Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 4 1886.djvu/340

 332 Ill The Prince's Dream, given by Von Hahn, the hero's adventures belong to the myth embodied in The Forbidden Chamber group, and to that division of the group, which I have in a former paper called The Teacher and his Scholar type; sub-type Scabby John. The cause of offence here also, as in several variants examined before, is a dream in which the hero imagines the king, his father, stepping down from his throne, and placing himself, his youngest son, upon it. The two elder brothers have only been favoured with commonplace visions of marriage with the daughters of neighbouring monarchs. After residing with an ogre, and escaping from him by the aid of a speaking horse and a dog, the youth clothes himself in a skin of an old man and returns thus disguised to his father's court. The father, meantime, has, with one of those fatuous caprices that in these tales lead kings so often to their doom, dug an enormous ditch, and proclaimed that he who successfully jumps it shall have the crown—paying, if he fail, the penalty of his ambition with his life. The hero, of course, performs the feat, and thus fulfils the prophecy of his dream.

A curious variation of the starting point occurs in a South Slavonic story of The Emperor's Son-in-law, given by Dr. Krauss out of Vuk's collection from Dalmatia, Herzegovina, Servia, and the neighbouring districts. There the boy is beaten and turned out of doors by his parents, not for telling the wonderful dream he professes to have had, but for refusing to do so. He is found in the street by a Tartar, who in turn, on learning from him why he weeps, enquires what really was his dream. The hero replies that he would not tell even the emperor himself. The Tartar repeating this to the emperor, that august personage sends for the boy, and being himself unable to extract the information exhibits his imperial power by casting him into prison. The place of incarceration is a room in the castle next to the apartments of the emperor's daughter. The partition, as is usual in such cases, is extremely thin and of so elastic a character that our hero is