er race, not so remote, but still
non-Aryan, the Finns[74]. That the Santals borrow _Maerchen_ from their
Hinduised aboriginal neighbours is not certain, but is perfectly
possible and even probable. Though some theorists have denied that races
borrow nursery tales from each other, it is certain that Loennrot,
writing to Schiefner in 1855, mentions a Finnish fisher who, meeting
Russian and Swedish fishers, 'swopped stories' with them when stormy
weather made it impossible to put to sea[75]. No doubt similar
borrowings have always been going on when the peasantry on the frontiers
met their neighbours, and where Kaffirs have taken Hottentot wives, or
Sidonians have carried off Greek children as captives, in fact, all
through the national and tribal meetings of the world[76].

_The Wonderful Birch_ (Emmy Schreck, ix.) is a form of _Cinderella_ from
Russian Carelia. The story has a singularly dramatic and original
opening. A man and his wife had but one daughter, and one Sheep. The
Sheep wandered away, the woman sought him in the woods, and she met a
witchwife. The witchwife turned the woman into the semblance of the
Sheep, and herself took the semblance of the woman. She went to the
woman's house, where the husband thought he was welcoming his own wife
and the sheep that was lost. The new and strange stepmother demanded the
death of the Sheep, which was the real mother of the heroine. Warned by
the Sheep, a black sheep, the daughter did not taste of her flesh, but
gathered and buried the bones and fragments. Thence grew a beautiful
birch tree. The man and the witchwife went to court, the witchwife
leaving the girl to accomplish impossible tasks. The voice of the dead
mother from the grave below the birch bade the girl break a twig from
the tree, and therewith accomplish the tasks. Then out of the earth came
beautiful raiment (as in _Peau d'Ane_), and the girl dressed, and went
to court. The Prince falls in love with her, and detects her by means of
her ring, which takes the part of the slipper. Then comes in the
frequent formula of a false bride substituted by the witchwife, a number
of trials, and the punishment of the witch.

Here, then, the friendly beast is but the Mother surviving in two
shapes, first as a sheep, then as a tree, exactly the idea of the
ancient Egyptian story of the _Two Brothers_, where Bitiou first becomes
a bull, and then a persea tree[77]. In Finnish the Cinderella plot is
fully developed. A simila