Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/249

Rh the cats fill it with gold pieces, and give it her back and dismiss her. As soon as she gets home she empties the sack as she thinks and returns it to the lender, who on searching it through finds that a gold piece has been left in it, whereupon she goes to the old woman and by threats of the police extorts from her an avowal of the truth. Upon this knowledge she goes herself to the house of the cats, and threatens to denounce them if they do not fill her sacks (she had brought two) with gold also. The cats order their servant to do so, and dismiss the woman, enjoining her not to open the sacks until she gets home. She follows the direction, and when she opens them, lo! snakes jump out of them and eat her up, leaving nothing of her but her skeleton. This story in its motif is the same as Imbriani's Tuscan fiaba—"Il convento dei gatti." The Greek fiction is, however, the more picturesque of the two.

No. 10, The King of the Birds.

A king who has three daughters promises them all something, as the other father does in the Italian version of "Beauty and the Beast," and on his return duly delivers his presents. The youngest daughter takes hers (a jonquil) to her chamber and places it in a pot. After a little while a golden eagle emerges from the flower. This straightway turns into a beautiful young man, who tells her that he is king of the birds and the reptiles. He offers her marriage, and is accepted. He then visits her every day, and explains to her how he may be summoned when she shall require him. The sisters discover the secret, and lay a snare for the prince, by which, when he is next summoned, he is cruelly cut with broken glass. The prince, being enraged at this strange treatment, tells his wife that he abandons her, and then disappears. She starts in search of him, and in the course of her wanderings she overhears some snakes talking together about what has befallen their king. They say that the remedy for his hurts would be obtained by some person killing one of them and taking out his fat. She goes further, and overhears some birds talking in the same way as the snakes. She accordingly kills one of the snakes and one of the birds, and takes out of each some of his fat, and then hastens on to the palace of the suffering king. There she is admitted, on her declaring that she can restore him to health, and she applies