“No, I won’t.”
“Don’t you know me?”
“Yes, I know you. You are Masama, who cheated me once. Give your head to the king.” So the executioner cut Masama’s head off.
Then Mabait came, and told the king that he could cure the princess. After he was given permission to try, he said to the duende, “Who are you?”
“I am the duende, your friend.”
“Will you please come out of the princess’s abdomen?”
“Yes, I will, for the sake of our friendship.”
Mabait was married to the princess, was crowned king, and lived happily with his friend the duende.
Before attempting to decide anything concerning the provenience of these two tales, we shall first examine versions of the story from other parts of the world. The nearest European analogue that I am familiar with is an Andalusian story printed by Caballero in 1866 (Ingram, 107, “The Demon’s Mother-in-Law”). An outline of the chief elements of this tale follows:—
Mother Holofernes, while very neat and industrious, was a terrible termagant and shrew. Her daughter Panfila, on the contrary, was so lazy and thoughtless, that once, when the old woman burnt herself badly because her daughter was listening to some lads singing outside, instead of helping her mother with the boiling lye for washing, the enraged Mother Holofernes shouted to her offspring, “Heaven grant that you may marry the Evil One himself!” Not long afterward a rich little man presented himself as a suitor for Panfila’s hand. He was accepted by the mother, and preparations for the marriage went forward. The old woman, however, began to dislike the suitor, and, recalling her curse, suspected that he was none other than the Devil himself. Accordingly, on the night of the wedding, she bade Panfila lock all the windows and doors of the room, and then beat her husband with a branch of consecrated olive. So done. The husband tried to escape from his wife by slipping through the key-hole; but his mother-in-law anticipated this move. She caught him in a glass bottle, which she immediately sealed hermetically. Then the old lady climbed to the summit of a mountain, and there deposited the bottle in an out-of-the-way place. Ten years the imp remained there a prisoner, suffering cold, heat, hunger, thirst. One day a soldier, returning to his native town on leave, took a short cut over the mountain, and spied the bottle. When he picked it up, the imp begged to be released, and told him of all he had suffered; but the soldier made a number of conditions,—his release from the army, a four-dollar daily pension, etc.,—and finally the imp promised to enter the body of the daughter of the King of Naples. The soldier was to present himself at court as a physician, and demand any reward he wished to, in return for a cure. So done. The king accepted the services of the soldier, but stipulated that if in three days he had not cured the princess, he should be hanged. The soldier accepted the conditions; but the demon, seeing that he had his arrogant enemy’s life in his hands, and bent on revenge, refused to leave the body of the princess. On the last day, however, the soldier ordered all the bells rung. On the demon’s asking what all the noise was about, the soldier said, “I have ordered your mother-in-law summoned, and she has just arrived.” In great terror the Devil at once quitted the princess, and the soldier was left “in victorious possession of the field.”