Note 278 — Chapter I

Professor Spiegel says in a note, Khorda-Avesta, p. 147: "Die Beschwörung vormittelst einer Feder ist gewiss eine alteranische Vorstellung."—In a story, hitherto unpublished, of the Monferrato, communicated to me by Signor Ferraro, a woman, who had gone to eat parsley in the garden of a sorceress, was obliged to give her daughter up to her as a penalty for the offence. The girl was afterwards subjected to three difficult trials; to sunder in one day a mountain of wheat and millet into the grains composing it, to eat in one day a mountain of apples, and to wash, dry, and iron in one hour all the linen of a year. In the first trial, by means of two bird's feathers, she calls up a thousand birds, who separate the grain from the millet.—In the fourth story of the fifth book of the Pentamerone, the birds strip themselves of their feathers to fill a mattress which the witch has ordered the young Permetella to make. In a Tuscan story, for the possession of a peacock's feather, the young brother is killed.