The abbot put all his money into the bag. “Now get into the bag,” said Juan, “and we will go.”

The old man promptly obeyed. “Where are we now?” said he, after an hour’s “flight.”

“We are within one thousand miles of the abode of the blessed,” was Juan’s reply.

Twenty minutes later, and they were in Juan’s cave. “Come out of the bag, and behold my rude abode?” said Juan to the old man. The abbot was astounded at the sight. When he heard Juan’s story, he advised him to abandon his evil ways. Juan listened to the counsels of his new friend. He became a good man, and he and the abbot lived together until their death.

Notes.

The story of “Zaragoza” is of particular interest, because it definitely combines an old form of the “Rhampsinitus” story with the “Master Thief” cycle. In his notes to No. 11, “The Two Thieves,” of his collection of “Gypsy Folk Tales,” F. H. Groome observes, “(The) ‘Two Thieves’ is so curious a combination of the ‘Rhampsinitus’ story in Herodotus and of Grimm’s ‘Master Thief,’ that I am more than inclined to regard it as the lost original, which, according to Campbell of Islay, ‘it were vain to look for in any modern work or in any modern age.’ ” By “lost original” Mr. Groome doubtless meant the common ancestor of these two very widespread and for the most part quite distinct cycles, “Rhampsinitus” and the “Master Thief.”

Both of these groups of stories about clever thieves have been made the subjects Of investigation. The fullest bibliographical study of the “Rhampsinitus” saga is that by Killis Campbell, “The Seven Sages of Rome” (Boston, 1907), pp. lxxxv–xc. Others have treated the cycle more or less discursively: R. Köhler, “Ueber J. F. Campbell’s Sammlung gälischer Märchen,” No. XVII (d) (in Orient und Occident, 2 [1864] : 303–313); Sir George Cox, “The Migration of Popular Stories” (in Fraser’s Magazine, July, 1880, pp. 96–111); W. A. Clouston, “Popular Tales and Fictions” (London, 1887), 2 : 115–165. See also F. H. Groome, 48–53; McCulloch, 161, note 9; and Campbell’s bibliography. The “Master Thief” cycle has been examined in great detail as to the component elements of the story by Cosquin (2 : 274–281, 364–365). See also Grimm’s notes to the “Master Thief,” No. 192 (2 : 464); and J. G. von Hahn, 2 : 178–183.

F. Max Müller believed that the story of the “Master Thief” had its origin in the Sanscrit droll of “The Brahman and the Goat” (Hitopadesa, IV, 10 = Panchatantra, III, 3), which was brought to Europe through the Arabic translation of the “Hitopadesa.” Further, he did not believe that the “Master Thief” story had anything to do with Herodotus’s account of the theft of Rhampsinitus’s treasure (see Chips from a German Workshop [New York, 1869], 2 : 228). Wilhelm Grimm, however, in his notes to No. 192 of the “Kinder- und Hausmärchen,” says, “The well-known story in Herodotus (ii, 121) ... is nearly related to this.” As Sir G. W. Cox remarks (op. cit., p. 98), it is not easy to discern any real affinity either between the Hitopadesa tale and the European traditions of the “Master Thief,” or between the latter and the “Rhampsinitus” story. M. Cosquin seems to see at least one point of contact between the two cycles: “The idea of the episode of the theft of the horse, or at least of the means which the thief uses to steal the horse away .... might well have been borrowed from Herodotus’s story ... of Rhampsinitus” (Contes de Lorraine, 2 : 277).

A brief analysis of the characteristic incidents of these two “thieving” cycles will be of some assistance, perhaps, in determining whether or not there were originally any definite points of contact between the two. The elements of the “Rhampsinitus” story follow:—

  1. A Two sons of king’s late architect plan to rob the royal treasure-house.
  2. (A¹ In some variants of the story the robbers are a town thief and a country thief.)
  3. A² They gain an entrance by removing a secret stone, a knowledge of which their father had bequeathed them before he died.
  4. B The king discovers the theft, and sets a snare for the robbers.
  5. C Robbers return; eldest caught inextricably. To prevent discovery, the younger brother cuts off the head of the older, takes it away, and buries it.
  6. D The king attempts to find the confederate by exposing the headless corpse on the outer wall of the palace.
  7. D¹ The younger thief steals the body by making the guards drunk. He also shaves the right side of the sleeping guards’ beards.
  8. E King makes second attempt to discover confederate. He sends his daughter as a common courtesan, hoping that he can find the thief; for she is to require all her lovers to tell the story of their lives before enjoying her favors.
  9. E¹ The younger thief visits her and tells his story; when she tries to detain him, however, he escapes by leaving in her hand the hand of a dead man he had taken along with him for just such a contingency.
  10. F The king, baffled, now offers to pardon and reward the thief if he will discover himself. The thief gives himself up, and is married to the princess.