Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/236

210 becomes a fish. The purchaser becomes a heron, and looks for him. Then the usual chase ensues, ending happily.

73. The Fruit of Youth.—A man saves a nest of birds from a snake; the mother bird gives him the fruit of youth, which being eaten makes the old to be young. This is wasted; the search for another; the tree is found in the garden of Raja Raghu.

74. The Devoted Lover, who cuts off his own hands (!!) for his lady, allows his head to be cut off, and in the end is restored to life and wins her.

75. Grateful Beasts.—Snake, dog, cat, mouse, ransomed by a prince. From the snake's father he gets a ring, which builds him a palace. He weds a princess. He leaves the ring with her; she in his absence gives it to a beggar, who goes away and bids the ring fetch palace and princess to him. The prince is disconsolate. The cat meditates and discovers where she is; the mouse creeps in by a drain and finds her; she tells him that the man keeps it in his mouth at night. The mouse puts his tail up the man's nose; he sneezes out the ring, which is caught up by the mouse. The dog takes it and swims over a river with it, but drops it; a fish swallows it down. They get hold of the fish, which some fishers have caught, and take it back to the prince. All's well that ends well.

79. How the Unfaithful Wife was outwitted.—A never ending theme, here treated anew.

138. The Discarded Princess.—A king, who fears ill-luck from his daughter, exposes her in a box which he throws into the river. Her adventures, and how she gets home again. [This seems to be an incomplete story.]

139. A stupid tale; but interesting in that it encloses a number of versicles, like so many old stories. It also contains the episode of the unfaithful wife, who has to undergo an ordeal to prove her chastity, and escapes by causing her paramour to accost her in disguise of a beggar just before the ordeal; she then says: "May the Nāg bite me if I have ever touched any man save my husband and this man." [The ordeal trick occurs in the Jātaka.]

140. Entertaining gods unawares.

141. The Fairy Wife.—A prince marries a woman on condition that for the first six months she is merely to visit him for an hour every day. A fiend gives him some lampblack, which, rubbed on his eyes, makes invisible [sympathetic magic]. Thus