ws over her shoulders, and thus becomes a hound. When the
hunter finds her in his hut as a maiden, the charmed skin hanging up and
revealing her secret, he flings the skin into the fire and weds
her.[211]

But enchantment is not the only explanation. The lady may, like Hasan's
bride, be held to belong to a superior race to men, though properly in
human form. In either case the peltry would be a mere veil hiding the
true individuality for a while. It would thus acquire a distinct magical
efficacy; so that when deprived of it, the maiden would be unable to
effect the change. A remarkable instance of this occurs in an Arab saga.
There a man, at Algiers, puts to death his three daughters, who
afterwards appear to a guitar-player and dance to his playing. As they
dance they throw him the rind of the oranges they hold in their hands;
and this rind is found the next day changed into gold pieces and into
jewels. The following year the maidens appear again to the
guitar-player. He manages to get hold of their shrouds, which he burns.
They thereupon come back to life, and he weds the youngest of them. This
is said to have happened no longer ago than sixty years before the
French conquest of Algiers.[212]

Nothing of the sort is found in the Maori tales. To the natives of New
Zealand no change seemed needful: the lady was of supernatural birth and
could fly as she pleased. The same may be said of Andrianoro's wife,
notwithstanding that the Malagasy variant, as a whole, bespeaks a higher
level of culture than the adventures of Tawhaki and Tini-rau. As little
do we find the magical robe in the Passamaquoddy story of the Partridge
and the Sheldrake Duck. The Dyaks of Borneo are unconscious of the need
of it in the saga of their ancestral fish, the _puttin_, which was
caught by a man, and when laid in his boat turned into a girl, whom he
gave to his son for a bride. The Chinese have endless tales about foxes
which assume human form; but the fox's skin plays no part in them. And
in a Japanese tale belonging to the group under consideration, the lady
changes into a fox and back again into a lady without any apparatus of
peltry.[213]

Again, in the nursery tales of the higher races, the dress when cast
seems simply an article of human clothing, often nothing but a girdle,
veil, or apron; and it is only when donned by the enchanted lady, or
elf, that it is found to be neither more nor less than a complete
plumage. Thence it easily pass