Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/206

 198 woman on drinking some milk given her by the heroine; but here it is the heroine's foot that is soiled with blood. In another story of the same series the cat offers to cleanse her foot for a drop of milk, and afterwards gives instructions to restore her sisters to life by means of the magic club.

Thus it happens in some of the stories that the heroine is not found out at all. This is usually so where she is the youngest of three or more sisters who have been less lucky. When she is found out, the means are not always the same. In the Basque tale of "The Cobbler and his Three Daughters," for example, the disobedience of the two elder sisters alone is discovered, and this seems to occur rather by their own confession than by any suspicious appearances on the key which they have successively dropped on the ground. In "The Trimmatos" the ghoul has the power of assuming various forms, and he deceives the heroine into admitting her guilt by taking the shape of her nurse. I have already referred to the part played by a little dog in two Tuscan tales, in which it appears as a spy, though in both these cases we are justified in supposing that the magician learns the sorry fact independently of the tell-tale beast.

The next point to be considered is the heroine's deliverance. In the type her deliverance is effected entirely by extraneous aid; and in this important respect the type differs from most of the variants which it has been my fortune to meet with. A few, however, are in accord with Perrault's tale on this point. In the Esthonian tale of "The Wife-Murderer," already referred to, the heroine is warned against her suitor by a gooseherd, who gets leave to accompany her to her husband's castle, and after the catastrophe strikes down the husband as he is about to chop off her head, brings him to justice, and marries her after his death. In one of the Tirolese stories given by Miss Busk, in which the heroine marries the Devil, she sends a note by two carrier-pigeons to her father, praying to be released. The task is undertaken by a former rejected lover, and accomplished with the aid of his three seiTants, the man of keenest sight, the man of keenest