Page:Researches respecting the Book of Sindibad and Portuguese Folk-Tales.djvu/17

 Rh supplanted bride loses not only her husband but her eyes. These, however, she recovers, obtaining them as the price of a nosegay. In No. 22 the supplanted heroine is a girl, whose mother, when dying, gives her a towel and a comb, on the application of which to her head pearls fall therefrom. Her supplanter contrives to have her thrown, in a state of trance, into the sea, where she is swallowed by a whale, from which, after a time, she emerges unhurt. In the first two variants there is a characteristic touch of ferocity at the close. When the true bride was asked what the prince ought to do to the impostor, "the maiden replied that he should kill her, and with her bones make bed-steps for her to climb into her bed, and with her skin to make a drum."

Another group of narratives, describing undeserved suffering, tell the story of what may be called "The Calumniated Wife," the innocent mother who is accused of having killed, and sometimes eaten, her beloved children. A specimen of this group occurs in No. 29. One of its characteristic features is the mention of three little blue stones, which bear witness to the truth of the victim's asseveration of innocence. A confidant somewhat resembling these blue stones is the stone talisman to which the heroine of No. 15, "The Maiden with the Rose on her Forehead," tells the story of her wrongs,—how she has