerable animals, men, treasures, and other objects, including caskets containing the old woman's eyes. The old man endows him with the power of transforming himself into various animal shapes at will. In one of these he wins a wife and much gold. In another, two lean camels appear, who are his parents of whom he had dreamt. These he loads with a sack. He takes to himself another wife; and, living now with one wife and now with the other, he gives them the flesh of his own father to eat, thus revenging himself for his previous ill-usage.

In considering these stories it must be remembered that the adventures of The Outcast Child after expulsion are all episodic, and therefore liable to endless variation. The framework and substance of the narrative are the cause and facts of the expulsion, and the ultimate vindication of the hero or heroine. The Altaic mountaineers, who are responsible for the variant just referred to, are in a much lower stratum of civilization than were the Hebrews when the "history" of Joseph took final shape. Hence the events assume a much ruder and more marvellous form. There is, however, sufficient agreement to prove the essential identity of the two tales, while the differences preclude any suggestion of borrowing by the heathen Tartars from Christian or Jewish sources. I have mentioned this variant first because it is impossible to assume any such borrowing. Some of the European traditions I am about to cite under this and the following type contain similarities to the Biblical narrative which may to some readers seem incredible as independent growths in the face of the long dominance of Christianity in the West. Hence it is that this Siberian story, and some others I shall refer to later on, are of value. Take, for example, the Sicilian variant called The King of France.^[21] Here the king has three daughters, one of whom dreams that she has become queen, and seven kings, including her own father, bow down before her. Her father sends her into a wood to be put to death, but she is set free, despite his commands. The rest of the story follows the Sicilian tale of Water and Salt, given under the previous type, except that the Deus ex machinâ is a parrot instead of a turkey-cock.

In the variants of this type, it will be noticed, the expelled child is sometimes of one sex and sometimes of the other. It is natural that where a father takes offence at a daughter the after events should bear more affinity with those of the last preceding type than in the other case. Accordingly other stories of this genus, beside the King of France, exhibit this affinity. One current among the people of the Abruzzi^[22] follows the same lines. We are told that a certain king has three daughters, two of whom are ugly, and the other (the youngest) beautiful. The two former, driven by envy, conspire to have their sister put to death. For this purpose they tell their father that they have dreamt she would dishonour them by eloping with a common soldier. The father accordingly orders one of his generals to take her into "the wood of the Savage King," and there put her to death, bringing him, as a token of obedience, her ensanguined vest. The general takes pity on her, lets her go, and brings back her vest covered with the blood of a puppy. The Savage King (who gives his name to the story) feeds on human flesh. His son, while hunting, finds the maiden, and brings her home. Struck with her beauty, he prevails on his father to abstain from gratifying his cannibal passion, and to treat her as a daughter. But a dove, belonging to a neighbouring king, whose palace was in undesirable proximity to this ogre's dwelling, declines to believe in his friendly professions towards the heroine, and taunts her with the expectation that she will be eaten after all. This is nothing but spite because the maiden declines to feed her; and, taught by the Savage King, she replies the next day that she will be the dove's master's wife. The dove sheds all its feathers with rage; and this, as in Dr. Pitre's variants, brings about the marriage. The heroine's father is invited to the wedding feast. It is proposed that tales shall be told, and she takes the opportunity to extort her father's acknowledgment of his injustice.

The Sicilian tale of The Holy Father^[23] takes a similar turn. Here a merchant, having a son and daughter, sets out on a journey, taking the son with him. He commits his daughter to the care of a cleric, who spends on his own enjoyment the money consigned to him for the girl's support, and thrusts her into a dungeon. On her father's return he accuses her of wicked practices (cattivi costumi), and the father directs her brother to put her to death. The latter, however, sets her free in a wood, and killing a dog takes its blood home to his father, who drinks it ferociously. The maiden arrives at the palace of another holy father, who treats her kindly. A turkey plays the part of a prophet of evil. Ultimately she marries a king's son, and by the holy father's advice she invites her father, her brother and the wicked priest to the wedding. There, by treating her father and the priest differently from the other guests, she provokes explanations, which end in the punishment of the ecclesiastic by burning. I should add that her patron has been, in the meantime, by his own directions, flung into a heated oven and there converted into crowns, apples and ribbons.

It is probable that we may ascribe the identity of the heroine's adventures in these tales to the obvious causes of nearness in geographical situation and in blood of the peasants who narrate them. Too much stress, therefore, must not be laid upon this identity. But it may be expected that episodes, both of The Savage King class and of the Peau d'Âne class, will be found in stories of the present type in other countries. The adventures of a heroine are usually more limited in range than those of a hero; and the adventures just referred to are such as would fit easily into the framework of the tale. Moreover, they have a sort of property in that framework, as being already found in more than one type of The Outcast Child group. Waiving, however, the question whether we are likely to find these episodes, or either of them as a whole, elsewhere, some light may perhaps be thrown on that of The Savage King. Let us take first the incident of the bird, whether dove, turkey, or parrot, whose extraordinary conduct brings about the happy result of all märchen. If the creature's proceedings could be so interpreted as to render probable an earlier connection with the Peau d'Ane plot, more than one of the problems connected with this type of the story would be solved. And, indeed, something might perhaps be made of the fact that the heroine of many Peau d'Âne tales becomes a gooseherd, and that the animals under her care betray her by uttering articulate self-congratulations upon the beauty and grace of their warden. But this must not be pressed. Peau d'Âne belongs, there can be little doubt, to an essentially distinct group; and its relations to The Outcast Child are to be explained rather as the accidental blending of the two separate stories, in consequence of the obvious resemblance of the heroine's circumstances at one point, than as the natural outgrowth of the narrative. The Brazilian story of The King Andrade, given by Professor Romero,^[24] however, enables us to go one step further back. There the king, with prurient folly, directs his three daughters every morning to relate their dreams. The following morning one of the maidens tells him that she has dreamed that in a few days she will change her condition, and that five kings, and among them her own father, will kiss her hand. This dream returns the next night, and on hearing it a second time the king orders her out to be put to death, directing that her little finger shall be brought to him in sign of the executioners' compliance. She is, of course, spared, but loses her finger. She enters a cave in the wood, and at length finds herself in a rich palace, inhabited alone by a parrot, whose voice only she hears through a closed door. After some days a fair youth appears for a moment, to give her the key of the room where the parrot dwells, and to tell her to open it and answer the parrot when it speaks. The bird compliments her in verse, and the heroine replies (also in verse) that she will make a head-dress of its rich feathers. The parrot forthwith is disenchanted into the youth who had just appeared to her. He marries her, and invites five kings to the wedding. Her father is among them, but she refuses to give him her hand to kiss, as she had done to the others; and this brings about the customary explanations. In the incident of the parrot as found in this variant, I think we may catch a glimpse of an earlier form of that of the dove in The Savage King. It is not that the episode is less complex, and leads with greater directness to the solution of the plot. Simplicity is not always a note of antiquity. But the union of human nature with that of the lower animals is more complete in the parrot than in the turkey or dove of the Italian narrator; and this union is known to be thoroughly in harmony with primitive thought. One of the first notions entertained by mankind, of which we have any record, was that all animals—nay, even trees, flowers, rocks, the heavenly bodies, and every object known to sense—were actuated by reason and feelings precisely analogous to our own. But this imputation of the characteristics of man to brutes and things inanimate is more than primitive: it is the perpetually recurring will-o'-the-wisp of our imagination. When man's essential distinction comes to be recognised by widening knowledge, the ideas of metempsychosis and afterwards of enchantment, grow up as a support for the conviction that still haunts us. In The Savage King episode the bird is a bird only, though of remarkable powers; but in the Portuguese tale he is the bridegroom also, though for this purpose we are told he was disenchanted. This allusion to enchantment is a solitary one; and no explanation is offered, nor any account of how he became bewitched. May we not suppose that the enchantment is a late gloss upon the bolder animism that even yet shines through this story? The supposition would be quite reconcileable with a theory, were it broached, that the simplicity of the episode is due to the trituration of ages, and that much, or at least something, has been forgotten. Without pronouncing a definite opinion, I may observe that some colour is lent to such a suggestion by the fact that the parrot-man of The King Andrade is in The Savage King split up into four persons, namely, the Savage King himself, his son, the dove, and her master. In other stories the maiden's protector and his son are identified; and thus three persons take the place of the one in the Brazilian-Portuguese version. None of these persons are really necessary, save the bird and the bridegroom; but they have not been introduced by the peasant story-teller at random. Had that been the case they would scarcely have been found in more than a single variant. Whence, then, have they been derived? In the first place they may constitute the genuine form assumed by the various turns of the plot after having been handed down by tradition during a long period. It would appear, if this be so, that not only, as in The King Andrade, has the original thought been obscured in the course of time: the original cast of the subordinate parts of the story has also gradually been forgotten; and some of the more incredible incidents have been replaced by others making a smaller draft upon the rustic imagination.

Yet it is evident that some reservation must be made as regards the slaughter of the Savage Man in the Sicilian tale of Water and Salt, and its consequence—truly not a small draft on the imagination. But the Savage Man is clearly regarded from the first as a being of a different order; and it may be that the incident is a relic of something completely dropped out of The King Andrade. The history of Sicily and Southern Italy, the home of The Savage King, may suggest another theory. Nothing would seem more likely than the direct importation of Eastern tales into this neighbourhood; and the episode in question may be the effect of the union of one such Eastern tale with another of the same type, but of indigenous origin. This is, of course, mere speculation; but as such it may be worth bearing in mind, not only while investigating the group of stories wherewith we are now occupied, but also in connection with the general subject of the migration of folk-tales. I am unable at present to point to any oriental variant precisely answering the description required; but the Romance of the Four Dervishes^[25] contains one which has a more or less remote resemblance to it. There a king has seven daughters, whom he impiously tells that all their good fortune depends upon his life. Six of them profess to agree with this sentiment; but the seventh and youngest dissents, telling her father that they both alike owe their positions to the King of Kings, and that the destiny of every one is with himself. The king, becoming angry, causes her to be stripped of her jewels and carried into a wilderness, where she is left to perish. There, after three days, she is found by a hermit, who relieves her wants, and thenceforth regularly brings her the produce of his day's begging in the city. After a few days she takes down her hair to oil and comb it; and as she opens the plaits a fine pearl drops out. This the hermit sells for her in the city, bringing her the price. Then she desires to erect a small dwelling on the spot; and by the hermit's advice she begins to dig the foundation. This leads to the discovery of a buried treasure, with which she enters on the erection of a magnificent palace. The news of these extensive buildings in the waste reaches her father's ear. He is surprised, and makes enquiry, but cannot learn who it is that has commenced these great works. By her permission and appointment he comes to see for himself, and is presented with gifts of fabulous value. Both he and her sisters, whom she also sends for, are naturally confounded at her good fortune. In the foregoing narrative the hermit plays much the same part as the Savage Man of Sicily. It is he who finds the heroine in the desert, and rescues her from death. It is by following his instructions that she obtains riches, and is enabled to triumph over her father's perversity. If at the last the hermit does not suffer death in order to provide the wealth, at all events when the wealth has been got he sinks into oblivion. An Indian variant^[26] of near akin, however, reverses, to a great extent, the parts of the heroine and her protector, endowing him with the wealth obtained by her sagacity and good fortune. A Badshaw one morning calls his seven daughters before him, and asks, "By whom are you supported?" The six elder answer that they are dependent upon himself, but the youngest says, as in The Four Dervishes, that she is supported by her own fate. Irritated with this the Badshaw replies, "Whomsoever I meet with to-morrow, I will make you over to him, you ungrateful child!" Accordingly, he marries her to a wood-cutter, the first person he sees the next day. The heroine proves an excellent wife. Having discovered her husband's wood to be sandal-wood chips from a great tree in the forest, she induces him to cut the tree down, and he commences a lucrative trade with the wood. It then occurs to her that it was the practice of some men to bury their wealth at the feet of such trees. She digs at the roots, and finds four great jars full of money. In a few years the wood-cutter and his wife become wealthy; they erect a stately palace, and give a grand feast to the people of the neighbouring villages. Some of the guests chance to mention that the once opulent Badshaw had been reduced to poverty, and compelled to do menial work for his livelihood. At this news the lady is penetrated with sorrow. She orders the excavation of a large tank, such as is common in Hindoo villages, and causes only such persons as are really in want and without food to be employed. Among these the Badshaw becomes a hired labourer. He is so changed as to be recognized by no one; but the manager of the works, seeing that he is unfit for such toil, represents the case to his mistress, and the man is brought before her. It is her own father. She makes herself known to him, weeping at the memory of his past prosperity contrasted with his present destitution. But he shall no longer want: he and her sisters will henceforth live with her in comfort. And she reminds him of what she before asserted, namely, that every one lives according to the destiny prescribed for each by an all-wise God.

Other Indian variants, however, though manifestly bound by very close ties to the foregoing, lead us far away from The Savage King. The story of The Fan Prince^[27] takes its name from an episode related to a cycle of tales to which Cupid and Psyche belongs. It runs thus: A certain king calls all his seven daughters one day before him, and inquires who gives them food, and by whose permission they eat it? Six of them return the expected answer, ascribing their food to him; but the youngest says, "God gives me my food, and by my own permission I eat it." Her enraged parents send her away to the jungle, and cause her to be there abandoned. God, however, sends her food, and builds for her a beautiful palace during the night, filling it with angels as servants. Similarly He feeds the heroine of the Hindoo story already cited under The Value of Salt type; and so also the Hebrew poet writes: "He giveth unto his beloved in sleep." Her father hears of her sudden good fortune, and acknowledges that she has told the truth—it is God who gives us everything. Here the story might have ended; the plot is quite complete, and the Fan Prince has no connection with it. But it is, as we have seen, one of the characteristics of The Outcast Child that it lends itself with remarkable ease to the inweaving of other tales—if, indeed, from the bareness of its outline it does not, as a matter of art, demand some such treatment. A very long and involved Kashmiri narrative affords a striking instance of this. It is called The Prince that was three times Shipwrecked,^[28] and gives the adventures of the youngest of four sons. The king, their father, wishing to test their wisdom and talents, called them all to him, and asked them singly by whose good fortune it was that he possessed so large and powerful a kingdom, and was enabled to govern it so wisely and well. Three of them, of course, reply, "It is by your own good fortune, king, our father, that you have this kingdom and this power." But the youngest, with amazing impudence, claims for himself—not for Heaven or for destiny, still less for his sire —the greatness and power of the king. His father orders him away from his presence; and the boy, needing no second bidding, hastens to quit the palace. Nor, though the king afterwards relents and recalls him, can his messengers succeed in inducing him to return. His wife—for, though young, he is already married—follows him, to share his fate. He is now started on a strange career. He undergoes three shipwrecks; marries three more wives; vanquishes envious brothers-in-law, who claim from him the honour of killing a jackal, a bear, and a leopard; slays an ogre of the Punchkin breed; and, finally, contracts leprosy from the sting of an insect. Meantime, his wives have all met in a garden, which the coming of each in turn has made to bloom anew. As they will not utter a word, the king, who owns the garden, proclaims great rewards for him who will succeed in obtaining speech from them. The hero recovers his own health as well as the use of their tongues in the process. He marries, as his fifth wife—these Eastern heroes are lavish of their matrimonial engagements—the king's only daughter; and, having learnt that his father's kingdom has been conquered by strangers and his father and all the royal family taken prisoners, he gathers an army, and goes forth to make war on the victors. He succeeds in overthrowing his enemies, and restoring his father to the throne, wringing thus from the aged monarch an acknowledgment of the justice of his claim to the good fortune by which his parent held his realm and power.

This story is undoubtedly a needless jumble of adventures, but it may serve as an illustration, not merely of the ease with which our subject admits episodes, but, further, of the greatly wider field for doing and suffering opened when the expelled child is a son. Of this it is not necessary to cite any more examples; I shall therefore only allude to one or two other variants because of their intrinsic interest. Ill The Prince's Dream, given by Von Hahn,^[29] the hero's adventures belong to the myth embodied in The Forbidden Chamber group, and to that division of the group, which I have in a former paper called The Teacher and his Scholar type; sub-type Scabby John. The cause of offence here also, as in several variants examined before, is a dream in which the hero imagines the king, his father, stepping down from his throne, and placing himself, his youngest son, upon it. The two elder brothers have only been favoured with commonplace visions of marriage with the daughters of neighbouring monarchs. After residing with an ogre, and escaping from him by the aid of a speaking horse and a dog, the youth clothes himself in a skin of an old man and returns thus disguised to his father's court. The father, meantime, has, with one of those fatuous caprices that in these tales lead kings so often to their doom, dug an enormous ditch, and proclaimed that he who successfully jumps it shall have the crown—paying, if he fail, the penalty of his ambition with his life. The hero, of course, performs the feat, and thus fulfils the prophecy of his dream.

A curious variation of the starting point occurs in a South Slavonic story of The Emperor's Son-in-law, given by Dr. Krauss out of Vuk's collection from Dalmatia, Herzegovina, Servia, and the neighbouring districts.^[30] There the boy is beaten and turned out of doors by his parents, not for telling the wonderful dream he professes to have had, but for refusing to do so. He is found in the street by a Tartar, who in turn, on learning from him why he weeps, enquires what really was his dream. The hero replies that he would not tell even the emperor himself. The Tartar repeating this to the emperor, that august personage sends for the boy, and being himself unable to extract the information exhibits his imperial power by casting him into prison. The place of incarceration is a room in the castle next to the apartments of the emperor's daughter. The partition, as is usual in such cases, is extremely thin and of so elastic a character that our hero is able to break through it at night and afterwards to close up the breach so that his mode of access to the princess's room is undiscoverable. On entering he finds the lady lying asleep surrounded by her attendants, and a feast upon the table. He eats the food and changes the position of the candles which stand by the bedside. As this visit is repeated nightly, the princess watches, and at length finds out the intruder, with whom she promptly falls in love. After a while she comes of age, and the Emperor issues a proclamation that the hero who can fling a certain staff (wurfstab) over the battlements of the city shall marry her. After all the nobles' sons have tried in vain, the imprisoned youth is fetched at the maiden's suggestion; and he accomplishes the condition. The marriage is then solemnized; but the viziers' sons are envious, and invite the bridegroom to a feast, with the stipulation that he is to bring his wife and a thousand followers, and if they do not succeed in consuming all the food provided, both wife and followers are to be forfeit to them. He succeeds by the aid of followers of supernatural power, whom he meets with by the way and induces to accompany him. The viziers' sons then challenge him to one more trial, namely, a trial of swiftness between one of his followers and an old winged woman. Out of this our Slavonic Thor also comes victorious, and carries off his adversaries' wives and treasure.

A Wallachian example of this type, referred to by Von Hahn,^[31] explains the hero's reluctance to tell his dream by the fact that he had dreamed he would become Emperor, and fear of the consequences deters him from repeating it even to his father. Doubtless we are to understand some such explanation above, and it is easy to believe that under a despotic government the narrative might very naturally take this modification. Notwithstanding, however, the large diversity of detail in the specimens I have referred to there can be but one opinion as to the substantial identity of the framework of all the stories. The catastrophe is, in the majority of instances I have met with, brought about by a dream. In one case, indeed, the dream is a feigned one; but that very instance serves to emphasize the conformity of the narrative to the type in the jealousy of the wicked sisters. Generally the meaning of the dream is clear, and in Western Europe, at least, there is no attempt to veil or symbolize it. The conduct of the brothers or sisters is ordinarily indifferent, and they then retire into the background of the story. Occasionally they are actively hostile to the hero; but sometimes, as in Water and Salt, they contrive his escape. Both these attitudes are illustrated in the story of Joseph by the vacillating counsels of the ten elder sons, who, moreover, themselves represent the executioners. This is in accord with the simple pastoral scenes of the early part of the narrative. It would be an interesting enquiry, were this the place for it, how far such stories as these have influenced the relations of analogous bands of brothers in other tales. The treachery of the two elder brothers in Queen Marmot, a Tuscan story collected by Signer Nerucci,^[32] is suggestive of the sufferings of the Hebrew youth; and this is only one of many similar traditions.

The Emperor's Son-in-law departs more widely from the type than any other I have mentioned. The absence of the brothers is one difference which brings it nearer to the type we shall next consider, though it is as if to balance this absence that we are treated to the final episode of the challenge by the viziers' sons, the former pretenders as we are apparently to understand, to the heroine's hand. Its polygamous indications are not unnatural in folk-lore which concerns viziers and pashas.

IV.

The next type need not detain us very long. In it the hero's brothers and sisters have disappeared, and his own adventures have but little variety in the different versions with which we are about to deal. I propose to take as the standard the story incorporated in The Seven Sages and known as The Ravens,^[33] which runs to the following effect: A youth, to whom the knowledge of the language of birds has been given by God, is one day rowing across an arm of the sea with his father to a little island. As they row three ravens alight on the boat and make a great noise. The boy laughs, and on his father's asking him why, he replies that the ravens have said that he shall thereafter be in so high a position that his father will be glad to "gyf water to my honde," and his mother to fetch a towel. His father in a rage pitches him into the sea; but he reaches a rock, whence he is rescued by a fisherman. A current, however, drives them to another land, and there the fisherman sells him to a noble. The king of that country is tormented by three ravens who constantly pursue him; and at length he summons a council to determine in what manner he is to rid himself of them, promising his daughter in marriage to any one who could effectually advise him. This somewhat disproportionate reward is won by the hero, who informs the king that the ravens are two males disputing for the third, a female claimed by both, and that they require the king's judgment on the case. When the king has given his decision the birds fly away. The hero, married to the king's daughter, bethinks himself of his parents, who meantime have fallen into great poverty. In one version he is informed of this in a vision; in that which I am citing, however, the knowledge is obtained by the much less romantic but more probable means of privy inquiries. They are found now living in his father-in-law's realm. The hero goes to the town where they dwell, puts up at an inn hard by, and sends for them. When they come he asks for water; and the prophecy of the ravens is fulfilled.

In the foregoing story the hero's loss and gain are alike made by his knowledge of the language of birds. The three ravens who require the king's judgment on their cause are found in several variants, and their number has probably duplicated itself in a way well known to folk-lore students, in the number of the birds whose conversation, as repeated by the boy, causes his father's anger. At all events this latter number is less constant than the other. In a copy of "The Seven Wise Masters,"^[34] in a dialect of Italian, dating back to the end of the fourteenth century, the story of The Ravens is given with but few variations from the text just cited. Here the number of the prophetic birds is given as two, and they are not described as ravens. The father is a merchant who is taking his son with him on a voyage. The cause assigned for the parents' removal after the father's crime against his son is a famine. If we could venture to use this it would supply a striking analogy with the Mosaic narrative; but to do so would perhaps involve assumptions we are not warranted in making, since it is at least possible that the famine may have been more or less consciously transferred from the story in Genesis. No argument for the identity in origin of the two tales can, therefore, be founded upon it.^[35] In this variant the final scene is wrought somewhat more impressively, and apparently with more artistic purpose, than in the type. After his parents have waited on the hero he seats them at table and himself between them, at which all present marvel. When dinner is over he turns to his father and asks, "What punishment shall he have who has slain his own son in the sea?" The father replies, "Death." "Against thyself thou hast spoken!" exclaims his son; but taking pity upon him he reveals himself and pardons the crime.

A similar story, but elaborated in some respects, is given by Afanasief among his Russian stories.^[36] The hero's name, itself an omen, is Basil. His father's curiosity is one day excited by the tones of a pet nightingale in its song. Basil, then six years of age, interprets the song as in The Ravens. This irritates both his father and mother so much that they determine to get rid of him; and for that purpose, having constructed a little canoe, they place him therein during the night, and thrust it out to sea. The nightingale flies out of its cage, and perches on the boy's shoulder. The boy is picked up by a passing vessel. The nightingale predicts a tempest; the captain disbelieves, but the storm falls, breaking the masts and rending the sails. The bird having afterwards predicted pirates, the captain deems it wise to heed the warning, and succeeds in avoiding them. The vessel arrives at Chvalinsk, where the king is troubled by three ravens. The question they desire to put to him is even more difficult than in The Seven Sages, namely, to which of his parents the young bird belongs—to the cock or the hen? The king decides in favour of the cock, but, like a wise judge, reserves his reasons. The boy is adopted by the king, and in due time espouses his daughter. His father and mother are found keeping an inn.

In a Basque tale^[37] a sea-captain's son is sent to school, but the sclioolmaster reports that he cannot drive anything into his head, and the boy himself admits that he has learnt nothing but the songs of the birds. His father takes him to sea. A bird comes and settles on the end of the ship, singing; and the father asks him what it is singing. The boy replies, "He says I am now under your orders, but you shall also be under mine." The father encloses him in a barrel, and throws the barrel into the sea. A storm casts it ashore, where a king is walking. He has the barrel opened, and takes home the boy, who eventually marries the king's daughter. There is no mention of the three ravens, nor of the hero's accession to the crown, which is, however, implied. His father is one day caught in a storm, and flung upon the same shore. He takes service with the king, who is his own son, and thus fulfils the prophecy.

A Portuguese variant^[38] represents the hero as accustomed from an early age to go to the top of a mountain to see the moon, for which his father asks his reason. He replies that the moon had many times told him that his father would one day offer to fetch him water, and he would refuse it. The father, interpreting this that he would be his son's servant, is angry with the pert youth. He gets a chest, puts his son therein, and pitches it into the sea. After three days the waif comes to land, and is taken to the king of that country as containing a treasure. Here, as in the last-mentioned tale, we probably have a reference to a well-known royal right. The king opens the chest, and adopts the boy, whom he finds alive within. At the age of twenty, the boy goes on a journey with a great company of people; but not with any design, so far as appears, of finding his parents, as in the typical story. The parents have now fallen into poverty, and keep an inn, where the hero goes to stay: and there the prediction is accomplished.

The learned Köhler,^[39] in a note to the tales of Pope Innocent and Christie, cited under the following type, refers, among others, to two variants which appear to belong to this genus. In the first, of Masurian origin, the prophet is a lark, and foretells that the boy will become very rich—his parents, on the other hand, very poor—and that his mother will wash his feet, and his father drink the water of his bath. The hero becomes the son-in-law of the king of England, whose son and daughter he cures. Visiting his native town some time afterwards, the lark's prediction is accomplished. In the next story a raven intimates a similar degradation on the father's part, which is fulfilled when his son has become an emperor's son-in-law, and the father claiming shelter as a beggar has been received at his palace for the night. Here there is no attempt by the father on his son's life: he is simply driven away.

V.

It would perhaps be unwise to assert that this, the last type we shall consider, is more generally known in Western Europe, and a greater favourite with the people, than those which precede it, but there can be no doubt of its extensive popularity, especially in France and Italy. The typical story is one found by M. Fleury in Lower Normandy, and entitled The Language of Beasts.^[40] It is to the following effect: A man, enraged with his son because he has learnt nothing at school but the languages of dogs, frogs, and birds, notwithstanding that his schools have been twice changed on account of the frivolity of his accomplishments, hands the boy over, in spite of his mother's intercession, to a poor neighbour to be put to death. He pays the man for this service, charging him to bring back the child's heart in proof that he has performed the task. The murderer, however, after taking the boy to a wood for the execution of his purpose, relents, and spares him on condition that he goes away and does not return. A bitch is killed, and her heart taken back to the father instead of his son's.^[41] The hero wanders away, and, falling in with two priests who are journeying to Rome, is permitted to accompany them. On the way thither the knowledge his father had judged so useless proves of the greatest service. Lodged at a house which robbers have undermined with the intention of entering that very night, he discovers the plot by overhearing the conversation of the owner's restless hounds; and, by persuading his host to watch, he delivers him from this danger. At another place he heals a girl who has been stricken dumb as a punishment for her carelessness in letting fall to the ground at her first communion a portion of the sacred wafer, which had been afterwards swallowed by a frog. The hero listens to the frogs talking in the ditch, and thus discovers the cause of the maiden's disease. On beating the ditch a frog of unusual size is found; and, after three priests successively have tried in vain, the boy succeeds, speaking to the frog in her own tongue, in inducing her to disgorge the precious fragment. The three travellers reach Rome to find that the pope has died and his successor is about to be chosen. Our hero, with astonishment, overhears the birds in the trees predicting his good fortune. A touch of humour follows. The two priests, his companions, not despairing of being chosen, make him promises of preferment: the one will install him as his shoeblack, the other as his messenger. The new pope is to be indicated by a "portion of heaven" (interpreted by the collector of the story as a cloud) resting upon him. It rests upon the outcast youth. Meantime, his mother has died of grief, and his father is tormented with remorse. The latter confesses, but his confessor refuses him absolution, referring him to the bishop. The bishop, in turn, refers him to the pope. The new pope hears his confession, and, finding him truly penitent, "Your son is not dead," he cries, "he occupies a high rank which he even owes to you. If you had not been so cruel to him, he would not be to-day sovereign pontiff. Embrace me, my father!"

The Mantuan story of Bobo^[42] differs but in unimportant details. The father's rage at the folly of his son's acquirements is told with full appreciation of its comic side. A dog's heart is the proof of the execution of this father's murderous commands. The robbers have not undermined the house where the hero finds shelter, but attack it in a more commonplace manner. The sick maiden, whom he heals, has for six years been punished with disease for the impiety of flinging the sacred host into a pond, where it has become a plaything for frogs. The youth falls in with two men reposing one hot day under a chestnut tree. They are going to Rome to the election of pope. Sparrows on the tree foretell that one of the three will be elected pope that day. Arrived in the church where the new pontiff is to be revealed, a dove alights on the hero's head, and he is conducted to the throne. Meantime, in a corner of the church a cry is heard. It is his father, dying with remorse. Bobo recognizes, and has just time to pardon him ere he expires.

A variant from Upper Brittany^[43] is less severe to the parents. Here it is the mother who first becomes indignant at the hero's folly; but at last the father's patience also is worn out, and the youth is beaten, and turned out of doors. The will of Heaven as to the popedom is declared by a bell, which rings of itself when the chosen person passes under it. On becoming pope, the hero, as in the Italian tale already cited in a note, sends for his parents. They disregard his first letter, but, after a second, they hasten to Rome to beg his forgiveness, and remain with him happily to the end of their days.

Two other Breton stories, much longer and more remarkable, collected by Luzel in Lower Brittany, where the old Keltic speech is still preserved, approach somewhat nearer The Ravens type. In one of these, the story of Christic,^[44] a devout girl offends God by an impulse of pride, and is in consequence forsaken by her good angel, who, before finally leaving her, directs her to sit by the wayside and offer herself in marriage to the passers by. A drunkard weds her, and in due time she gives birth to a son. A mysterious old man becomes godfather, and enriches the parents. Doubtless we are to understand, as M. Luzel tells us in a note, that the benevolent stranger is no less a personage than the Deity himself, or rather, Jesus Christ, between whom and the Father it is rare that any distinction is made in Continental folk-tales. The hero's career would justify so great an interest in his baptism; and the name (Christic) chosen for him indicates the exalted patronage under which he is received into the Church. The humour of the situation is not lost upon the narrator, but we cannot pause over the details. The father is reformed, and the son grows "like a fern in the fields." He is caressed by all the women of the village (il était si gentil!), and often thus detained from school. Beaten once for this by his father he foretells that the day will come when his father will wash his feet, and his mother will hold the towel. Their love for him turns to hatred, and they give orders to a servant for his death. The servant, however, satisfies himself by hanging him feet upwards to a tree, and taking home a dog's heart in sign of obedience. The hero is released from his uncomfortable position by a party of nobles, one of whom he afterwards delivers from a devil, who has taken service with him for the purpose of carrying off his lady. The evil spirit is, of course, outwitted. Christic then determines to go to Home to see the city and the pope. By the way he meets an old monk, accompanied by a boy of his own age, who also are going to Rome. In this variant the house saved from robbers is an inn; and the innkeeper himself calls attention to the noise made by the dogs. The robbers seek entrance as the Forty did into Ali Baba's dwelling. At midnight a man disguised as a rich tradesman arrives, with ten horses laden each with two hampers. By Christic's advice assistance is obtained from the neighbouring town, and the robbers are caught. The three travellers next meet a child's funeral. The hero, while others weep, bursts out laughing, and explains that by the child's death three souls have been saved; for, had he lived, the salvation alike of himself and his parents would have been imperilled by their pride in him. Towards evening the monk and his companions come to a country house, where, however, Christic refuses to lodge, foretelling that it will be burnt during the night; and they go to rest in the wood which surrounds the house. The great hall rings out into the night with riot and blasphemy, until the thunder falls upon it and all is reduced to ashes. The next day the hero weeps at a monk's funeral, for the loss of his soul, while every one else is joyous, convinced that the departed has gone straight to Paradise. At Rome he refuses to cap to a rich man as others do. He asks the monk what he will give him if he (the monk) becomes pope. The monk replies that the youth shall be his swineherd if he likes, otherwise he shall go away. The younger fellow-traveller promises to make him his vicar. The next day there is to be a procession, candles in hand; and he whose candle lights of itself will be the pontiff. Christic, who has no money to buy a candle, carries a peeled hazel-wand, like the pilgrims who go to the "pardons" of Lower Brittany. His wand takes fire; but he is declared a sorcerer, and the fire extinguished. The next day, and the next, the procession is repeated with the same result; and Christic is at length seated in St. Peter's chair. He bestows the office of vicar on his younger fellow-traveller, and that of swineherd on the monk. Meanwhile, his parents confess their sin, and can find none to absolve them. They seek the pope. After hearing their confession separately, he exhorts them to have confidence in God,—perhaps their son is not dead; and he requests them to come to see him at the palace before leaving. They obey, trembling in expectation that he will impose on them some terrible penance. But, instead of fulfilling his own prediction, he reverses it by himself washing the feet of his father and mother, after which, with eyes filled with tears, he cries:—"Do you not know me? I am your son Christic, whom you condemned to death!"

The hero of the other Breton tale is the son of a king of France, born in answer to prayers.^[45] His nurse forgets one day to make the sign of the cross over his cradle, and he is taken away by the devil, and a changeling left in his place. The babe is deposited in a magpie's nest at the top of an elm in a German archbishop's garden. He is found by the gardener, and taken to his master, who names him Innocent, from the expression made use of by the gardener in presenting the babe, and brings him up. Innocent learns his prayers without being taught, reproves the archbishop for his pride and vanity, and displays supernatural knowledge. At the age of twenty-one this enfant terrible goes to seek his father and mother. Arrived at Paris he makes at once for the palace, delivers his parents from the horrid changeling, and declares himself their true son. They receive him with joy; but after awhile he displeases them by always shunning gaiety, and by frequenting instead the society of a charcoal-burner. His father remonstrates, and forbids him to see his friend again, threatening him in case of disobedience to be torn to pieces by four horses. In return the hero poohpoohs his father's anger, and tells him that one day he will be happy to pour the water for his son to wash his hands, and his mother to present him with a napkin to dry them. The king, transported with rage, gives orders for the execution of his threat; but this does not please the queen, who goes to the charcoal-burner and promises him a large sum to pitch the prince into his furnace the next day when he comes as usual to visit him. The charcoal-burner reveals the plot, and Innocent quits the country. He sets out for Rome, to be present at the pope's election. On the road he encounters two Capuchin monks. In this story, contrary to the last, it is the elder monk who is gentle to him; the younger is suspicious and hostile. And it must be confessed that appearances favour the younger monk's attitude. A nobleman, at whose house the travellers are received, asks them in the morning before leaving to bless his babe. The monks comply graciously; Innocent, on the other hand, secretly stabs it to the heart. At a distance from the house he tells his companions what he has done, and justifies it on the ground that he has saved the parents' souls, to whom their child had become their god. Towards evening they arrive at another country seat, where they are supped; but Innocent refuses to go to bed, and persuades their host to watch and get constables into the house. A similar attempt upon the house to that narrated in the story of Christic is made by robbers, and defeated by our hero's prudence. At the next town the travellers find no house to receive them; and as they are forbidden the inns they are in a difficulty. Innocent solves it by stealing from a goldsmith's shop, and they are all three clapped into prison. At midnight an enemy assails the town, and sets it on fire. The prisoners are, as the youth has predicted, set at liberty; and he forthwith presents himself before the besieging prince and forbids him to destroy the town as he intended. He even with a word withholds the cannons from firing when shot; and the assailants are helpless. All take him for a sorcerer; and the younger monk says in so many words that he and his companion will be fortunate if he do not bring them to the gallows or the stake before reaching Rome. The next adventure is with the frogs. In this case the girl is one of evil life, who has presented herself before the altar in a state of mortal sin, and has put the host into her handkerchief. That very morning she has accidentally dropped it into the pond, where it has been swallowed by a frog; and Innocent hears the other frogs, who have surrounded the first, chanting their Maker's praises. The girl has been stricken blind, deaf and dumb. As they draw near the holy city, birds in a hedge foretell that one of the three shall be pope. The usual conversation occurs: the elder monk promises, if he attain the dignity, to make our hero his foremost cardinal; the other to make him beadle in his cathedral. In the procession Innocent bears a wand from the hedge where the birds sang. All happens as in the story of Christic; and he confers on his companions the posts they had promised him. In this variant the hero's prediction to his father and mother is fulfilled to the letter, but is not preceded by actual confession, though the parents had come to Rome for that purpose.

I have lingered over these two Breton tales, so well told and so full of detail that they are two of the best examples of this type. I shall now notice two other variants of a much less perfect description. The former of these is given by Grimm:^[46] it is a Swiss story from the Upper Valais, entitled The Three Languages. An aged count's only son, we are told, is stupid, and can learn nothing. His father, annoyed, puts him under a celebrated master for a year; and at the end the son, in answer to his enquiries, tells him that he has learnt what dogs say when they bark. The angry count puts him under another master, with the result that he learns only what birds say. The removal is repeated, only to end in the boy's acquiring the language of frogs. The usual order for death follows; and the count is deceived with a deer's eyes and tongue. The youth, wandering, comes to a fortress, where he begs a night's lodging. It is granted on condition of his staying in an old tower full of wild dogs, which bark and howl unceasingly, and devour men. He goes with food for them, and is well received. The next morning he reports that they have told him they are bewitched to watch over a treasure hidden in the tower, and cannot have rest ere it be discovered; and further that he has learned from them how this is to be done. He discovers it accordingly, and the dogs disappear. The lord of the castle, in gratitude, adopts him as his son. After a time he determines to go to Rome. By the way he hears what the frogs in a certain marsh are saying, and becomes thoughtful and sad. Arrived at Rome he finds that the pope has just died, and that his successor is to be pointed out by some divine and miraculous token. The hero enters the church, and suddenly two snow-white doves fly on his shoulders and settle there. This is recognised as the required sign, and he is chosen pope—thus fulfilling the frogs' prophecy. He has to sing a mass, but does not know a word of it. He is relieved of his perplexity by the doves, who, sitting on his shoulders, say it all in his ear.

The earlier part of this variant approximates more nearly to the type than those of Christic and Pope Innocent; but the touching termination has been forgotten. It reappears, however, in the Basque version^[47] I am about to cite, although the prophecy with which the tale opens is not even there literally fulfilled. Perhaps the story is more dramatic as it stands. A boy, one of the children of a lady and gentleman, says that he hears a voice very often telling him that a father and a mother would be servants to their son, but without saying who. The mother, becoming angry, sends the boy with her two men-servants to be killed, directing them to bring his heart back to the house. The servants fall out, like the ruffians in the Babes in the Wood. The servant who wished to spare him gets the better of the other; and instead of the boy they kill a big dog, and take his heart to their mistress. The youth, wandering about, determines to go to Rome. He meets two men and goes with them. The voice again speaks to him when at a house in a thick forest; and by listening to it and watching he saves himself and his companions in the night from an attempt to rob and murder them. At another place he heals a girl who has been shrieking with pain for seven years; but the narrator had forgotten how this was done. There is, however, little doubt as to the method. Her father takes a ring off her finger, and cutting it in two gives one-half to the youth. This is probably a sign of betrothal. As the travellers approach Rome the bells begin to ring of themselves; and the people taking it as a sign make him pope. His mother, slowly dying of remorse, tells her husband of the crime; and they make a journey to Rome, accompanied by the two servants, to make confession, as she believes she will get pardon there. She confesses aloud in the middle of the church. Her son is there. When he hears that he goes opening his arms to the arms of his mother, saying to her: "I forgive you, I am your son!" The father and mother die of joy on the spot. The pope gives the half-ring to the servant who wanted to spare him, and marries him to the girl whom he has healed. The other servant he makes a charcoal-burner. A Siberian story, cited by Köhler in the note already referred to,^[48] condemns the hero's father to even greater degradation than the closely related variants of the last previous type. The birds which utter the prophecy are not specified. The irritated sire having, as he believes, successfully accomplished his son's death, flings his body into the sea; but the youth, still living, is thrown by the waves upon the beach. The emperor of that land has just died, and his successor is to be he on whom two tapers placed on golden sticks shall fall. They fall on the nape of the hero's neck, and continue to burn. Succeeding thus to the throne, he gives a great feast, which his father attends, and suffers what had been foretold concerning him.

The last variant I shall mention was obtained by Dr. Pitré at Partanna, in Sicily.^[49] It is to the following effect: A father sends his son to study at Catania, and he finishes his course at the age of twenty, and takes his doctor's degree. On his return his father takes the opportunity of asking him at table what is the most useful thing in this world? The youth answers, "A close stool"; whereupon his father, unable to control himself, drives him out of the house, and curses him. Our hero enters the Church, and becomes, successively, incumbent, bishop, cardinal, pope. The father, smitten with remorse, goes to Rome to throw himself at the new pope's feet (not knowing who he is), and pray forgiveness for his conduct to his son. The pope recognizes him, and causes him to be lodged in the palace. There, before making himself known, he gives him cause, amid the luxury, the silk and gold of his surroundings, bitterly to feel, and to admit in words, the justice of his son's opinion. At length the son reveals his identity, and we are quaintly told that "everything ended with a solemn embrace."

The rise of the popedom within comparatively recent times is a guarantee that the type now before us is one of the latest developments of The Outcast Child myth. The story of The Ravens can be traced back into the Middle Ages, but I have not found The Language of Beasts save in modern collections of folk-tales. It is an obvious conjecture that this type has been developed from the former under the influence of the final situation. The transition is not difficult. In the one case a parent is brought face to face with the son, for whose slaughter he has long since been devoured by remorse, and whom he now finds to have escaped death and reached the predicted height of power. In the other case he has gone to fling himself at the feet of one whose God-given authority alone can absolve him from the same crime, and is confounded to learn that he to whom he prays for pardon is his ill-used child, yet living to prove to him the truth of his prophecy. The dramatic force of this position has been recognized in another Italian tale, in which the bastard child of a sister and brother, cast away at his birth, becomes pope, and receives the confession of his father and mother, to whom no meaner ecclesiastic has dared to give remission of so great a sin.^[50] This tale is well known in Italy and Sicily, where, perhaps, it would be more likely to arise than in other countries whose natives more rarely attain the pontifical dignity. A diligent search may, however, find it elsewhere. Its details do not resemble those we have been considering, except that the choice of pope is indicated by a dove.

VI.

In considering the story of The Outcast Child I have not allowed myself to deviate into any of the closely related groups. There are, however, several the detailed examination of which might possibly throw light upon the origin and transmission of the one now before us. These may be divided into two main classes,—the one dealing with the sufferings of a lady unjustly suspected by her husband, and the other narrating the relations of a band of brothers. I have already mentioned one of the latter; and additional instances, such as that of Codadad and his Brothers, will readily occur to the reader. One portion at least of the former class will, we may be sure, be adequately treated by Mr. Clouston in the studies on the origin of Chaucer's Tales, on which he is now engaged. Until these groups have been analysed it is probably vain to expect that any satisfactory suggestions will be offered as to the real source and primitive shape of The Outcast Child. Professor De Gubernatis has, indeed, made some guesses on the subject,^[51] but, it seems to me, without much success. The stories he cites certainly demand further inquiry. Two of them are, like the first three types we have just considered, Youngest-best stories. But none includes the essential incident of expulsion by the father of the only child who ultimately proves faithful to him. Still it is of course possible that the intermediate steps may be discovered, and one or more of these narratives may be proved to be rightly assigned as an early form of King Lear.

Meantime, this paper has already grown to too great a length, and I will now detain the reader only to point out that the framework of the tale has nothing in it of the marvellous, and, consequently, it lends itself with more than usual ease to the transformation from märchen to saga. This transformation is a great assistance to the preservation of folk-tales as literature, and frequently, also, while still in the mouths of the people. The oldest variant is found already converted into a saga in the book of Genesis; and it is not too much to say that it is this change which has not only preserved it for us, but has rendered it the most widely known of all. King Lear, too, owes its enduring life to the same cause. The tendency of the tale towards saga shape may be studied still farther in The Language of Beasts type, where more than one of the variants will be found in process of conversion. The name of Pope Innocent is one step. It would not have required much help from favouring circumstances, nor much effort of pious fraud or sincere enthusiasm, to proceed a little further, and, identifying the hero with one of the popes of that name, to add a few more particulars of persons and places, so as to develop a complete saga. Similar indications will be noted in other examples.

E. Sidney Hartland.

1. The most easily accessible and handiest edition of Geoffrey is in the Six Old English Chronicles, Bohn, 1848. This story will be found on p. 114.
2. Gesta Romanorum, London, Geo. Bell & Sons, 1877, p. xxxix.
3. Bladé, Contes Populaires recueillis en Agenais, Story No. 8, p. 31; version in dialect, p. 102. Contes Populaires de la Gascoigne, vol. i. p. 251.
4. Ortoli, Les Contes Populaires del' ile de Corse, p. 48.
5. p. 403.
6. Deutsche Volksmärchen aus Schwaben, Story No. 27, p. 99.
7. Blade, op. cit. p. 152.
8. Bernoni, Fiabe Popolari Veneziane, Story No. 14, p. 68.
9. Sessanta Novelle Popolari Montalesi, Story No. 13, p. 106. See also Comparetti, Novelline Popolari Italiane, Story No. 61, vol. i. p. 264.
10. Pitré, Fiabe Novelle e Racconti Popolari Slciliani, Story No. 10, vol. i. p. 83. An English translation in Crane, Italian Popular Tales, p. 333. In a variant the ill-omened bird is a parrot. Pitré, p. 90.
11. Kinder und Hausmärchen, Story No. 179, 7th edition, Berlin, 1880, p. 614. Margaret Hunt's English translation, vol. ii. p. 282.
12. Maive Stokes, Indian Fairy Tales, Story No. 23, p. 164.
13. Webster, Basque Legends, p. 165.
14. In another story a girl is condemned to death for the supposed robbery of her master's treasure, but is spared, and an ass' heart taken back to the king instead of hers. She clothes herself in the ass' skin, and the usual course of Peau d'Äne is followed. Ibid. p. 158.
15. Zingerle, Kinder und Hausmârchen aus Tirol, Story No. 31, cited by Köhler in Bladé, op cit. p. 154.
16. Finamore, Tradizioni Popolari Abruzzesi, vol. i. p. 130.
17. Theophilo Braga, Contos Tradicionaes do Povo Portuguez, vol. i. p. 122, vol. ii. p. 202.
18. While these sheets are going through the press the eighth volume of the Biblioteca de las Tradiciones Populares Españolas has appeared. It contains a collection of Asturian folk-lore, obtained by Senor L. Giner Arivau from a young woman of Proaza, a small hamlet in the province of Oviedo. Among the tales I find (p. 175) a variant of The Value of Salt type. As in the Basque the heroine answers her father that he is dear to her as the bread to the salt. A bitch's eyes are taken to the king in proof of his daughter's execution. Meanwhile she buys from a shepherd his clothes, and takes service at a palace. The turkeys put under her charge are lost in admiration of her beauty, when she discloses her real self, and forget to feed. The consequence is that every day one of them dies. This rouses the suspicions of the king's son, and leads to her marriage with him. The heroine's father is invited to the wedding and brought to a confession of his wrong-doing by being served with a loaf made without salt. Senor Arivau in a note refers to a parallel story in the Panchatantra. Unfortunately the usefulness of Benfey's admirable edition of that work is marred by the want of an index. I have, however, hastily searched through it, but have failed to find the narrative in question. As epitomised by Senor Arivau it is as follows: A king named Bali drives his daughter from his house, because in greeting him she prayed that he might enjoy the good which was destined for him, while her elder sister had prayed that he might be ever victorious. The maiden goes away, marries a prince who is enchanted, succeeds in disenchanting him, returns to his country, and, honoured by his father and all his friends, lives happily for many years. This would appear to be a variant of the next type, and its relations with the Indian stories examined below demand further enquiry.
19. So I interpret Gen. chap, xxxvii. and especially verse 3. To recognise the existence of a still younger brother blunts the point of the tale. This is a not unimportant consideration in reference to the mode in which the whole narrative has been put together.
20. Cited by De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, vol, i. p. 139, from Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der Türkischen Stämme süd-Sibirlens.
21. Pitré, op. cit. vol. i. p. 89. Unfortunately only an outline is given, the story being treated as a variant of Water and Salt, cited above. See also vol. iv. p. 370.
22. Finamore, op. cit. vol. i. p. 83.
23. Pitré, op. cit. p. 88.
24. Contos Pop, do Brazil, Story No. 3, p. 12.
25. This is a Persian work translated into Urdú by Mír Amman, of Delhi. There are several English versions from the latter, but none from the Persian original. That which I have used is by Lewis Ferdinand Smith, made in the early part of the present century. In the Lucknow edition of 1870 the story occurs on p. .59. I have compared this version with that by Edward B. Eastwick, Hertford, 1852.
26. Vernieux, The Hermit of Motee Jhurna, or Pearl-spring (Calcutta, 1873), p. 103. I am indebted to Mr. W. A. Clouston for an abstract of this tale, as well as for other kind assistance and sympathy, which I desire most gratefully to acknowledge.
27. Maive Stokes, op. cit. Story No. 25, p. 193. This is told by a Hindu woman.
28. The Indian Antiquary, vol. xiv. p. 239. This story was obtained by the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles, of the Church Missionary Society stationed at Srinagar, Kashmir, from a Brahman, who in turn had it from a Mohammedan.
29. Griechsche und Albanesische Märchen, Story No. 45, vol. i. p. 258; vol. ii. p. 247.
30. F. S. Krauss, Sagen und Märchen der Südslaven, vol. ii. Story No. 129, p. 290. Where this story was obtained is not indicated; probably it is from Servia.
31. Von Hahn, op. cit. vol. ii. p. 247. I have not seen the text of this story.
32. Sessanta Novelle Populari Montalesi, Story No. 46, p. 371.
33. I cite from the late Thomas Wright's edition of The Seven Sages, printed for the Percy Society from one of the two MSS. preserved in the Public Library of the University of Cambridge. The story is found on p. 106. An abstract of the other version in verse (that published by Weber) is given by Ellis in his Early English Metrical Romances, Bohn, p. 405 (this story, p, 449), from the Auchinleck and Cottonian MSS. I have not seen the English prose version of The Seven Sages, but I have compared a Welsh version probably derived from it (Cymru Fu, p. 202). None of these present any material differences in this story.
34. Libro de 'Sette Savi di Roma, originally published in 1832 at Venice; republished in Scelta di curiosità letterarie in 1862 at Bologna, and again by F. Roediger in a series of Operette inedite o rare in 1883 at Florence. Its genuineness, though at first disputed, appears now to be established.
35. In a French version cited by Luzel, Lègendes Chrétiennes de la Basse Bretagne, vol. i. p. 307, the prophet-bird is a nightingale, the country into which the youth is taken is Egypt, and after his father-in-law's death he mounts the throne, and fulfils the prediction by sending for his parents to his court. There is more than one suggestion of Joseph here. M. Luzel also cites another version in which the prophecy is uttered by two crows.
36. Leger, Recueil de Contes Populaires Slaves traduits sur les textes originaux, p. 235.
37. Webster, op. cit. p. 136.
38. Coelho, Contos Populares Portuguezes,. 133.
39. Mélusine, vol. i. col. 384.
40. Fleury, Littérature Orale de la Basse Normandie, p. 123.
41. It is too much to recognise in the sex of the animal killed an indication of any special relationship of the story with the King Lear and The Value of Salt types. Yet the coincidence is curious.
42. Visentini, Fiabe Mantovane, Story No. 23, p. 121. Compare a story given by Comparetti from Monferrat (Comparetti, Novelline Popolari Italiane, vol, i. Story No. 56, p. 242). Here the house saved from robbers has become a prince's castle, containing his treasure. The maiden healed is a king's daughter, and the cause of her illness is that she has thrown a cross into a reservoir of water. The king desires to marry her to the hero, but he rejects the overture. On being made pope he sends for his father, for the prince's treasurer and the king. He recounts the facts, and reproves his father, showing how useful his knowledge has been. His father, repentant, demands forgiveness.
43. Sébillot, Contes des Paysans et des Pêcheurs, Story No. 25, p. 132.
44. Mélusine, vol. i. col. 300.
45. Mélusine, vol. i. col. 374. Luzel, op. cit. vol. i. p. 282 (part iii. Story No. 11).
46. Kinder und Hausmärchen, Story No. 33, p. 134. M. Hunt's English version, vol. i. p. 136.
47. Webster, op. cit. p. 137.
48. Mélusine, vol. i. col. 384. It is cited by Köhler from the work already referred to by Radloff. part i. p. 208.
49. Pitré, op. cit. vol. i. p. 90.
50. Gouzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen, Story No. 85, vol. ii. p. 159. Pitré, op. cit. Story No. 117, vol. iii. p. 33. (Pitré also refers to a story from Leghorn given in Kunst's Italienische Volksmärchen.) Finamore, Novelle Popolari Abruzzesi, Story No. 31, in Archivio, vol. v. p. 95.
51. Zoological Mythology, vol. i. p. 84, vol. ii. p. 2.30. The learned Professor omits to give the exact reference to Ælian, from whom he cites the stories of the hoopoe and the lark. They will be found De Nat. Anim. lib. xvi. c. 5.