Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/333

Rh add that her patron has been, in the meantime, by his own directions, flung into a heated oven and there converted into crowns, apples and ribbons.

It is probable that we may ascribe the identity of the heroine's adventures in these tales to the obvious causes of nearness in geographical situation and in blood of the peasants who narrate them. Too much stress, therefore, must not be laid upon this identity. But it may be expected that episodes, both of The Savage King class and of the Peau d'Âne class, will be found in stories of the present type in other countries. The adventures of a heroine are usually more limited in range than those of a hero; and the adventures just referred to are such as would fit easily into the framework of the tale. Moreover, they have a sort of property in that framework, as being already found in more than one type of The Outcast Child group. Waiving, however, the question whether we are likely to find these episodes, or either of them as a whole, elsewhere, some light may perhaps be thrown on that of The Savage King. Let us take first the incident of the bird, whether dove, turkey, or parrot, whose extraordinary conduct brings about the happy result of all märchen. If the creature's proceedings could be so interpreted as to render probable an earlier connection with the Peau d'Ane plot, more than one of the problems connected with this type of the story would be solved. And, indeed, something might perhaps be made of the fact that the heroine of many Peau d'Âne tales becomes a gooseherd, and that the animals under her care betray her by uttering articulate self-congratulations upon the beauty and grace of their warden. But this must not be pressed. Peau d'Âne belongs, there can be little doubt, to an essentially distinct group; and its relations to The Outcast Child are to be explained rather as the accidental blending of the two separate stories, in consequence of the obvious resemblance of the heroine's circumstances at one point, than as the natural outgrowth of the narrative. The Brazilian story of The King Andrade, given by Professor Romero, however, enables us to go one step further back. There the king, with prurient folly, directs his three daughters every morning to