added most ungallantly: 'If a man shews and tells his thoughts to a
woman, God will punish him for it'. Though, perhaps, it is better,
for the sake of the gentler sex, that the tale should be pointed with
this unfair moral, than that the African story should proceed like
all the other variations, and save the husband's gift at the cost of
the wife's skin.

Take other African instances. How is it that the wandering Bechuanas
got their story of 'The Two Brothers', the ground-work of which is
the same as 'The Machandelboom' and the 'Milk-white Doo', and where
the incidents and even the words are almost the same? How is it that
in some of its traits that Bechuana story embodies those of that
earliest of all popular tales, recently published from an Egyptian
Papyrus, coeval with the abode of the Israelites in Egypt? and how is
it that that same Egyptian tale has other traits which reminds us of
the Dun Bull in 'Katie Woodencloak', as well as incidents which are
the germ of stories long since reduced to writing in Norse Sagas of
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? [11] How is it that we still
find among the Negroes in the West Indies [12] a rich store of
popular tales, and the Beast Epic in full bloom, brought with them
from Africa to the islands of the West; and among those tales and
traditions, how is it that we find a 'Wishing Tree', the counter-part
of that in a German popular tale, and 'a little dirty scrub of a
child', whom his sisters despise, but who is own brother to Boots in
the Norse Tales, and like him outwits the Troll, spoils his
substance, and saves his sisters? How is it that we find the good
woman who washes the loathsome head rewarded, while the bad man who
refuses to do that dirty work is punished for his pride; the very
groundwork, nay the very words, that we meet in Bushy-bride, another
Norse Tale? How is it that we find a Mongolian tale, which came