Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/447

Rh himself; the Rakshasa "smells man," but is pacified. The fairy tells him that the heart of the monster is in a parrot, on the top of a tree, which is full of snakes and scorpions, guarded by demons and girt by seven seas. He wedded the fairy, and then returned to his original home, picking up on his way the two other wives and his menagerie of animals; and they all lived together happily ever after. [Clearly a hotch-potch, and incomplete. The animals do nothing to help him.]

476. Prince Nilkanth.—Childless king promised a son by a saint. The saint bids a jay enter into the queen's womb for a year, telling him that at twelve years old he would be married, and must sit on his wife's knee; he would then die, but she must put his body in the hollow of a pipal tree, and he would become a jay again. This all happened. The wife was taunted at losing her husband so soon. She worshipped Mahādeva for twelve years, and got him back again.

479. The Angel of Death.—A prince buys his life from the Angel of Death when a group of friends have each given him a portion of his own span of life.

538. An extraordinary moralising tale, turning on the belief that debts incurred in one life must be paid in another.

539. The Luck of the Youngest Son.—He finds the fairies bathing, and takes their clothes, which he refuses to give back until they promise to obey him. The rest of the tale relates how he got three other wives, but contains no instructive incident.

540. A witch caught a boy, and bagged him; but he escaped. She caught him again, and bade her daughter-in-law make soup of him. "What a pretty boy!" quoth she. "My mother," quoth he, "made my eyes with a hot darning-needle, and moulded my head with a rice-pounder." "Can you make me like you?" So he put out her eyes and smashed her head; dressed himself in her clothes and put her in the soup-pot.

541. A fool: who barters his wife for an ox, and the ox for radishes. (Parallels given of other bartering fools.)

542. A youngest son sets out on his travels, and picks up a demon Slow-foot, a demon Eat-little, and a demon Drink-little, with a swarm of rats. A Raja offers his daughter to any who can eat enough cakes to fill a room, cross a river at one leap, drink a whole tank. With the aid of his "skilful companions" he performs these feats.