Page:Tales of old Lusitania.djvu/112

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98

PORTUGUESE FAIRY TALES.

deceived; for the ugly maiden pointed out to him at the races was a maid of honour who had come over with her, and not herself, as he could plainly see himself.^[1]

Coimbra.

↑ The conclusion of the tale is evidently inconsistent with all the rest. The princess "makes up a little story—not telling him" that her beauty had been restored by magic, but—what? Why, her real history, and not a "made-up story" at all. But the allusion to magic proves that there must be another version of the tale, namely, that the "wife whom her husband never saw" was really ugly, until some preternatural power transformed her. And, in fact, that is the old Hindû story told in Buddhist books, where the woman prays to Buddha, and he makes her beautiful. It is so told in the Mongolian "Uliger-ûn-dalai." (Sea-of-fables), tale 26.

[1] The conclusion of the tale is evidently inconsistent with all the rest. The princess "makes up a little story—not telling him" that her beauty had been restored by magic, but—what? Why, her real history, and not a "made-up story" at all. But the allusion to magic proves that there must be another version of the tale, namely, that the "wife whom her husband never saw" was really ugly, until some preternatural power transformed her. And, in fact, that is the old Hindû story told in Buddhist books, where the woman prays to Buddha, and he makes her beautiful. It is so told in the Mongolian "Uliger-ûn-dalai." (Sea-of-fables), tale 26.

[1]