watches her, and, on discovering what really happens, she tells the king's son, who arrives in the nick of time. He insists on taking the heroine into his service, and, of course, catches her performing her toilette, and marries her. Her father comes to the wedding feast, where, deprived of salt, he is brought to reconciliation with the heroine, and punishes her jealous sisters.
The Cinderella episode reappears in a Portuguese tale[1] in a form not quite so common as some of those already cited, but somewhat better fitted to the framework. The two elder sisters in this tale respond, as usual, satisfactorily to their father's question. The youngest and best beloved, on the contrary, declares that she loves him as food loves salt; whereupon he drives her from the palace. She takes service as cook at another royal residence, and there slily puts a very small ring of great price into a pie. This ring, when found, will fit nobody but herself; and the king's son falls in love with her, suspecting she is of noble family. This leads him to watch; and one day his suspicions become certainties, by finding her dressed in the garb of a princess. He now obtains his father's leave to marry her, but she stipulates that she shall herself cook the wedding feast. Her father attends the marriage; and she renders his food unpalatable by cooking it without salt. On her revealing herself, he confesses his fault in the usual edifying manner.[2]
- ↑ Theophilo Braga, Contos Tradicionaes do Povo Portuguez, vol. i. p. 122, vol. ii. p. 202.
- ↑ While these sheets are going through the press the eighth volume of the Biblioteca de las Tradiciones Populares Españolas has appeared. It contains a collection of Asturian folk-lore, obtained by Senor L. Giner Arivau from a young woman of Proaza, a small hamlet in the province of Oviedo. Among the tales I find (p. 175) a variant of The Value of Salt type. As in the Basque the heroine answers her father that he is dear to her as the bread to the salt. A bitch's eyes are taken to the king in proof of his daughter's execution. Meanwhile she buys from a shepherd his clothes, and takes service at a palace. The turkeys put under her charge are lost in admiration of her beauty, when she discloses her real self, and forget to feed. The consequence is that every day one of them dies. This rouses the suspicions of the king's son, and leads to her marriage with him. The heroine's father is invited to the wedding and brought to a confession of his wrong-doing by being served with a loaf made without salt. Senor Arivau in a note refers to a parallel story in the Panchatantra. Unfortunately the usefulness of Benfey's admirable edition of that work is marred
