go_, p. 227.]

[Footnote 33: In popular French versions the Ogre is often called _Le
Sarrasin_ to this day (Sebillot in _Melusine_, May 5, 1887).]

NOTES ON THE

SEVERAL TALES BY PERRAULT,

AND THEIR VARIANTS.

LES TROIS SOUHAITS.

_The Three Wishes._

The story of _The Three Wishes_ is very valuable as an illustration of
the difficulties which baffle, and perhaps will never cease to baffle,
the student of popular Tales and their diffusion. The fundamental idea
is that a supernatural being of one sort or another can grant to a
mortal the fulfilment of a wish, or wishes, and that the mortal can
waste the boon. Now probably this idea might occur to any human mind
which entertained the belief in communication between men, and powerful
persons of any sort, Gods, Saints, Tree-spirits, fairies, _follets_ or
the like. The mere habit of prayer, universally human as it is, contains
the germs of the conception. But the notion, as we find it in story,
branches out into a vast variety of shapes, and the problem is to
determine which of these, or whether any one of these is the original
type, and whether the others have been adapted or burlesqued from that
first form, and whether these processes have been the result of literary
transmission, and literary handling, or of oral traditions and popular
fancy. Perhaps a compact statement of some (by no means all) of the
shapes of _The Three Wishes_ may here be serviceable.

1. The granters of the Wishes are gods. The gift is accepted in a pious
spirit, and the desires are noble, and worthy of the donors.

This tale occurs in Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, viii. 610-724. Baucis and
Philemon entertain the gods, who convert their hut into a Temple. They
_wish_ (the man is the speaker) to serve the gods in this fane, and that
neither may outlive the other:

Nec conjugis umquam
Busta meae videam: neu sim tumulandus ab illa.

Their wishes are fulfilled.

2. In German popular tales, this idea appears, with additions, in _Rich
and Poor_ (Grimm 87). Here the virtue of the good is contrasted with the
folly of the bad. The Poor man hospitably receives our Lord, and, for
his three wishes, chooses eternal happiness, health and daily bread, and
a new house. The Rich man rejects our Lord, but getting a second chance,
loses his temper, wishes his horse dead, the saddle on his wife's back,
and--the saddle off again!

Now popular fancy has been better pleased with the