As to the name "Doghead," see Notes to "[The Three Dreams]," infra, p. [377].
Page [74]. The castle that collapses into an apple also appears in "The Three Princes," p. [206], in this collection.
For a variant of Knight Mezey cf. "Zöldike," a Magyar tale, in Gaal, vol. iii., in which the beautiful meadow, the tent, the sleeping knight, and the witch weaving soldiers, all occur.
[THE STUDENT WHO WAS FORCIBLY MADE KING. Kriza vii.]
Page [77]. Heroes of folk-tales often attain wealth, &c., by picking up some apparently useless thing on the road. See Halliwell, Nursery Rhymes, "The Three Questions;" "The Princess of Canterbury," pp. 153-155.
Oriental writers, Indian and Persian, as well as Arab, lay great stress upon the extreme delicacy of the skin of the fair ones celebrated in their works, constantly attributing to their heroines, bodies so sensitive as to brook with difficulty the contact of the finest shift, and we may fairly assume that the skin of an Eastern beauty, under the influence of constant seclusion and the unremitting use of cosmetics and the bath, would in time attain a pitch of delicacy and sensitiveness such as would in some measure justify the seemingly extravagant statements of their poetical admirers, of which the following anecdote (quoted by Ibn Khellikan from the historian Et Teberi) is a fair specimen. Ardeshir Ibn Babek (Artaxerxes I.), the first Sassanian King of Persia (A.D. 226-242), having long unsuccessfully beseiged El Hedr, a strong city of Mesopotamia, belonging to the petty king Es Satiroun, at last obtained possession of it by the treachery of the owner's daughter, Nezireh, and married the latter, this having been the price stipulated by her for the betrayal of the place to him. It happened afterwards that one night as she was unable to sleep and turned from side to side in the bed, Ardeshir asked her what prevented her from sleeping. She replied, 'I never yet slept in a rougher bed than this; I feel something irk me.' He ordered the bed to be changed, but she was still unable to sleep. Next morning she complained of her side, and on examination a myrtle leaf was found adhering to a fold of the skin, from which it had drawn blood. Astonished at this circumstance, Ardeshir asked if it was this that had kept her awake, and she replied in the affirmative. 'How, then,' asked he, 'did your father bring you up?' She answered, 'He spread me a bed of satin, and clad me in silk, and fed me with marrow and cream and the honey of virgin bees, and gave me pure wine to drink.'—Payne's Arabian Nights, vol. ix., note to p. 148. Cf. "the Tale of the Dragon," in Geldart, Folk-Lore of Modern Greece, p. 142.
The same idea is the theme of Andersen's "The Princess and the Pea."—Cf. Finnish verse about the lovely Katherine, p. 314.
Page [78]. The castle turns round upon the approach of the dragon in the story of "Vasilisa," in Naaké, p. 51; see also Ralston, p. 66.