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ly." When he heard this, Putraka said— " What is the use of fighting? make this agreement, that whoever proves the hest man in running shall possess this wealth."*[1] Those simpletons said— " Agreed"— and set off to run, while the prince put on the shoes and flew up into the air, taking with him the
- ↑ * A similar incident is found in Grimm's Fairy Tales translated by Mrs. Paull, p. 370. The hero of the tale called the Crystal Ball finds two giants fighting for a little hat. On his expressing his wonder, " Ah", they replied " you call it old, you do not know its value. It is what is called a wishing-hat, and whoever puts it on can wish himself where he will, and immediately he is there." " Give me the hat," replied the young man, " I will go on a little way and when I call you must both run a race to overtake me, and whoever reaches me first, to him the hat shall belong." The giants agreed and the youth taking the hat put it on and went away; but he was thinking so much of the princess that he forgot the giants and the hat, and continued to go further and further without calling them. Presently he sighed deeply and said, " Ah if I were only at the Castle of the golden sun." Wilson (Collected Works, Vol. III, p. 169, note,) observes that " the story is told almost in the same words in the Bahar Dánish, a purse being substituted for the rod; Jahándár obtains possession of it, as well as the cup, and slippers in a similar manner. "Weber [Eastern Romances, Introduction, p. 39] has noticed the analogy which the slippers bear to the cap of Fortunatus. The inexhaustible purse, although not mentioned here, is of Hindu origin also, and a fraudulent representative of it makes a great figure in one of the stories of the Dása Kumára Charita" [ch. 2, see also L. Deslongchamps Essai sur les Fables Indiennes. Paris, 1838, p. 35 f. and Grässe, Sagen des Mittelalters, Leipzig, 1812, p. 19 f.] The additions between brackets are due to Dr. Reinholdt Rost the editor of "Wilson's Essays. The Mongolian form of the story may be found in Sagas from the Far East, p. 24. A similar incident is also found in the Swedish story in Thorpe's Scandinavian Tales, entitled " the Beautiful Palace East of the Sun and North of the Earth." A youth acquires boots by means of which he can go a hundred miles at every step, and a cloak, that renders him invisible, in a very similar way. I find that in the notes in Grimm's 3rd Volume, page 168, (edition of 1856) the passage in Somadeva is referred to, and other parallels given. The author of these notes compares a Swedish story in Cavallius, p. 182, and Pröhle, Kindermärchen, No. 22. He also quotes from the Sidi Kür, the story to which I have referred in Sagas from the Far East, and compares a Norwegian story in Ashbjörnsen, pp. 53, 171, a Hungarian story in Mailath and Gaal, N. 7, and an Arabian tale in the continuation of the 1001 Nights. See also Sicilianische Märchen by Laura Gonzenbach, Part I, Story 31. Here we have a table-cloth, a purse, and a pipe. When the table-cloth is spread out one has only to say— Dear little table-cloth, give maccaroni or roast-meat or whatever may be required, and it is immediately present. The purse will supply as much money as one asks it for, and the pipe is something like that of the pied piper of Hamelin—, one who hears it must dance. Dr. Köhler in his notes, at the end of Laura Gonzenbach' s collection, compares (besides the story of Fortunatus, and Grimm III.202) Zingerle, Kinder-und Hausmärchen, II. 73 and 193. Curze, Popular Traditions from Waldeck, p. 34. Gesta Romanorum, Chap. 120. Campbell's Highland Tales, No. 10 and many others. The shoes in our present story may also be compared with the bed in the IXth Novel of the Xth day of the Decameron.
