Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/233

 Rh and into a fox that devours the magician while in the form of a hen seeking for the millet.

There is a closely related group of variants differing chiefly in their conclusion from the tales of this type just analysed. In this group the ogre is finally defeated by the hero's flight, and the remainder of the story is occupied by a totally different series of adventures which hang to what I may term the trunk of the story by the transformation in the hero's personal appearance consequent on his disobedience. M. Sébillot's tale of Scabby John may be cited as the type of this sub-genus. A stranger is taken as the boy's godfather, who returns at the end of a year and a day to fetch his precocious godson to his castle. There the hero's business is to feed two horses and to starve and beat a certain mule. He is entrusted with a hundred keys opening as many rooms in the castle; but he is forbidden to enter the hundredth chamber. For a while he obeys; but after his godfather's second departure he is overcome with curiosity and ventures to use the hundredth key. In the room he finds dead bodies and magical books. Going afterwards to attend to the animals the mule speaks to him, accusing him of disobedience, and advising him, now that he has gone so far, to bind up a certain bell, to plunge into a certain fountain, and to mount the mule herself and flee, taking with him some magical articles which she enumerates. The fountain turns his hair to gold. His godfather pursues the fugitives, but is impeded in the usual manner by the stolen talismans flung behind by the hero, who at length reaches the Holy Land, where his godfather (who turns out to be the Devil) cannot enter. Following the mule's directions he covers his shining hair and engages himself as under-gardener to the king, the mule in the meantime disappearing. The gardener becomes jealous of him and falsely accuses him twice to the king. The hero calls in the aid of the mule by means of a magical wand she has given him, and with her help he foils the gardener, who is at length dismissed and the hero installed in his place. Secretly by night the hero wears at different times three glorious dresses given him by his faithful mule; but the youngest of the kings three daughters discovers him. On the princesses' choosing husbands she