106. The Magic Hat and the Staff of Life. [[Story]]
Numbers [106]–[109] and [133]–[136] belong to the Little Peasant cycle of stories, Grimm 61, Bolte u. Polívka 2: 1–18.
This number contains three episodes. (1) Three men trick another into selling a cow cheap by pretending it is a goat. He avenges himself by selling them (2) a magic hat which he claims will pay the cost of what they buy, (3) a staff of life through which they are themselves destroyed.
The first episode occurs in Heetopades of Veeshnoo-Sarma, Wilkin’s translation (London, 1787), 261–262, 266. The second is episode D in Bolte u. Polívka’s analysis. The third is episode G in Bolte u. Polívka; see note to 109. [[282]]
107. Uncle Green and Jack. [[Story]]
See Bolte u. Polívka 2: 1–18. The story is composed of three episodes. (1) A nephew sells to his miserly uncle a means for making pots self-cooking. (2) In revenge, he is put into a bag to be thrown into the sea; exchanges places with a shepherd and gets his sheep, (3) then pretends to his uncle to have got them underseas and persuades him to try the same means of enriching himself. The first is a modification of the self-cooking vessel, which is episode C in Bolte u. Polívka’s analysis.
Compare Clouston, Popular Tales 2: 243, 263, for Norse (Dasent) and Italian (Crane) parallels; Espinosa, Pedro de Ordimales cycle, JAFL 27: 169, and discussion, 220–221.
The second and third are episodes H and J in Bolte u. Polívka. See numbers [23] and [108] in this collection.