Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/324

 316 the tale. Dr. Köhler has brought several of these together in a note above mentioned to the variant of the King Lear type given by Bladé. I have already cited that story so much at length that I need now only mention the differences of a few of these variants; premising, however, that the elder daughters' histories being dropped after the heroine's expulsion in all the forms of this type, there is no illtreatment by them of the father, and, consequently, no intervention by the heroine to vindicate him. In the Venetian tale, the king orders the heroine to be taken into a desert place and put to death, her heart and eyes being brought to him in proof of the execution of his command. The servant entrusted with the foul work deceives him with the heart and eyes of a bitch, having let his daughter go. The maiden meets an old crone, by whom we are doubtless to understand a white witch, or an Italian "Fata." This personage gives her a berry, which, put into her bosom, turns her into a little old woman. Thus disguised she takes service as a henwife at a king's palace; but the king's son watches and discovers her real character. He marries her, and her father is bidden to the wedding feast. She arranges that salt is omitted from all the dishes put before him. He cannot eat, and in remorse tells the story of his conduct towards his youngest daughter, confessing that he was wrong. I have not had the opportunity of examining the Spanish, Flemish, and Hungarian tales mentioned by Köhler, but from his analysis they seem to follow the general course of the Venetian tale. In the first of these the executioners carry back to the king one of the heroine's toes and a phial full of a chicken's blood as guarantees of their fidelity, and she becomes a gooseherd. In the Flemish and Hungarian tales the answers of the two elder daughters differ slightly, and the heroine is not ordered to death but simply expelled; and in the former the plot follows a well-known variation of the Peau d'Âne story. There the heroine, taking service at a castle, appears thrice at religious worship clad as a princess, leaving behind her each time a different article, by which at last she is recognised. The articles dropped in the tale in question are a shoe,