before the image and complained to the Virgin of his situation. The
Virgin said to him, "Don't worry! To-morrow mount the horse which
is in the stable, clothe yourself in iron, and go to the kingdom of
Moscobia to help the king drive the Moors away." Juan did so, and
upon his arrival in Moscobia he found thousands of Moors threatening
the king. With his sword he killed half the enemy: the rest were
routed. Because of his great services, the king married his daughter
to Juan, and the new couple were proclaimed king and queen.

Some time afterwards, Juan wrote to his sister, suggesting that they
visit their parents. The two couples, accompanied by many of the
nobles of their kingdoms, set out for Spain. Their cruel father was
astounded to see his children raised to such a lofty position, and
he begged their pardon for his former harsh treatment of them. They
forgave him, and then returned to their respective kingdoms, where
they lived peacefully for many years.

The connection between our folk-tale and the romance is not very
clear. In both we have the abandoned children, the discovery of the
house in the woods where the children are reared to manhood and
womanhood, and the marriage of Maria with a prince who loses his
way in the forest. In both Juan becomes a king, and in both the two
children seek again their cruel parents and forgive them. On the other
hand, there is much in the folk-tale that is lacking in the romance;
e.g., the incident of the egg that hatches into a fighting cock,
and the incident of the black deer with the miraculous hide. In the
folk-tale Juan becomes king because of his skill in a tournament;
in the romance, because, with the help of the Virgin, he defeats a
large Moorish army. In the one, the shelter in the woods is but a
thatch-roofed hut inhabited by a kindly old woman; in the other,
it is a magnificent house occupied by no one except the image of
the Virgin. The correspondences as well as the differences between
the two versions, neither of which appears to be new, suggest that
the source of the folk-tale and the romance is one and the same,
but that the folk-tale went its own way, the way of the people, and
thus acquired its more native appearance. That the common source was
some European story, can hardly be doubted, I think.

The opening of our story is not unlike that of the German "Haensel
und Gretel" (Grimm, No. 15). Bolte and Polivka (1 : 123) note that
various different Maerchen