A golden-haired Princess is often described in folk-tales. See No. 240 in this volume, and Indian Fairy Tales (M. Stokes), pp. 62 and 98. In one of the Santal variants a grateful snake made a man’s hair like gold by breathing on it (op. cit., p. 75).
In Folk-Tales of Kashmir (Knowles), 2nd ed., p. 20, a merchant’s son bought a dog, cat, and snake that were likely to be killed. By means of a ring which the snake’s father gave him he got a mansion and a wife with golden hair. She set afloat some hairs inside a reed; a Prince found them lower down the river, and his father sent his aunt, an ogress, to bring their possessor. She flew to the place in the form of a bee, became an old hag, was received as the girl’s aunt, borrowed the ring, flew off with it, and by its means the Princess was brought away. She demanded a month’s delay before marrying, the cat and dog found her, and secured the ring (which the ogress kept in her stomach) by seizing the Rat King’s eldest son and getting it as his ransom, a rat having made the ogress cough it up by inserting its tail in her throat while she slept. They returned with it, and the Prince recovered his wife by it.
At p. 132, a crow carried off the comb of a Princess whom a Prince had rescued from a Rākshasa and married, and it was discovered at a palace, inside a fish that had swallowed it when it was dropped in the sea. A woman sent to find the owner poisoned the Prince; the King carried off the widow, but she refused to marry him for six months. The Prince’s two friends, a Brāhmaṇa and a Carpenter, found her, and by means of a magic horse of sandal wood which the latter made, that flew where required, they returned with her. By a touch the Brāhmaṇa restored to life the Prince’s corpse which his wife had enclosed in a box.
In Sagas from the Far East, p. 108, in a Kalmuk story, a Khan carried off a youth’s wife who dropped in a stream, while bathing, a gem-set ring, which the Khan got. Her husband was killed and buried by his emissaries. When his life-index tree withered, his five comrades found and revived him, and made a flying bird by means of which he regained his wife.
At p. 222, in a Kalmuk story, a maidservant gave a Khan some wonderful hairs which clung to her water jar, and which a wife whom the Snake King gave to a man had lost when bathing. The Khan’s men captured her; after a year she made her husband dance, dressed in feathers, before her and the Khan. When the Khan to please her exchanged dresses with him, she ordered the Khan to be driven out, the dogs overtook and killed him, and her husband became King. Compare the ending of No. 18, vol. i.
At p. 135, in a Kalmuk tale, a Brāhmaṇa’s son bought and set free a mouse, a young ape and a young bear; when he was afterwards enclosed in a chest and thrown into the river the animals rescued him. He found a talisman as large as a pigeon’s egg, made by its aid a city, palace, etc., exchanged the talisman for a caravan-load of goods, and all vanished. The animals recovered it, the palace was reconstructed, and he got a divine wife.
In Korean Tales (Dr. Allen), p. 43, a man lost an amber talisman that a supernatural caller gave him. His dog and cat found it, and regained it by the aid of the rat-chief, who made a mouse creep into the soap-stone box in which it was hidden, after the rats gnawed a hole through the side.
In Cinq Cents Contes et Apologues (Chavannes), vol. iii, p. 258, a King sent a youth for a Nāga girl whose hairs, one hundred feet long, were found in a swallow’s nest. By means of a cap of invisibility and shoes for walking on water, which he stole from two persons who were quarrelling about them, the youth fetched her; but seeing that the King was ugly she threw at him a cake of gold she had brought, the blow killed him, and the youth became King and married her.