enzlau ed.),
11 : 247, is added the death-penalty in case the hero fails to perform
the second cure, which consists in persuading the spirit, in the form
of a snake, to unwind itself from the body of the vezir's daughter. The
hero had already cured the sultan's daughter and married her.

A Serbian story (Wuk, No. 37) is closer to the "Forty Vezirs" version
than is the "1001 Days." The only essential difference is that the
opening of the Serbian tale is the well-known fabliau of the "Meadow
that was mowed."

Here the wife falls into a pit. When the husband attempts to draw
her out again, a devil appears. The devil is thankful; and, to reward
the man, it enters the body of the emperor's daughter. Here the hero
appears, not as an enchanter, but as a physician.

Practically identical is the story of "The Bad Wife and the Devil,"
in Vogl, "Slowenische Volksmaerchen" (Wien, 1837).

In a Finnish version of the story (Benfey, 524-525) the hero, as in
the preceding, assumes the role of a physician.

The husband pushes his bad wife into an abyss. When he attempts to
draw her out again, another woman appears. She is the Plague. [80]
Out of gratitude for her liberation from that other wicked woman,
she proposes to him that they travel together through the world: she,
the pest, will make people ill; he, as physician, will cure them. So
done. As a result the man becomes rich. But at last he grows weary
of his excessive work: so he procures a snappish dog, and puts it in
a sack. The next time he is called to the side of a person made sick
by the pest, he says to her, "Enter human beings no more: if you do,
I will liberate from this sack the woman that tormented you in the
abyss," at the same time irritating the dog so that it growls. The
Plague, full of terror, begs him for God's sake not to set the woman
free, and promises to reform.

It will be seen that in its method of the "sickness and the cure,"
this story is related to Grimm, No. 44, "Godfather Death," where
Death takes the place of the Plague, and where, instead of gratitude,
the motive is the godfather relationship of Death toward the hero.

This folk-tale, says Benfey (p. 525), was early put into literary form
in Europe. Among others, he cites Machiavelli's excellent version in
his story of "Belfagor" (early sixteenth century):--

Belfagor, a devil, is sent to earth by his master to live as a married
man for ten years, to see whether certain accusations made against