E WISHES

_Source._--Steinberg's _Folk-Lore of Northamptonshire_, 1851, but
entirely rewritten by Mr. Nutt, who has introduced from other variants
one touch at the close--viz., the readiness of the wife to allow her
husband to remain disfigured.

_Parallels._--Perrault's _Trois Souhaits_ is the same tale, and Mr. Lang
has shown in his edition of Perrault (pp. xlii.-li.) how widely spread
is the theme throughout the climes and the ages. I do not, however,
understand him to grant that they are all derived from one source--that
represented in the Indian _Pantschatantra_. In my _AEsop_, i., 140-1, I
have pointed out an earlier version in Phaedrus where it occurs (as in
the prose versions) as the fable of _Mercury and the two Women_, one of
whom wishes to see her babe when it has a beard; the other, that
everything she touches which she would find useful in her profession,
may follow her. The babe becomes bearded, and the other woman raising
her hand to wipe her eyes finds her nose following her
hand--_denouement_ on which the scene closes. M. Bedier, as usual,
denies the Indian origin, _Les Fabliaux_, pp. 177, _seq._

_Remarks._--I have endeavoured to show, _l.c._, that the Phaedrine form
is ultimately to be derived from India, and there can be little doubt
that all the other variants, which are only variations on one idea, and
that an absurdly incongruous one, were derived from India in the last
resort. The case is strongest for drolls of this kind.

LXVI. THE BURIED MOON

_Source._--Mrs. Balfour's "Legends of the Lincolnshire Cars" in
_Folk-Lore_, ii., somewhat abridged and the dialect removed. The story
was derived from a little girl named Bratton, who declared she had heard
it from her "grannie." Mrs. Balfour thinks the girl's own weird
imagination had much to do with framing the details.

_Remarks._--The tale is noteworthy as being distinctly mythical in
character, and yet collected within the last ten years from one of the
English peasantry. The conception of the moon as a beneficent being, the
natural enemy of the bogles and other dwellers of the dark, is natural
enough, but scarcely occurs, so far as I recollect, in other
mythological systems. There is, at any rate, nothing analogous in the
Grimms' treatment of the moon in their _Teutonic Mythology_, tr.
Stallybrass, pp. 701-21.

LXVII. A SON OF ADAM

_Source._--From memory, by Mr. E. Sidney Hartland, as heard by him from
his nurse in childhood.

_Pa