ation
of a common form to the notion of difficult Tasks, which is of the
essence of the story.

XVIII. THE MASTER-MAID

This is one of the oldest and widest spread tales of the world, and
the resultant formula was, therefore, more than usually difficult to
reconstruct. The essence of the tale consists in the Menial
Hero--Three Tasks--Master-Maid Help--Obstacles to Pursuit--Oblivion
Kiss--False Bride--Sale of Bed--Happy Marriage. In essentials this is
the story of Jason and Medea, where we have the Tasks, the Pursuit,
and the False Bride, though the dramatic genius of the Greeks has
given a tragic ending to the tale. Lang, in his _Custom and Myth_, pp.
87-102, has pointed out parallels, not alone in modern folk-tales,
like Grimm 92, Campbell 2, Dasent 11, and Basile 11, but even in
Madagascar (_Folk-Lore Journal_, Aug., 1883), and Samoa (Turner 102)
while the Flight and Obstacles are found in Japan and Zululand. Even
in America there is the Algonquin form of the Tasks (School-craft,
Algic Researches ii., 94-104), and the Flight is given in an
interesting article in the _Century Magazine_, 1884. According to
Lang's general views, he seems to regard these incidents as being
universally human and having no affiliation with one another, though
he entitles his essay, "A Far Travelled Tale."

The modern Folk-Tales, however, make it practically impossible that
these at least could have arisen independently. Many of them have an
introductory set of incidents, Jephtha-Vow, Herd-Boy, Shepherd-Boy,
Prince; this I have adopted in my version. But besides this the Tasks
are often identical, Cleaning Stable (Dasent, Campbell), Finger-Ladder
(Campbell, trace in Cosquin 32), Building Castle (Grimm 113, Hahn 54);
the Oblivion Kiss occurs in Scotland, Germany, Spain, Tyrol, Tuscany,
Sicily, and Rome, all in connection with similar stories.

The tale has been especially popular in Celtdom. I have enumerated no
less than fourteen versions in my notes on the "Battle of the Birds"
(_Celtic Fairy Tales_, p. 265). There we have the Obstacles to Pursuit
mainly in the form of forest, mountain, and river, which the late Mr.
Alfred Nutt pointed out to be the natural boundaries of the
Nether-World in Teutonic Paganism. It is, therefore, possible that our
story has been "contaminated" or influenced by the notion of the
"Descent to Hell."

Here, as in the parallel case of Cupid and Psyche, we find a classical
story, with many of the incidents