Page:Grimm's household tales, volume 2 (1884).djvu/412

398 thereto. La Belle Etoile, No 22. in Madame d'Aulnoy coincides with the Italian down to the smallest particulars and embellishments. The Hungarian story (Gaal, No. 16) is distinctive, inasmuch as all the evil arises from the step-mother.

What is still more important than noting how these Arabian and Italian stories differ from each other, is to trace out how our German one agrees in some particulars with the former, and in others with the latter, which is the surest proof of its independence, though everyone who knows the neighbourhood where it was taken down must already be convinced that these foreign stories could never have made their way there. It agrees with Straparola in this, that the children come into the world with a red (golden) star on the forehead (flame on the head was the ancient token of high descent ): of this the Arabian story says nothing. We must set against this that no wicked step-mother assists, as in Straparola, but only the sisters; furthermore that the children are born in three successive years, and not all at the same time, and that on the two first occasions the King's anger is appeased. The incident of a little bird rising from the water each time a child is thrown into it, is peculiar to the German, and very fine. This signifies that the spirit remains alive (for the soul is a bird, a dove), as in the story, Der Machandelboom, No. 47, and to this refer also the words in verse, "to the lily garland." They signify that the child was ready for death (i.e. dead) until further orders (from God), but he is saved; the lily still lives, for the lily is the undying spirit; see the story of the Twelve Brothers (No. 9), where, instead of the lily, we have its counterpart, the white "student's flower," the narcissus, the transformed youth; see also the people's song in the Wunderhorn, where three lilies spring from the grave in which the father, mother, and child are lying. The Golden Water, and Dancing Water, are here genuine Water of Life, which is often sought for in myths (it is also to be found in Rabbinical stories). It is this which is meant in The Thousand and One Nights when the princess changes the black stones into princes again with the water which she has obtained from the bird, in this case it is the black dog which regains its original shape. It is much more natural that in the end it should be used in restoring health to the innocent mother who had been imprisoned. Compare the following story.