Note 19.1 — Chapter VIII · THE LIFE-TOKEN IN TALE AND CUSTOM.
Reading edition
So far we have found no Life-token in mirror or well. A mirror or well, however, which reveals to the inquirer only the health of one in whom he has an interest, is obviously nothing more than a special variety of the mirror or well revealing anything or everything. This is the variety mentioned in a Roman variant of Beauty and the Beast, where Beauty, on taking leave of the Beast for a short time, is given a mirror, into which she can look and see how he is.19.1 In a Swedish märchen already cited, on the two comrades parting at a crossway, one of them dips his knife into the fountain adjacent, and says to the other: “It shall be to thee a sign that I am living so long as the water of this spring is clear; but if it be red and turbid, then I shall be dead, and I certainly expect that thou wilt avenge my death.”19.2