Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/277

Rh vol. iii. pp. 348-353. The tale entitled "Charity alone conquers" (pp. 63-83), which bears evident traces, we think, of Buddhist extraction, is a Tamil version of another very widely-diffused story. It is own brother (as Baring-Gould would say) to the Norse tale of "True and Untrue"; the German tale of "The Three Crows" (in Grimm); the Portuguese tale of "The Poor Muleteer"; the Persian tale of Khayr (i.e., Good) and his comrade Shár (Evil); and the Arabian tale of "Abú Niyyút and Abú Niyyútin" (the Well-intentioned and the Evil-intentioned), which occurs in a MS. text of the Thousand and One Nights, preserved in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. In the diverting story of Appayya (pp. 104-115) folk-lorists will readily recognise a variant of the German tale of "The Brave Little Tailor" (in Grimm); the Chilian tale of "Don Juan Bolondron" (Folk-Lore Journal, vol. iii. p. 293), which is of Spanish extraction; the tale of "Fattú the Valiant Weaver," in Wide-Awake Stories, and a host of others. The third adventure of the hero of the Norse tale, "Not a Pin to choose between them"—the Three Noodles—and that of his Italian cousin, in Miss Busk's Folk-Lore of Rome, in which he persuades a simple-minded goody that he has come straight from Paradise, have their counterpart in the story of "The Good Wife and the Bad Husband" (pp. 131-135), especially the Norwegian version; from which it is probable was derived the Sinhalese folk-tale translated in The Orientalist, 1884, vol. i. p. 62. We trust we have in the foregoing notes sufficiently indicated the general character of this new collection of Indian popular fictions, which cannot fail, we are confident, to be eminently serviceable to students of the science of comparative folk-lore, and to amuse, and even instruct, general readers. The two fasciculi before us are well printed and in a handy form, and we hope the work will soon be completed.

Students will thank Dr. Salamone-Marino for bringing out in a convenient form his study on the mediaeval and modern funeral