Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/400

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NOTES TO THE FOLK-TALES.

Undvalgte Eventyr og Fortœllinger ved C. Molbech, Kjöbenhavn, 1843. "Godtro og utro, et Skaansk Folkesagn."

Sagen, Märchen und Lieder der Herzogthümer Schleswig—Holstein und Lauenburg vom. R. Müllenhoff. Kiel, 1845. "Vom Bauernsohn der König ward."

Portuguese Stories. "Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain who build it." Folk-Lore Record, 1881, p. 157. The driver hears the devils talking on the top of the cave, where he shelters, and by means of which he obtains riches and honour. In this case, the gouging out of the eyes is omitted, and the whole story modified, and, if one may so say, Christianised.


THE HUNTING PRINCES. Kriza, iii.

Steel, flint, and tinder, form to this day the "Smoker's companion" in the rural districts of Hungary, although matches were invented more than half a century ago by a Hungarian.

Page 39. The youngest son in the Finnish story, "Ihmeellinen Sauwa," (The Wonderful Stick,) S. ja T. i. p. 158, is told to shoot at an oak, and if he hits it (which he does) he would find his mother who had been carried off one day whilst walking in the garden years before.

For other versions see "A Year Hence" in Gaal, vol. ii.; also "The Three Princes" in the present vol. p. 110, and "The Prince who tied the Dawn" in another collection of Erdélyi, entitled "Magyar Népmesék."

Dragons[1] appear at every turn in folk-lore, and therefore we can give but a short selection of comparisons out of the countless hosts of legends and tales. "At Lueska there is a dark cavern called the Dragon's Den, which was the terror of the country, and its legend is an interesting example of how old folk-tales are modified, as time rolls on; in this case, the burghers of the town can't tell what to do, and a little dwarf tinker declares he can kill the monster, but that he will

  1. Wagner's Asgard, p. 208. Roman intruders are called "the Roman dragon, the bane of Asgard." Wagner's Epics and Romances, "the Nibelung," p. 3; "the Dragonstone." p. 243. Henderson's Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties, p. 283.