Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/322

 314 rights by her lover and his father. When this is done she yields; and the faithful servant is also rewarded with a suitable marriage.

In this story Peau d'Âne has got inextricably mixed with King Lear and his daughters; or rather, this is the story of Peau d'Âne with the motive of the heroine's flight and disguise attributed to Lear's senile folly. Nothing could have been better adapted to exhibit the Proteus-like character of folk-tales, or to make it clear that a classification of incidents is of equal importance to the student with a classification of tales. It is not, however, for this purpose that I have given this story from Agenais so much at length, but in order to distinguish it from some other versions which we shall meet with presently, and which Dr. Köhler in a note to this story brings into comparison with it. All I desire now to observe is that the wickedness of the elder daughters is insisted upon as fully as in the typical story itself, and their punishment is brought about by the heroine after her father has recognised his former injustice to her.

In a Corsican variant the connection with the story of Peau d'Âne is, if possible, rendered more obvious by the actual introduction of the ass' skin. There the king's family is varied by the substitution of a son for the second daughter. He and the elder daughter reply to their father's enquiry in terms of the utmost extravagance and blasphemy; while the heroine, on the other hand, simply answers that she loves her father as a submissive and devoted daughter ought to love a father like him. For this reply he expels her from home, and, taking her robes, embroidered in gold and silver, she sets forth. Having found a dead ass by the roadside she flays it, and, clad in the hide, she enters a nobleman's service as goatherd. One day she leads her flock to a retired place and dresses herself in her royal garb. She is seen by the king's son, who has lost his way while hunting; and she flies, leaving behind a little shoe. By this she is discovered, but refuses to wed the prince until her father has been brought to see his mistake in regard to her, and is willing to be present at the marriage. The messengers sent to him find that his two elder children have dethroned him, and pent him in a dungeon into which no one can