‘So you see, sir, that I have gained my end.’
‘It is very fortunate that you have, by the grace of God. We were certain you were dead, and, see, you are still alive.’
He paid this miller a large sum of money for bringing him to the house where his wife was living. He comes home; his mother sees that it is her son, who had been absent from home for more than twenty years. His child is now grown up. She is filled then with joy, so is his son at his father’s return; and they all live together with the good, golden God.
‘The Witch’ is identical with the middle portion (pp. 125–130) of Ralston’s ‘The Water King and Vasilissa the Wise,’ collected by Afanasief in the Voronej government, South-eastern Russia. Ralston cites many variants, among them an Indian one. Cf. also ‘Prince Unexpected,’ a Polish story, No. 17 in Wratislaw’s Sixty Slavonic Folk-tales, pp. 108–121. A striking parallel for the recovery of the smock is furnished by ‘La Loulie et la Belle de la Terre’ in Dozon’s Contes Albanais, pp. 94–5. Cf. also Wratislaw’s Croatian story, ‘The She-Wolf,’ No. 55, p. 290; Georgeakis and Pineau’s story from Lesbos, No. 2, ‘Le Mont des Cailloux,’ p. 11; and especially Cosquin’s ‘Chatte Blanche,’ No. 32, with the valuable notes thereon (ii. 9–28). The Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘The Green Man of Noman’s Land,’ No. 62, is almost a variant (there, likewise, the hero is tearful); so, too, is the Bukowina-Gypsy story, ‘Made over to the Devil’ (No. 34). Cf. the notes on these; and Clouston, i. 182–191, for bird-maidens. The pursuit and the transformation into a church and a priest are discussed pretty fully in the Introduction.
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[1] This answer presupposes the presence of at least three robbers. [↑]
[2] This method of killing the robbers is exactly the same as that followed by the youth in the Moravian-Gypsy story of ‘The Princess and the Forester’s Son’ (No. 43, p. 147). Cf. too, No. 8, ‘The Bad Mother,’ pp. 25, 30, where the lad kills eleven of twelve dragons, and Hahn, vol. ii. p. 279. [↑]
[3] For cutting three red stripes out of back, cf. ‘Osborn’s Pipe’ (Dasent’s Tales from the Fjeld, p. 3), which = the Welsh-Gypsy tale of ‘The Ten Rabbits’ (No. 64); also Dasent’s Tales from the Norse, ‘The Seven Foals,’ p. 380. Cutting three strips out of the back occurs also in a Russian story epitomised by Ralston, p. 145; and cutting a strip of skin from head to foot in Campbell’s West Highland tale, No. 18 (cf. supra, p. 124), which Reinhold Köhler connects with the pound of flesh in the Merchant of Venice (Orient und Occident, 1864, pp. 313–316). [↑]
[4] Our story here has a curious resemblance with pp. 122–3 of ‘Le Trimmatos ou l’Ogre aux Trois Yeux,’ a vampire story from Cyprus, in Legrand’s Contes Grecs (1881). Query: Was ‘Mr. Fox’ originally a vampire story? [↑]