Page:The folk-tales of the Magyars.djvu/423

 Rh a pack of wolves at his heels. The lad shoots into the pack, killing one wolf, and thus terrifying the rest. The grateful devil promises the lad whatever he wishes. Acting on the advice of a maid in the devil's house, he asks "for the mare which is in the third stall, on the right-hand side of the stable." The devil is very loath to give this, but is obliged to do so, and gives the boy a kantele, a fiddle, and a flute besides. The mare acts the part of a Tátos for part of the tale, and then changes into a woman, being the wife of the king, who appears at the latter part of the story, and who orders the hero to perform difficult tasks. The kantele is like the fiddle in the "Jew in a thicket" (Musical Myths, vol. ii., 122; Grimm, vol. ii. p. 97), it makes every one dance that hears it. The woman drops out of the story, and the persecuting king is kicked up into the clouds by the irate devil who comes to help the hero, and is never heard of again.

A horse that can talk plays a prominent part in another Finnish tale, "The Golden Bird."—"Dapplegrim" is the magic foal in the Norse; see Dasent, pp. 813 and 367. See also the "brown foal' 'in Grimm, "Two Brothers," No. 107, and the "white horse," in "Ferdinand the Faithful," No. 126, and note.

Note also horses in "Der goldne Vogel," "Das Zauberross," and "Der Knabe und der Schlange," in Haltrich's, Siebenbuergische Märchen; "La Belle aux cheveux d'or," in Contes des Fées, par Mme. D'Aulnoy; "Schönchen Goldhaar," Märchensaal aller Völker für Jung und Alt, Dr. Kletke, i. p. 344; " Der goldne Apfelbaum," in Kaiadschitsch, Volksmärchen der Serben, p. 33; and Denton, p. 43. Enchanted horses play a prominent part in "Simple Johnny," p. 36, and "The Black Charger of Hernando," p. 292, in Patranas or Spanish Stories.—Cf. "The little Mare" from Mentone, F. L. Record, vol. iii. p. 44. The Russians tell of "a sorry colt rolling in the muck," which possesses marvellous powers in "Marya Morevna," Ralston, p. 94; and in "Koshchei, the Deathless," there is an heroic steed, ibidem, p. 101. See also "Ivan Kruchina," Naake, p. 124. "The marvellous white horse " appears also in Austria; see Land of Marvels, pp. 48, 256, 260, 272, 342.

In the story of the third royal mendicant, in the Arabian Nights, Agib mounts a black horse and flies through the air. Similar incidents