Page:Researches respecting the Book of Sindibad and Portuguese Folk-Tales.djvu/18

 vi been killed, and hidden away in an iron chest in a secret chamber of the Bluebeard story type, and scorched all over with a hot iron, after having been brought back to life and the light of day, to the temporary destruction of her beauty. This tale seems to be a mixture of several story-scraps.

Enchantment is, of course, the leading feature of many of these stories. No. 1, which is like No. 15, a medley, tells how a vain queen tried to kill a girl who surpassed her in beauty, and how the girl escaped and took refuge in a swineherd's hut, and how, all of a sudden, "it was transformed into a palace, the man who had sheltered the girl was turned into a powerful emperor, the pigs into dukes, the maiden into a beautiful princess." No. 7 deals with a prince who is under a spell, and No. 8 with a "spell-bound giant." The well-known story of the wicked step-mother, who illtreats the girl whom she first cajoles into asking her father to marry again, as in the opening of "the three little men in the wood" (Grimm, No. 13), occupies the whole of No. 12, and the opening of No. 16. Nos. 11 and 25 contain the well-known account of the hag who succeeded in killing, or at least bewitching, the elder brothers of a family, but who was at last overcome by the youngest brother, who rescued his dead or entranced relatives. In these two stories each of the brothers is protected by a horse and