nize their despised brother-in-law, Weissnittle, who
sells them his game the first day for their wedding-rings, the second
for leave to brand them with these rings on their foreheads, the third
for permission to brand them with a gallows on their backs: lastly, we
have Weissnittle, as a splendid young prince, publicly shaming his
brothers-in-law by exposing their branding marks. In India this
branding with red-hot pice was the punishment for stealing. Compare in
Taylor's _Confessions of a Thug_, p. 411, Amir Ali's horror at being
so branded by the Raja of Jhalone. It was, he says years later, a
punishment worse than death, as the world would think him a thief, and
he would carry to his grave "a mark only set on the vile and the
outcasts from society."

7. Muniya tells me that, in a variation of this story, the dog, cow,
and horse each swallow the child three times, but for shorter periods,
as he is only five years old when he escapes on Ka[t.]ar. Then when
the princess chooses her husband she rides three times round the
assemblage of Raja's, who all sit on a great plain, and each time she
chooses the pretended _old_ man; for in this version the boy loses his
youth as well as his good looks. Instead of taking service with the
grain merchant, the boy is told by his horse to go boldly to the
king's palace and ask for service there. The shaming of the
brothers-in-law happens thus. The boy invites these princes, the king,
all the king's servants, and all the people in the king's country, to
a grand entertainment in the king's court-house. When they are all
assembled he has the six princes stripped and every one mocks at the
pice-marks on their backs. These are the only variations in the other
version.

Sir George Grey, in his _Polynesian Mythology_, p. 73, tells how the
hero Tawhaki when he climbed into heaven in search of his lost wife
"disguised himself, and changed his handsome and noble appearance, and
assumed the likeness of a very ugly old man." If fact, he looks such a
thoroughly common old man that in the heavens he is taken for a slave
instead of a great chief, and treated as such.

XXI.--THE BEL-PRINCESS.

1. Muniya says that telling the prince he would marry a Bel-Princess
was equivalent to saying he would not marry at all, for these
brothers' wives knew she lived in the fairy-country, and that it would
be very difficult, if not impossible, for the prince to find her, and
take her from it.

2. With the fa