Note 99.1 — Chapter XVIII · THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA: ITS RELATION TO HUMAN SACRIFICES.

The Kabyle tale of The Children and the Bat makes the villain out of the heroine’s barren fellow-wife. The children are seven sons and a daughter. They are carried by the envious woman into the forest one after another as they are born. An old woman induces the maiden to ask her brothers to get a bat; and an old man directs the brothers one after another to a certain date-palm on the sea-shore. “What wild beast comes here?” asks the bat from the top of the tree. “Go to sleep, old head,” answers the lad. The bat changes the adventurer’s gun into a bit of wood, and renders the adventurer himself “microscopic.” When she has thus lost all her brothers the maiden goes to seek the bat. She does not answer the creature, but waits until it is asleep. Then she climbs the tree, seizes the bat, and compels it to restore her brothers, promising in return to clothe it in silver and gold. The bat conducts the band of children back to their father, saves them from partaking of the poison offered to them by their stepmother, and reunites them to their parents. The stepmother is bound to a horse’s tail and dragged to death, while the bat is returned to its tree and clad in silver and gold.99.1 A version from Mirzapur comprises the Supernatural Birth. The children are three in number, two lovely boys and a girl, born of the king’s favourite wife, in consequence of eating three fruits given by a fakir. Their mother’s fellow-wives play the usual treacherous part at their birth. When, years after, the wicked queens find out that the children are still alive and dwelling in a miraculous palace, the gift of the friendly fakir, they send to persuade the maiden (it is always the woman) to ask for a nightingale that dwelt in a certain jungle, could sing a thousand notes, and could talk like a man. The fakir warns the elder brother not to answer when the bird cries out to him, else he will be turned into stone. The youth succeeds; and as in the other variants, the evil devised by the wicked queens recoils on their own heads, for it is by means of the bird that the truth is brought to light and punishment inflicted.100.1