2 This method of killing the robbers is exactly the same as that followed by the youth in the Moravian-Gypsy story of ‘The Princess and the Forester’s Son’ (No. 43, p. 147). Cf. too, No. 8, ‘The Bad Mother,’ pp. 25, 30, where the lad kills eleven of twelve dragons, and Hahn, vol. ii. p. 279. ↑
3 For cutting three red stripes out of back, cf. ‘Osborn’s Pipe’ (Dasent’s Tales from the Fjeld, p. 3), which = the Welsh-Gypsy tale of ‘The Ten Rabbits’ (No. 64); also Dasent’s Tales from the Norse, ‘The Seven Foals,’ p. 380. Cutting three strips out of the back occurs also in a Russian story epitomised by Ralston, p. 145; and cutting a strip of skin from head to foot in Campbell’s West Highland tale, No. 18 (cf. supra, p. 124), which Reinhold Köhler connects with the pound of flesh in the Merchant of Venice (Orient und Occident, 1864, pp. 313–316). ↑
4 Our story here has a curious resemblance with pp. 122–3 of ‘Le Trimmatos ou l’Ogre aux Trois Yeux,’ a vampire story from Cyprus, in Legrand’s Contes Grecs (1881). Query: Was ‘Mr. Fox’ originally a vampire story? ↑
5 It is the general custom among pious people in Poland, on entering a house, or when meeting one another, to give the greeting, ‘Jesus Christ be praised.’ To which the response is, ‘From age to age.’ ↑