e spade from his father's hands, and at no great
distance began to dig another pit. His father asked why he dug that
pit; and he answered,--

"I too, when thou art aged, father mine,
Will treat my father as thou treatest thine;
Following the custom of the family,
Deep in a pit I too will bury thee."

By repeating a few more stanzas the son convinced his father that
he was about to commit a great crime. The father, penitent, seated
himself in the cart with his son and the old man, and they returned
home. There the husband gave the wicked wife a sound drubbing, bundled
her heels over head out of the house, and bade her never darken his
doors again. [The rest of the story, which has no connection with
ours, tells how the little son by a trick made his mother repent and
become a good woman, and brought about a reconciliation between her
and his father.]

The chief difference between our Pampango variant and the "Jataka,"
it will be seen, is in the prominent role played by the wife in
the latter. She is lacking altogether in the Filipino story. The
resemblances are strong, on the other hand. The father plans to kill
the grandfather,--a turn seldom found in the Occidental versions,--and,
accompanied by his son, he goes out to the forest (in the Indian,
cemetery) to despatch the old man. The small boy's thinking (or
pretending to think) it a family custom to put old men out of the
way is found in both stories. Our Pampango variant appears to me to
represent a form even older than the "Jataka," but at the same time
a form that is historically connected with that Indian tale.

Of our two main stories,--"Respect Old Age" and "The Golden Rule,"--the
second is very likely derived from Europe. Compare it, for instance,
with Grimm, No. 78. The "machinery" of the wooden plates establishes
the relationship, I believe. This form of the story, however, is not
unlike an Oriental Maerchen cited by Clouston (op. cit., 2 : 377). It
is from a Canarese collection of tales called the "Katha Manjari,"
and runs thus:--

A rich man used to feed his father with congi from an old broken
dish. His son saw this, and hid the dish. Afterwards the rich man,
having asked his father where it was, beat him [because he could not
tell]. The boy exclaimed, "Don't beat grandfather! I hid the dish,
because, when I become a man, I may be unable to buy another one for
you." When the rich man heard this, he was ashamed, and afterwards
treated his father k