NOTES


"_The Soul of the Great Bell._"--The story of Ko-Ngai is one of the
collection entitled _Pe-Hiao-Tou-Choue_, or "A Hundred Examples of
Filial Piety." It is very simply told by the Chinese narrator. The
scholarly French consul, P. Dabry de Thiersant, translated and published
in 1877 a portion of the book, including the legend of the Bell. His
translation is enriched with a number of Chinese drawings; and there is
a quaint little picture of Ko-Ngai leaping into the molten metal.

"_The Story of Ming-Y._"--The singular phantom-tale upon which my work
is based forms the thirty-fourth story of the famous collection
_Kin-Kou-Ki-Koan_, and was first translated under the title, "La
Bachelière du Pays de Chu," by the learned Gustave Schlegel, as an
introduction to his publication (accompanied by a French version) of
the curious and obscene _Mai-yu-lang-toú-tchen-hoa-koueï_ (Leyden,
1877), which itself forms the seventh recital of the same work.
Schlegel, Julien, Gardner, Birch, D'Entrecolles, Rémusat, Pavie,
Olyphant, Grisebach, Hervey-Saint-Denys, and others, have given the
Occidental world translations of eighteen stories from the
_Kin-Kou-Ki-Koan_; namely, Nos. 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 14, 19, 20, 26,
27, 29, 30, 31, 34, 35, and 39. The Chinese work itself dates back to
the thirteenth century; but as it forms only a collection of the most
popular tales of that epoch, many of the stories selected by the Chinese
editor may have had a much more ancient origin. There are forty tales in
the _Kin-Kou-Ki-Koan_.

"_The Legend of Tchi-Niu._"--My authority for this tale is the following
legend from the thirty-fourth chapter of the _Kan-ing-p'ien_, or "Book