Note 187.1 — Chapter VII · DEATH AND BIRTH AS TRANSFORMATION.

M. Cosquin, commenting on the Egyptian tale, has brought together a number of analogues, chiefly European. I proceed to notice some of these, and a few others containing a similar chain of incidents. In a Roumanian story which follows the main lines of the Transylvanian, an emperor’s son weds the youngest of three daughters. The heroine’s foes, however, are not her sisters, but her husband’s stepmother and her daughter. As she had foredoomed, she bears twin sons with golden hair and a golden star on the forehead. By his stepmother’s treachery her husband is induced to believe that she has given birth to two puppies; and he orders her to be buried in the earth to the breast, that the world might know what was her punishment who would betray the emperor’s son. Then he married his stepsister. The twins had been interred beneath the emperor’s window; and out of their grave grew two fair aspen-trees. In three days they had attained the stature of three years, and the emperor took great pleasure in them. Long did his wife beg for permission to cut them down ere he yielded; but, after all, emperors are but men. So cut down they were, and made by his command, the one into a bedstead for himself and the other for the empress. But the bedsteads talked, as in the Transylvanian tale, and the empress overheard them. The next day she caused them to be burnt, and their ashes thrown to the winds. When the fire was hottest there flew out two sparks and fell into the deep water that flowed through the realm. There they became two fish with golden scales. They were caught by the imperial fishermen, and then changed back into their original form of twin boys with golden hair and golden stars. When they had grown up they made their way to the palace and told their tale, to the confusion and condemnation of their enemies, and the restoration of their mother to her rightful place.187.1 According to a Sicilian variant, the heroine, married against the will of the queen, her mother-in-law, bears thirteen children, twelve sons and a daughter. They are thrown into the garden, where they grow up as twelve orange-trees and a lemon-tree. A goat eats them and bears the children anew.187.2 In a Bengalee tale the heroine kindly relieves her fellow-wife by accidentally tumbling into a well. A rishi explains to her husband that she was not of royal blood, but had been born a rat, and changed by him at her own wish into a cat, then into a dog, a boar, an elephant and a beautiful girl, successively. He directs the well to be filled up, and causes a poppy-tree to grow up out of her flesh and bones; and that is the origin of opium.187.3