Note 440 — Appendix IV. ADDITIONAL NOTES ON THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS.

This great class of tales is quite as widely extended in the north of Europe and Asia, as in the south. We meet with them in Siberia, and they are particularly common in Lapland. I believe, too that the Indian story of the Red Swan, (referred to by Longfellow, Hiawatha, xii.) is only a Swan Maiden legend in a rather modified form. As usual, we find a bizarre form of the Swan Maiden story among the Samoghitians of Lithuania. The Zemyne is a one-eyed venomous snake, with black blood which cures all diseases and neutralises all magic. It is an enchanted maiden; and sometimes the skin has been stolen, and she has married a man. But if she recovers her skin, she resumes her snake-form, and bites and kills her husband and children. Many other strange things are related of the Zemyne (Veckenstedt, Mythen, Sagen, und Legenden der Zamaiten, ii., pp. 149–152).