prince the moment his head is struck off, has many parallels in European folk-tales; commonly it is a fox or a horse who had rendered the hero important service, and desires to be decapitated, with the like result.[1]
To return to the Breton version, the first part of which only is analogous to “The Frog Prince”, the other incidents having a very distinct Eastern flavour; such as the lady’s appointing Jack to meet her a year and a day hence at the fountain, fasting, and without having embraced another woman in the interim; his falling asleep after eating a trifle, and his consulting the maid of the inn: these will doubtless recall to readers of the Arabian Nights similar incidents in the story of “Azíz and Azíza” (Lane, Payne, Burton). Then we have the lady’s departure for her own country—fairyland, evidently—and her imposing on him the task of coming to her; which reminds us of the Arabian tales of Mazin of Khurasán and Hasan of Basra (Scott, Lane, Payne, Burton), when the hero goes in quest of his fairy bride, after she has obtained possession of her feather-robe and fled away. The magic balls which rolled before Jack and conducted him to the second and third hermits are decidedly of Eastern conception, and occur in the tale of Mazin of Khurasán and others. The sending of Jack by one old man to one older, to obtain the information he desires, is common to European as well as Asiatic fictions. Thus in the Swedish tale of the Beautiful Palace, etc. (Thorpe’s Yule-tide Stories), the hero is sent by an old woman to an older sister, who in turn sends him to one still more aged. In No. 2 of Dozon’s Contes Albanais the hero is directed in like manner; and in Laura Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen, a prince goes to three aged
- ↑ In the story of “The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Haugh,” a young damsel is turned to a dragon by her wicked stepmother, and the enchantment can only be done away by Chylde Wynde, her own brother, kissing her. See Mr. Jacobs’ English Fairy Tales, lately issued in a dainty volume by Mr. Nutt.
