specimens of this kind of monster are to be found in the Russian tales
about Koshchei the Deathless. But these remarkably abnormal beings
scarcely seem at home in western folk-lore. They are but little in
keeping with their European surroundings, and never seem to divest
themselves of their alien air. In oriental stories, on the other hand,
they figure frequently, and they seem to occupy a familiar and an
appropriate place. The oldest of the world's tales of wonder, the
Egyptian story of the Two Brothers, contains an heroic being whose
life comes to an end when his heart falls to the ground from the tree
upon which he has hung it. And in the modern folk-tales of India,
demons of this kind play their part without exciting any more than
usual surprise. Miss Frere's Deccan stories make us well acquainted
with one of these personages, "a wicked magician named Punchkin,"
whose name serves as a convenient designation for the long-lived
monsters in question. The present collection contains several
specimens. In "Brave Hiralalbasa" (No. 11) we meet with a Rakshas, who
is induced, as usual by female wiles, to reveal the secret of his
life. "Sixteen miles away from this place," he says, "is a tree. Round
the tree are tigers, and bears, and scorpions, and snakes; on the top
of the tree is a very great flat snake; on his head is a little cage;
in the cage is a bird; and my soul is in that bird." When the bird is
seized by the hero of the story, the Rakshas feels that something
terrible has occurred. When the bird's legs and wings are pulled off,
the Rakshas becomes a mere head and torso; and when the bird's neck is
wrung, down falls the Rakshas dead. In like manner, in the tale of
"The Demon and the King's Son" (No. 24), the demon dies when the
prince has killed a certain bird, the lives of the bird and of the
demon being conterminable. According to the narrator Dunkni, "all
Rakshases keep their souls in birds;" but another authority asserts
(p. 261) that "a whole tribe of Rakshases, dwelling in Ceylon, kept
theirs in one and the same lemon."

The tale of "The Voracious Frog" (No. 6) is a valuable contribution to
the store we already possess of what appear to be myths relating to
apparent destruction, but ultimate resuscitation. To this class seem
to belong the stories on which Little Red Riding Hood was probably
based, describing how a wolf or other monster swallowed various
innocent beings, but was at last forced to restore the