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I gave the servants a good hazing

But there was nothing to be done

In store-room walls there's bound to be a crack.'
The Merchant said the story was amazing,

But feigned belief; and one fine day
Kidnapped the rascal's little son :
The next, invited him to dine.
"Alas!" he wept, "such grief is mine,
You must excuse me, friend, I pray,
I'm in no mood for social pleasure:
My darling child, my only treasure-
He's all I have.

nay, for I have him not!—
Has just been stolen. Pity my sad lot!"
"Why!" said the Merchant, "sure enough,
An owl last night at moonrise bore him off.
I saw it carry him toward a ruined spire."

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An owl, indeed!" exclaimed the sire,

"How could an owl bear off a boy? What stuff!
It would have been the other way about!"
"Never mind how," his friend replies,

"I tell you what I saw with my own eyes;

And I am pained that you should doubt
Ev'n for a moment what I state.
It isn't so surprising as all that
That in a country where a Rat
Can eat an iron hundredweight,

An owl can lift a boy of fifty pounds."
The other saw his cunning was outranged;
The iron and the scion were exchanged.'

As an example of an anecdote taking a purely local colour in its passage from East to West, I would quote the Æsopian story of The Drowning Boy, and in order to recall to my readers this somewhat unfamiliar fable, I print the following rendering of La Fontaine's 'L'Enfant et le Maître d'Ecole':

"THE SCHOOL-BOY AND THE DOMINIE.

"This tale exhibits the unreason

Of sermonising out of season.

An Urchin, larking by Thames' side,

Fell in.

Kind Heaven a tree supplied,
Whose branches caught him in suspense,
And saved him, under Providence.

While clinging to the slippery willow,
Half-in, half-out, the little fellow
Sighted a Master walking by,

And hailed him: "Help me, or I die!"
The Don, arrested by his groans,
Thought opportune in weighty tones
To scold him: "You young jackanapes,
This shows how mischief leads to scrapes.
And then to fash with brats like you!
I sympathise with Parents, who
All day must put themselves about
To save you pickles from your folly.
Truly their lot is melancholy!"
After this speech, he pulled him out.

'I aim-perhaps my butts will twig ?—
At Babbler, Pharisee and Prig:
Three breeds whom Heaven, I wonder why,
Encourages to multiply;

Who only see in all that haps

A chance to exercise their chaps.

My friend, say I, first help me through-
Then, lecture me till all is blue.'

Among the modern Egyptians and possibly among other Arabic-speaking peoples, there is a very similar tale which runs as follows: A famous grammarian was one day wandering by the banks of a canal, when he heard a man crying out: 'Ya-rajulu, ya-rajulu!' ('oh! man, oh! man!'). Stooping over the embankment the grammarian saw a man on the point of drowning and pulled him out of the water. He thereupon asked the man he had saved: 'Did you see me from the water, or did you call out merely in the hope that some one might be passing?' The man replied, It was merely on the chance of some one hearing me!' Whereupon the grammarian said, 'In that case you have used the wrong form of the vocative,' and placed him back in the canal to drown. I have never met this story in print, and as far as I am aware no similar tale occurs in the Ocean of Story.'

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* These two unpublished English versions I am able to offer my readers, thanks to the kindness of their author, Mr Edward Marsh, who is preparing for Messrs Heinemann a complete translation of La Fontaine's

Fables,

So much for the Western migrations. If we turn our attention Eastwards we seem to come nearer the original sources. In recent times an attempt has been made to trace the origin of the Bluebeard motif, namely, the daily execution of Brides till at last one of them saves herself by inventiveness, back to certain legends of Indo-China and Siam. If we trace this motif from the country of the Arabian Nights where women were held of little account and wives were multiple, to a land like India where the women were of more account, we find it is the prospective Bridegrooms who are killed at the order of the Bride's father, and tracing it further still into Austro-Asia where matriarchy prevailed, we notice that the wanton cruelty is attributed to the Bride herself. In order to explain these variations in the dramatis persona we must explain the Sanskrit expression 'Svayamvara,' which means the choice of a husband by a free woman. Such is its meaning in the 'Mahabharata' story, where Damayanti is courted by five pretenders who resemble exactly her beloved Nala. She finally distinguishes Nala from the four Gods who have assumed his form, and places a garland on his head. But later 'Svayamvara' comes to mean a tournament in which heroes compete for the hand of the fair one: thus both in the story of Arjuna and of the young Siddharta (afterwards Gotama the Buddha) we find the episode of the bow which none of the other competitors could draw.

Now in the Siamese legend called 'Nanthuk Pakaranam' we get back yet a further stage. There we read that a young prince having reached the age of sixteen, set out on his travels, accompanied by a faithful friend. On the way they met a demon with whom they fought. The prince overpowered the demon and was about to cut off his head, but spared him in exchange for a magic formula by which the soul could be made to detach itself from the body, and to enter again. They came to a town where the King had a beautiful daughter, whose only fault was that she could not speak or smile. The astrologers, however, had said that when she reached the age of sixteen she would meet a man worthy to be her husband and would immediately speak. The King, therefore, ordered all the nobles of the land to send

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we their sons one by one to the palace. He who made the are Princess speak should marry her, all who failed should be put to death. A number of young men had thus perished, and when our hero arrived on the scene, it was of the the turn of the son of a rich banker. The Prince offered lege to replace him. When they arrived in the presence of if the Princess, the Prince and his companion determined to tell a story. Let us see,' said the Prince, 'who can

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oak reply to the questions I am going to ask.' Thereupon his companion detached his soul, which settled in the illed curtain near the Princess. The curtain began to speak, furt saying, It is I who will reply to your questions, for I am the devoted servant of the Princess.' The Prince having told a story asks his first question, to which the curtain gives a clumsy answer. The Princess is so vexed that she herself gives the right word. During the second watch of the night the companion's soul passes into a lamp, and gives an equally stupid answer to the second question. Again the Princess cannot refrain from giving the correct answer, and so during the third and fourth watches of the night. And having thus replied to four questions of the Prince her father gives her to him in marriage. The relationship of this story to the frame-story of the Thousand and One Nights' is quite evident, only it is a man who is threatened with death, and a woman who is obdurate till the right person presents himself.

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But the general frame of 'Nanthuk Pakaram' offers another variation, in which the heroine saves the situation not for herself but for her father, which seems to represent an intermediate stage in the migration of this motif. A certain King loses his temper because his courtiers have turned their faces away from his majesty during an audience. He commands his Chief Justice to seize them and put them all to death. This minister pleads in excuse for their behaviour that they had turned round to look at a certain Brahman, who had just married a woman so perfect that she could only be compared to a goddess. The King pardons them, but says: 'How can a simple Brahman marry a goddess while I cannot among the 16,000 women of my harem a single one fit to be a Queen?' It thus comes about that the Chief Minister of Justice is commissioned to bring him a new

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bride every day during a whole year, in order that he may find one as good as the Brahman's. If the Minister on any day fails to bring a girl he will be put to death with all his family. The Minister carries out his daily task till one day he fails to find a girl with the requisite qualifications, namely, noble, of perfect beauty, and under ten years of age. He confides his trouble to his family, whereupon his daughter offers to go herself. The father somewhat brutally says: "That's all very well for to-day, but what will happen to-morrow and the following days?' The girl replies: 'Do not distress yourself, I mean to end this affair.' While the girl is waiting to be ushered in to the King, and is surrounded by the ladies and servants of the Court, she suggests that they should tell stories to keep themselves awake. They all refuse, so she begins one herself. In the middle the King enters and is enchanted, and on the next day he says that he wishes the same girl to be brought again; and thus she continues her stories indefinitely. There is no question here of putting the girls to death; they are merely dismissed, and it is the Minister who runs the risk.

The theory has, therefore, been adduced that the later Aryan story-tellers in order to satisfy Indian taste, turned the story round, and in the place of a Princess choosing a husband after rejecting many suitors, they introduced a powerful King, who at length chooses a bride among a large number of women. This was, of course, a dull story by comparison with the winning of the Princess's favour, and thus probably came into existence the Bluebeard theme, of the sanguinary King and the Princess who saves her life by her never-ending stories. We may tremble with excitement for her, as we do for the threatened suitors. On the other hand, this ruthless murdering of the Brides has been attributed to the vindictiveness of a King who having been in some way betrayed by a woman was determined to avoid a recurrence of such a misadventure. It is, however, quite likely that the story originated in something less brutal, namely, that the wives perished from the poison in the King's breath. The familiar quotation from Hudibras : "The Prince of Cambay's daily food Is Aspe and Basilisk and Toad,'

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