es of all Eastern story-books are more or less slight and of
small account. The value of the _Tuti Nama_ consists in the aid which
the subordinate tales furnish in tracing the genealogy of popular
fictions, and in this respect the importance of the work can hardly be
over-rated.

_ADDITIONAL NOTE._

THE MAGIC BOWL, pp. 152-156; 157, 158.

In our tale of the Faggot-maker, the fairies warn him to guard the Magic
Bowl with the utmost care, "for it will break by the most trifling
blow," and he is to use it only when absolutely necessary; and in the
notes of variants appended, reference is made (p. 158) to a Meklenburg
story where the beer in an inexhaustible can disappears the moment its
possessor reveals the secret. The gifts made by fairies and other
superhuman beings have indeed generally some condition attached (most
commonly, perhaps, that they are not to be examined until the recipients
have reached home), as is shown pretty conclusively by my friend Mr. E.
Sidney Hartland in a most interesting paper on "Fairy Births and Human
Midwives," which enriches the pages of the _Archaeological Review_ for
December, 1889, and at the close of which he cites, from Poestion's
_Lapplaendische Maerchen_, p. 119, a curious example, which may be fairly
regarded as an analogue of the tale of the Poor Faggot-maker--"far cry"
though it be from India to Swedish Lappmark:

"A peasant who had one day been unlucky at the chase was returning
disgusted, when he met a fine gentleman, who begged him to come and cure
his wife. The peasant protested in vain that he was no doctor. The other
would take no denial, insisting that it was no matter, for if he would
only put his hands on the lady she would be healed. Accordingly, the
stranger led him to the very top of a mountain where was perched a
castle he had never seen before. On entering, he found the walls were
mirrors, the roof overhead of silver, the carpets of gold-embroidered
silk, and the furniture of the purest gold and jewels. The stranger took
him into a room where lay the loveliest of princesses on a golden bed,
screaming with pain. As soon as she saw the peasant, she begged him to
come and put his hands upon her. Almost stupified with astonishment, he
hesitated to lay his coarse hands upon so fair a dame. But at length he
yielded, and in a moment her pain ceased, and she was made whole. She
stood up and thanked him, begging him to tarry awhile and eat with them.
This, however