23
They turned him in this lady’s arms
Like to a naked knight;
She’s taen him hame to her ain bower,
And clothed him in armour bright.
338 a, 507, II, 505 b.
A king transformed into a nightingale being plunged three times into water resumes his shape: Vernaleken, K.-u. H. Märchen, No 15, p. 79. In Guillaume de Palerne, ed. Michelant, v. 7770 ff., pp. 225, 226, the queen who changes the werewolf back into a man takes care that he shall have a warm bath as soon as the transformation is over; but this may be merely the bath preliminary to his being dubbed knight (as in Li Chevaliers as Deus Espees, ed. Förster, vv. 1547–49, p. 50, and L’Ordene de Chevalerie, vv. 111–124, Barbazan-Méon, I, 63, 64). A fairy maiden is turned into a wooden statue. This is burned and the ashes thrown into a pond, whence she immediately emerges in her proper shape. She is next doomed to take the form of a snake. Her lover, acting under advice, cuts up a good part of the snake into little bits, and throws these into a pond. She emerges again. J. H. Knowles, Folk-Tales of Kashmir, p. 468 ff.. (G. L. K.)
339 b, II, 505 b.
Fairy salve and indiscreet users of it. See also Sébillot, Contes pop. de la Haute-Bretagne, II, 41, 42, cf. I, 122–3; the same, Traditions et Superstitions de la Haute-Bretagne, I, 89, 109; the same, Litt. orale de la Haute-B., pp. 19–23, 24–27, and note; Mrs Bray, Traditions of Devonshire, 1838, I, 184–188, I, 175 ff. of the new ed. called The Borders of the Tamar and the Tavy; “Lageniensis” [J. O’Hanlon], Irish Folk-Lore, Glasgow, n. d., pp. 48–49. In a Breton story a fairy gives a one-eyed woman an eye of crystal, warning her not to speak of what she may see with it. Disregarding this injunction, the woman is deprived of the gift. Sébillot, Contes pop. de la Haute-Bretagne, II, 24–25. (G. L. K.)
340. The danger of lying under trees at noon. “Is not this connected with the belief in a δαιμονιόν μεσημβρινόν (LXX, Psalm xci, 6)? as to which see Rochholz, Deutscher Unsterblichkeitsglaube, pp. 62 ff., 67 ff., and cf. Lobeck, Aglaophamus, pp. 1092–3.” Kittredge, Sir Orfeo, in the American Journal of Philology, VII, 190, where also there is something about the dangerous character of orchards. Of processions of fairy knights, see p. 189 of the same.