The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night Volume XIII Part 31

wolf!"

[FN#436] Again the old notion of maternal and paternal instincts; but the children don't often seem in folk-tales, to have a similar impulsive affection for their unknown parents.

[FN#437] Colotropis gigantea.

[FN#438] Rkshashas and rksha.s.s are male and female demons or ogres, in the Hind mythology.

[FN#439] Literally, the king of birds, a fabulous species of horse remarkable for swiftness, which plays an important part in Tamil stories and romances.

[FN#440] Here we have a parallel to the biblical legend of the pa.s.sage of the Israelites dryshod

[FN#441] Demons, ogres, trolls, giants, et hoc genus omne, never fail to discover the presence of human beings by their keen sense of smelling. "Fee, faw, fum! I smell the blood of a British man,"

cries a giant when the renowned hero Jack is concealed in his castle. "Fum! fum! sento odor christianum," exclaims an ogre in Italian folk tales. "Femme, je sens la viande frache, la chair de chrtien!" says a giant to his wife in French stories.

[FN#442] In my popular "Tales and Fictions" a number of examples are cited of life depending on some extraneous object--vol. i.

pp. 347-351.

[FN#443] In the Tamil story-book, the English translation of which is called "The Dravidian Nights' Entertainments," a wandering princess, finding the labour-pains coming upon her, takes shelter in the house of a dancing-woman, who says to the nurses, "If she gives birth to a daughter, it is well [because the woman could train her to follow her own profession'], but if a son, I do not want him;--close her eyes, remove him to a place where you can kill him, and throwing a bit of wood on the ground tell her she has given birth to it."--I daresay that a story similar to the Bengali version exists among the Tamils.

[FN#444] It is to be hoped we shall soon have Sir Richard Burton's promised complete English translation of this work, since one half is, I understand, already done.