nd 2.

The second part of our story opens with the "bride-wager" incident
(see Von Hahn, 1 : 54, "Oenomaosformel"), though I can point to no
parallel of Juan's method of making love to the princess; that is,
by means of a letter conveyed by a kite.

The tasks which the hero is obliged to perform vary greatly in the
different members of the "Forgotten Betrothed" cycle. Juan has to
plant wheat and bake bread from the ripened grain in twenty-four hours,
separate a jar of mongo from a jar of sand, and fetch a ring from the
sea. The first task imposed by the king has analogies in a number of
European tales. In Groome's No. 34 the Devil says to the hero, "Here
is one more task for you: drain the marsh, and plough it, and sow it,
and to-morrow bring me roasted maize" (p. 106). In Groome's No. 7 the
king says to the old man, "See this great forest! Fell it all, and make
it a level field; and plough it for me, and break up all the earth;
and sow it with millet by to-morrow morning. And mark well what I tell
you: you must bring me a cake [made from the ripened millet-seed,
clearly; see p. 23] made with sweet milk." Cosquin (2 : 24) cites a
Catalan and a Basque story in which the hero has not only to fell a
great forest, but to sow grain and harvest it. In kind this is the same
sort of impossible task imposed on Truth in a Visayan story (JAFL 19 :
100-102), where the hero has to beget, and the princess his wife to
bring forth, in one night, three children. Helpful eagles solve this
difficulty for Truth by conveying to him three newly-born babes. The
second task is a well-known one, and is found in many members of the
"Grateful Animals" cycle. Usually it is ants, which the hero has
earlier spared, that perform the service of separating two kinds of
seed, etc. (see Tawney, 1 : 361 and note). The mixture of sand and
mongo, in our story, is not a very happy conception. Originally it must
have been either gravel and mongo, or else mongo and some other kind of
lentil nearly resembling it in size. The third task, with the method of
accomplishing it, is perhaps the most interesting of all. In a Samoan
story of the "Forgotten Betrothed" cycle (Lang, op. cit., p. 98), the
heroine bids the hero cut her body into pieces and cast them into the
sea. There she becomes a fish and recovers the ring. In a Catalan tale
(Rondallayre, 1 : 41) the hero is also required to fetch a ring from
the bottom of the sea. His loved one tells him to cut her to p