582 CHINESE FOLKLORE AND SOME WESTEEN ANALOGIES. 



courageous acts of women — an admiration as spontaneously enkindled 

 in the East as among ourselves when the achievement is realh' deserv- 

 ing. The heroine of this incident is supposed to have lived in China 

 during the reign of the Emperor Yung-loh, earl}" in the liftecnth cen- 

 tury of our era, but the story seems to owe its birth to a much older 

 tradition. The father of Ko-ai, having been ordered to casta huge 

 bell of bronze, had failed twice in the very difficult task, the metal 

 having ' ' honeycombed " in each attempt. Yung-loh, being thoroughly 

 enraged at the dou})lc failure, promised the founder that he would 

 behead him if the third trial did not prove successful. Then it was 

 that the girl of 16 showed the metal in her in more senses than one. 

 Taking counsel of a master astrologer, she learned that the only means 

 of averting calamity and insuring a perfect casting was that of mixing 

 a virgin's blood in the molten stream as it tilled the mold. To save 

 her father's life, therefore, she plunged headlong into the liquid mass 

 as the third casting was being made, and all that remained of her was 

 the shoe which a workman had gnisi)ed and pulled off her foot in 

 frantic effort to prevent her sudden plunge. The wretched father 

 was carried home a raving maniac; but the astrologer nuist have 

 known his business, for was not the bell a perfect success, as anyone 

 may prove to-day by going to Pekin and listening to its sonorous 

 boom? Only every stroke is followed by a low, wailing cry that 

 seems to reverberate the word lisieh (shoe) in fainter and fainter tones 

 until all is still. That, they say, is poor Ko-ai calling for her lost shoe. 

 This pathetic legend might perhaps be duplicated in more than one 

 literature of eastern and western romancers. A still more widely 

 diffused genus of folk-tale, based upon the evanescent charm of woman- 

 hood, is discovered in the so-called "Swan-Maiden" group. The tj'pe 

 of this group appears clearly in the far north of Asia, where among 

 the Samoj^eds the tale, shorn of its adornments, runs somewhat as 

 follows: A hunter coming upon an old woman chopping birch trees 

 stopped and helped her cut and carry the logs to her hut. Highly 

 gratified at this attention she bade him hide there and see what would 

 hapi)on, PresentU' seven l)eautiful girls came in, asked if anyone was 

 about, and being told that the woman was quite alone, took their way 

 to a neighboring lake where they went in swimnung. The man fol- 

 lowed them, and at the suggestion of his aged hostess, stole one of 

 the feather dresses left on the shore by the maidens. Of course, when 

 they emerged one hapless girl was unable to find her costume and 

 could not fl}" away with her companions. She begged the hunter to 

 restore her clothes ''because she was freezing," and even promised 

 if he did to become his wife; but he does not yield until she consents 

 to secure for him the hearts of some villains who have slain his mother. 

 She does so, and the storj' then rambles on in a wilderness of inven- 

 tions which need not concern us. Among the Tartars the swan- 



