what's the good of owning these things?' Then they answered
'Whoever puts on these shoes gets the power to fly; whatever is
pointed at with this staff rises up at once; and whatever food one
wishes for in this bowl, it comes at once.' So when Putraka had
heard that he said 'Why fight about it? Let this be the prize;
whoever beats the other in a race, let him have them all'.

'So be it', said the two fools, and set off running, but Putraka
put on the shoes at once, and flew away with the staff and bowl up
into the clouds'.

Well, this is a story neither in the _Pantcha Tantra_ nor the
_Hitopadesa_, the Sanscrit originals of _Calila and Dimna_.
It is not in the _Directorium Humanae Vitae_, and has not passed
west by that way. Nor is it in the _Book of Sendabad_, and
thence come west in the _History of the Seven Sages_. Both these
paths are stopped. It comes from the _Katha Sarit Sagara_, the
'Sea of Streams of Story' of Somadeva Bhatta of Cashmere, who, in the
middle of the twelfth century of our era, worked up the tales found
in an earlier collection, called the _Vrihat Katha_, 'the
lengthened story', in order to amuse his mistress, the Queen of
Cashmere. Somadeva's collection has only been recently known and
translated. But west the story certainly came long before, and in the
extreme north-west we still find it in these Norse Tales in 'The
Three Princesses of Whiteland', No. xxvi.

'Well!' said the man, 'as this is so, I'll give you a bit of
advice. Hereabouts, on a moor, stand three brothers, and there they
have stood these hundred years, fighting about a hat, a cloak, and
a pair of boots. If any one has these three things, he can make