Note 44 — TALES OF A PARROT.

Many Asiatic stories relate to the concealing of treasure—generally at the foot of a tree, to mark the spot—by two or more companions, and its being secretly stolen by one of them. The device of the carpenter in the foregoing tale of abducting the rascally goldsmith’s two sons, and so on, finds an analogue in the Panchatantra, the celebrated Sanskrit collection of fables (Book I, Fab. 21, of Benfey’s German translation), where we read that a young man, who had spent the wealth left to him by his father, had only a heavy iron balance remaining of all his possessions, and depositing it with a merchant went to another country. When he returned, after some time, he went to the merchant and demanded back his balance. The merchant told him it had been eaten by rats; adding: “The iron of which it was composed was particularly sweet, and so the rats ate it.” The young man, knowing that the merchant spoke falsely, formed a plan for the recovery of his balance. One day he took the merchant’s young son, unknown to his father, to bathe, and left him in the care of a friend. When the merchant missed his son he accused the young man of having stolen him, and summoned him to appear in the king’s judgment-hall. In answer to the merchant’s accusation, the young man asserted that a kite had carried away the boy; and when the officers of the court declared this to be impossible, he said: “In a country where an iron balance was eaten by rats, a kite might well carry off an elephant, much more a boy.” The merchant, having lost his cause, returned the balance to the young man and received back his boy. Return