that maiden
For her choosing in war
The one he willed not.'

Sigurd is bidden to awaken her, and this he does, rending her mail with
his magic sword. But the rest of the tragic story does not correspond
with _La Belle au Bois Dormant_. Perrault's tale has its closest
companion in Grimm's _Little Briar Rose_ (90), which lacks the
conclusion about the wicked mother-in-law. Her conduct, again, recurs in
various tales quite unlike _La Belle_ in general plot. The incident of
the sleep-thorn, or something analogous, occurs in _Surya Bai_ (_Old
Deccan Days_), where a prick from the poisoned nail of a demon acts as
the soporific. To carry poison under the nail is one of the devices of
the Voudou or Obi man in Hayti. Surya Bai, when wakened and married by a
Rajah, is the victim of the jealousy, not of an ogress mother-in-law,
but of another wife, and _that_ story glides into a form of the Egyptian
tale _The Two Brothers_ (Maspero, i.). The sleep-thorn, or poisoned
nail, takes again in Germany the shape of the poisoned comb.
_Snow-white_ is wounded therewith by the jealousy of a beautiful
step-mother, with a yet fairer step-daughter (Grimm, 53). In mediaeval
romances, as in _Perceforest_, an incident is introduced whereby the
sleeping maid becomes a mother. Lucina, Themis, and Venus take the part
of the Fairies, Fates, or Hathors. In the Neapolitan _Pentamerone_ the
incident of the girl becoming a mother in her sleep is repeated. The
father (as in _Surya Bai_) is a married man, and the girl, Thalia,
suffers from the jealousy of the first wife, as Surya Bai does. The
first wife wants to eat Thalia's children, _a diverses sauces_, which
greatly resembles Perrault's _sauce Robert_. The children of Thalia are
named Sun and Moon, while those of the Sleeping Beauty are L'Aurore et
Le Jour. The jealous wife is punished, like the Ogre mother-in-law[41].

While the idea of a long sleep may possibly have been derived from the
repose of Nature in winter, it seems useless to try to interpret _La
Belle au Bois Dormant_ as a Nature myth throughout. The story, like all
_contes_, is a patchwork of incidents, which recur elsewhere in
different combinations. Even the names Le Jour and L'Aurore only appear
in such late and literary forms as the _Pentamerone_, where they are
mixed up with Thalia, clearly a fanciful name for the mother, as
fanciful as that of the sleeping Zellandine, who marries the god Mars in
_Perceforest_. As an example of t