God took the child by the head, and the father took him by the feet, and they tugged, and God cut the child in half.
‘One half for you, and one half for me.’
‘Now you’ve killed him, I don’t want him. Take him and be hanged to you.’
God took him, and went outside, and put him together; and he was healed, and lived again.
‘Do you take him now.’
For God cut off his sins.
Of this story, widely familiar through H. C. Andersen’s ‘Flying Trunk,’ Wlislocki furnishes a Transylvanian-Gypsy variant, ‘The Wooden Bird,’ in his ‘Beiträge zu Benfey’s Pantschatantra’ (Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenl. Gesellschaft, vol. xxxii. 1888, part i. p. 119). For that variant and many others—Persian, Hindu, Modern Greek, etc., including ‘Der Weber als Wischnu’ from Benfey, i. 159–163, ii. 48–56, see W. A. Clouston’s Notes on the Magical Elements in Chaucer’s ‘Squire’s Tale,’ and Analogues (Chaucer Soc. 1890, pp. 413–471). Cf. also Grimm’s ‘Blue Light,’ No. 116; Hahn, No. 15, and ii. 269, for tower of glass or crystal; Cosquin, No. 31; and Hahn, ii. 186, for a king who governs nine kingdoms. With the princess lying lifeless on the bed compare the lady sleeping on a golden bedstead in Lal Behari Day’s Folk-tales of Bengal, p. 251. In ‘The Demon and the King’s Son’ (Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, p. 186), the demon every day makes his daughter lie on her bed, and covers her with a sheet, and [[104]]places a thick stick at her head, and another at her feet. Then she dies till he comes home in the evening and changes the sticks. This brings her to life again. Cf. also notes to our Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘An Old King and his three Sons’ (No. 55).
No. 27.—Tropsyn
There was a poor man, and he had four sons. And they went out to service, and went to a gentleman to thrash wheat. And they received so much wheat for a wage, and brought it to their father. ‘Here, father, eat; we will go out to service again.’ And they went again to a gentleman, who was to give them each a horse at the year’s end. And the youngest was called Tropsyn; and the gentleman made him his groom. And a mare brought forth a colt; and that colt said, ‘Tropsyn, take me. The year is up now.’