We now propose to show, not only that the incidents of this tale--far more ancient than historic India as it is--are common in the _märchen_ of many countries, but that they are inextricably entangled and intertwisted with the chief plots of popular tales. There are few of the main cycles of popular tales which do not contain, as essential parts of their machinery, one or more of the ideas and situations of this legend. There is thus at least a presumption that these cycles of story may have been in existence in the reign of Rameses II., and for an indefinite period earlier; while, if they were not, and if they are made of borrowed materials, it may have been from the Egypt of an unknown antiquity, not from much later Indian sources, that they were adapted. The incidents will now be analysed and compared with those of _märchen_ in general. To this end let us examine the incidents in the ancient Egyptian tale of _The Two Brothers_. These incidents are:-- (1) The _spretæ injuria formæ_ of the wedded woman, who, having offered herself in vain to a man, her brother-in-law, accuses him of being her assailant. This incident, of course, occurs in Homer, in the tale of Bellerophon, before we know anything of historic India. This, moreover, seems one of the notions (M. Cosquin admits, with Benfey, that there are such notions) which are "universally human," and _might_ be invented anywhere. (2) The Egyptian Hippolytus is warned of his danger by his cow, which speaks with human voice. Every one will recognise the ram which warns Phrixus and Helle in the Jason legend.* In the Albanian _märchen_,** a _dog_, not a cow nor a ram, gives warning of the danger. Animals, in short, often warn of danger by spoken messages, as the fish does in the Brahmanic deluge-myth, and the dog in a deluge-myth from North America. * The authority cited by the scholiast (Apoll. Rhod., Argon., i. 256) is Hecatseus. Scholiast on Iliad, vii. 86, quotes Philostephanus. ** Von Hahn, i. 65.