Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/209

Rh above referred to the heroine deceives her captor by a skull or a dressed-up clout; and in the Icelandic story a tree-trunk, disguised in her wedding clothes, is left by the poker-riding lady. Schneller, also, refers to a Tirolese tale in which the heroine places a straw figure at the well, as if she were there washing, and the dehided Devil carries her home in the chest.

In some cases, however, the episode of the doll is absent. Of these a Tirolese variant given in substantially similar terms by Schneller and Miss Busk approaches most nearly to the terminal type we have just been discussing. In the Gaelic story of "The Widow and her Daughters," referred to above, the cat who is so useful in cleaning the blood off the heroine's foot counsels her as to restoring her sisters to life, and getting the horse, her captor, to take them and herself successively home. When the horse on returning the third time finds he has been deceived, and rushes back to the heroine's mother's house, the heroine, previously instructed by the omniscient cat, strikes off his head. He is thereby freed from his enchantment, and, being restored to his former condition as a king's son, he marries his deliverer. The other version given by Campbell does not treat the horse so well. When the heroine chops off his head there is an end of him; but she returns to his castle and enjoys his wealth in company with the cat, who turns out to be no cat but a king's daughter. In this tale the heroine herself slays the ogre; nor is it a singular example. In the Basque variant she manages to drop the keys as she gives them back to him, and while he stoops to pick them up she cuts off his head with a sabre she has found in the Forbidden Chamber. In another, Blue Beard has assumed the character of Punchkin. The test of disobedience here is that one of three golden balls given by the ogre to his victim is dropped by accident into a certain cupboard in the Forbidden Chamber and thus becomes defiled. The heroine, before disobeying, puts the balls