Page:Popular tales from the Norse (1912).djvu/86

 lxxx Take other African instances. How is it that the wandering Bechuanas got their story of "The Two Brothers," the ground-work of which is the same as "The Machandelboom" and "The Milk-white Doo," and where the incidents and even the words are almost the same? How is it that in some of its traits that Bechuana story embodies those of that earliest of all popular tales, recently published from an Egyptian Papyrus, coeval with the abode of the Israelites in Egypt? and how is it that that same Egyptian tale has other traits which remind us of the Dun Bull in "Katie Woodencloak," as well as incidents which are the germ of stories long since reduced to writing in Norse Sagas of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? How is it that we still find among the Negroes in the West Indies a rich store of popular tales, and the Beast Epic in full bloom, brought with them from Africa to the islands of the West; and among those tales and traditions, how is it that we find a "Wishing Tree," the counterpart of that in a German popular tale, and "a little dirty scrub of a child," whom his sisters despise, but who is own brother to Boots in the Norse Tales, and like him outwits the Troll, spoils his substance, and saves his sisters? How is it that we find the good woman who washes the loathsome head rewarded, while the bad man who refuses to do that dirty work is punished for his pride; the very ground-work, nay the very words, that we meet in "Bushy Bride,"