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[ This strange notion may have been derived from some Eastern source, since it occurs in Indian fictions; for example, in Dr. Rájendralála Mitra's "Sanskrit Buddhist Literature of Nepál," p. 304, we read that "there lived in the village of Vásava a rich householder who had born unto him a son with a jewelled ring in his ear." And in the "Mahábhárata" we are told of a king who had a son from whose body issued nothing but gold— the prototype of the gold-laying goose.]
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[ Connected with this romance is the tale of "The Six Swans," in Grimm's collection— see Mrs. Hunt's English translation, vol. i. p. 192.]
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[ Mahbúb. a piece of gold, value about 10 francs, replaces the dinár of old tales. Those in Egypt are all since the time of the Turks: 9, 7, or 6 1/2 frs. according to issue.—Note by Spitta Bey.]
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[ Here again we have the old superstition of "blood speaking to blood," referred to by Sir Richard, ante, p. 347, note 1. It often occurs in Asiatic stories. Thus in the Persian "Bakhtyár Náma," when the adopted son of the robber chief is brought with other captives, before the king (he is really the king's own son, whom he and the queen abandoned in their flight through the desert), his majesty's bowels strangely yearned towards the youth, and in the conclusion this is carried to absurdity: when Bakhtyár is found to be the son of the royal pair, "the milk sprang from the breasts of the queen," as she looked on him—albeit she must then have been long past child-bearing!]
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[ The enchanted pitcher does duty here for the witches' broomstick and the fairies' rush of European tales, but a similar conveyance is, I think, not unknown to Western folk-lore.]