[184]. This recalls the story of the herd-boy who cried “Wolf! wolf!”
[185]. Again the old notion of maternal and paternal instincts; but the children don’t often seem in folk-tales, to have a similar impulsive affection for their unknown parents.
[186]. Colotropis gigantea.
[187]. Rákshasas and rákshasís are male and female demons, or ogres, in the Hindú mythology.
[188]. Literally, the king of birds, a fabulous species of horse remarkable for swiftness, which plays an important part in Tamil stories and romances.
[189]. Here we have a parallel to the biblical legend of the passage of the Israelites dryshod over the Red Sea.
[190]. Demons, ogres, trolls, giants, et hoc genus omne, never fail to discover the presence of human beings by their keen sense of smelling. “Fee, faw, fum! I smell the blood of a British man,” cries a giant when the renowned hero Jack is concealed in his castle. “Fum! fum! sento odor christianum,” exclaims an ogre in Italian folk-tales. “Femme, je sens la viande fraîche, la chair de chrétien!” says a giant to his wife in French stories.
[191]. In my “Popular Tales and Fictions” a number of examples are cited of life depending on some extraneous object—vol. i. pp. 347–351.
[192]. In the Tamil story-book, the English translation of which is called “The Dravidian Nights’ Entertainments,” a wandering princess, finding the labour pains coming upon her, takes shelter in the house of a dancing-woman, who says to the nurses, “If she gives birth to a daughter, it is well [because the woman could train her to follow her own ‘profession’], but if a son, I do not want him;—close her eyes, remove him to a place where you can kill him, and throwing a bit of wood on the ground tell her she has given birth to it.”—I daresay that a story similar to the Bengalí version exists among the Tamils.
[193]. It is to be hoped we shall soon have Sir Richard Burton’s promised complete English translation of this work, since one half is, I understand, already done.