Indian Fairy Tales
Book Excerpt
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Of more general interest than the few peculiarities of these tales are the many points in which they resemble and illustrate some of the familiar features of European folk-lore. As an example of the latter may be taken a "husk-myth," which is a valuable contribution to the literature of the "Beauty and the Beast" cycle. In 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 f