is unfit for such toil, represents the case to his mistress, and the man is brought before her. It is her own father. She makes herself known to him, weeping at the memory of his past prosperity contrasted with his present destitution. But he shall no longer want: he and her sisters will henceforth live with her in comfort. And she reminds him of what she before asserted, namely, that every one lives according to the destiny prescribed for each by an all-wise God.
Other Indian variants, however, though manifestly bound by very close ties to the foregoing, lead us far away from The Savage King. The story of The Fan Prince[1] takes its name from an episode related to a cycle of tales to which Cupid and Psyche belongs. It runs thus: A certain king calls all his seven daughters one day before him, and inquires who gives them food, and by whose permission they eat it? Six of them return the expected answer, ascribing their food to him; but the youngest says, "God gives me my food, and by my own permission I eat it." Her enraged parents send her away to the jungle, and cause her to be there abandoned. God, however, sends her food, and builds for her a beautiful palace during the night, filling it with angels as servants. Similarly He feeds the heroine of the Hindoo story already cited under The Value of Salt type; and so also the Hebrew poet writes: "He giveth unto his beloved in sleep." Her father hears of her sudden good fortune, and acknowledges that she has told the truth—it is God who gives us everything. Here the story might have ended; the plot is quite complete, and the Fan Prince has no connection with it. But it is, as we have seen, one of the characteristics of The Outcast Child that it lends itself with remarkable ease to the inweaving of other tales—if, indeed, from the bareness of its outline it does not, as a matter of art, demand some such treatment. A very long and involved Kashmiri narrative affords a striking instance of this. It is called The Prince that was three times Shipwrecked,[2] and gives the adventures of the youngest of four sons. The king, their father, wishing
- ↑ Maive Stokes, op. cit. Story No. 25, p. 193. This is told by a Hindu woman.
- ↑ The Indian Antiquary, vol. xiv. p. 239. This story was obtained by the Rev. J. Hinton Knowles, of the Church Missionary Society stationed at Srinagar, Kashmir, from a Brahman, who in turn had it from a Mohammedan.
