Note 180 — Chapter XI

In the fifteenth story of Afanassieff, the bear revenges himself upon an old man who had cut off one of his paws with a hatchet; the bear makes himself a paw from the wood of a linden-tree, takes the old man and the old woman by surprise in their house and devours them. In the nineteenth story of the fourth book, the bear allies himself with the fox lamed by the peasant, and with the gadfly that the peasant had placed behind the straw, in order to revenge himself upon the peasant, who, promising to cover him with spots like the horse, had struck him here and there on the body with a red-hot axe, so that the bones were left bare. This fable is perhaps connected with the Hindoo superstition that the burns of a horse are cured by means of a monkey. As to the wooden paws, they are doubtless the branches of the cloudy or nocturnal forest. In the Edda of Sömund it is said that the Alfes are accustomed to call the trees the beautiful arms; we already know the meaning of the boy with the golden hand.