Page:Researches respecting the Book of Sindibad and Portuguese Folk-Tales.djvu/15

Rh West o' the Moon." In Nos. 27 and 28 the Beast is not the husband but the wife, there being, as is usual, a feminine as well as a masculine form of the story. In the one case, a young man, in the most improbable manner, without the slightest compulsion, marries a spider; in the other, a youth weds something "which felt very cold and clammy," and which turns out to be "a little tick." In both of these stories the idea which lent an air of comparative probability to their eastern originals has been forgotten or misunderstood. In most of the Indian stories of this class, and their variants in other Asiatic lands, there exists the notion that a celestial being may be condemned to live on earth, generally cased in a bestial husk, but having the power of, at times, laying that husk aside, until the spell under which the fallen divinity labours is brought to an end by the destruction of the husk during the temporary absence of its celestial tenant.

The story of Cinderella occurs twice, Nos. 18 and 24, or three times if the "Katie Woodencloak" form of the tale in No. 16 is included. In the first and second of these the heroine is styled "the Hearth-Cat," because "she was fond of assisting the servant in. the kitchen." In neither of them is it stated that she was assisted, as no doubt was the case, by her dead mother. In No. 18 a cow protects her, and in No. 24 a fish, which she had rescued from the frying-pan;