_Sources._--Kennedy, _Fireside Stories_, pp. 47-56.
_Parallels._--Campbell, _West Highland Tales_, lvi.; _Mac Iain Direach_,
ii. 344-76. He gives other variants at the end. The story is clearly
that of the Grimms' "Golden Bird," No. 57. They give various parallels
in their notes. Mrs. Hunt refers to an Eskimo version in Rae's _White
Sea Peninsula_, called "Kuobba the Giant and the Devil." But the most
curious and instructive parallel is that afforded by the Arthurian
Romance of Walewein (_i.e._, Gawain), now only extant in Dutch, which,
as Professor W. P. Ker has pointed out in _Folk-lore_, v. 121, exactly
corresponds to the popular tale, and thus carries it back in Celtdom to
the early twelfth century at the latest.