“Did he not mix together two jars of mongo and sand, then order you to assort them so that the mongo was in one jar and the sand in the other?”
“No!”
“Do you not remember when you and a princess went together to the seashore to find the ring of her father, and when you cut her body to pieces and poured the chopped mass into the water?”
When Juan, who was watching, heard this last question, he rushed from the ring of people that surrounded her and knelt before her, saying, “O my most precious wife! I implore your forgiveness!” Then the new-comer, who was none other than Maria, Juan’s true wife, embraced him, and their former love was restored. So the feast went on. To the great joy of Felipe, Maria, the subterranean lady, was given back to him; and the two couples lived happily the rest of their lives.
Notes.
This story, which is a mixture of well-known motifs and incidents, really falls into two parts, though an attempt is made at the end to bind them together. The first part, ending with the treachery of the brothers after the hero has made his underground journey and rescued the two beautiful maidens from their giant captors, has resemblances to parts of the “Bear’s Son” cycle. The second half of the story is a well-developed member of the “Forgotten Betrothed” cycle, preserving, in fact, all the characteristic incidents, and also prefacing to this whole section details that form a transition between it and part 1. I am unable to point out any European parallels to the story as a whole, but analogues of both parts are very numerous. As the latter half constitutes the major portion of our story, we shall consider it first.
The fundamental and characteristic incidents of the “Forgotten Betrothed” cycle (sometimes called the “True Bride” cycle) are as follows:—
A The performance by the hero of difficult tasks through the help of the loved one, who is usually the daughter of a magician.
B The magic flight of the couple, either with transformations of themselves or with the casting behind them of obstacles to retard the pursuer.
C The forgetting of the bride by the hero because he breaks a taboo (the cause of the forgetting is usually a parental kiss, which the hero should have avoided).