CHAP.
colloquies which lead at length to the true answer exhibit the giant in the more kindly and rollicking character frequently bestowed on >— trolls, dwarfs, elves, and demons, in the mythology of the Western Aryans. The final answer corresponds precisely to that of Punch- kin. " Far, far away in a lake lies an island ; on that island stands a church ; in that church is a well ; in that well swims a duck ; in that duck there is an egg ; and in that egg there lies my heart, you darling." His darling takes a tender farewell of Boots, who sets off on the wolf's back, to solve, as in the Eastern tale, the mystery of the water and the bird. The wolf takes him to the island ; but the church keys hang high on the steeple, and the raven is now brought in to perform an office analogous to that of the young eaglets in the Deccan legend. At last, by the salmon's help, the egg is brought from the bottom of the well where the duck had dropped it.
" Then the wolf told him to squeeze the egg, and as soon as ever he squeezed it, the giant screamed out.
" 'Squeeze it again,' said the wolf; and when the prince did so, the giant screamed still more piteously, and begged and prayed so prettily to be spared, saying he would do all that the prince wished if he would only not squeeze his heart in two.
" ' Tell him if he will restore to life again your six brothers and their brides, you will spare his life,' said the wolf. Yes, the giant was ready to do that, and he turned the six brothers into king's sons again, and their brides into king's daughters.
" ' Now squeeze the egg in two,' said the wolf So Boots squeezed the egg to pieces, and the giant burst at once."
The supposition that these stories have been transmitted laterally Influence is tenable only on the further hypothesis, that in every Aryan land, literature from Eastern India to the Highlands of Scotland, the folk-lore of the country has had its character determined by the literature of written books, that in every land men have handled the stories introduced from other countries with the deliberate purpose of modifying and adapting them, and that they have done their work in such a way as sometimes to leave scarcely a resemblance, at other times scarcely to effect the smallest change. In no other range of literature has any such result ever been achieved. In these stories we have narratives which have confessedly been received in the crudest form, if the fable of the Brahman and the goat is to be taken as the original of the Master Thief, and which have been worked up with marvellous vigour and under indefinitely varied forms, not by the scholars who imported the volumes of the Kalila and Dimna, or the Exploits of the Romans, but by unknown men among the people. The tales
