Note 1 — Hero Tales and Drolls.

These two Tagalog stories, together with another, “How Piro became Rich,” which is almost identical with No. 5(a), may possibly be descended directly from an old Buddhist birth-story (“Gāmaṇi-canda-jātaka,” No. 257),—a tale in which W. A. Clouston (see Academy, No. 796, for Aug. 6, 1887) sees the germ of the “pound-of-flesh” incident. An abstract of the first part of this Jātaka will set forth the striking resemblance between our stories and this old Hindoo apologue,1 The part of the Jātaka that interests us is briefly the account of how a man was haled to the king’s tribunal for injuries done unwittingly, and how the king passed judgment thereupon. The abstract follows:—