Afterwards, when the girl went to the place where the mouse-jacket had been, and looked for it, it was not there. Then she looked in the hearth, and saw that there was one sleeve in it. While she was there weeping and weeping, the Prince [came forward and] said, “Your mother told me to burn the mouse-jacket.” So the Mouseling became the Princess again, and the Prince and Princess remained there.
Tom-tom Beater. North-western Province.
The notion of a skin dress that could be put off and on, and that transformed a person into one of the lower animals, is well-known in folk-tales. It is found in Old Deccan Days (Frere), pp. 183, 193, where a King had a jackal-skin coat which turned him into a jackal when he put it on, until it was burnt.
At p. 222, a Princess concealed herself by putting on the skin of an old beggar woman. She was discovered when she removed it in order to wash it and herself. In the end it was burnt by the Prince she had married, and she retained her true form as a Princess.
In Indian Fairy Tales (Stokes), p. 41 ff., there is a Prince who had a monkey skin, which he could put on and off as he wished.
In Indian Nights’ Entertainment, Panjāb (Swynnerton), p. 344, four fairies came in the form of doves, and took off their feather dresses in order to bathe. A Prince concealed one dress, and the fairy was unable to resume her bird form and fly away.
In The Story of Madana Kāma Rāja, or “Dravidian Nights” (Naṭēśa Sāstrī), pp. 56, 57, there is an account of a tortoise Prince who had the power of leaving his shell and assuming his human form. His mother one day saw the transformation, and smashed the shell, after which he remained a Prince.
In Folk-Tales of Hindustan, Allahabad (Shaik Chilli), p. 54 ff., the daughter of the King of the Pēris had the form of a monkey while she wore a monkey’s skin, and her own form at other times. When a Prince burnt the skin she took fire, and flew away in a blaze to her father’s palace. While she was ill there, the Prince discovered her and cured her, and she did not resume her monkey form.
The feather-vest of the Dove-maidens—female Jinn—in the Arabian Nights (Lady Burton’s ed.), iii, p. 417 ff., is well known. They removed it for bathing, and could not fly without it.