Notes.
This story, like the preceding, is clearly an importation from the Occident. The bibliography of the cycle to which it belongs may be found in Bolte-Polívka, 2 : 69–71 (on Grimm, No. 70). German, Breton, French, Flemish, Swedish, Catalan, Serbian, Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, and Finnish versions have been recorded. The story as a whole does not appear to have been collected from the Far East hitherto, though separate tales turning on the sale of a cat in a catless country (Dick Whittington type) are found among the Jews and in Africa. Bolte and Polívka give the bibliography of this latter group of stories on pp. 71–76.
The oldest form of our story known is that found in Nicholas de Troyes’ “Grand Parangon des nouvelles Nouvelles,” No. X, dating from 1535. The three things here bequeathed by the father are a cock, a cat, and a sickle, as in our version. I think it probable that the tale was introduced into the Philippines through the medium of a French religious. The Catalan form differs from the French in mentioning a fourth “heirloom,” a raven, and was probably not the parent of our Tagalog version.