ttle Men in the
Wood"] and No. 24 ["Mother Holle"]; and Bolte-Polivka's notes to
the two stories). In these groups, however, the two young women
are sisters,--one bad, and the other good. About all there is in
common between the norm of the "Toads and Diamonds" cycle and our
tales is the situation of the plain-looking but faithful, unselfish,
good-hearted woman being granted by some supernatural creature wealth
and beauty; while the handsome but selfish and wicked woman, envious
of her rival's good luck, becomes loathsome and miserable when she
asks a boon from the same supernatural source.

The only other member of this group that narrates the story of
two wives instead of two sisters is Lal Behari Day's No. 22. This
Bengal tale, it appears to me, is related both to our stories and to
those of the "Mother Holle" group, thus linking ours with the latter
also. Following is Cosquin's summary of Day's story (2 : 123):--

A man had two wives,--one young, and one old. The latter was treated by
the other as if she were a slave. One day her rival, in a fit of anger,
snatched from the old woman's head the one tuft of hair she had, and
drove her from the door. The old woman went into the forest. Passing
by a cotton-tree, she saw that the ground round about the tree needed
sweeping, and she swept it. The tree, much pleased, showered its
blessings on her. She did the same thing for other trees--a banana
and a tulasi--and also for a bull, whose stall she swept out. All
blessed her. She arrived next at the hut of a venerable mouni (a
kind of ascetic), and she told him of her misery. The mouni told her
to go plunge herself once, but only once, in a certain pool. She
obeyed, and came up out of the water with the most beautiful hair
in the world, and altogether rejuvenated. The mouni next told her
to enter his hut and to select from among many willow baskets that
which pleased her. The woman took one very simple in appearance. The
mouni bade her open it: it was filled with gold and precious stones,
and was never empty. On her way back home she passed in front of the
tulasi. The tree said to her, "Go home in peace! your husband will
love you to madness." Next the bull gave her some shell ornaments
which were about its horns, and told her to place them on her wrists:
if she would but shake them, she would have all the ornaments she could
wish. The banana-tree gave her one of its large leaves, which filled
itself of its own accord with