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A number of parallels have been cited from various sources by M. Cosquin, a few of which may be mentioned. A Burmese drama, for instance, sets before us nine princesses of the city of the Silver Mountain, who wear enchanted girdles that enable them to fly as swiftly as a bird. The youngest of these princesses is caught while bathing, by means of a magical slip-knot.
Cosquin has also traced it to Ceylon, Orientalist, 1884, p. 62. The adventure of the door and the robbers is equally widely spread in Normandy, Germany, Austria, Bosnia, Rome, Catalonia, and Sicily. Vinegar" in English Fairy Tales. The two adventures are, however, rarely combined; Cosquin knows of only two instances.
Cosquin, i., 67, knows of only eighteen which have the full contingent, one in Brittany, two in Greece, one in Sicily, four in Italy, one each Basque, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Danish, and Swedish; two German; one Lithuanian; and a Russian variant. There must be many more in Bolte's notes to Grimm, 60.
Cosquin, ii., 209-14, gives a number of Oriental stories, Annamite, Kalmuk, Kaffir, which contain the incident of the girl in the bag, and Indian and Kabyle stories, which go through the same exchanges as our story.
M. Cosquin and others bring in the Vedic myth of Urvasi and Pururavas, but we have seen reason to reject the notion that the tale is, in its essence, mythological, and therefore need not consider its relation to Indian mythology. This is indeed a close parallelism sufficient to raise the general question of relation between the Indian and the European folk-tale.
Benfey's researches were followed up by E. Cosquin who, in the elaborate notes to his Contes de Lorraine, Paris, 1886, largely increased the evidence both for the common European popularity of many of the tales and incidents as well as for the parallels to be found in Oriental collections.
First of all, let it be admitted that in several of these tales the service rendered by the brute is in requital for a good turn on the part of the hero. Andrianòro, as we have seen, begins by making friends with various animals by means of the mammon of unrighteousness in the shape of a feast. Jagatalapratâpa, in the narrative already cited from the Tamil book translated into English under the title of "The Dravidian Nights Entertainments," pursuing one of Indra's four daughters, is compelled by her father, after three other trials, to choose her out from her sisters, who are all converted into one shape. He prays assistance from a kind of grasshopper; and the little creature, in return for a previous benefit, hops upon her foot. But it is somewhat curious, if the theory be true, that even in stories told among peoples distinctly under Buddhist influence the gratitude is by no means an invariable point. Thus the princess in the Burmese drama is betrayed by "the king of flies" to her husband, though the abstract we have of the play gives us no hint of any previous transaction between the puny monarch and the hero; and it is worthy of note that the Tibetan version of the same plot given by Mr. Ralston from the Kah-Gyur knows nothing of this entomological agency. There the hero is a Bodisat, who, if he does not recognize his beloved among the thousand companions who surround her, at least has a spell the utterance of which compels her to step out from among them. It does not appear that Kasimbaha, the Bantik patriarch, is required to undergo this particular test. But he is indebted to a bird for indicating the lady's residence; a glow-worm places itself at her chamber door; and a fly shows him which of a number of dishes set before him he must not uncover. M. Cosquin, who is an adherent of the Buddhist hypothesis, in relating this instance, is compelled expressly to say that "one does not see why" these animals should render such services. Neither, on M. Cosquin's principle, can one see why, in the Araw
Cosquin, ii., 16, has, with his usual analytical grasp, seen the separable character of these various series of incidents.
Webster, p. 120; Campbell, vol. i. p. 25; "Mélusine," vol. i. p. 446; "F. L. Españ." vol. i. p. 187; Schneller, p. 71; Imbriani, p. 411; Cosquin, vol. i. pp. 9, 25; Sébillot, "Contes," vol. i. p. 197; Grundtvig, vol. i. p. 46; Cavallius, p. 255; Maspons y Labros, p. 102; "F. L. Journal," vol. i. p. 284, quoting Lewis. Waldau, p. 248; Ralston, "R. F. Tales," p. 120, from Afanasief.
But the particular adventures of Thumbkin are so consistently identical throughout Europe, especially with regard to the adventures in the cow's stomach, that it is impossible to consider the stories as independent. Cosquin, 53, has more difficulty than usual in finding real parallels in the Orient. But it is more likely that the name came from the tale than the tale from the star.
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