their good characters bearing their unmerited misfortunes with
unvarying meekness and patience, and being ultimately rewarded, while
the envious and malicious rivals who have supplanted or slandered them
are punished in the end. But they have not taken a firm hold on the
west, where they are probably destined to become forgotten when the
progress of education has replaced folk-lore by literature, while they
are likely to go on living for ages in the east, which seems to have
been their original home.

In the present collection the story of the Substituted Princess occurs
several times. In "Phulmati Rani" the heroine is a wife instead of a
bride, which makes the substitution more than usually improbable. As
she and her husband are resting beside a tank, a shoemaker's wife
comes up, and pushes her into the water, in which she is drowned. The
shoemaker's wife takes her place, though she is "very black and ugly,"
one-eyed, and exceedingly wicked. It may be remarked that the
substitution in question generally takes place by the side of water.
In the "Bel-Princess," the beautiful maiden who has come out of the
fruit which the prince opened by the side of a well, is pushed into
the water, while the prince is asleep, by a wicked woman, very ugly,
and with "something wrong with one of her eyes," who then assumes her
place. In tales like the story of "The Princess who loved her Father
like Salt," the transformation scene is of a different nature, though
the leading idea of the change is the same. It is not an ordinary
bride or wife who is supplanted, and the substitution need not take
place beside water. The heroine is a stranger who, generally after
long wanderings, finds a prince really or apparently dead, by patient
watching all but effects his cure, but is at the last moment
supplanted by a servant, who gives the final touch to the work, claims
its entire merit, and is made the wife of the grateful patient. In the
Indian tale the prince lies motionless, his body "stuck full of
needles." The heroine sits down by the side of his couch, and there
remains for a whole week "without eating, or drinking, or sleeping,
pulling out the needles." At the end of two weeks more the needles are
all extracted, except those in the eyes. She then goes away to bathe;
and while she is absent, a servant maid whom she has left in charge of
the body pulls out the remaining needles. The prince opens his eyes,
thanks God for bringing him to life agai