body be taken away.

At last the news of the miracle was brought to the ears of the
king. He himself went to the river to see the wonderful corpse. As
soon as he saw the figure of the drowned woman, he was tortured with
remorse. Then, to his great surprise and fear, the corpse suddenly
stood up out of the water, and said to him in sorrowful tones, "O
king! as you see, my body has been floating on the water. The birds
would have buried me, but I wanted you to know that you ordered me to
be killed without any investigation of my fault. Your wife stole my
boy, and, as you saw, she put a cat by my side." The ghost vanished,
and the king saw the body float away again down the river. The king
at once ordered the body of his favorite to be taken out of the water
and brought to the palace; and he himself was driven back to the town,
violent with rage and remorse. There he seized his treacherous wife
and hurled her out of the window of the palace, and he even ordered
her body to be hanged.

Having gotten rid of this evil woman, the king ordered the body of
the innocent woman to be buried among the noble dead. The corpse
was placed in a magnificent tomb, and was borne in a procession with
pompous funeral ceremonies. He himself dressed entirely in black as
a sign of his genuine grief for her; yet, in spite of his sorrow for
his true wife, he took comfort in her son, who grew to be a handsome
boy. As time went on, the prince developed into a brave youth,
who was able to perform the duties of his father the king: so, as
his father became old, no longer able to bear the responsibilities
of regal power, the prince succeeded to the throne, and ruled the
kingdom well. He proved himself to be the son of the good woman by
his wise and just rule over his subjects.

Note.

I know of no other versions of this story. The incident of the animal
substitution for child is a commonplace in folk-tales, though it is
usually ascribed to an envious step-mother rather than an envious
co-wife. For abstracts of Filipino stories containing this incident
see JAFL 29 : 226 et seq., 228, 229; 19 : 265-272.

TALE 44

THE MAGIC RING ("ANG SINGSING NGA TANTANAN").

Narrated by Encarnacion Gonzaga, a Visayan from Jaro, Iloilo. The
story, she says, is very popular among the Visayans.

In the town of X, not far from the kingdom of Don Fernando, there
lived an old religious woman named Carmen. She had a son named
Carlos. She had been a widow s