f. Little Red
Riding Hood thus becomes the Dawn. Vartika is a bird, the Quail, 'i.e.
the returning bird. But as a being delivered by the Asvins, the
representatives of Day and Night, Vartika can only be the returning
Dawn, delivered from the mouth of the wolf, i. e. the dark night[47].'

It is hard to see why the Night, as one of the Asvins, should deliver
the Dawn from the Night, as the Wolf. On the identification of the
Asvins with this or that aspect of Light and Darkness, Muir may be
consulted. 'This allegorical interpretation seems unlikely to be
correct, as it is difficult to suppose that the phenomena in question
should have been alluded to under such a variety of names and
circumstances.' (_Sanskrit Texts_, v. 248. Prof. Goldstuecker thinks the
Asvins are themselves the crepuscular mingling of light and dark, which,
in the other theory, is the struggle of quail and wolf, _op. cit._ v.
257. M. Bergaigne supposes that the Asvins are deities of dawn, _La
Religion Vedique_, ii. 431.)

These considerations lead us far enough from Perrault into 'worlds not
realised.' Vartika (who, in these theories, answers to _Le Petit
Chaperon Rouge_) has been compared by Mr. Max Mueller, not only to the
returning Dawn, but to the returning year, _Vertumnus_. He notes that
the Greek word for quail is _ortyx_, that Apollo and Artemis were born
in Ortygia, an old name of Delos, and that 'here is a real traditional
chain.' But 'it would be a bold assertion to say that the story of _Red
Riding Hood_ was really a metamorphosis of an ancient story of the
rosy-fingered Eos, or the Vedic Eos with her red horses, and that the
two ends, Ushas and Rothkaeppchen, are really held together by an
unbroken traditional chain.'

We shall leave the courage of this opinion to M. Husson, merely
observing that, as a matter of fact, Dawn is _not_ swallowed by Night.
Sunset (which is red) is so swallowed, but then sunset is not 'a young
maiden carrying messages,' like Red Riding Hood and Ushas. To be sure,
the convenient Wolf is regarded by mythologists as 'a representative of
the sun or of the night,' at will. He 'doubles the part,' and 'is the
useful Wolf,' as the veteran Blenkinsopp, in _Pendennis_, was called
'The useful Blenkinsopp.'

[Footnote 42: _Contes de Charles Perrault_, Paris, _s. a._ p. lxiv.
Perrault's love of refining is not idle in _Le Chaperon Rouge_. In the
_popular_ versions, in Brittany and the Nievre, the wolf puts the
grandmothe