Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 2 1884.djvu/306

298 drawn solely from the folk-tales of the wide-spread Indo-European races, and we may pause to note that the likeness running through these, as through other groups, is explicable on no theory of borrowing, and finds its sole and rational explanation in the possession of a common stock of folk-lore by the several ancestors of the Aryan race. After allowing for local colouring and for changes incident to the lapse of time, they are the variants of stories related to children in the Aryan fatherland at a period historically remote, and moreover are told in words which are phonetically akin.

Turning for a moment or two to non-Aryan sources, we have the Tatar story of the demon-giant who could not be slain, for he did not keep his soul in his body, but in a twelve-headed snake carried in a bag on his horse's back. The hero finds out the secret, kills the snake, and then the giant dies too. In one of the Samoyed tales a man had no heart in his body, and could recover it only on restoring to life the mother of him whom he had killed. Then the man said to his wife: "Go to the place where the dead lies; there you will find a purse, in that purse is her soul, shake the purse over her bones and she will come to life." The woman did as she was ordered, and the mother of the Samoyed revived; then he dashed the heart to the ground, and the man died.

More elaborate than these however are the stories from The Thousand and One Nights, as those of the Princess Parizade and of Seyf-el-Mulook and Bedua-el-Jemál. In this latter tale, when Seyf-el-Mulook would flee with Dolet-Khátoon, she replies, "By Allah! we cannot do that. If we fled to the distance of a year's journey this accursed wretch (speaking of Jinni) would bring us back immediately, and he would destroy us." So Seyf-el-Mulook said, "I will hide myself in a place, and when he passeth by me I will smite him with a sword and slay him." But she replied, "Thou canst not slay him unless thou kill his soul." "And in what place," said he, "is his soul?" She answered, "I asked him respecting it many times, but he would not confess to me its place. It happened however that I urged him one day, and he was enraged against me, and said to me, 'How often wilt thou ask me respecting my soul? What is the reason of thy question respecting my soul?' So I answered him,