Note 14 — Note on Chapter XXXIX.

Compare the story of “die kluge Else,” the 34th in Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen, where the heroine has a doubt about her own identity and goes home to ask her husband, and No. 59 in the same collection. Cp. also Campbell’s Tales from the West Highlands, Vol. II, p. 375, where one man is persuaded that he is dead, another that he is not himself, another that he is dressed when he is naked. See also the numerous parallels given in Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 54., Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p. 128) mentions a story in which a woman persuades her husband, that he is dead. See also Bartsch’s Sagen, Märchen, und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, Vol. I, p. 508. In Prym and Socin’s Syrische Märchen, No. LXII, page 250, the flea believes himself to be dead, and tells every one so.