all the stories
belonging to that group, the action turns upon the union of the human
hero or heroine with a spouse who is really or apparently an inferior
animal. In the modified version of the story with which our nurseries
have become acquainted through a French literary medium, the species
of Beast to which the Beauty is wedded is not stated, and its
transformation into a princely husband is attributed to her unaided
love. But in by far the greater part of the variants of the folk-tale
on which it seems to have been founded, as well as of the other
stories in which a similar transformation is the principal
feature--variants which have been gathered in abundance from all parts
of Europe, not to speak of Asia--the animal nature of the mysterious
spouse is clearly defined. In them the husband whom the Beauty is
induced by filial affection, fear, or compassion to wed, is an
unmistakable Beast--a pig in Sicily, a bear in Norway, a hedgehog in
Germany, a goat in Russia. Sometimes he is even of a lower type, often
a frog or a snake. And once, in Wallachia, he has been transferred
from the animal to the vegetable world, and figures as a pumpkin. In
every instance he is represented as being able to change at times his
repulsive appearance for one of beauty, and this he generally does by
doffing a kind of husk which when donned conceals his real form, and
invests him with that of an inferior being. If this husk be destroyed
during the temporary absence of its owner, he loses his transforming
power. The destruction of the husk is generally the work of the wife,
who is sometimes rewarded, her husband remaining with her constant to
his true nature; at other times she is punished, he being lost to her
for a time or for ever. These stories about a monster husband have
their exact counterparts in tales about a monster wife, the leading
idea being the same in both groups; the only difference being that it
is the wife who appears at times as a frog or other inferior creature,
and who continues to do so until her transforming power terminates
with the destruction of her disguising husk.

Now these temporary transformations, though common to the folk-tales
of all parts of Europe, are not in accordance with the European
superstitions of the present day, nor with those, so far as we are
acquainted with them, of old European heathenism. The nearest approach
to them is afforded by the wehr-wolf superstition, but that is an
isolated belief