Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/253

Rh CHAP, and a feather, to guide her in her quest of him.^ At last this guid- ance fails her, and she asks the sun and moon to tell her whither the ^^' , dove had gone. As in the tale of Demeter and Persephone, they are unable to say : but they give her a casket and an egg which may one day be of use. She then asks aid of the North Wind, who bears her over the world until she rescues her lover, who has resumed his lion's shape, from a caterpillar who is an enchanted princess. But the latter, when disenchanted, seizes on the maiden's lover, and bears him away. The maiden follows to the place in which she hears that the Avedding is to be celebrated, and then opening the casket, finds a dress which glistens like the sun and which the princess seeks to buy. But it can be given only for flesh and blood, and the maiden demands access to the bridegroom's chamber as her recompense. During the first night her lover sleeps by force of a potion, but her voice sounds in his ears like the murmuring of the wind through the fir-trees. On the next day, learning the trick, he refuses the draught, and the maiden, availing herself of the gift bestowed by the moon, is reunited to him at last.^

The Norse tale " East of the Sun and West of the Moon," ap- •• East of proaches more nearly to the form of Beauty and the Beast. A white est bear (we are at once remmded of the process which converted the of the seven shiners into seven bears) taps at a poor man's window on a °°"* cold winter night, and promises him boundless wealth, on condition that he receives his daughter as his wife. The man is willing, but the maiden flatly says nay, until, overcome by the thought of her father's poverty, she agrees to live with the beast. The bear takes her to a palace in which the rooms gleam with silver and gold ; but the being who comes to her at night is a beautiful youth who never allows her to see him. The woman who acts the part of Venus in this tale is the mother, not of the lover, but of the maiden ; and as she could scarcely be represented as jealous of her daughter's happi- ness, we are told that, while suggesting the same doubts which brought Psyche to her trouble, she warned her child not to let a drop of oil fall on her husband while she stooped to look upon him. The sequel of the story jjresents no features materially different from

' Frere, Deccan Tales, 221. prince is imprisoned. In the tale of Stove (Grimm), the part of Eros is is rescued from a tower or well in which played by a king's son, who is compelled she is confined like the Argive Danae. by a witch to sit in a great iron stove In the legends of the True Bride and of which stood in a wood. This is mani- the Drummer the maiden recovers her festly a reversing of the myth of Bryn- lover as in the story of the Soaring hild, in which the flame surrounding Lark. See also ch. viii. sect. 2 of this the maiden on the Glistening Heath book, answers to the fier)- stove in which the
 * In the German story of the Iron Strong Hans (Grimm), it is Psyche who