Note 28 — INTRODUCTION (continued 2)

There is also a frequent identity of incident in Gypsy and Indian folk-tales. Thus, in the Hungarian-Gypsy version of ‘The Vampire’ (No. 5), the king sends his coachman to pluck the flower that has grown from the maiden’s grave; the coachman cannot, but the king himself can, and takes the flower home. Just so the Bel-Princess, thrown into a well, turns into a lotus-flower, which recedes from the villager who tries to pluck it, but floats into the prince’s hand (Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, p. 145; also p. 10). Fruits causing pregnancy are common in Gypsy as in Indian folk-tales (cf. Notes to No. 16); and God sends St. Peter with them in the former just as Mahádeo does an old fakír in the latter. The sleeping beauty in ‘The Winged Hero’ (No. 26) lies lifeless on the bed, and is awakened only by the removal of the candle from her head; in ‘The Boy with the Moon on his Forehead’ (Lal Behari Day’s Folk-tales of Bengal, p. 251) it is two little sticks of gold and silver that revive the suspended animation of the young lady sleeping on the golden bedstead. The rescue of the eaglets from the dragon in ‘Mare’s Son’ (No. 20) exactly matches the rescue of the two birds from the huge serpent in the Bengal ‘Story of Prince Sobur’ (p. 134); and the princess in the tree in that same Bengal story (p. 126) comes very near the wife in the oak in the Polish-Gypsy ‘Tale of a Girl who was sold to the Devil’ (No. 46). The robbers in a Moravian-Gypsy story (No. 43) break through the wall of a castle like the robbers of Scripture and of Indian folk-tales; and one very curious feature, which we can trace across two continents, is the feather, hair, or wing of a bird, beast, or insect, the burning of which, or sometimes the mere thinking on which, summons its former possessor to the hero’s aid. It occurs in this passage from an unpublished Turkish-Gypsy story (Paspati, p. 523):—‘He gave the old man a feather, and he said to the old man, “Take it and carry it to your daughter, and if she puts it in the fire I will come.” ’ It occurs, too, in the Roumanian-Gypsy story of ‘The Three Princesses and the Unclean Spirit’ (No. 10), in the Bukowina-Gypsy story of ‘The Enchanted City’ (No. 32), and in the Polish-Gypsy ‘Tale of a Girl who was sold to the Devil’ (No. 46). It is by no means a common feature in Western folklore, but it occurs in Basile’s Pentamerone, iv. 3, and in the Irish story of ‘The Weaver’s Son and the Giant of the White Hill’ (Curtin, pp. 64–77) the hero gets a bit of wool from the ram, a bit of fin from the salmon, and a feather from the eagle, with injunctions to take them out when in any difficulty, and so summon all the rams, salmon, or eagles of the world to his assistance. As I show in the notes to No. 46, the idea is of frequent occurrence in the folk-tales of the Levant28 and of India. In Mrs. Steel’s Wide-awake Stories, p. 32, the demon says to the Faithful Prince, ‘Take this hair with you, and, when you need help, burn it, then I will come immediately to your assistance.’ And in the Arabian Nights (‘Conclusion of the Story of the Ladies of Baghdad’) the Jinneeyeh gives the first lady a lock of her hair, and says, ‘When thou desirest my presence, burn a few of these hairs, and I will be with thee quickly, though I should be beyond Mount Kaf.’