Page:Indian Fairy Tales (Stokes, 1879).djvu/266

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Indian Fairy Tales.

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

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


III.— THE CAT AND THE DOG.

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

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