Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/243

Rh his daughters with disobedience. The prophecies of the book are subsequently fulfilled. Here, the Forbidden Chamber is the keeper of the oracle consigning Psyche to the embraces of a monster. The evil influence of her sisters, however, ceases with the persuasion to disobey their father, and in the after-part of the narrative their counsels, which lead Psyche to so much mischief, are replaced by those of a witch. But in a Milanese story given by Imbriani it is her sisters who persuade the heroine to break her mysterious husband's taboo, and indeed provide her with the materials for striking the prohibited light. Acting in accordance with their exhortations she finds that the monster she has married is a fair youth at night, and round his neck is a cord to which a key is attached. She takes this key, and seeks the door which it fits. Having found the door she opens it. Inside are many ladies working, as they tell her in rhyme, for the king's son. For this disobedience she can live no longer with her husband, but he is in the sequel disenchanted and relieved of his monster-form in consequence of her devotion. A more curious and pathetic form of the tale is found in Spain under the title of "The Black Hand." Here a poor man, endeavouring to uproot a large cabbage, incurs a giant's wrath, and to save his own life he is compelled to bring the eldest of his three daughters to be the giant's wife. The giant takes her down into his underground palace, puts a ring on her finger, and hands her his keys, forbidding her to enter a certain chamber. She disobeys. Within is a well full of dead bodies, torn to pieces and covered with blood, into which the ring falls from her finger, and, though she recovers it, it cannot afterwards be cleansed. She is killed, and flung into the well; and the like fate happens to the next daughter, who is obtained on the usual pretext. But the third daughter escapes detection by removing the ring beforehand. After visiting the chamber repeatedly she discovers a little door ajar within it. Entering this further room she finds lying on a magnificent bed a comely youth whose breast is a river; and in this river many washer-women are washing skeins of wool. She daily comes to gaze on his beauty, and one day she sees a skein elude one of the washerwomen