is so small compared with the
number of "pure" versions of each cycle, that we are led to think
it very unlikely that there ever was a "lost original." There seems
to be no evidence whatsoever that these two cycles had a common
ancestor. Besides the fact that the number of stories in which the
contamination is found is relatively very small, there is also to
be considered the fact that these few examples are recent. No one
is known to have existed more than seventy-five years ago. Hence the
"snowball" theory will better explain the composite nature of the gypsy
version and our story of "Zaragoza" than a "missing-link" theory. These
two cycles, consisting as they do of a series of tests of skill, are
peculiarly fitted to be interlocked. The wonder is, not that they have
become combined in a few cases, but that they have remained separate
in so many more, particularly as both stories are very widespread;
and, given the ingredients, this is a combination that could have
been made independently by many story-tellers. Could not the idea
occur to more than one narrator that it is a greater feat to steal a
living person (B4) than a corpse (D1), a piece of roast meat guarded
by a person who knows that the thief is coming (B6) than a piece of
raw meat from an unsuspecting butcher (E7)? All in all, it appears
to me much more likely that the droll and certainly later cycle of
the "Master Thief" grew out of the more serious and earlier cycle of
"Rhampsinitus's Treasure-House" (by the same process as is suggested
in the notes to No. 1 of this present collection) than that the two
are branches from the same trunk.

In any case, our two stories make the combination. When or whence
these Tagalog versions arose I cannot say. Nor need they be analyzed
in detail, as the texts are before us in full. I will merely call
attention to the fact that in "Zaragoza" the king sets a snare
(cf. Herodotus) for the thief, instead of the more common barrel of
pitch. There is something decidedly primitive about this trap which
shoots arrows into its victim. Zaragoza's trick whereby he fools
the rich merchant has an analogue in Knowles's Kashmir story of
"The Day-Thief and the Night-Thief" (p. 298).

"Juan the Peerless Robber," garbled and unsatisfactory as it is
in detail and perverted in denouement, presents the interesting
combination of the skill-contest between the two thieves (see above),
the treachery of one (cf. the Persian Bahar-i-Danush, 2 :