le, of which the "Indolent Husband" is clearly
a member, is one of the most widespread Maerchen in the world. For
a full bibliography of this group, see Bolte-Polivka, 1 : 346-361
(on Grimm, No. 36). The usual formula for this cycle is as follows:--

A young servant (or a poor man) is presented by his master (or by
some powerful personage--in some of the versions, God himself) on two
different occasions with a magic object, usually a gold-giving animal,
and a table or cloth which miraculously supplies food. When in an inn,
he is robbed of the magic object and magic animal by the inn-keeper
or his wife, and worthless objects resembling those that are stolen
are substituted while the hero sleeps (or is drunk). The third magic
article, which he gets possession of in the same way as he acquired
the other two, is a magic cudgel or cane, through the aid of which
he recovers his stolen property.

This is the form of the story as it is found in Basile (1 : i),
Gonzenbach (No. 52), Cosquin (Nos. IV and LVI), Schott (No. 20),
Schneller (No. 15), Jacobs (English Fairy Tales, "The Ass, the
Table, and the Stick"), Dasent (No. XXXIV, "The Lad Who Went to the
North Wind" = Asbjoernsen og Moe, 1868, No. 7), Crane (No. XXXII,
"The Ass that Lays Money"); and it is this formula that our story
follows. Grimm, No. 36, however, differs from these stories in two
respects: (1) it has a framework-story of the deceitful goat on
whose account the father drives from home his three sons; (2) the
story proper concerns three brothers, one of whom acquires the little
wishing-table, another the gold-ass, and the third the cudgel. However,
as in the other tales, the possessor of the stick compels the thieving
inn-keeper to return the property stolen from his brothers.

In their details we notice a large number of variations, even among
the European forms. The personage from whom the poor man receives the
magic objects is sometimes God, Fortune, a fairy, a statue, a magician,
a dwarf, a priest, a lord, a lady, etc. (Cosquin, 1 : 52). The old
humpback in our story may be some saint in disguise, though the
narrator does not say so. The gold-producing animal is not always an
ass, either: it may be a ram (as in the Norse and Czech versions),
a sheep (Magyar, Polish, Lithuanian), a horse (Venetian), a mule
(Breton), a he-goat (Lithuanian, Norwegian), a she-goat (Austrian),
a cock (Oldenburg), or a hen (Tyrolese, Irish). For references see
Macculloch, 215.