Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/606

 420 house, who, born and bred in it, is rather regarded as a member of the family than as a servant. They are printed just as she told him, and both their genuineness and their affinity with the stories of other races will be self-evident. Thus we have the "Wishing Tree" of the Hindoos, the Kalpa Vriksha of Somadeva, and of the German Fairy Tales in the "Pumpkin Tree," which throws down as many pumpkins as the poor widow wishes. In one story we have "Boots" to the life, while the man whom he outwits is own brother to the Norse Trolls. In another we find a "speaking heart," which reminds us at once of the Egyptian story of Anessou and Satou, as well as of the "Machandel-boom," and the "Milk-white Doo." We find here the woman who washes the dirty head rewarded and the man who refuses to wash it punished, in the very words used in "The Bushy Bride." We find, too, in "Nancy Fairy," the same story, both in groundwork and incident, as we have in "The Lassie and her Godmother;" and most surprising of all, in the story of "Ananzi and Quanqua," we find the very trait about a trick played with the tail of an ox, which is met with in a variation to "Boots who ate a match with the Troll." Here is the variation: "Whilst he was with the Troll, the lad was to go out to watch the swine, so he drove them home to his father's house, but first he cut their tails off, and stuck them into the ground. Then he went home to the Troll, and begged him to come and see how his swine were going down to Hell. But when the Troll saw the swine's tails sticking out of the ground he wanted to pull them back again, so he caught hold of them and gave a great tug, and then down he fell with his heels up in the air, and the tails in his fist."