Page:Researches respecting the Book of Sindibad and Portuguese Folk-Tales.djvu/19

a lion, but the hag induces her victims to tie them up with one of her hairs, which acquires irresistible strength when she calls upon it to do so. In the Russian variants of the story the witch usually petrifies her victims. No. 14 contains the widely-spread story of the ogress who intended to bake her human guests, but was baked herself instead. One of its incidents, the testing of the tenderness of her prisoners, closely resembles a passage in the Norse story of "Boots and the Troll." The "Three Spinsters" (Grimm, 14), who attribute their ugliness to the amount of work they have done, and thereby rescue a girl in whom they are interested from a life of industry, figure here in No. 19. "The Seven Iron Slippers" of No. 21 are the counterparts of "The Shoes which were danced to pieces" (Grimm, No. 133). No. 17, "The Baker's Idle Son," is a variant of a tale which is popular everywhere, but especially in the East of Europe. In Russia it is generally known as the story of "Emilian the Fool," or "By the Pike's Will" (Afanasief, Skazki, v. No. 55, vi. No. 32, vii. No. 31). The opening is the same as that of the German story of "The Fisherman and his Wife" (Grimm, No. 19), in which a fish, in return for its life being spared, enables its sparer to obtain everything which he wishes. In the variant in Hahn's Griechische Märchen (No. 8) the hero is a