Page:Indian fairy tales (1892).djvu/291

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Notes and References
251

guesses riddles. She has been bibliographised by Prof. Child, Eng. and Scotch Ballads,, i. 485; see also Benfey, Kl. Schr. ii. 156 seq. The sex test at the end is different from any of those enumerated by Prof. Köhler on Gonzenbach, Sezil. Mähr. ii. 216.

Remarks.—Here we have a further example of a whole formula, or series of incidents, common to most European collections, found in India, and in a quarter, too, where European influence is little likely to penetrate. Prof. Benfey, in an elaborate dissertation ("Die Kluge Dirne," in Ausland, 1859, Nos. 20-25, now reprinted in Kl. Schr. ii. 156 seq.), has shown the wide spread of the theme both in early Indian literature (though probably there derived from the folk) and in modern European folk literature.


Source.—The Pancāvudha-Jātaka, Fausböll. No. 55, kindly tranlated for this book by Mr. W. H. D. Rouse, of Christ's College, Cambridge. There is a brief abstract of the Jataka in Prof. Estlin Carpenter's sermon, Three Ways of Salvation, 1884, p. 27, where my attention was first called to this Jataka.

Parallels.—Most readers of these Notes will remember the central episode of Mr. J. C. Harris' Uncle Remus, which Brer Fox, annoyed at Brer Rabbit's depredations, fits up "a contrapshun, what he calls a Tar Baby." Brer Rabbit, coming along that way, passes the time of day with Tar Baby, and, annoyed at its obstinate silence, hits it with right fist and with left, with left fist and with right, which successively stick to the "contrapshun," till at last he butts with his head, and that sticks too, whereupon Brer Fox, who all this time had "lain low," saunters out, and complains of Brer Rabbit that he is too stuck up. In the sequel Brer Rabbits begs Brer Fox that he may "drown me as deep ez you please, skin me, scratch out my eyeballs, t'ar out my years by the roots, en cut off my legs, but do don't fling me in dat brier patch;" which, of course. Brer Fox does, only to be informed by the cunning Brer Rabbit that he had been "bred en bawn in a brier patch." The story is a favourite one with the negroes: it occurs in Col. Jones' Negro Myths of the Georgia Coast (Uncle Remus is from S. Carolina), also among those of Brazil (Romero, Contos de Brazil), and in the West Indian Islands (Mr. Lang, "At the Sign of the Ship," Longman's Magazine, Feb. 1889). We can trace it to Africa, where it occurs in Cape Colony (South African Folk-Lore Journal, vol. i.).

Remarks.—The five-fold attack on the Demon and the Tar Baby is so preposterously ludicrous that it cannot have been independently