edly, she hid the brothers in the kitchen, in a trough used
for scalding pigs. There the two humpbacks smothered before the
wife could release them. In order to rid herself of their corpses,
she hired a body-carrier to cast one of them into the Tiber; and
when he returned for his pay, she informed him that the corpse had
come back. After the man had removed the second corpse, he met the
humpbacked husband, whom he now likewise cast into the river.

The identity of this story with ours makes a direct connection between
the two practically certain. The two stories differ in this respect,
however: the Italian has a long introduction telling of the enmity
between the hunchback brothers, and of the knavish tricks of Zambo,
the oldest, who goes out to seek his fortune, and is finally married
in Rome. All this detail is lacking in the Filipino version, as is
likewise the statement (found in Straparola) that the wife rejoiced
when she learned that she had been rid of her husband as well as of
the corpses of her brothers-in-law.

In our other story and the Pampango variant we note some divergences
from the preceding tale. Here the one married brother charitably
supports his six indigent brothers, whom the wife subsequently
murders. In the majority of the European versions the deaths are either
accidental or are contrived by the husband and wife together (e.g.,
Gesta Romanorum; and Von der Hagen, No. 62). While I am inclined
to think these two stories of ours imported, they do not appear to
be derived immediately from the same source (Straparola). However,
the facts that the seven men are brothers and are humpbacks, and that
the husband is killed by mistake, make an Occidental source for our
second story and for the Pampango variant most probable.

I know of no Oriental analogues to the story as a whole, though the
trick of getting a number of corpses buried for one appears in several
stories from Cochin-China, Siam, and the Malay Archipelago:--

(1) Landes, No. 180, which I summarize here from Cosquin (2 : 337):

In the course of some adventures more or less grotesque, four monks are
killed at one time near an inn. The old woman who keeps this hostelry,
fearful of being implicated in a murder, wishes to get rid of the
corpses. She hides three of the bodies, and has one buried by a monk
who is passing by. She pretends that the dead man is her nephew. The
monk, returning to the inn after his task, is stupefied to see the
co