Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/301

 Rh cried the boy; and with that he wrung the bird's neck, and threw it at the magician, and, as he did so, Punchkin's head twisted round, and, with a fearful groan, he died. Of course all the other characters "lived very happily ever afterwards," as they do in the plays and the novels.

In the stories of "Chundun Rajah" and of "Sodewa Bai" (the latter corresponding to the Cinderella group), in the same collection, the dependence of life upon the retention or removal of a sacred necklace which holds the soul is a main incident. When the ranee, jealous of her husband's love for Sodewa Bai, asks her why she always wears the same golden beads, she replies,—"I was born with these beads round my neck, and the wise men told my father and mother that they contained my soul, and that if any one else wore them I should die." The ranee instructs her servant to steal the beads from the princess while she sleeps; whereupon she dies, but her body does not decay, and in the end she is restored to life by the recovery of her necklace.

A not unlike idea occurs in the story of "Truth's Triumph." The children of a village beauty, whom the rajah had married, are changed into mango-trees, to save them from the fury of the jealous ranee, until the time of danger was passed.

In Miss Stokes's collection of Indian Fairy Tales we have variants corresponding more closely to Punchkin. In "Brave Hírálálbásá," a rakshas (the common name for demon, or ogre, but sometimes used as a euphemism for protection) is induced by female wiles, not unfamiliar to the daughters of Eve, to reveal the secret of his life. "Sixteen miles away from this place is a tree; round the tree are tigers and bears, and scorpions and snakes; on the top of the tree is a very great flat snake; on his head is a little cage; in that cage is a bird, and my soul is in that bird." By enchantment Hírálálbásá reaches the tree and "took the little cage, and came down again. Though the rakshas was far off he knew at once that something had happened to his bird. Hírálál pulled off the bird's right leg, and the rakshas's right leg fell off, but on he hopped on one leg. Then the rajah's son pulled off the bird's left leg, and off fell the rakshas's left leg, but still he went on towards his house on his