Chapter VI · POLISH-GYPSY STORIES (continued 2)
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He paid this miller a large sum of money for bringing him to the house where his wife was living. He comes home; his mother sees that it is her son, who had been absent from home for more than twenty years. His child is now grown up. She is filled then with joy, so is his son at his father’s return; and they all live together with the good, golden God.
‘The Witch’ is identical with the middle portion (pp. 125–130) of Ralston’s ‘The Water King and Vasilissa the Wise,’ collected by Afanasief in the Voronej government, South-eastern Russia. Ralston cites many variants, among them an Indian one. Cf. also ‘Prince Unexpected,’ a Polish story, No. 17 in Wratislaw’s Sixty Slavonic Folk-tales, pp. 108–121. A striking parallel for the recovery of the smock is furnished by ‘La Loulie et la Belle de la Terre’ in Dozon’s Contes Albanais, pp. 94–5. Cf. also Wratislaw’s Croatian story, ‘The She-Wolf,’ No. 55, p. 290; Georgeakis and Pineau’s story from Lesbos, No. 2, ‘Le Mont des Cailloux,’ p. 11; and especially Cosquin’s ‘Chatte Blanche,’ No. 32, with the valuable notes thereon (ii. 9–28). The Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘The Green Man of Noman’s Land,’ No. 62, is almost a variant (there, likewise, the hero is tearful); so, too, is the Bukowina-Gypsy story, ‘Made over to the Devil’ (No. 34). Cf. the notes on these; and Clouston, i. 182–191, for bird-maidens. The pursuit and the transformation into a church and a priest are discussed pretty fully in the Introduction.