Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/217

 Rh coffin, and thrown into the sea. The coffin comes to port at Paris (that city being on the sea coast), and is taken to the king, who, opening it, finds the heroine inside, and marries her. In another Tuscan story the heroine and her lover escape from the robber chief's castle in a coal-seller's sacks. This tale unites, perhaps, more closely than any other I have met with, the characteristics of the "Bluebeard" and "Robber Chief" types. The ogre, Centomogli, is the head of a band of assassins. The heroine, and her two sisters before her, are forbidden to open a door unlocked by a golden key; and, in her case, a similar prohibition is added in respect of a silver key. She disobeys both. In the latter room she finds the king of Portugal's son. As in the last-mentioned story, a dog had been left with her as a spy: she destroys it, and flees with the prince. Her marriage follows, and, after it, the assassins' attempted revenge.

I will only mention one more story of this group before passing to quite a different presentation of the Forbidden Chamber. This variant is important, because it affords a striking example of the way in which folk-tales, like living organisms, change their forms, approximating now to one type, now to another. The heart of the story in question is the Forbidden Chamber, but the introduction has developed the incident with which the "Dead Hand" stories begin a little further in the direction of "Beauty and the Beast," while the afterpart is connected through the chest episode with Katie Woodencloak, as well as with the myth of the fickle hero,—Jason, Herakles, or whatever else may be his name. For this reason, and for its native picturesqueness, I may be pardoned for giving it somewhat more at length than the previous instances I have referred to.

A certain king one day hunting pursues a hart, which enters a wood; and pressing hard after the noble beast, he finds himself at last in a garden, where he loses it. He opens a door and enters another garden in which the trees are of gold and the herbs of diamonds. Tempted by the beauty of a rose he plucks it, when a cord instantly leaps out and enwinding him holds him fast. He hears a noise, the earth trembles, and an enraged dragon stands before him,