Seven princes have a very beautiful sister. An emperor decides upon marrying her, but upon the condition that if he does not find her to his taste, he will decapitate her seven brothers. They set out altogether, and the mother-in-law with her daughter follow them. On the way, the sun is hot, and the elder brother cries out, "Solabella, defend me from the heat, for you must please the king." The step-mother advises her to take off her necklaces and to put them on her half-sister. The second brother next complains of the heat, and the step-mother advises her to take off her gold apparel and to put it on her half-sister. By such means the step-mother at last succeeds in making her naked; they come to the sea, and the step-mother pushes her in; she is taken by a siren, who holds her by her foot with a golden chain. The princes arrive with the ugly sister; the king weds the ugly wife and cuts off the heads of the seven brothers. When the maiden is wandering about in the sea, she asks the king's ducks for news of her brothers; the ducks answer that they have been executed. She weeps; the tears become pearls and the ducks feed upon them. This marvel comes to the ears of the king, who follows the ducks and asks the girl why she shuns the society of men; to which she answers: "Alas! how can I, who am fastened by a golden chain?" and then relates everything. Having recognised his bride, the king gives her this advice: she must ask how, after the siren's death, she would be able to free herself; and then he departs. Next day, Solabella tells the king that the siren will not die, because she lives in a little bird, enclosed in a silver cage which is shut up in a marble case, and seven iron ones, of which she has the keys, and that if the siren died, a horseman, a white horse, and a long sword would be necessary to cut the chain. The king brings her a certain water, which he advises her to give the siren to drink; she will then fall asleep, and the girl will be able to take the keys and kill the little bird. When it is killed, the white horse plunges into the sea, and the sword cuts the chain. Then the king takes his beautiful bride to his palace, and the old step-mother is burned in a shirt of pitch; the seven brothers are rubbed with an ointment which brings them to life again, each exclaiming, "Oh! what a beautiful dream I have had!"
[464] The old ogress of the ninth story of the fifth book of the Pentamerone, who keeps three beautiful maidens shut up in three citron-trees, and who feeds the asses which kick the swans upon the banks of the river, is a variety of the same myth.
[465] Instead of geese, swans were also solemnly eaten; a popular mediæval German song in Latin offers the lamentation of the roasted swan; cfr. Uhland's Schriften, iii. 71, 158.—In the Pańćatantram, we have the swan sacrificed by the owl. In order to allure the swan, the funereal owl, who wishes to kill it, invites it into a grove of lotus-flowers, only, however, to decoy it subsequently into a dark cavern, where the swan is killed by some travelling merchants, who believe it to be an owl.
[466] In the Eddas, when the hero Sigurd expires, the geese bewail his death.
[467] Cfr. also, with regard to this subject, the twenty-fourth Esthonian story of the princess born in the egg, of whom her brother, born in a more normal manner of the queen, becomes enamoured.
[468] The parrot is sung of by Statius in connection with the same birds in the second book of the Sylvæ—
"Lux volucrum plagæ, regnator Eoæ
Quam non gemmata volucri Junonia cauda
Vinceret, aspectu gelidi non phasidis ales."
[469] A pathetic elegy in Sanskṛit distiches, of a Buddhist character, of which I do not now remember the source, presents us the çukas, or parrot, who wishes to die when the tree açokas, which has always been his refuge, is dried up.
[470] Such as, for instance, the following unpublished story, communicated to me by Dr Ferraro, which is related in the Monferrato, and of which I have also heard, in my childhood, a variation at Turin:—A king, going to the wars, and fearing that another king, who is his rival, will profit by his absence to seduce his wife, places by her side one of his friends transformed into a parrot; this friend warns her to remain faithful every time that the rival king sends to tempt the queen by means of a cunning old woman. The queen pays attention to the parrot's advice, and remains faithful till the husband's return. This is, in a few words, the contents of the seventy Hindoo tales of the parrot, of which the Tuti-Name is a Persian version.—In the story which I heard at Turin, the wife is, on the contrary, unfaithful and covers the parrot's cage that it may not see; she then fries some fishes in the guest's honour; the parrot thinks that it is raining. The fish and the rain remind us of the myth of the phallical and pluvial cuckoo.
[471] Cfr. the chapter on the Crow.