[23].
Page 213. In a New-Mexican Spanish story (JAFL 27 : 128) one of the adventures of Pedro di Urdemales is to make a pact with the Devil in return for much money. In hell he wins his freedom by sticking the demons to their chairs with varnish and then frightening them with a cross. This version seems nearly related to our story. In a Tepecano tale of the same hero (ibid., 171) Pedro frightens and beats devils with a holy palm-leaf.
[24].
Page 221. Add to Benfey’s Oriental versions a Sinhalese story by Parker (2 : 288–291, No. 141). Parker analyzes three other Hindoo variants which should be noted.
Page 222. Parker, No. 252 (3 : 339–341), “How Mārayā was put in the Bottle,” is a close variant of Grimm, No. 44. Death is finally outwitted by the hero, who persuades him to creep into a bottle to demonstrate that he had been able to enter a closed room through a keyhole. Thereafter all the hero has to do to cure a sick person is to place the bottle at his head! This detail of enclosing a demon in a bottle is found in Caballero’s story.
In another Sinhalese story (Parker, 3 : 185–186, No. 222) a water-snake, pleased by a beggar’s actions, promises to make him rich by creeping up the trunk of the king’s tusk elephant and making the animal mad. The beggar “cures” the elephant when he tells the snake to leave, and becomes wealthy.
[27].
Thompson (413–414) cites two American Indian stories, Penobscot and Maliseet, which open with the obtaining of a gold-dropping horse from an old man because of kindness, the loss of it at an inn at the bands of a rascally landlord, and the recovery of the animal through the generous use of a magic cudgel. The remainder of the two stories is connected with the last part of the “Golden Goose” cycle (Grimm, No. 64).
Page 237. To the East Indian variants of this story add Parker, No. 97 (2 : 101–104), in which an indigent man who frightens a Yakā obtains from the demon a magic self-filling plate, a ring which when sold will always return to its owner, and a gold-dropping cow. These are stolen from him on successive days by a Hettiyä, and worthless imitations substituted. Then the Yakā gives the hero a magic cudgel, with which he regains his magic articles. (See Parker, ibid., 104–105, for other Oriental versions.)
[29].