FAIRY BIRTHS AND HUMAN MIDWIVES.
Stories of midwives who have been summoned to the birth of
fairies--Human visitors to Fairyland must not eat there--The
reason--Fairies' gratitude--The conditions of fairy gifts.
A tale, the scene of which is laid near Beddgelert, runs, as translated
by Professor Rhys, in this way:--"Once on a time, when a midwife from
Nanhwynan had newly got to the Hafodydd Brithion to pursue her calling,
a gentleman came to the door on a fine grey steed and bade her come with
him at once. Such was the authority with which he spoke, that the poor
midwife durst not refuse to go, however much it was her duty to stay
where she was. So she mounted behind him, and off they went, like the
flight of a swallow, through Cwmllan, over the Bwlch, down Nant yr Aran,
and over the Gadair to Cwm Hafod Ruffydd before the poor woman had time
even to say Oh! When they got there, she saw before her a magnificent
mansion, splendidly lit up with such lamps as she had never before seen.
They entered the court, and a crowd of servants in expensive liveries
came to meet them, and she was at once led through the great hall into a
bed-chamber, the like of which she had never seen. There the mistress of
the house, to whom she had been fetched, was awaiting her. She got
through her duties successfully, and stayed there until the lady had
completely recovered, nor had she spent any part of her life so merrily;
there was naught but festivity day and night: dancing, singing, and
endless rejoicing reigned there. But merry as it was, she found she
must go, and the nobleman gave her a large purse, with the order not to
open it until she had got into her own house; then he bade one of his
servants escort her the same way she had come. When she reached home she
opened the purse, and, to her great joy, it was full of money; and she
lived happily on those earnings to the end of her life."[15]
It is a long leap from Carnarvonshire to Lapland, where this story is
told with no great variation. A clergyman's wife in Swedish Lappmark,
the cleverest midwife in all Sweden, was summoned one fine summer's
evening to attend a mysterious being of Troll race and great might,
called Vitra. At this unusual call she took counsel with her husband,
who, however, deemed it best for her to go. Her guide led her into a
splendid building, the rooms whereof were as clean and elegant as those
of very illustrious folk; and in a beautiful bed lay a still more
beautiful woman, for whom her services were required, and who was no
other than Vitra herself. Under the midwife's care Vitra speedily gave
birth to a fair girl, and in a few minutes had entirely recovered, and
fetched all sorts of refreshments, which she laid before her
benefactress. The latter refused to eat, in spite of Vitra's reassuring
persuasion, and further refused the money which the Troll-wife pressed
upon her. Vitra then sent her home, bidding her look on the table when
next she entered her cowherd's hut and see what she would find there.
She thought no more of the matter until the following spring, when on
entering the hut she found on the table half a dozen large spoons of
pure silver with her name engraved thereon in neat letters. These spoons
long remained an heirloom in the clergyman's family to testify the truth
of the story. A Swedish book, published in 1775, contains a tale,
narrated in the form of a legal declaration solemnly subscribed on the
12th April 1671 by the fortunate midwife's husband, whose name was Peter
Rahm, and who also seems to have been a clergyman. On the authority of
this declaration we are called on to believe that the event recorded
actually happened in the year 1660. Peter Rahm alleges that he and his
wife were at their farm one evening late when there came a little man,
swart of face and clad in grey, who begged the declarant's wife to come
and help his wife then in labour. The declarant, seeing that they had to
do with a Troll, prayed over his wife, blessed her, and bade her in
God's name go with the stranger. She seemed to be borne along by the
wind. After her task was accomplished she, like the clergyman's wife
just mentioned, refused the food offered her, and was borne home in the
same manner as she had come. The next day she found on a shelf in the
sitting-room a heap of old silver pieces and clippings, which it is to
be supposed the Troll had brought her.[16]
Apart from the need of human aid, common to all the legends with which
we are dealing, the two points emphasized by these Swedish tales are the
midwife's refusal of food and the gratitude of the Troll. In a Swabian
story the Earthman, as he is called, apologizes for omitting to offer
food. In this case the midwife was afraid to go alone with her summoner,
and begged that her husband might accompany her. This was permitted; and
the Earthman showed them the way through the forest with his lantern,
for it was of course night. They came first to a moss door, then to a
wooden door, and lastly to a door of shining metal, whence a staircase
went down into the earth, and led them into a large and splendid chamber
where the Earthwife lay. When the object of their visit was accomplished
the Earthman thanked the woman much, and said: "You do not relish our
meat and drink, wherefore I will bestow something else upon thee." With
these words he gave her a whole apronful of black coals, and taking his
lantern again he lighted the midwife and her husband home. On the way
home she slily threw away one coal after another. The Earthman said
nothing until he was about to take his leave, when he observed merely:
"The less you scattered the more you might have." After he had gone the
woman's husband remonstrated with her, bidding her keep the coals, for
the Earthman appeared in earnest with his gift. When they reached home,
however, she shook out her apron on the hearth, and behold! instead of
coals, glittering true gold pieces. The woman now sought eagerly enough
after the coals she had thrown away, but she found them not.[17]
Confining our attention for the moment to the refusal of food, it would
seem that the Earthman's apology in the foregoing narrative is, as too
many human apologies are, a mere excuse. The real reason for the
midwife's abstention was not that fairy food was distasteful, but that
she durst not touch it, under penalty of never again returning to the
light of day. A Danish tradition tells of a woman who was taken by an
elf on Christmas Eve down into the earth to attend his wife. As soon as
the elfwife was delivered her husband took the child away; for if he
could find two newly married persons in the bridal bed, before they had
repeated their Paternoster, he could, by laying the child between them,
procure for it all the good fortune intended for the newly wedded pair.
During his absence the elfwife took the opportunity of instructing her
helper as to her conduct when he returned; and the first and chief point
of her advice was to eat nothing that was offered her. The elfwife was
herself a Christian woman who had been inveigled down into the dwellings
of the elves; she had eaten, and therefore had never escaped again. On
the elf's return, accordingly, the midwife refused food, and he said:
"They did not strike thee on the mouth who taught thee that." Late
rabbinical writings contain a similar legend of a Mohel, a man whose
office it was to circumcise, who was summoned one winter's night by a
stranger to perform the ceremony upon a child who would be eight days
old the following day. The stranger led him to a lofty mountain, into
the bowels of which they passed, and after descending many flights of
steps found themselves in a great city. Here the Mohel was taken to a
palace, in one of whose apartments was the child's mother lying. When
she saw the Mohel she began to weep, and told him that he was in the
land of the Mazikin, but that she was a human being, a Jewess, who had
been carried away when little from home and brought thither. And she
counselled him to take good heed to refuse everything whether of meat or
drink that might be offered him: "For if thou taste anything of theirs
thou wilt become like one of them, and wilt remain here for ever."[18]
We touch here upon a very ancient and widespread superstition, which we
may pause to illustrate from different parts of the world. A Manx tale,
which can be traced back to Waldron, narrates the night adventure of a
farmer who lost his way in returning home from Peel, and was led by the
sound of music into a large hall where were a great number of little
people feasting. Among them were some faces he seemed to know; but he
took no notice of them until the little folk offered him drink, when one
of them, whose features seemed not unknown to him, plucked him by the
coat and forbade him, whatever he did, to taste anything he saw before
him; "for if you do", he added, "you will be as I am, and return no more
to your family."[19]
It is necessary for the hero of a Picard story to go and seek the devil
in his own abode. The devil of popular imagination, though a terrific
ogre, is not the entirely Evil One of theologians; and one of his good
points in the story referred to is that he has three fair daughters, the
fairest of whom is compelled by the hero to help him in overcoming her
father. She accordingly instructs him to eat no meat and to drink no
wine at the devil's house, otherwise he will be poisoned. This may
remind us of Kan Püdäi, who in the Altaic ballad descends with his steed
to the middle of the earth and encounters various monsters. There the
grass and the water of the mountain forest through which he rode were
poison. In both cases, what is probably meant is, that to eat or drink
is to return no more from these mysterious abodes; and it may be to the
intent to obviate any such consequence that Saint Peter, in sending a
certain king's son down through a black and stinking hole a hundred
toises deep underground, in a Gascon tale, to fetch Saint Peter's own
sword, provides him with just enough bread in his wallet every morning
to prevent his bursting with hunger. An extension of this thought
sometimes even prohibits the hero from accepting a seat or a bed offered
by way of hospitality on the part of the devil, or the sorceress, to
whose dwelling his business may take him, or even to look at the fair
temptress who may seek to entice him to eat.[20]
The meaning of the superstition is not easy to trace, but it should be
remembered that in the lower stages of human civilization no distinction
is drawn between supernatural or spiritual beings who have never been
enclosed in human bodies, and the spirits of the dead. Savage philosophy
mingles them together in one phantasmagoria of grotesquery and horror.
The line which separates fairies and ogres from the souls of men has
gradually grown up through ages of Christian teaching; and, broad as it
may seem to us, it is occasionally hardly visible in these stories.
Every now and then it is ignored, as in the case of the old friends
found among the "little people" by the Manx farmer. Less startling than
these, but quite as much in point, are the women, like some already
mentioned, who are carried off into Fairyland, where they become wives
and mothers. They can never come back to their old life, though they
retain enough of the "mortal mixture" to require the adventurous human
midwife to relieve their pains. Accordingly, we need not be surprised if
the same incidents of story or fibres of superstition attach at one time
to ghosts and at another to the non-human creatures of imagination, or
if Hades and Fairyland are often confounded. Both are equally the realm
of the supernatural. We may therefore inquire whether eating is
forbidden to the chance sojourner in the place of the dead equally as to
the sojourner in Fairyland, if he wish to return to the upper air. And
we shall find that it is.
Proserpine ate seven grains of a pomegranate which grew in the Elysian
Fields, and so was compelled to remain in the Shades, the wife of "the
grisly king." Thus, too, when Morgan the Fay takes measures to get Ogier
the Dane into her power she causes him to be shipwrecked on a loadstone
rock near to Avalon. Escaping from the sea, he comes to an orchard, and
there eats an apple which, it is not too much to say, seals his fate.
Again, when Thomas of Erceldoune is being led down by the Fairy Queen
into her realm, he desires to eat of the fruit of certain trees.
"He presed to pul the frute with his honde,
As man for fode was nyhonde feynte;
She seid, Thomas, lat them stande,
Or ellis the fiend will the ateynte.
If thou pulle the sothe to sey,
Thi soule goeth to the fyre of hell
Hit cummes never out til doomsday,
But ther ever in payne to dwelle."
An old story preserved for us by Saxo Grammaticus describes the visit of
some Danish heroes to Guthmund, a giant who rules a delightful land
beyond a certain river crossed by a golden bridge. Thorkill, their
conductor, a Scandinavian Ulysses for cunning, warns his companions of
the various temptations that will be set before them. They must forbear
the food of the country, and be satisfied with that which they had
brought with them; moreover, they must keep apart from the natives,
taking care not so much as to touch them. In spite, however, of
Thorkill's warnings to them, and his excuses in their behalf to the
king, some of the heroes fell and were left behind when their friends
were at last allowed to depart.[21] So far we see that the prohibition
and the danger we found extant in the Fairyland of modern folk-tales
apply also to the classic Hades; and we have traced them back a long way
into the Middle Ages in French, British, and Danish traditions relating
to fairies and other supernatural existences, with a special threat of
Hell in the case of Thomas of Erceldoune.
On the other side of the globe the Banks' islanders believe, like the
Greeks, in an underground kingdom of the dead, which they call Panoi.
Only a few years ago a woman was living who professed to have been down
there. Her object had been to visit her brother, who had recently died.
To do this she perfumed herself with water in which a dead rat had been
steeped, so as to give herself a death-like smell. She then pulled up a
bird's nest and descended through the hole thus made. Her brother, whom
of course she found, cautioned her to eat nothing, and by taking his
advice she was able to return. A similar tale is told of a New Zealand
woman of rank, who was lucky enough to come back from the abode of
departed spirits by the assistance of her father and his repeated
commands to avoid tasting the disgusting food of the dead. Wäinämöinen,
the epic hero of the Finns, determined to penetrate to Manala, the
region of the dead. We need not follow in detail his voyage; it will
suffice to say that on his arrival, after a long parley with the maiden
daughter of Tuoni, the king of the island, beer was brought to him in a
two-eared tankard.
"Wäinämöinen, old and trusty,
Gaz'd awhile upon the tankard;
Lo! within it frogs were spawning,
Worms about its sides were laying.
Words in this wise then he utter'd:
'Not to drink have I come hither
From the tankard of Manala,
Not to empty Tuoni's beaker;
They who drink of beer are drowned,
Those who drain the can are ruin'd.'"[22]
The hero's concluding words might form a motto for our teetotallers; and
in any case his abstinence enabled him to succeed in his errand and
return. A point is made in the poem of the loathsome character of the
beverage offered him, which thus agrees with the poison referred to in
some of the narratives I have previously cited. The natives of the
Southern Seas universally represent the sustenance of spirits as filthy
and abominable. A most remarkable coincidence with the description of
Tuoni's beer occurs in a curious story told on one of the Hervey
Islands, concerning a Mangaian Dante. Being apparently near death, this
man directed that, as soon as the breath was out of his body, a
cocoa-nut should be cracked, and its kernel disengaged from the shell
and placed upon his stomach under the grave-clothes. Having descended
to the Shades, he beheld Miru, the horrible hag who rules them, and
whose deformities need not now be detailed. She commanded him to draw
near. "The trembling human spirit obeyed, and sat down before Miru.
According to her unvarying practice she set for her intended victim a
bowl of food, and bade him eat it quite up. Miru, with evident anxiety,
waited to see him swallow it. As Tekanae took up the bowl, to his horror
he found it to consist of living centipedes. The quick-witted mortal now
recollected the cocoa-nut kernel at the pit of his stomach, and hidden
from Miru's view by his clothes. With one hand he held the bowl to his
lips, as if about to swallow its contents; with the other he secretly
held the cocoa-nut kernel, and ate it--the bowl concealing the nut from
Miru. It was evident to the goddess that Tekanae was actually swallowing
_something_: what else could it be but the contents of the fatal bowl?
Tekanae craftily contrived whilst eating the nourishing cocoa-nut to
allow the live centipedes to fall on the ground one or two at a time. As
the intended victim was all the time sitting on the ground it was no
difficult achievement in this way to empty the bowl completely by the
time he had finished the cocoa-nut. Miru waited in vain to see her
intended victim writhing in agony and raging with thirst. Her practice
on such occasions was to direct the tortured victim-spirit to dive in a
lake close by, to seek relief. None that dived into that water ever came
up alive; excessive anguish and quenchless thirst so distracting their
thoughts that they were invariably drowned. Miru would afterwards cook
and eat her victims at leisure. Here was a new event in her history: the
bowl of living centipedes had been disposed of, and yet Tekanae
manifested no sign of pain, no intention to leap into the cooling, but
fatal, waters. Long did Miru wait; but in vain. At last she said to her
visitor, 'Return to the upper world' (_i.e._, to life). 'Only remember
this--do not speak against me to mortals. Reveal not my ugly form and
my mode of treating my visitors. Should you be so foolish as to do so,
you will certainly at some future time come back to my domains, and I
will see to it that you do not escape my vengeance a second time!'
Tekanae accordingly left the Shades, and came back to life"; but he, it
is needless to say, carefully disregarded the hag's injunction, or we
should not have had the foregoing veracious account of what happens
below.[23]
The tortures reserved for Miru's victims cast a weird light on the
warning in the Picard story against eating and drinking what the devil
may offer. But whether poisoning in the latter case would have been the
preliminary to a hearty meal to be made off the unlucky youth by his
treacherous host, or no, it is impossible to determine. What the tales
do suggest, however, is that the food buried with the dead by
uncivilized tribes may be meant to provide them against the contingency
of having to partake of the hospitality of the Shades, and so afford
them a chance of escaping back to the upper air. But, putting this
conjecture aside, we have found the supposition that to eat of fairy
food is to return no more, equally applicable to the world of the dead
as to Fairyland. In seeking its meaning, therefore, we must not be
satisfied without an explanation that will fit both. Almost all over the
earth the rite of hospitality has been held to confer obligations on its
recipient, and to unite him by special ties to the giver. And even where
the notion of hospitality does not enter, to join in a common meal has
often been held to symbolize, if not to constitute, union of a very
sacred kind. The formation of blood relationship, or brotherhood, and
formal adoption into a tribe or family (ceremonies well known in the
lower culture), are usually, if not always, cemented in this way. The
modern wedding breakfast, with its bridecake, is a survival from a very
ancient mode of solemnizing the closest tie of all; and when Proserpine
tasted a pomegranate she partook of a fruit of a specially symbolic
character to signify acceptance of her new destiny as her captor's wife.
Hence to partake of food in the land of spirits, whether they are human
dead, or fairies, is to proclaim one's union with them and to renounce
the fellowship of mortals.
The other point emphasized in the Swedish tales quoted just now is the
Troll's gratitude, as evidenced by his gifts to the successful midwife.
Before considering this, however, let us note that these supernatural
beings do not like to be imposed upon. A German midwife who was summoned
by a Waterman, or Nix, to aid a woman in labour, was told by the latter:
"I am a Christian woman as well as you; and I was carried off by a
Waterman, who changed me. When my husband comes in now and offers you
money, take no more from him than you usually get, or else he will twist
your neck. Take good care!" And in another tale, told at Kemnitz of the
Nicker, as he is there called, when he asks the midwife how much he owes
her, she answers that she will take no more from him than from other
people. "That's lucky for thee," he replies; "hadst thou demanded more,
it would have gone ill with thee!" But for all that he gave her an apron
full of gold and brought her safely home.[24]
A Pomeranian story marks the transition to a type of tale wherein one
special characteristic of elfin gifts is presented. For in this case,
when the mannikin asked the midwife what her charge was, she modestly
replied: "Oh, nothing; the little trouble I have had does not call for
any payment." "Now then, lift up thy apron!" answered he; and it was
quickly filled with the rubbish that lay in the corner of the room.
Taking his lantern, the elf then politely guided her home. When she
shook out the contents of her apron, lo! it was no rubbish which fell
on the ground, but pure, shining minted gold. Hitherto she and her
father had been very poor; thenceforth they had no more want their whole
lives long. This gift of an object apparently worthless, which turns
out, on the conditions being observed, of the utmost value, is a
commonplace of fairy transactions. It is one of the most obvious
manifestations of superhuman power; and as such it has always been a
favourite incident in the stories of all nations. We have only to do
here with the gift as it appears in the group under analysis; and in
these cases it presents little variety. In a tale told on the lake of
Zug the dwarf fills the woman's apron with something at which he bids
her on no account look before she is in her own house. Her curiosity,
however, is uncontrollable; and the moment the dwarf vanishes she peeps
into her apron, to find simply black coals. She, in a rage, flings them
away, keeping only two as evidence of the shabby treatment she had met
with; but when she got home these two were nothing less than precious
stones. She at once ran back to where she had shaken out the supposed
coals; but they were all gone. So a recompense of straws, dust, birch
leaves, or shavings becomes, as elsewhere told, pure gold, pure silver,
or thalers. Nor is the story confined to Europe. In Dardistan it is
related that a boy, taken down by a Yatsh, or demon, into an underground
palace, is allowed to be present at a Yatsh wedding. He finds the
Yatshes assembled in great force and in possession of a number of
valuables belonging to the dwellers in his own village. On his return
his guide presents him with a sack full of coals, which he empties as
soon as he is out of sight. One little piece, however, remains, and is
transformed into a gold coin when he reaches home.[25]
Conversely, when the midwife is rewarded with that which seems valuable
it turns out worthless. An Irishwoman, in relating a professional
experience among the Good People, wound up her story as follows: "The
king slipped five guineas into my hand as soon as I was on the ground,
and thanked me, and bade me good-night. I hope I'll never see his face
again. I got into bed, and couldn't sleep for a long time; and when I
examined my five guineas this morning, that I left in the table-drawer
the last thing, I found five withered leaves of oak--bad scran to the
giver!" This incident recalls the Barber's tale of his fourth brother in
the "Arabian Nights." This unlucky man went on selling meat to a
sorcerer for five months, and putting the bright new money in which the
latter paid him into a box by itself; but when he came to open the box
he found in it nothing but a parcel of leaves, or, as Sir Richard Burton
has it, bits of white paper cut round to look like coin. Chinese
folklore is full of similar occurrences, which we cannot now stay to
discuss. But, returning to western traditions, there is a way of
counteracting the elves' transforming magic. The wife of a farmer named
Niels Hansen, of Uglerup, in Denmark, was summoned to attend a
troll-wife, who told her that the troll, her husband, would offer her a
quantity of gold; "but," she said, "unless you cast this knife behind
you when you go out, it will be nothing but coal when you reach home".
The woman followed her patient's advice, and so continued to carry
safely home a costly present of gold.[26]
The objection of supernatural beings to iron, and its power of undoing
their charms, will be considered in a future chapter. The good luck of
Niels Hansen's wife offers meantime another subject of interest; for it
was due to her own kindness of heart. A short time before she had been
raking hay in a field, when she caught a large and fat toad between the
teeth of her rake. She gently released it, saying: "Poor thing! I see
that thou needest help; I will help thee." That toad was the troll-wife,
and as she afterwards attended her she was horrified to see a hideous
serpent hanging down just above her head. Her fright led to explanations
and an expression of gratitude on the part of the troll-wife. This
incident is by no means uncommon; but a very few examples must suffice
here. Generally the woman's terror is attributed to a millstone hanging
over her head. At Grammendorf, in Pomerania, a maid saw, every time she
went to milk the cows, a hateful toad hopping about in the stable. She
determined to kill it, and would have seized it one day had it not, in
the very nick of time, succeeded in creeping into a hole, where she
could not get at it. A few days after, when she was again busy in the
stable, a little Ulk, as the elves there are called, came and invited
her to descend with him into Fairyland. On reaching the bottom of a
staircase with her conductor, she found her services were required for
an Ulkwife, whose time was at hand. Entering the dwelling she was
frightened to observe a huge millstone above her, suspended by a silken
thread; and the Ulk, seeing her terror, told her she had caused him
exactly the same, when she chased the poor toad and attempted to kill
it. The girl was compelled to share in the feast which followed. When it
was over she was given a piece of gold, that she was carefully to
preserve; for so long as she did so she would never be in want of money.
But her guide warned her at parting never to relate her experience,
otherwise the elves would fetch her again, and set her under the
millstone, which would then fall and crush her. Whether this was indeed
the consequence of her narrating this very true story we do not know.
After some of the beliefs we have been considering in the foregoing
pages it is, however, interesting to note that no ill attended her
eating and drinking in Fairyland, and that the gold she received did not
turn to dross, though it possessed other miraculous qualities which
might very well have led her to the bad end threatened by the Ulk.
Perhaps a portion of the story has been lost.[27]
Sometimes a different turn is given to the tale. A Swabian peasant-woman
was once in the fields with her servant-maid, when they saw a big toad.
The woman told her maid to kill it. The latter replied: "No; I won't do
that, and I will stand sponsor for it yet once more." Not long
afterwards she was sent for to become sponsor, and was conducted into
the lake, where she found the toad now in guise of a woman. After the
ceremony was over, the lake-woman rewarded her with a bushel of straw,
and sent by her hand a girdle for her mistress. On the way home the girl
tried the girdle on a tree to see how it would look, and in a moment the
tree was torn into a thousand pieces. This was the punishment devised by
the lake-woman for her mistress, because she had wished to put her to
death while in the form of a toad. The straw was, of course, pure gold;
but the girl foolishly cast it all away except a few stalks which clung
to her dress. So a countryman who accidentally spilt some hot broth on a
witch, disguised as a toad, is presented by her another day with a
girdle for his little son. Suspecting something wrong, he tries it on
his dog, which at once swells up and bursts. This is a Saxon saga from
Transylvania; an Irish saga brings us to the same catastrophe. There a
girl meets a frog which is painfully bloated, and kicks it unfeelingly
aside, with the words: "May you never be delivered till I am midwife to
you!" Now the frog was a water-fairy dwelling in a lake, into which the
girl soon after was conveyed and compelled to become the fairy's
midwife. By way of reward she is presented with a red cloak, which, on
her way home, she hangs up in admiration on a tree. Well was it for her
that she did so, for it set the tree on fire; and had she worn it, as
she meant to do, on the following Sunday at Mass, the chapel itself
would have been in a blaze.[28]
The fairies' revenge here missed its mark, though calculated on no
trifling scale. Indeed, the rewards they bestowed were never nicely
balanced with the good or ill they intended to requite, but were
showered in open-handed fashion as by those who could afford to be
lavish. Of this we have already had several instances; a few more may be
given. At Palermo a tale is told of a midwife who was one day cooking in
her own kitchen when a hand appeared and a voice cried: "Give to me!"
She took a plate and filled it from the food she was preparing.
Presently the hand returned the plate full of golden money. This was
repeated daily; and the woman, seeing the generous payment, became more
and more free with her portions of food. At the end of nine months a
knocking was heard at the door; and, descending, she found two giants,
who caught her up on their shoulders, and unceremoniously ran off with
her. They carried her to a lady who needed her offices, and she assisted
to bring into the world two fine boys. The lady evidently was fully
alive to her own dignity, for she kept the woman a proper human month,
to the distress of her husband, who, not knowing what had become of her,
searched the city night and day, and at last gave her up for dead. Then
the lady (a fairy princess she was) asked her if she wished to go, and
whether she would be paid by blows or pinches. The poor midwife deemed
her last hour was come, and said to herself that if she must die it
would be better to die quickly; so she chose blows. Accordingly the
princess called the two giants, and sent her home with a large sack of
money, which enabled her to relinquish business, set up her carriage,
and become one of the first ladies in Palermo. Ten years passed; and one
day a grand carriage stopped at her door. A lady alighted and entered
her palace. When she had her face to face, the lady said: "Gossip, do
you know me?" "No, madam." "What! do you not remember that I am the lady
to whom you came ten years ago, when these children were born? I, too,
am she who held out her hand and asked for food. I was the fairies'
captive; and if you had not been generous enough to give me to eat, I
should have died in the night. And because you were generous you have
become rich. Now I am freed, and here I am with my sons." The quondam
midwife, with tears in her eyes, looked at her, and blessed the moment
she had done a generous act. So they became lifelong friends.[29]
I have given the foregoing tale almost at full length because it has
not, so far as I know, appeared before in any other than its native
Sicilian dress, and because analogous stories are not common in
collections from Mediterranean countries. This rarity is not, I need
hardly say, from any absence of the mythological material, and perhaps
it may be due to accident in the formation of the collections. If the
story were really wanting elsewhere in Southern Europe, we might be
permitted the conjecture that its presence in Sicily was to be accounted
for by the Norman settlements there. One such story, however, is
recorded from the Island of Kimolos, one of the Cyclades, but without
the human captivity in Elfland, without the acts of charity, and without
the gratitude. The Nereids of the Kimoliote caves are of a grimmer
humour than the kindly-natured underground folk of Celtic and Teutonic
lands, or than the heroine of Palermo. The payment to their human help
is no subject of jest to them. A woman whom they once called in was
roundly told: "If it be a boy you shall be happy; but if it be a girl we
will tear you in four parts, and hang you in this cave." The unhappy
midwife of course determined that it should be a boy; and when a girl
arrived she made believe it was a boy, swaddled it up tightly, and went
home. When, eight days afterwards, the child was unpacked, the Nereids'
rage and disappointment were great; and they sent one of their number to
knock at her door in the hope that she would answer the first summons.
Now to answer the first summons of a Nereid meant madness. Of this the
woman was fully aware; and her cunning cheated them even of their
revenge.[30]
Sometimes these supernatural beings bestow gifts of a more distinctly
divine character than any of the foregoing. A midwife in Strathspey, on
one such occasion, was desired to ask what she would, and it should be
granted if in the power of the fairies. She asked that success might
attend herself and her posterity in all similar operations. The gift was
conferred; and her great-grandson still continued to exercise it when
Mr. Stewart was collecting the materials for his work on the
superstitions of the Highlanders, published in 1823. In like manner the
Mohel, to whose adventure I have already referred, and who was
originally an avaricious man, received the grace of benevolence to the
poor, which caused him to live a long and happy life with his family, a
pattern unto the whole world. The gift was symbolized by the
restoration to him of his own bunch of keys, which he found with many
others in the possession of his uncanny conductor. This personage had
held the keys by virtue of his being lord over the hearts of those who
never at any time do good: in other words, he was the demon of
covetousness. Here we have an instance, more or less conscious, of the
tendency, so marked in Jewish literature, to parable. But the form of
the parable bears striking testimony to its origin in a myth common to
many races. The keys in particular probably indicate that the recompense
at one time took the shape of a palladium. This is not at all uncommon
in the tales. The Countess Von Ranzau was once summoned from her castle
of Breitenburg in Schleswig to the help of a dwarf-woman, and in return
received, according to one account, a large piece of gold to be made
into fifty counters, a herring and two spindles, upon the preservation
of which the fortunes of the family were to depend. The gifts are
variously stated in different versions of the tale, but all the versions
agree in attaching to them blessings on the noble house of Ranzau so
long as they were kept in the family. The Frau Von Hahnen, in a Bohemian
legend, receives for her services to a water-nix three pieces of gold,
with the injunction to take care of them, and never to let them go out
of the hands of her own lineage, else the whole family would fall into
poverty. She bequeathed the treasures to her three sons; but the
youngest son took a wife, who with a light heart gave the fairy gold
away. Misery, of course, resulted from her folly; and the race of Hahnen
speedily came to an end.[31]
It is quite possible that the spoons bestowed by Vitra upon the
clergyman's wife in Lappmark were once reputed to be the subject of a
similar proviso. So common, forsooth, was the stipulation, that in one
way or other it was annexed to well-nigh all fairy gifts: they brought
luck to their possessor for the time being. Examples of this are
endless: one only will content us in this connection; and, like Vitra's
gift, we shall find it in Swedish Lappmark. A peasant who had one day
been unlucky at the chase, was returning disgusted, when he met a fine
gentleman who begged him to come and cure his wife. The peasant
protested in vain that he was not a doctor. The other would take no
denial, insisting that it was no matter, for if he would only put his
hands upon the lady she would be healed. Accordingly the stranger led
him to the very top of a mountain, where was perched a castle he had
never seen before. On entering it he found the walls were mirrors, the
roof overhead of silver, the carpets of gold-embroidered silk, and the
furniture of the purest gold and jewels. The stranger took him into a
room where lay the loveliest of princesses on a golden bed, screaming
with pain. As soon as she saw the peasant she begged him to come and put
his hands upon her. Almost stupefied with astonishment he hesitated to
lay his coarse hands upon so fair a dame. But at length he yielded; and
in a moment her pain ceased, and she was made whole. She stood up and
thanked him, begging him to tarry awhile and eat with them. This,
however, he declined to do, for he feared that if he tasted the food
which was offered him he must remain there. The stranger whom he had
followed then took a leathern purse, filled it with small round pieces
of wood, and gave it to the peasant with these words: "So long as thou
art in possession of this purse money will never fail thee. But if thou
shouldst ever see me again, beware of speaking to me; for if thou speak
thy luck will depart." When the man got home he found the purse filled
with dollars; and by virtue of its magical property he became the
richest man in the parish. As soon as he found the purse always full,
whatever he took out of it, he began to live in a spendthrift manner
and frequented the alehouse. One evening as he sat there he beheld the
stranger with a bottle in his hand going round and gathering the drops
which the guests shook from time to time out of their glasses. The rich
peasant was surprised that one who had given him so much did not seem
able to buy himself a single dram, but was reduced to this means of
getting a drink. Thereupon he went up to him and said: "Thou hast shown
me more kindness than any other man ever did, and I will willingly treat
thee to a little." The words were scarce out of his mouth when he
received such a blow on his head that he fell stunned to the ground; and
when again he came to himself the stranger and his purse were both gone.
From that day forward he became poorer and poorer, until he was reduced
to absolute beggary.[32]
This story exemplifies every point that had had interested us in this
discussion: the need of the Trolls for human help, the refusal of food,
fairy gratitude, and the conditions involved in the acceptance of
supernatural gifts. It mentions one further characteristic of fairy
nature--the objection to be recognized and addressed by men who are
privileged to see them. But the consideration of this requires another
chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[15] "Y Cymmrodor," vol. v. p. 70, translated from "Y Brython," vol. iv.
p. 251.
[16] Poestion, p. 111; Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 457, note, quoting at
length the declaration from Hülpher, "Samlingen om Jämtland." A
translation will be found in Keightley, p. 122.
[17] Meier, p. 59.
[18] Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 128, from Thiele, "Danmark's Folkesagn";
Keightley, p. 506.
[19] Waldron, p. 28.
[20] "Mélusine," vol. i. p. 446; Radloff, vol. i. p. 78; Bladé, vol. i.
p. 161; Cosquin, vol. ii. p. 10; Cavallius, p. 281; "Revue des Trad.
Pop." vol. iv. p. 222.
[21] Child, vol. i. p. 319; "Thomas of Erceldoune," p. 11 (Cambridge
Text); Saxo, "Gesta Dan." l. viii.
[22] _Journal of Anthrop. Inst._ vol. x. p. 282; Shortland, p. 150;
"Kalewala," rune xvi. l. 293.
[23] Gill, p. 172.
[24] Keightley, p. 261; Kuhn und Schwartz, p. 93.
[25] Jahn, p. 72; Keightley, p. 275, quoting Müller, "Bilder und Sagen
aus der Schweiz," p. 119; Birlinger, "Volksthümliches," vol. i. p. 42;
Kuhn, p. 82; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 128; vol. iii. p. 54, quoting
Müllenhoff, "Sagen, &c., der Herzogthümer Schleswig, Holstein und
Lauenburg"; Kuhn und Schwartz, p. 173; Wratislaw, p. 40; Wenzig, p. 198;
Liebrecht, p. 100, citing "Results of a Tour in Dardistan", part iii. p.
3.
[26] Kennedy, p. 106; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 130, quoting Thiele,
"Danmark's Folkesagn."
[27] Jahn, p. 64; _cf._ p. 74, where there are two maidens, one of whom
had saved the toad when the other desired to kill it. They stand
sponsors for the fairy child, and are rewarded with sweepings which turn
to gold; also Bartsch, vol. i. p. 50, where a sword is suspended.
[28] Meier, p. 69; Müller, p. 140; "N. and Q.," 7th ser. vol. v. p. 501.
[29] Pitré, vol. v. p. 23. The story in its present form does not say
that the human food enabled the lady to return from Fairyland, but only
that it saved her life. Probably, however, an earlier version may have
shown the incident in a more primitive form.
[30] Bent, p. 46.
[31] Keightley, p. 388, citing Stewart; Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 50 _et
seq._, quoting Müllenhoff and Thiele; Grohmann, p. 145; see also Thorpe,
vol. iii. p. 51.
[32] Poestion, p. 119.