[211] Afanassieff, iv. 10.
[212] It is here, perhaps, to be remarked that in the Piedmontese dialect lightning is called loszna.
[213] Afanassieff, iv. 11. In the fourth story of the second book of the Pentamerone, instead of a fox, it is the cat that enriches Pippo Gagliufo and runs before him. In the same way as in the Russian stories the man shows himself ungrateful towards the fox, so in the Pentamerone the cat ends by cursing the ungrateful Pippo Gagliufo whom she had done good to. In the following story the fox offers herself as companion to the young bride who is looking for her lost husband.
"Pietushók, pietushók,
Zalatói grebeshók,
Másliannaja galovka,
Smiatanij lobók!
Vighliani v oshko;
Dam tebie kashki,
Na krasnoi loszkie."
In an unpublished Tuscan story which I heard related at Antignano near Leghorn, a chicken wishes to go with its father (the cock) into the Maremma to search for food. Its father advises it not to do so for fear of the fox, but the chicken insists upon going; on the way it meets the fox, who is about to eat it, when the chicken beseeches him to let it go into the Maremma, where it will fatten, lay eggs, bring up young chickens, and be able to provide the fox with a much more substantial meal than it now could. The fox consents. The chicken brings up a hundred young ones; when they are grown up, they set out to return home; every fowl carries in its mouth an ear of millet, except the youngest. On the way they meet the fox waiting for them; on seeing all these animals each with a straw in its beak, the astonished fox asks the mother-hen what it is they carry. "All fox's tails," she answers, upon which the fox takes to its heels.—We find the fox's tail in connection with ears of corn in the legend of Samson; the incendiary fox is also found in Ovid's Fasti, iv. 705; (from the malice with which the story-teller (a woman) relates the fable, it is probable that the fox's tail has here also a phallic meaning).—In Sextus Empiricus we read that a fox's tail hung on the arm of a weak husband is of great use to him.
[215] Thus, in the myth of Kephalos, his dog cannot, by a decree of fate, overtake the fox; but inasmuch as, on the other hand, no one also, by decree of fate, can escape from the dog of Kephalos, dog and fox are both, by the command of Zeus, changed into stone (the two auroras, or dying sun and dying moon).
[216] This work has, on the other hand, been already almost accomplished, as regards the Franco-Germanic part, in the erudite and interesting introduction (pp. 5-163) which Ch. Potvin has prefixed to his translation into verse of the Roman du Renard, Paris, Bohné; Bruxelles, Lacroix, 1861. I am told that Professor Schiefner read a discourse two years since at St Petersburg upon the story of the fox, but I do not know whether it has been published.
[217] Vṛikâya ćiǵ ǵasamânâya çaktam; Ṛigv. vii. 68, 8.—The grateful wolf and crow are found united to assist Ivan Tzarević in the twenty-fourth story of the second book of Afanassieff.
[218] xix. 108, 109.