214. In
some of the folk-tales, there is an introduction in which the Foolish
Wife sells three cows, but keeps one of the three as a pledge.
Thereupon her husband leaves her until he can find any one as silly,
which he does by posing as a Visitor from Paradise. This is more
suitable for an introduction for "The Three Sillies."

XX. INSIDE AGAIN

This story is one of the most interesting in the study of the popular
diffusion of tales, and I therefore give it here though I have given
an excellent version from Temple and Steel in _Indian Fairy Tales_,
ix., "The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal," and have there
discussed the original form. Its interest, from the point of view of
diffusion, lies in the fact that it occurs in India, both early (see
Benfey, i., 117) and late (Temple, 12, Frere, 14), in Greece, both
classical (AEsopic fable of the serpent in the bosom) and modern (Hahn,
87, Schmidt, p. 3), and in the earliest mediaeval collection of popular
tales by Petrus Alfonsi (_Disciplina clericalis_, vii.), as well as in
the Reynard cycle. Besides these quasi-literary sources ranging over
more than two thousand years, there are innumerable folk-versions
collected in the last century and ranging from Burmah (Semeaton, _The
Karens_, 128) to America (Harris, _Uncle Remus_, 86). These are all
enumerated by Professor Krohn in an elaborate dissertation, "Mann und
Fuchs" (Helsingfors, 1891). In essentials the trick by which the
fisherman gets the djin inside the bottle again, in the first story
within the frame of the _Arabian Nights_ (adapted so admirably by Mr.
Anstey in his _Brass Bottle_), is practically the same device. Richard
I. is said, by Matthew Paris (ed. Luard, ii., 413-16), to have told
the nobles of England, after his return from captivity in the East, a
similar apologue proving the innate ingratitude of man. This is
derived from the Karma Jataka, which was possibly the ultimate source
of the whole series of tales.

Amid all these hundred variants there is one common idea, that of the
ingratitude of a rescued animal (crocodile, snake, tiger, etc.), which
is thwarted by its being placed back in the situation from which it
was rescued. In some cases the bystander who restores equilibrium is
alone; in most instances there are three of them; the first two having
suffered from man's ingratitude see no reason for interfering. This is
the "common form" which I have adopted in my version. In India the
sufferer from