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When reading of the fate of all these princes, it is impossible not to think of Lot’s wife.

The danger of looking back, when engaged on any dealings with supernatural powers, is insisted on in the tales and practices of the Russians, Eskimos, Zulus, and the Khonds of Orissa. In Russia the watcher for the golden fern-flower must seize it the instant it blossoms and run home, taking care not to look behind him: whether through fear of giving the demons, who also watch for it, power over him, or whether through a dread of the flower losing its magic powers if this precaution is neglected, Mr. Ralston does not say ( Songs of the Russian People, p. 99). When “the Revived who came to the under-world people” (Dr. Rink tells us in his Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo, p. 299) took the old couple to visit the ingnersuit (supernatural beings “who have their abodes beneath the surface of the earth, in the cliffs along the sea-shore, where the ordinarily invisible entrances to them are found” ib. p. 46), he warned “them not to look back when they approached the rock which enclosed the abode of the ingnersuit, lest the entrance should remain shut for them…. When they had reached the cliff, and were rowing up to it, it forthwith opened; and inside was seen a beautiful country, with many houses, and a beach covered with pebbles and large heaps of fish and matak (edible skin). Perceiving this the old people for joy forgot the warning and turned round, and instantly all disappeared: the prow of the boat knocked right against the steep rock and was smashed in, so that they all were thrown down by the shock. The son [the revived] said, ‘Now we must remain apart for ever.'” Mr. Tylor, in the 2nd volume of his Primitive Culture, at p. 147 mentions a Zulu remedy for preventing a dead man from tormenting his widow in her dreams; the sorcerer goes with her to lay the ghost, and when this is done “charges her not to look back till she gets home:” and he says the Khonds of Orissa, when offering human sacrifices to the earth-goddess bury their portions of the offering in holes in the ground behind their backs without looking round ( ib. p. 377).

4. In most of the stories of this kind the command is to open the fruit or casket only near water, for if the beautiful maiden inside cannot get water immediately she dies. Such is the case in the “Drei Pomeranzen” (Stier’s Ungarische Maerchen und Sagen, p. 83), in “Die Schoene mit dem sieben Schleier” ( Sicilianische Maerchen, vol. I. p. 73), and in “Die drei Citronen” (Schmidt’s Griechische Maerchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, p. 71). “Die Ungeborene Niegesehene” (Schott’s Wallachische Maerchen, p. 248) must be compared with these, though the beautiful maiden does not come out of the golden fairy-apple. She appears suddenly and the prince must give her water to drink and the apple to eat, before he can take her and keep her. In all these stories the hero has a long journey, and encounters many dangers, in seeking his bride. In the Sicilian story he is helped by hermits; in the Greek story, by a monk–monks in Greek and hermits in Sicilian and Servian stories playing the part of the fakírs in these Indian tales. In all these stories, too, the maiden is killed or transformed by a wicked woman who takes her place. In the Wallachian and Sicilian fairy tales the rightful bride becomes a dove only. But in the Hungarian tale she is drowned in a well and becomes a gold fish; the wicked gipsy has no rest till she has eaten the fish’s liver: from one of its scales springs a tree; she has the tree cut down and burnt. The wood-cutter who hews down the tree makes a cover for his wife’s milk-pot from a piece of the wood, and they find their house kept in beautiful order from this moment. So to discover the secret, they peep through the keyhole one day and see a lovely fairy come out of the milk-jar. Then they enter their house suddenly and the girl tells her story: the wood-cutter’s wife burns the wooden lid to force her to keep her own form, and goes to the king’s son to tell him where he will find his Pomegranate-bride again. In the Greek story a Lamnissa eats the citron-girl, but a tiny bone falls unnoticed into the water and becomes a gold-fish. The prince not only takes the Lamnissa home with him, but he takes the gold-fish too, and keeps it in his room, “for he loved it dearly.” The Lamnissa never rests till he gives her the fish to eat. Its bones are thrown into a garden and from them springs a rose bush on which blooms a rose which the king’s old washerwoman wishes to break off to sell it at the castle. From out of the bush springs the beautiful citron-maiden, and tells the old woman her story. She also gives her the rose for the king’s son, and in the basket with the rose she lays a ring he had given her, but charges the old woman to say nothing about her to him. The next day he comes to the old woman’s cottage and finds his real bride.