In a very large proportion of folktales wherever they may be found magic plays a considerable part, and it is almost universal in some form in all those stories we know as wonder tales. In an important group of these stories the possession of such powers and objects serves as the crucial point in the narrative.

A good example of such a tale is that known as The Lazy Boy (Type 675). Just as in the story of The Two Brothers (Type 303) , the hero catches a large fish, usually a salmon, and when he agrees to throw the salmon back into the water the latter gives him the power of making all his wishes come true. He has but to say, "By the word of the Salmon." Among his other accomplishments he makes a saw that cuts wood of itself and a self-moving boat or wagon. His arrival in the royal city in his strange conveyance and the sight of his marvelous saw at work causes the princess to laugh at him. In his anger, he wishes her pregnant. When in due time she has a child an inquiry is made as to who the unknown father may be and all the probable men are gathered together. The child picks the hero out as his father, and the parents [p. 68] are then joined in marriage. In his anger, the king has the hero and princess abandoned in a glass box in the sea or in a cask in the mountains. The hero still has his magic power, which he uses to make a great castle next to the king's. He then invites and humbles his father-in-law.

This is one of the few very well-known European tales which do not appear in the great collection of Grimm. It has been known, however, for a long time, since it is found in the Nights of Straparola in sixteenth century Italy and a hundred years later in the Pentamerone of Basile. It is disseminated rather evenly over the whole of Europe and extends eastward far into Siberia. It does not appear to be known in India or Africa, but two versions have been reported from Annam, and it has been carried to New Guinea and to America. The Cape Verde Island version told in Massachusetts is obviously from Portugal, and the Missouri French and the American Indian tales told by the Maliseets of New Brunswick and the Ojibwas of Michigan are clearly from France.

I am not a collector of folktales, but this happens to be one of the few which I have taken down in the field. The story in question is such a good example of the way in which a tale entering an alien culture may be changed that I cannot forbear making special mention of the story as told me by an Ojibwa Indian on Sugar Island, Michigan, in the summer of 1941. He had been telling us stories of the Ojibwa culture hero. Suddenly he asked, "Did you ever hear the tale about Rummy and his little Ford car?" He proceeded then to tell what is undoubtedly the present story, though confused with some other French tales. Rummy was clearly the hero of these French tales, René, and the little Ford car was Mr. Joseph's idea of the self-moving wagon. The automatic saw played its part, and the experience with the princess was exactly as we have outlined it above. From other tales he brought in the story of the magic tablecloth which produced food of itself and the tabu against looking backwards, which he repeated frequently but apparently did not understand or actually make use of in the story.

No one has investigated this tale systematically, but a casual listing of the versions country by country suggests the strong probability of origin in southern Europe and of the predominant influence of the literary treatments of the two famous Italian taletellers of the Renaissance.

If the literary origin of The Lazy Boy appears not to be certain, there can be no doubt that the story of Open Sesame (Type 676) has been learned by those who tell it either from a copy of the Arabian Nights itself or eventually, perhaps through many intermediaries, from the same source. It seems likely that this tale has entered the oral tradition of nearly every European country since the time of Galland's translation of the Thousand and One Nights into French at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Whether the versions current in central Africa have come more directly from the Arabic versions of the work has not been determined, but seems probable. [p. 69] The fact that the story is now an authentic part of the folklore of a good part of Europe, whatever its actual origin may have been, justifies its inclusion in the canon of oral folktales. It is known to almost everyone. The poor brother observes robbers entering a mountain and overhears the magic words "Open Sesame," which gives them admittance. He secures much gold from the mountain and takes it home. He borrows money scales from his rich brother and a piece of the money remains in the scale and thus betrays the secret. The rich brother tries to imitate, but forgets the formula for opening the mountain and is caught inside. Though the magic words vary as the tale passes from country to country, they always seem to be at least a reminiscence of the phrase "Open Sesame."

Another tale of magic powers which surely comes from the Orient, but this time from India, is that of The Magician and His Pupil (Type 325). The fact that it is well known in India and also throughout Europe has served to bring it to the attention of those folklorists interested in the problem of the Indian origin of the European folktales. In 1859 Theodor Benfey in the Prolegomena to his Pantschatantra uses this story as an illustration of the way in which tales from India are taken over into the Mongolian literature (in this case, as part of the collection of Kalmuck tales known as Siddhi-Kür) and carried through this intermediary into Europe. More than fifty years later his disciple, Emmanuel Cosquin, [61] while accepting the main thesis of Indic origin for European tales, made exception to the importance of the Mongols and uses the present tale as the foundation for his case. He shows clearly enough that the European tales are like the purely Indian ones and are considerably different from the Mongolian form.

The main fact that this tale is originally from India seems never to have been disputed, though it has become so well known in Europe that it must be ranked among the most popular of oral stories. It is told in the sixteenth century by Straparola. It appears in nearly all the collections of the Near East and of southern Siberia. Beyond India, where it has been frequently reported, it is told in the Dutch East Indies and in the Philippines. It is popular in North Africa, and has been brought to Missouri by the French and to Massachusetts by Portuguese-speaking Cape Verde Island Negroes.

The details of the story remain remarkably constant wherever it is told. A father sends his son to school to a magician. The father may have the son back if, at the end of one year, he can recognize the son in the animal form to which the magician will have transformed him. The boy learns magic secretly, and he escapes from the magician by means of a magic flight. He either transforms himself frequently, or else he casts behind him magic obstacles. [62] He thus returns to his father and helps his father make money by [p. 70] selling him as a dog, an ox, or a horse. At last he is sold as a horse to the magician. Contrary to his instructions, the father gives the bridle along with the horse and this brings the youth into the magician's power. The boy succeeds in stripping off the bridle and then he conquers the magician in a transformation combat. He changes to various animals and the magician likewise changes himself. The details of these changes vary somewhat. One of the most popular varieties of this motif is that in which the youth (or prince) has flown to a princess in the form of a bird and is hidden by her after he has transformed himself to a ring. As the princess throws the ring, a great number of grains of corn fall on the ground. When the magician as cock is about to eat the corn, the boy becomes a fox and bites off the cock's head.

In this tale, as in the two treated immediately before it, the magic powers are thought of as inherent in the hero. Much more common in folktales is the use of objects whose intrinsic magic power does not depend upon any special quality in the person who uses them.