Puss-in-boots (le chat botté), helps the third brother in the tale of Perrault.
[98] In Tuscany the previously mentioned story-teller, Uliva Selvi, at Antignano, near Leghorn, narrated it to me as follows:—A mother has a number of children and no money; a fairy tells her to go to the summit of the mountain, where she will find many enchanted cats in a beautiful palace, who give alms. The woman goes, and a kitten lets her in; she sweeps the rooms, lights the fire, washes the dishes, draws water, makes the beds, and bakes bread for the cats; at last she comes before the king of the cats, who is seated with a crown on his head, and asks for alms. The great cat rings the golden bell with a golden chain, and calls the cats. He learns that the woman has treated them well, and orders them to fill her apron with gold coins (rusponi). The wicked sister of the poor woman also goes to visit the cats, but she maltreats them, and returns home all scratched, and more dead than alive from pain and terror.
[99] Cfr. Rochholtz, Deutscher Glaube und Brauche, i. 161.
[100] Ib.—I find the same belief referred to in the twenty-first Esthonian story of Kreutzwald.
[101] It is almost universally believed that when the cat cleans itself behind its ears with its wet paw, it presages rain. And yet the Latin proverb says—
"Catus amat pisces, sed aquas intrare recusat;"
and the Hungarian proverb, that the cat does not die in water. It is for this reason, perhaps, that it is said, in a watery autumn the cat is worth little—("The cat of autumn and the woman of spring are not worth much;" Hung. prov.)
[102] Polier, Mythologie des Indes, ii. 571.
[103] Mûsho na çiçnâ vy adanti mâdhyaḥ stotâraṁ te çatakrato; Ṛigv. i. 105, 8.—The commentator now interprets çiçnâ by sutrâni, threads, and now calls the reader's attention to the legend of the mice that lick their tails after plunging them into a vase full of butter, or some other savoury substance; but here vy adanti can only mean, they lacerate by biting, as in the preceding strophe we have the thought that tears by biting, as the wolf tears the thirsty wild beast (mâ vyanti âdhyo na tṛishṇaǵam mṛigam).—The mouse in the jar of provisions also occurs in the fable of the mouse and the two penitents in the Pańćatantram, in the Hellenic fable of the son of Minos and of Pasiphäe, who, pursuing a mouse, falls into a jar of honey, in which he is suffocated, until recalled to life by a salutary herb.
[104] Den Mäusen pfeifen, heisst den Seelen ein Zeichen geben, um von ihnen abgeholt zu werden; ebenso wie der Rattenfänger zu Hameln die Lockpfeife bläst, auf deren Ton alle Mäuse und Kinder der Stadt mit ihm in den Berg hineinziehen, der sich hinter ihnen zuschliesst. Mäuse sind Seelen. Die Seele des auf der Jagd entschlafenen Königs Guntram kommt schlängleinartig aus seinem Munde hervor, um so in einen nächsten Berg und wieder zurückzulaufen. Der goethe'sche Faust weigert sich dem Tanz mit dem hübschen Hexenmädchen am Blocksberg fortzusetzen:—