Chapter XII: The Charmed Ring

_Source._--Knowles, _Folk-Tales of Kashmir_, pp. 20-8.

_Parallels._--The incident of the Aiding Animals is frequent in folk-tales: see bibliographical references, _sub voce_, in my List of Incidents, _Trans. Folk-Lore Congress_, p. 88; also Knowles, 21, _n._; and Temple, _Wideawake Stories_, pp. 401, 412. The Magic Ring is also "common form" in folk-tales; _cf._ Köhler _ap._ Marie de France, _Lais_, ed. Warncke, p. lxxxiv. And the whole story is to be found very widely spread from India (_Wideawake Stories_, pp. 196-206) to England (_Eng. Fairy Tales_, No. xvii, "Jack and his Golden Snuff-box," _cf._ Notes, _ibid._), the most familiar form of it being "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp."

_Remarks._--M. Cosquin has pointed out (_Contes de Lorraine_, p. xi. _seq._) that the incident of the rat's-tail-up-nose to recover the ring from the stomach of an ogress, is found among Arabs, Albanians, Bretons, and Russians. It is impossible to imagine that incident--occurring in the same series of incidents--to have been invented more than once, and if that part of the story has been borrowed from India, there is no reason why the whole of it should not have arisen in India, and have been spread to the West. The English variant was derived from an English Gipsy, and suggests the possibility that for this particular story the medium of transmission has been the Gipsies. This contains the incident of the loss of the ring by the faithful animal, which again could not have been independently invented.