Page:The Katha Sarit Sagara.djvu/395

 ing the daughter cut an apple into nine shares : she put two at the head of the bed, two at the foot, two at the door of the kitchen, two at the house-door, and one outside the house. The giant awoke and called " Are you asleep?" several times, and the shares answered " No." At last he went and found the bed empty and cold, and pursued the fugitive couple. At the break of day the giant's daughter felt her father's breath burning her back. She told the prince to put his hand in the horse's ear, and fling what he found behind him. Ho found a sprig of sloe, flung it behind him, and produced a wood twenty miles long. The giant had to go back for his axe and wood-knife. In the middle of the day the prince finds in the ear of the filly a piece of gray stone. This produces twenty miles of gray rock behind them. The giant has to go back for his lever and mattock. The next thing, that the prince finds and flings behind him, is a bladder of water. This produces a fresh- water loch twenty miles broad. In it the giant is happily drowned. The rest of the story has no bearing upon the tale of Śringabhuja. Köhler compares a story in William Carleton's stories of the Irish peasantry. Here there is a sprig, a pebble and a drop of water producing a wood, a rock and a lake. He compares also a Norwegian story, Ashbjörnsen, No. 46, and some Swedish stories collected by Hylten Cavallius and G. Stephens. The three tasks are very different in the different forms of the tale. The ladder of fingers is only found is the Celtic form.

It is only in the Gaelic and Irish forms that the objects thrown behind to check pursuit are found in the ear of the horse.

In the latter form of the story of the Mermaid, Thorpe's Yule-Tide Stories, p. 205, we have the pursuit with much the same incidents as in our text. See also Ralston's remarks on the story in our text at pp. 132 and 143 of his Russian Folk-Tales. Cp. also Veckenstedt's Wendische Sagen, p. 216. An Indian parallel will be found in Miss Frere's Old Deccan Days, pp. 62 and 63. A Modern Greek one in Bernhard Schmidt's Griechische Märchen, pp. 76-79.

 

Then, the next morning, when Naraváhanadatta was in Ratnaprabhá's house, Gomukha and the others came to him. But Marubhúti, being a little sluggish with intoxication produced by drinking spirits, approached slowly, decorated with flowers, and anointed with unguents. Then Gomukha, with face amused at his novel conception of statesman-like behaviour, out of fun ridiculed him by imitating his stammering utterance and staggering gait, and said to him, "How comes it that you, though the son of Yaugandharáyana, do not know policy, that you drink spirits in the morning, and come drunk into the presence of the prince? When the intoxicated Marubhúti heard this, be said to him in his anger, "This should be said to me by the prince or some superior. But, tell me, who are you that you take upon you to instruct me', you son of Ityaka?" When 