Note 9 — Chapter LVII

In La Fontaine’s Contes et Nouvelles III, 13, there is a little dog qui secoue de l’argent et des pierreries. The idea probably comes from the Mahábhárata. In this poem Srinjaya has a son named Suvarṇashṭívin. Some robbers treat him as the goose that laid the golden eggs was treated. There are also birds that spit gold in the Mahábhárata. (See Lévêque, Les Mythes et Légendes de l’Inde, pp. 289–294.) There is an ass with the same gift in Sicilianische Märchen, No. 52. For the wishing-stone see Dasent’s Norse Tales, Introduction, p. xcv. He remarks that the stone in his tale No. LIX, which tells the prince all the secrets of his brides, “is plainly the old Okastein or wishing-stone.”