Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/153

Rh dress; but these facts are sufficient to show the feeling attached to it, and the obligation on the bride to make it or assist in its making, and these are the points which enable us to associate it with the device of Penelope.

In this connection it is important to note that in many tales of the Abhorred Marriage class, particularly in those of the Unnatural Father type of which Catskin is the best example, we have numerous instances where the daughter makes the provision of magic robes a condition on which she promises to consider her father's offer at a later time. Thus, in a Mecklenburgh tale, she demands a dress of silver, a robe stiff with gold, a coat made of crow's feathers. In a Naples story it is a dress of golden bells, and another with the sun in front and the moon behind. In a Calabrian tale she wants a dress of gold lined with rabbit skin. In Peau D'Ane one dress must be like the sky, another like the moon, a third like the sun, and so on.

But in all or most of these stories the dress is provided by the unnatural father, not by the bride. The only exception is in the Finnish tale of the "Three Dresses," in which the father promises to release the girl from the Abhorred Marriage "if she can procure clothes like gold." In another tale of the same collection from Vienne, the girl finds men and women who have been working for seven years at her wedding dress and lace for her, and Miss M. R. Cox kindly refers me in the same connection to the tale of the "Sprig of Rosemary."