CHAP. V.
brother Karpara, for whom he contrives to perform the necessary amount of mourning by dashing on the ground a karpara, or pot of rice, and then bewailing his loss by the words, "Alas for my precious Karpara,"—words which the guards of course apply to the broken pipkin, and not to the dead thief. The story winds up with a proclamation from the king, promising half his realm to the magician who has done all this: but the princess bids him beware, and Gata goes away with her to another country.[1]
The story of Trophonios and Agamêdês.The mason's secret is much more closely reproduced in the story which Pausanias tells of Trophonios and Agamedes, the builders of the temple of Phoibos, after he had slain the dragon at Delphoi. These two builders also raise the treasury of Hyrieus, placing one of the stones so that they could remove it from the outside. Hyrieus, astonished at the lessening of his wealth, sets a snare, in which Agamêdês is caught, and Trophonios cuts off his head to save him from torture and himself from discovery. The latter precaution seems unnecessary, since Pausanias adds that the earth opened and received Trophonios as in the myth of Amphiaraos.
The Shifty Lad.In the Scottish story the Shifty Lad goes through his apprenticeship not among a company of thieves, but under the sole charge of the Black Rogue, of whom he rids himself by getting him to try the pleasant sensation of being hung by the neck. The trick answers to that of the Norse thief, but the mode of effecting it differs widely. Having disposed of his master, he engages himself to a carpenter whom he persuades to break into the kings storehouse. The advice of the Seanagal whom the king consults is that a hogshead of soft pitch should be placed near the entrance. The wright, again making the venture, sinks into the pitch, and the Shifty Lad, stepping in on his shoulders, takes as much as he can carry, and then sweeping off his master's head, leaves the body in the hogshead. Again the Seanagal is consulted, and his answer is "that they should set the trunk aloft on the points of the spears of the soldiers, to be carried from town to town, to see if they could find any one at all that would take sorrow for it." As they pass by the wright's house, his wife screams, but the Shifty Lad cutting himself with an adze leads the captain of the guard to think that the cry was caused by sorrow at- ↑ See Mr. Cowell's Paper "On the Hindu Version of the Story of Rhampsinitos," in the Journal of Philosophy, No. I. p. 66. The imprisonment of the king's daughter in the treasure—chamber can scarcely fail to remind us of Brynhild within her flaming walls; and thus the myth seems to exhibit an affinity to the legends which tell of unsuccessful attempts to rescue the imprisoned maiden, who is finally Won only by the peerless knight or irresistible warrior who can leap the hedge of spears or cross the fiery barrier. See also book ii. ch. viii. sect. 2.
