a hare, inside a boar, inside a dragon (_ajdaya_) which is in a lake, near a royal city. The hero of the story fights the dragon of the lake, and after a long struggle, being invigorated at the critical moment by a kiss which the heroine imprints on his forehead--he flings it high in the air. When it falls to the ground it breaks in pieces, and out comes the boar. Eventually the hero seizes the sparrow and wrings its neck, but not before he has obtained from it the charm necessary for the recovery of his missing brothers and a number of other victims of the dragon's cruelty. To these European tales a very interesting parallel is afforded by the Indian story of "Punchkin,"[134] whose life depends on that of a parrot, which is in a cage placed beneath the lowest of six jars of water, piled one on the other, and standing in the midst of a desolate country covered with thick jungle. When the parrot's legs and wings are pulled off, Punchkin loses his legs and arms; and when its neck is wrung, his head twists round and he dies. One of the strangest of the stories which turn on this idea of an external heart is the Samoyed tale,[135] in which seven brothers are in the habit, every night, of taking out their hearts and sleeping without them. A captive damsel whose mother they have killed, receives the extracted hearts and hangs them on the tent-pole, where they remain till the following morning. One night her brother contrives to get the hearts into his possession. Next morning he takes them into the tent, where he finds the brothers at the point of death. In vain do they beg for their hearts, which he flings on the floor. "And as he flings down the hearts the brothers die."