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PAGE 4

Phulmati Rani
by [?]

3. Her beauty lights up a dark room. In this shining quality she resembles many Asiatic and European fairy-tale heroes and heroines. See in this book Hírálí, whose face shone like a diamond, p. 69; and the Princess Labám, who shone like the moon, and her beauty made night day, p. 158. In Old Deccan Days, p. 156, the prince’s dead body on the hedge of spears dazzles those who look at it till they can hardly see. Pánch Phúl Rání, p. 140, shines in the dark jungle like a star. So does the princess in Chundun Rájá’s dark tomb, p. 229. In a Dinájpur story published by Mr. G. H. Damant in the Indian Antiquary for February 1875, vol. IV. p. 54, the dream-nymph, Tillottama, whenever she appears, lights up the whole place with her beauty. “At every breath she drew when she slept, a flame like a flower issued from her nostril, and when she drew in her breath the flower of flame was again withdrawn.” Her beauty lit up her house “as if by lightning.” See Appendix A. In Naake’s Slavonic Fairy Tales, p. 96, is the Bohemian tale quoted above of Princess Golden-Hair. “Every morning at break of day she [the princess] combs her golden locks; its brightness is reflected in the sea, and up among the clouds,” p. 102. When she let it down “it was bright as the rising sun,” and almost blinded Irik with its radiance, p. 107. The golden children (Schott’s Wallachische Maerchen, p. 125) shine in the darkened room “like the morning sun in May.” Gubernatis in the 2nd vol. of his Zoological Mythology, mentions at p. 31 a golden boy who figures in one of Afanassieff’s stories; when this child’s body is uncovered on his restoration to his father, “all the room shines with light.” And at p. 57 of the same volume he quotes another of Afanassieff’s stories, in which the persecuted princess has three sons “who light up whatever is near them with their splendour.” Of Gerd in Jötunheim, the beautiful giant maiden with the bright shining arms, Thorpe says ( Northern Mythology, vol. I. p. 47), when she raised “her arms to open the door, both air and water gave such a reflection that the whole world was illumined.” The boar Trwyth (who was once a king, but because of his sons was turned into a boar) after his fall preserves some of his old kingly splendour; for “his bristles were like silver wire, and whether he went through the wood or through the plain he was to be traced by the glittering of his bristles” ( Mabinogion, vol. II. p. 310). In the same work (vol. III. p. 279), in “The Dream of Maxen Wledig,” is a maiden, of whom it is told: “Not more easy than to gaze upon the sun when brightest was it to look upon her by reason of her beauty.” And in “Goldhaar” (Haltrich’s Siebenbuergische Maerchen, p. 61) when the hero’s cap fell off he stood there “in all splendour and his golden locks fell round his head, and he shone like the sun.”

In a Santhali tale published by the Rev. F. T. Cole in the Indian Antiquary for January 1875, p. 10, called “Toria the Goatherd and the Daughter of the Sun,” a beggar’s eyes are as dazzled by the Sun’s daughter’s beauty “as if he had stared at the sun.”

4. Phúlmati Rání has on her head the sun, on her hands moons, and her face is covered with stars. Compare in these stories “The Indrásan Rájá,” p. 1, “The boy who had a moon on his forehead and a star on his chin,” p. 119, and “Prince Dímá-ahmad and Princess Atása,” Notes, p. 253. In Fr�ulein Gonzenbach’s Sicilian Fairy Tales, No. 5 (vol. I. p. 21), the king’s son’s children are born, the boy with a golden apple in his hand, the girl with a star on her forehead. In the Notes to this story (vol. II. p. 207) Herr Köhler mentions a Tyrolean fairy tale, “Zingerle, II. p. 112,” where the king’s son’s daughter has a golden apple in her hand, and her brother a golden star on his forehead. In Milenowsky’s Bohemian Fairy Tales, p. 1, is the story “Von den Sternprinzen” in which the king’s son by the queen has a gold star on his forehead, and his son by the old woman has a silver star, p. 2. These princes’ children also are born with gold and silver stars on their foreheads, p. 30. In a Hungarian tale, “Die verwandelten Kinder,” the old man’s youngest daughter promises, and keeps her promise, to give the king, if he marries her, twin sons, who will be most beautiful, will have golden hair, and each a golden ring on his arm; further, one is to have a planet, the other a sun on his forehead–Stier’s Ungarische Volksmaerchen, p. 57. Also in the same author’s Ungarische Sagen und Maerchen in “Die beiden juengsten Koenigskinder,” the hero wins a bride (p. 77) who has a sun on her forehead, a moon on her right, and three stars on her left, breast. In “Eisenlaci” in the same collection the snake-king’s daughter has a star on her forehead (p. 109). Gubernatis ( Zoological Mythology, vol. I. p. 412) says, “In the seventh story of the third book of Afanassieff, the queen bears two sons; one has a moon on his forehead and the other a star on the nape of his neck. Her wicked sister buries them; a golden and a silver sprout spring up which a sheep eats and then has two lambs, one with a moon on its head, the other with a star on its neck. The wicked sister who has married the king orders them to be torn in pieces, and their intestines to be thrown into the road. The good, lawful queen eats them and again gives birth to her sons.” Gubernatis in the 2nd volume of the same work, p. 31, quotes another of Afanassieff’s stories, the thirteenth of the third book, in which a merchant’s wife has a son “whose body is all of gold, effigies of stars, moon, and sun covered it.” This is the gold boy mentioned in the preceding paragraph as lighting up the room when his body was uncovered. In “Das Schwarze Lamm,” the empress bears a son with a golden star on his forehead (Karadschitsch, Volksmaerchen der Serben, p. 177).