Page:Europa's Fairy Book.djvu/250

 228 II. ALL CHANGE

This nonsense story is found widely spread, especially in Romance tongues, French, Italian, Provencal, and Portuguese; but it is also found in Ireland (see Celtic Fairy Tales), Hanover, Transylvania, Esthonia, and Russia; so that it has claims to be included in the fairy book of all Europe. Cosquin, ii., 209-14, gives a number of Oriental stories, Annamite, Kalmuk, Kaffir, which contain the incident of the girl in the bag, and Indian and Kabyle stories, which go through the same exchanges as our story. In the latter case it is an animal story in which the jackal has a thorn picked out of his paws by an old woman, and gets an egg out of her in exchange for the thorn which he has "lost." In this form the jackal helps considerably in the disappearance of the successive exchanges. It is difficult to say whether the European or the Indian form was the earlier. The animal dramatis personæ seem less incongruous and turn the scale in favour of India.

III. KING OF THE FISHES

This is practically the Perseus legend of antiquity, which has been made the subject of an elaborate study by Mr. E. Sidney Hartland, The Legend of Perseus, 3 vols., London, 1894-6. Mr. Hartland distinguishes four chains of incidents in the story:

1. The Supernatural Birth.

2. The Life Token.

3. The Rescue of Andromeda.

4. The Medusa Witch.

Not all the variants, which are very numerous, running from Ireland to Cambodia, include all these four incidents. The Greek Perseus legend, for instance, has not the Life Token. Cosquin, i., 67, knows of only eighteen which have