Note 7 — Mabait and the Duende.

The occasion for Benfey’s dissertation on this particular tale is the relationship he sees between it and the large family of stories turning on the motive of a marvellous cure, a representative of which is “Pantschatantra,” 5 : 12, “The Miraculous Cure of a Blind Man, a Humpback, and a Three-breasted Princess.”7 While the story we are discussing cannot be considered in any sense an offshoot of the Pantschatantra tale, it can scarcely be denied, says Benfey, that between the two there is a definite internal relationship, which is further manifested by the fact that in its later development the latter is actually joined to the former (p. 519).