Notes.
A Visayan variant, “The Ape and the Firefly” (JAFL 20 : 314) shows the firefly making use of the same ruse the dragon-flies employ to get the monkeys to slay one another. The first part of this variant is connected with our [No. 60]. The “killing fly on head” incident we have already met with in [No. 9], in the notes to which I have pointed out Buddhistic parallels. It also occurs in [No. 60 (d)]. In a German story (Grimm, No. 68, “The Dog and the Sparrow”) the sparrow employs the same trick to bring ruin and death on a heartless wagoner who has cruelly run over the dog.
A closer analogue is the Celebes fable of “The Butterfly and the Ten Monkeys,” given in Bezemer, p. 292.
Our story belongs to the large cycle of tales in which is represented a war between the winged creatures of the air and the four-footed beasts. In these stories, as Grimm says in his notes to No. 102, “The Willow-Wren and the Bear,” “the leading idea is the cunning of the small creatures triumphing over the large ones .... The willow-wren is the ruler, for the saga accepts the least as king as readily as the greatest.” For the bibliography of the cycle and related cycles, see Bolte-Polívka, 1 : 517–519, and 2 : 435–438, to which add the “Latukika-jātaka,” No. 357, which tells how a quail brought about the destruction of an elephant that had killed her young ones. I am inclined to think that the Bicol and Visayan stories belonging to this group are native—at least, have not been derived through the Spanish.
I have another Visayan story, however, relating a war between the land and the air creatures, which may possibly have come from the Occident. It was narrated by José R. Cuadra, and runs thus:—