before the mass was over, a very beautiful girl, the
daughter of a poor man, came out of the church and sat at the foot of
the tree. She had been disappointed in her love with a rich man's son,
who had forsaken her in order to marry the daughter of a rich man. So
she wished to die. When the monkey-prince saw her sitting there alone,
he noiselessly went down, carefully took her by the right hand, and
carried her to the top of the tree. She would have died of fright, as
was the fate of the two former women, had she not seen in the monkey's
eyes a noble look that filled her with wonder and sympathy. As days
went by, she lived on delicious fruits which were entirely strange
to her; and her love for the poor creature grew greater and greater,
until at last she loved him more than anything else.

On the evening of the tenth day she was surprised to find herself
beside a gallant prince in a richly-decorated room. At first she
thought that she was dreaming; but when the prince woke up, kissed
her, and then told her the history of his life, she knew that it
was real. She was so astonished, that she exclaimed, "Ah, me! God
is wise!" The next morning she was crowned queen of her husband's
happy subjects, whom she had restored from the enchantment of the
wicked witch. Every one in the kingdom loved his new queen as long
as he lived.

Notes.

I know of no parallels to this interesting story, which appears to
be old native tradition. The hero transformed by enchantment into
a beast, and saved by the devotion of the human lover, suggests the
"Beauty and Beast" cycle (Macculloch, ch. IX; Crane, 7, 324 [notes 5
and 6]; Ralston, Tibetan Tales, p. XXXVII f.); only it is to be noted
that those stories are, after all, heroine tales, not hero tales, for
the interest in them is centred on the disenchantment brought about
by the maiden who comes to love the prince in his beast form. The
curse by a disappointed witch, and the prophecy that only after
five hundred years will the curse be removed, suggest in a way the
"Sleeping Beauty" cycle (Grimm, No. 50; and Bolte-Polivka's exhaustive
notes); only here, too, the resemblance is but vague. There is no magic
sleep in our story, but a Circe-like transformation of the prince and
all his subjects into animals, the city itself being changed into a
forest of trees. We have already met with stories in the Philippines
based on the idea of animal-marriages (e.g., Nos. 18, 19, 29);
but, even were i