their aid wins court favour. Throughout the tale the skill of an
extremely small boy is the subject of admiration.

(1) The opening of the story has nothing supernatural or unusual in it.
During the famines which Racine and Vauban deplored, peasants must often
have been tempted to 'lose' their children (Sainte-Beuve, _Port Royal_,
vi. 153; _Memoires sur la Vie de Jean Racine_. A Geneve, M.DCCXLVII, pp.
271-3).

(2) The idea of dropping objects which may serve as a guide or 'trail'
is so natural and obvious that it is used in 'paper-chases' every day.
In the Indian story[93] of _Surya Bai_, a handful of grains is
scattered, the pearls of a necklace are used in the _Raksha's Palace_,
in Grimm (15, _Haensel and Grethel_) white pebbles and crumbs of bread
are employed. The Kaffir girl drops ashes[94]. In _Nennilloe Nennella_
(_Pentamerone_, v. 8) the father of the children has pity on them, and
makes a trail of ashes. Bran is used on the second journey, but it is
eaten by an ass[95].

(4) The children arrive at the house of an ogre, whose wife treats them
kindly; the ogre, however, smells them out.

This incident, quite recognisable, is found in Namaqua folklore (Bleek,
_Bushman Folk Lore_). A Namaqua woman has married an elephant. To her
come her two brothers, whom she hides away. 'Then the Elephant, who had
been in the veldt, arrived, and smelling something, rubbed against the
house.' His wife persuades him that she has slain and cooked a wether,
indeed she does cook a wether, to hide the smell of human flesh.

Compare Perrault, 'L'Ogre flairoit droite et a gauche, disant qu'il
sentoit la chair fraiche. Il faut, luy dit sa femme, que ce soit ce veau
que je viens d'habiller que vous sentez.' But the ogre, like the blind
mother of the Elephant in Namaqua, retains his suspicions. In the Zulu
tale of Uzembeni (Callaway, p. 49) there is an ogress very hungry and
terrible, who has even tried to eat her own daughters. She comes home,
where Uzembeni is concealed, and says, 'My children, in my house here
today there is a delicious odour!' As Callaway remarks, this
'Fee-fo-fum' incident recurs in Maori myth, when Maui visits
Murri-ranga-whenua, and in the legend of Tawhaki, where the ogre is a
submarine ogre (Grey's _Polynes. Myth._ pp. 34, 64). In a more familiar
passage the Eumenides utter their _fee-fo-fum_ when they smell out
Orestes[96].

In the extreme north-west of America this world-wide notion meets us
again, among