strapping of her sandal.

In several of the stories just cited, and many of their congeners, the
maiden forewarns her suitor how she will be disguised, or by what marks
she will be known. Sometimes, however, she makes a sign to him on the
spot. The Lady of the Van Pool only thrusts her foot forward that he may
notice her shoe-tie; but Cekanka in a Bohemian tale is bold enough to
wink at him. In a Russian variant of the Marquis of the Sun, to which I
have already referred, the hero is in the power of the Water King. On
his way to that potentate's palace he had, by the advice of the Baba
Yaga, gone to the seashore and watched until twelve spoonbills alighted,
and, turning into maidens, had unrobed for the purpose of bathing. Then
he had stolen the eldest maiden's shift, to restore it only on her
promise to aid him against her father, the Water King. She redeems the
pledge by performing for him the usual tasks, the last of which is to
choose the same bride thrice among the king's twelve daughters. The
first time she secretly agrees with him that she will wave her
handkerchief; the second time she is to be arranging her dress; and the
third time he will see a fly above her head.[208]

Here we are led to the third means of recognition. The incident of help
rendered by one or more of the lower animals to man is a favourite one
in folk-tales; and it has furnished a large portion of the argumentative
stock-in-trade of those scholars who contend for their Indian origin. We
are assured that every tale which contains this incident must be
referred to a Buddhist source, or at least has been subjected to
Buddhist influence. This theory is supported by reference to the
doctrine of love for all living creatures which Buddha is said to have
promulgated. The command to overcome hatred by love, the precepts of
self-sacrifice and devotion to others' good were not limited in the
Buddha's discourses, if those discourses be correctly reported, to our
conduct towards our fellow-men: they included all creation. And they
were enforced by parables which represented good as done in turn to men
by all sorts of creatures, even the wildest and the most savage. Stories
of grateful beasts, of the type familiar to us in Androcles and the
Lion, became favourites among the disciples of the Light of Asia.
Scholars, therefore, have told us that wherever a grateful beast thrusts
his muzzle into the story, that story must have come from India, and
must have