The whole story has been compared by M. Husson to the adventure of Vartika, whom the Asvins rescue from the throat of a wolf. Little Red Riding Hood thus becomes the Dawn. Vartika is a bird, the Quail, 'i.e. the returning bird. But as a being delivered by the Asvins, the representatives of Day and Night, Vartika can only be the returning Dawn, delivered from the mouth of the wolf, i. e. the dark night[47].'
It is hard to see why the Night, as one of the Asvins, should deliver the Dawn from the Night, as the Wolf. On the identification of the Asvins with this or that aspect of Light and Darkness, Muir may be consulted. 'This allegorical interpretation seems unlikely to be correct, as it is difficult to suppose that the phenomena in question should have been alluded to under such a variety of names and circumstances.' (Sanskrit Texts, v. 248. Prof. Goldstücker thinks the Asvins are themselves the crepuscular mingling of light and dark, which, in the other theory, is the struggle of quail and wolf, op. cit. v. 257. M. Bergaigne supposes that the Asvins are deities of dawn, La Religion Védique, ii. 431.)
These considerations lead us far enough from Perrault into 'worlds not realised.' Vartika (who, in these theories, answers to Le Petit Chaperon Rouge) has been compared by Mr. Max Müller, not only to the returning Dawn, but to the returning year, Vertumnus. He notes that the Greek word for quail is ortyx, that Apollo and Artemis were born in Ortygia, an old name of Delos, and that 'here is a real traditional chain.' But 'it would be a bold assertion to say that the story of Red Riding Hood was really a metamorphosis of an ancient story of the rosy-fingered Eos, or the Vedic Eos with her red horses, and that the two ends, Ushas and Rothkäppchen, are really held together by an unbroken traditional chain.'
We shall leave the courage of this opinion to M. Husson, merely observing that, as a matter of fact, Dawn is not swallowed by Night. Sunset (which is red) is so swallowed, but then sunset is not 'a young maiden carrying messages,' like Red Riding Hood and Ushas. To be sure, the convenient Wolf is regarded by mythologists as 'a representative of the sun or of the night,' at will. He 'doubles the part,' and 'is the useful Wolf,' as the veteran Blenkinsopp, in Pendennis, was called 'The useful Blenkinsopp.'
[42] Contes de Charles Perrault, Paris, s. a. p. lxiv. Perrault's love of refining is not idle in Le Chaperon Rouge. In the popular versions, in Brittany and the Nièvre, the wolf puts the grandmother in the pot, and her blood in bottles, and makes the unconscious child eat and drink her ancestress! The cock or the robin redbreast warns her in vain, and she is swallowed. (Mélusine, May 5, 1887.)
[43] A. M. de la Fontaine, à Usez, le ii. Nov. 1661.
[44] Tylor, Prim. Cult. i. 338.
[45] Brough Smyth, Natives of Victoria, i. p. 432.
[46] Grimm, Note on 5.
[47] Max Müller's Selected Essays, i. 565.