Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/264

238 him. She wiped his mouth with a handkerchief, saying: 'You must show me that handkerchief to-morrow morning or else you will lose your head.' With that she put it in her bosom.

"The prince went to bed in great sorrow, but Jack's cap of knowledge informed him how it was to be obtained. In the middle of the night she called upon her familiar spirit to carry her to Lucifer. But Jack put on his coat of darkness and his shoes of swiftness, and was there as soon as she was. When she entered the place of the- Old One she gave the handkerchief to old Lucifer, who laid it upon a shelf, whence Jack took it and brought it to his master, who showed it to the lady next day, and so saved his life. On that day she gave the prince a kiss, and told him he must show her the lips to-morrow morning that she kissed last night or lose his head.

"'Oh!' he replied, 'if you kiss none but mine, I will.'

"'That is neither here nor there,' said she. 'If you do not, death's your portion.'

"At midnight she went as before, and was angry with old Lucifer for letting the handkerchief go. 'But now,' quoth she, 'I will be too hard for the king's son, for I will kiss thee, and he is to show me thy lips.'

"Which she did, and Jack, when she was not standing by, cut off Lucifer's head, and brought it under his invisible coat to his master, who the next morning pulled it out by the horns before the lady. This broke the enchantment, and the evil spirit left her, and she appeared in all her beauty. They were married the next morning."

It must surely be evident to the "meanest intelligence" that we have here the English equivalent of the German, the Danish, and the Norse story. True there is no Grateful Dead at all; Jack has to play his part. But that is nothing to the surprising changes presented by other variants of the folktale. A Danish one wanders off into "Puss in Boots," and the Icelandic one into the "Forbidden Room;" in Kennedy's "Jack the Master and Jack the Servant" (Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 32-38) it is the dead man's brother who plays the dead man's part; and in a Gascon