I have excised the opening of this tale as far too Rabelaisian; in fact, it leaves the very priest ashamed. Its hero is called ‘Mare’s Son,’ and is suckled by a mare like Milosh Obilich in a Croatian ballad. But the story is clearly identical with Grimm’s ‘Strong Hans’ (No. 166, ii. 253, 454) and ‘The Elves’ (No. 91, ii. 24, 387), in one or other of which, or of their variants, almost every detail, sometimes to the minutest, will be found. Cosquin’s ‘Jean de l’Ours’ (No. 1, i. 1–27) should also be carefully studied, and Hahn’s ‘Das Bärenkind’ (No. 75, ii. 72). The Gypsy version is in one respect clearly defective: it has no heroine—a lack that might be supplied from Miklosich’s Gypsy story of ‘The Seer’ (No. 23). The episode of the fairies that blind occurs in ‘The Scab-pate’ (Geldart’s Folklore of Modern Greece, p. 158; cf. also Hahn, i. 222); and in Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, p. 57, one finds a similar restoration of their eyes to seven blinded mothers, with salve, however, not water, for application. Cf. Krauss, i. 181, for a flute that obliges to dance; and a blind old man riding on a great goat comes in Denton’s Serbian Folk-lore, p. 249. The rescue of the young eagles, and the being borne to the upper world by the old mother-bird, are conjointly or separately very widespread. The meat generally runs short, and the hero gives her a piece of his own flesh (cf. p. 240). Hahn’s ‘Der Goldäpfelbaum und die Höllenfahrt,’ from Syra (No. 70, ii. 57, 297), furnishes an excellent example; and Cosquin (ii. 141) gives Avar, Siberian, Kabyle, Persian, and Indian variants. The rescue of two eaglets from a great snake occurs in ‘The Demon and the King’s Son’ (Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, No. 24, p. 182), and in ‘Punchkin’ (Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, No. 1, p. 14). The striking ordeal at the close, recurring in ‘The Seer’ (No. 23, p. 89), is, to the best of my knowledge, [[80]]peculiar to these two Gypsy stories; the arrows suggest a high antiquity. Von Sowa’s Slovak-Gypsy story of ‘The Three Dragons’ (No. 44) offers many analogies to ‘Mare’s Son,’ of which the Welsh-Gypsy story, ‘Twopence-halfpenny’ (No. 58, p. 243), is actually a variant. The first eight pages of ‘Prince Lionheart and his three Friends,’ in F. A. Steel’s Wide-awake Stories, pp. 47–54, and her ‘How Raja Rasalu’s Friends forsook him,’ pp. 255–7; also the very curious story of ‘Gumda the Hero’ (Campbell’s Santal Folk-tales, p. 57), offer Indian versions of the opening of ‘Mare’s Son.’
No. 21.—The Deluded Dragon
There was an old man with a multitude of children. He had an underground cave in the forest. He said, ‘Make me a honey-cake, for I will go and earn something.’ He went into the forest, and found a well. By the well was a table. He laid the cake on the table. The crows came and ate it. He slept by the well. He arose and saw the flies eating the crumbs. He struck a blow and killed a hundred flies. He wrote that he had killed a hundred souls with one blow. And he lay down and slept.
A dragon came with a buffalo’s skin to draw water. He saw what was written on the table, that he had killed a hundred souls. When he saw the old man, he feared. The old man awoke, and he too feared.
The dragon said, ‘Let’s become brothers.’
And they swore that they would be Brothers of the Cross.[7] The dragon drew water. ‘Come with me, brother, to my palace.’
They went along a footpath, the old man first. When the dragon panted, he drove the old man forward; when he drew in his breath, he pulled him back. The dragon said, ‘Brother, why do you sometimes run forward and sometimes come back?’
‘I am thinking whether to kill you.’
‘Stay, brother, I will go first and you behind; maybe you will change your mind.’ [[81]]