THE SUPERNATURAL LAPSE OF TIME IN FAIRYLAND
(_continued_).
The story not an early one--Its weirdest developments
European--Stories of short time appearing long--Mohammed's
night-journey and its variants--The Sleeping Hero, a heathen
god--The Wild Hunt--The Enchanted Princess, a heathen goddess.
The visits to Fairyland recorded in Chapter VII differ only in one
respect from those mentioned in earlier chapters of this book. Like
them, they are visits of business or of pleasure. Mortals are summoned
to perform some service for the mysterious beings whose dwelling is
beneath the earth, such as to stand sponsor to their children, or to
shoe their horses; or they go to take a message from this world, or to
bring a message back. Or else they are drawn into the regions over which
the power of the supernatural extends, by curiosity, by the desire of
pleasure, or else by the invitation, or unconsciously by the spell, of
their superhuman inhabitants. The point at which the visits differ from
those we have previously considered, and from a hundred others precisely
parallel in all other respects, is in their length. To the entrammelled
mortal the visit seems to last but a moment; for while under the fairy
sway he is unconscious of the flight of time. In other stories deception
is practised on the sight. The midwife, without the ointment, is
deceived like Thor by Utgard-Loki: nothing is as it appears to her.
Parents and husbands are deceived by changelings: they are made to
believe that images of dead wood are living creatures, or human corpses.
In these stories, on the other hand, the magic is directed against the
sense of time. A subtler, a weirder, a more awful horror is thus added
to the dread of communion with the supernatural.
This horror is one arising comparatively late in the history of culture.
The idea of time must first grow up and be elaborated. Time is dependent
on number. A savage who can barely count beyond five cannot know
anything of stories which deal with the lapse of centuries. Even the
vaguer, but shorter, period of a generation will be an idea he cannot
grasp. We have therefore found no such tales in the lower savagery; and
even among the Lapplanders and the Siberian tribes the stories we have
been able to collect speak only of short periods, such as the transition
from autumn to spring, where a man had slept through the winter, and the
expansion of a day into a month, or a year. In these two cases not only
the phases of the moon and the measurement of time by them, which must
have been early in development, but also the cycle of the seasons had
been observed. But the idea lying at the root of this group of tales is
as yet only in germ. The full terror of the situation, as exhibited in
the traditions of the more highly organized societies of Europe and of
the extreme Orient, is unforeseen. For it is in proportion to the
organization of society that such a catastrophe as the loss of years,
and thereby of kindred and friends, becomes really dreadful. Indeed, it
would seem to have been reserved for the European nations to put the
final touches of gloom and horror upon the canvas. It may be sufficient
to refer this to the more sombre imagination of Western peoples. But we
ought not to overlook the influence of the Catholic Church in darkening
the general tone of the imagination, and particularly the tone of the
fairy sagas, by the absolute and unquestioned supremacy she demanded,
and the frightful penalties, temporal and spiritual, she invoked upon
those who dared to indulge in cults she was unable to incorporate. To
men under such an influence, intercourse with fairies would be a thing
unholy; and the greater the temptations to it, the severer, they would
deem, should be the penalties. This is the frame of mind which would, if
with shuddering, yet without a murmur, acquiesce in the justice of the
doom suffered by Herla, to put an extreme case--a frame of mind
undoubtedly countenanced by the equally uncompromising claims of various
forms of Protestantism. But, while reprobating commerce with unhallowed
spirits, intercourse with spirits sanctioned by the Church was believed
to be almost equally possible, and was encouraged as much as the other
was denounced. If such intercourse sometimes resulted in severance
between the favoured mortal and his human friends, this was only an
extension of the monastic idea; and, as in that case, the loss was held
to be abundantly compensated by the favour of Heaven and the bliss
received. At all events it is certain, from whatever cause, that the
deepest depths and the loftiest heights of which this story-plot has
been found capable, have been reached only under Christian influences.
Pliny and Mohammed, the Taoist and the Shintoist, have recorded no tale
that sways our emotions like those of Herla, the Aged Bride, and the
Monk Felix.
But the magical power over time operates now and then in the contrary
way, by making a short time appear long. A few examples may be
interesting, though they will in no way affect the foregoing
conclusions. In the tenth part of a night Mohammed, it will be
remembered, was taken up to Paradise on the back of the beast Alborac,
and passed through all the seven heavens into the presence of Allah
himself, with whom he had a conversation, which could not have been a
very short one, and was then brought back by the way he had gone. He
remained long enough in each heaven to give a full, true and particular
account of it and of its inhabitants, and performed various other feats
during the journey. Nor will it be forgotten how one of the Sultans one
day expressing doubts on the possibility of so much having happened to
the Apostle in so short a time, a learned doctor of the Mohammedan law
caused a basin of water to be brought and requested him to dip his head
into it. When the Sultan dipped his head he found himself in a strange
country, alone and friendless, on the seashore. He made his way to a
neighbouring town, obtained employment, became rich, married, lived
seven years with his wife, who afterwards, to his great grief, died, and
then he lost all. One day he was wandering in despondency along the
seashore, where he had first found himself; and in his despair he
determined to cast himself into the sea. Scarcely had he done so when he
beheld his courtiers standing around his throne: he was once more
Sultan, and the basin of water into which he had dipped his head was
before him. He began furiously to reproach the learned doctor for
banishing him from his capital and sending him into the midst of
vicissitudes and adventures for so many years. Nor was it without
difficulty that he was brought to believe that he had only just dipped
his head into the water and lifted it out again.
This type of story is less frequent than the other, but it is known in
countries far apart. A stripling, in Pembrokeshire, joined a fairy
dance, and found himself in a palace glittering with gold and pearls,
where he remained in great enjoyment with the fairy folk for many years.
One restriction was laid upon him: he was not to drink from a certain
well in the midst of the palace gardens. But he could not forbear. In
that well swam golden fishes and fishes of all colours. One day the
youth, impelled by curiosity, plunged his hand into the water; but in a
moment fishes and all disappeared, a shriek ran through the garden, and
he found himself again on the hillside with his father's flocks around
him. In fact, he had never left the sheep, and what seemed to him to be
years had been only minutes, during which the fairy spell had been over
him. In Count Lucanor, a Spanish work of the fourteenth century, is a
story of a Dean of Santiago, who went to Don Illan, a magician of
Toledo, to be instructed in necromancy. Don Illan made a difficulty,
stating that the dean was a man of influence and consequently likely to
attain a high position, and that men when they rise forget easily all
past obligations, as well as the persons from whom they received them.
The dean, however, protested that, no matter to what eminence he
attained, he would never fail to remember and to help his former
friends, and the magician in particular. This being the bargain, Don
Illan led the dean into a remote apartment, first desiring his
housekeeper to procure some partridges for supper, but not to cook them
until she had his special commands. Scarcely had the dean and his friend
reached the room when two messengers arrived from the dean's uncle, the
archbishop, summoning him to his death-bed. Being unwilling, however, to
forego the lessons he was about to receive, he contented himself with a
respectful reply. Four days afterwards other messengers arrived with
letters informing the dean of the archbishop's death, and again at the
end of other seven or eight days he learned that he himself had been
appointed archbishop in his uncle's place. Don Illan solicited the
vacant deanery for his son; but the new archbishop preferred his own
brother, inviting, however, Don Illan and his son to accompany him to
his see. After awhile, the deanery was again vacant: and again the
archbishop refused Don Illan's suit, in favour of one of his own uncles.
Two years later, the archbishop was named cardinal and summoned to Rome,
with liberty to name his successor in the see. Don Illan, pressing his
suit more urgently, was again repulsed in favour of another uncle. At
length the pope died, and the new cardinal was chosen pope. Don Illan,
who had accompanied him to Rome, then reminded him that he had now no
excuse for not fulfilling the promises he had so often repeated to him.
The pope sought to put him off; but Don Illan complained in earnest of
the many promises he had made, none of which had been kept, and declared
that he had no longer any faith in his words. The pope, much angered,
threatened to have Don Illan thrown into prison as a heretic and a
sorcerer; for he knew that in Toledo he had no other means of support
but by practising the art of necromancy. Don Illan, seeing how ill the
pope had requited his services, prepared to depart; and the pope, as if
he had not already shown sufficient ingratitude, refused even to grant
him wherewith to support himself on the road. "Then," retorted Don
Illan, "since I have nothing to eat, I must needs fall back on the
partridges I ordered for to-night's supper." He then called out to his
housekeeper and ordered her to cook the birds. No sooner had he thus
spoken than the dean found himself again in Toledo, still dean of
Santiago, as on his arrival, for, in fact, he had not stirred from the
place. This was simply the way the magician had chosen to test his
character, before committing himself to his hands; and the dean was so
crestfallen he had nothing to reply to the reproaches wherewith Don
Illan dismissed him without even a taste of the partridges.[166]
A modern folk-tale from Cashmere tells of a Brahmin who prayed to know
something of the state of the departed. One morning, while bathing in
the river, his spirit left him and entered the body of the infant child
of a cobbler. The child grew up, learned his father's business, married,
and had a large family, when suddenly he was made aware of his high
caste, and, abandoning all, he went to another country. There the king
had just died; and the stranger was chosen in his place, and put upon
his throne. In the course of a few years his wife came to know where he
was, and sought to join him. In this or some other way his people
learned that he was a cobbler; and great consternation prevailed on
account of his low caste. Some of his subjects fled; others performed
great penances; and some indeed burnt themselves lest they should be
excommunicated. When the king heard all this, he too burnt himself; and
his spirit went and re-occupied the Brahmin's corpse, which still lay by
the riverside. Thereupon the Brahmin got up and went home to his wife,
who only said: "How quickly you have performed your ablutions this
morning!" The Brahmin said not a word of his adventures, notwithstanding
he was greatly astonished. To crown all, however, about a week
afterwards a man came to him begging, and said he had eaten nothing for
five days, during which he had been running away from his country
because a cobbler had been made king. All the people, he said, were
running away, or burning themselves, to escape the consequences of such
an evil. The Brahmin, while he gave the man food, thought: "How can
these things be? I have been a cobbler for several years; I have reigned
as a king for several years;--and this man confirms the truth of my
thoughts. Yet my wife declares I have not been absent from this house
more than the usual time; and I believe her, for she does not look any
older, neither is the place changed in any way." Thus were the gods
teaching him that the soul passes through various stages of existence
according to a man's thoughts, words, and acts, and in the great
Hereafter a day is equal to a thousand years, and a thousand years are
equal to a day.[167]
We may now turn to the types in which the spell is believed to be still
powerful over heroes once mighty but now hidden within the hills, or in
some far-off land, awaiting in magical sleep, or in more than human
delight, the summons that shall bid them return to succour their
distressed people in the hour of utmost need. As to the personality of
these heroes there can be no doubt. Grimm long ago pointed out that the
red-bearded king beneath the Kyffhäuser can be no other than Thor, the
old Teutonic god of thunder, and that the long beard--sometimes
described as white--attributed to other leaders was a token of Woden.
The very name of Woden is preserved in the Odenberg, to which several of
such legends attach; and the hidden king there is sometimes called Karl
the Great, and sometimes Woden. In other countries Quetzalcoatl and
Vishnu, we know, are gods of the native cults. Oisin, Merlin, and King
Arthur all belong to the old Celtic Pantheon. And if some other sleeping
or vanished heroes bear the names of personages who once had a real
existence, they are but decked in borrowed plumes. In short, all these
Hidden Heroes are gods of the earlier faiths, vanquished by Christianity
but not destroyed.
If this be so, it may be inferred that these gods were at one time
conceived as presently active, and that it is only since the
introduction of the new faith that they have been thought to be retired
beneath the overhanging hills or in the Islands of the Blest. But this
was not so. In all regions the chief activity of the deities has always
been placed in the past. Upon the stories told of the deeds of yesterday
the belief of to-day is founded. Whether it be creation, or strife
against evil spirits, or the punishment of men, or the invention of the
civilizing arts, or the endless amours of too susceptible divinities,
all is looked upon as past and done. The present is a state of rest, of
suspension of labour, or at least of cessation of open and visible
activity. These gods, like men, require an abode. In the later stages of
culture this abode is a Paradise on some more or less imaginary
mountain-top, or effectually cut off from men by the magical tempests
of the immeasurable main, or by the supreme and silent heights of
heaven. But this exaltation of ideas took long to reach. At first a
strange rock, a fountain, the recesses of a cavern, or the mysterious
depths of the forest, enshrouded the divinity. In the earlier stages of
savagery it would be almost truer to say that these _were_ very often
the divinity: at least they were often his outward and visible form. Mr.
Im Thurn, who has had exceptional opportunities of observing the
characteristics of the savage mind, and has made exceptionally good use
of those opportunities, in describing the animism of the Indians of
Guiana, says: "Every object in the whole world is a being consisting of
body and spirit, and differs from every other object in no respect
except that of bodily form, and in the greater or less degree of brute
power and brute cunning consequent on the difference of bodily form and
bodily habits." Then, after discussing the lower animals and plants as
each possessed of body and soul, and particularizing several rocks which
are supposed by the Indians to possess spirits like human beings, he
goes on: "It is unnecessary to multiply instances, further than by
saying that almost every rock seen for the first time, and any rock
which is in any way abnormal whenever seen, is believed to consist of
body and spirit. And not only many rocks, but also many waterfalls,
streams, and indeed material bodies of every sort, are supposed to
consist each of a body and a spirit as does man; and that not all
inanimate objects have this dual nature avowedly attributed to them is
probably only due to the chance that, while all such objects may at any
time, in any of the ways above indicated, show signs of the presence of
a spirit within them, this spirit has not yet been noticed in some
cases."[168] From this belief to that in which the rocks and hills and
other inanimate objects are looked upon as having the relation to
spirits, not of body and soul, but of dwelling and dweller, is a step
upward, and perhaps a long one. But it is a natural development, and one
which would inevitably take place as the popular opinion of the power of
certain spirits grew, and these spirits attracted to themselves
superstitions and sagas current among the people whose civilization was
by the same slow movement growing too.
The development spoken of would perhaps be assisted by the erection of
monuments like piles of stones, or earthen barrows, over the dead. As
formerly in their huts, so now in their graves, the dead would be
regarded as the occupiers. Their spirits were still living, and would be
seen from time to time haunting the spot. Food would be buried with
them; and sacrifices at the moment of burial and on subsequent occasions
would be offered to them. In process of time among illiterate races
their identity would be forgotten, and then if the barrows were not
large enough to attract attention the superstitions which had their seat
there might cease. But if the barrows could not be overlooked, the
spirits supposed to haunt them might merge into some other objects of
reverence. In Denmark the barrows are invariably regarded as the haunt
of fairies; and this is frequently the case in other countries.[169]
When men once became habituated to think of a barrow as not the outward
and visible form of some spirit, but simply its dwelling-place--still
more, perhaps, if many interments took place within it, so that it
became the dwelling-place of many spirits--they would be led by an easy
transition to think of rocks, fountains, hills, and other natural
objects in the same way. The spirits once supposed to be their inner
identity would become perfectly separable in thought from them, because
merely their tenants. Thus the gulf would be bridged between the savage
philosophy of spirits described by Mr. Im Thurn, and the polytheism of
the higher heathendom, represented by Mexico, Scandinavia, and Greece.
But whether they travelled by this, or any different road, certain it is
that in the remoter times of the higher heathendom men had arrived no
further than the belief that certain spots, and preferably certain
striking objects, were the abodes of their gods. This was a doctrine
developed directly from that which regarded the more remarkable objects
of nature as the bodies of powerful spirits. Nor was it ever entirely
abandoned; for even after the more advanced and thoughtful of the
community had reached the idea of an Olympus, or an Asgard, far removed
above the every-day earth of humanity, the gods still had their temples,
and sacred legends still attached to places where events of the divine
history had happened. Consequently some localities kept their reputation
of sanctity. That they were really the abiding-places of the gods the
common people would not cease to hold, whatever might be taught or held
by those who had renounced that crudity. And, indeed, it may be doubted
whether anybody ever renounced it altogether. Probably, at all events,
most persons would see no difficulty in believing that the god dwelt on
the sacred spot of earth and also at the same time in heaven. They would
accept both traditions as equally true, without troubling themselves how
to reconcile them.
But the gods did not always remain in their dwellings. The Wild Hunt, a
tradition of a furious host riding abroad with a terrific noise of
shouts and horns and the braying of hounds, common to Germany and
England, has been identified beyond doubt by Grimm with Woden and his
host. We cannot here discuss the subject except in its relations with
the group of stories now under consideration. Woden, it will be borne in
mind, is one of the figures of the old mythology merged in the Hidden
Hero beneath the German hills. Now, nothing is more natural than that,
when a company of warriors is conceived as lying ready for a summons,
themselves all armed and their steeds standing harnessed at their sides,
they should be thought now and then to sally forth. This was the sound
which surprised the good burgesses of Jung-Wositz when Ulrich von
Rosenberg and his train rode out by night upon the plain. In this way
King Wenzel exercises his followers, and the unfortunate Stoymir
vindicated his existence beneath the Blanik notwithstanding his death.
In this way too, before a war, Diedrich is heard preparing for battle at
one o'clock in the morning on the mountain of Ax. Once in seven years
Earl Gerald rides round the Curragh of Kildare; and every seventh year
the host at Ochsenfeld in Upper Alsace may be seen by night exercising
on their horses. On certain days the Carpathian robber issues from his
cavern in the Czornahora. Grimm mentions the story of a blacksmith who
found a gap he had never noticed before in the face of a cliff on the
Odenberg, and entering, stood in the presence of mighty men, playing
there at bowls with balls of iron, as Rip van Winkle's friends were
playing at ninepins. So a Wallachian saga connects the Wild Hunt with a
mysterious forest castle built by the Knight Sigmirian, who was cursed
with banishment for three hundred years from the society of men for
refusing the daughter of the King of Stones. In the same category we
must put the spectral host in the Donnersberg, and Herla's company,
which haunted the Welsh marches, and is described by Walter Map as a
great band of men and women on foot and in chariots, with pack-saddles
and panniers, birds and dogs, advancing with trumpets and shouts, and
all sorts of weapons ready for emergencies. Night was the usual time of
Herla's wanderings, but the last time he and his train were seen was at
noon. Those who then saw them, being unable to obtain an answer to their
challenge by words, prepared to exact one by arms; but the moment they
did so the troop rose into the air and disappeared, nor was it ever seen
again.[170]
This is a different account of Herla from that previously quoted from an
earlier part of Map's work; but perhaps, if it were worth while to spend
the time, not altogether irreconcilable with it. The tradition, it
should be observed, appears to have been an English, and not a Welsh,
tradition, since the host received the English name of Herlething.
Gervase of Tilbury, writing about the same time, reports that Arthur was
said by the foresters, or woodwards, both in Britain and in Brittany, to
be very often seen at midday, or in the evening moonlight at full of the
moon, accompanied by a troop of soldiers, hunters, dogs, and the sound
of horns. This is manifestly a Celtic tradition. But these occasions are
not the last on which such appearances have been seen and heard in this
country. If we may believe a tract published in 1643, spectral fights
had taken place at Keniton, in Northamptonshire, during four successive
Saturday and Sunday nights of the preceding Christmastide. By those who
are reported to have witnessed the phenomenon--and among them were
several gentlemen of credit mentioned by name as despatched by the king
himself from Oxford--it was taken to be a ghostly repetition of the
battle of Edgehill, which had been fought only two months before on the
adjacent fields. The excitement of men's minds during periods of
commotion has doubtless much to do with the currency of beliefs like
this. Saint Augustine alludes to a story of a battle between evil
spirits beheld upon a plain in Campania during the civil wars of Rome.
As in the case of Edgehill, the vision was accompanied by all the noises
of a conflict; and indeed the saint goes the length of declaring that
after it was over the ground was covered with the footprints of men and
horses. On the spot where this is said to have happened an actual battle
took place not very long after.[171] These two instances are unconnected
with the Sleeping Host; but many of the legends explicitly declare the
exercises of the host when it emerges from its retirement to consist of
a sham fight. Although the legends containing this account are not all
found among Teutonic peoples, it cannot be deemed irrelevant to draw
attention to the fact that similar fights are mentioned as the daily
occupation of the heroes who attain to Valhalla, just as the nightly
feasts of that roystering paradise correspond to the refreshments
provided for the warriors around the tables of stone in their
subterranean retreats. Whatever may have been the creed of other
European races, it is hardly to be doubted that in these German
superstitions we have an approach to the primitive belief, of which the
Eddaic Valhalla was a late and idealized development.
But we may--nay, we must--go further. For in the history of traditional
religions goddesses have been as popular as gods; and if we are right in
seeing, with Grimm, the archaic gods in the Hidden Heroes, some where
we must find their mates, the corresponding goddesses. We have already
had glimpses of them in Morgan the Fay, in the Emperor Frederick's
lady-housekeeper (_ausgeberin_) and in the maid who in another saga
attended on his bidding. The lady-housekeeper is expressly called in one
story Dame Holle. Now Dame Holle herself is the leader of a Furious
Host, or Wild Hunt, and has been identified by Grimm beyond any doubt as
a pagan goddess, like Berchta.
Let us take another story in which the female companion of the enchanted
hero appears. Near the town of Garz, on the island of Rügen, lies a lake
by which a castle formerly stood. It belonged to an old heathen king,
whose avarice heaped up great store of gold and jewels in the vaults
beneath. It was taken and destroyed by the Christians, and its owner was
transformed into a great black dog ever watching his treasure. Sometimes
he is still seen in human form with helm, or golden crown, and coat of
mail, riding a grey horse over the city and the lake; sometimes he is
met with by night in the forest, wearing a black fur cap and carrying a
white staff. It is possible to disenchant him, but only if a pure
virgin, on St. John's night between twelve and one o'clock, will
venture, naked and alone, to climb the castle wall and wander backwards
to and fro amid the ruins, until she light upon the spot where the
stairway of the tower leads down into the treasure chamber. Slipping
down, she will then be able to take as much gold and jewels as she can
carry, and what she cannot herself carry the old king will bring after
her, so that she will be rich for the rest of her life. But she must
return by sunrise, and she must not once look behind her, nor speak a
single word, else not only will she fail, but she will perish miserably.
A princess who was accused of unchastity obtained her father's
permission to try this adventure, in order to prove the falsehood of the
charge against her. She safely gained the vault, which was illuminated
with a thousand lights. The king, a little grey old man, bestowed the
treasure upon her, and sent a number of servants laden with it to follow
her. All would have gone well, but unhappily when she had climbed a few
of the old steps she looked round to see if the servants were coming. At
once the king changed into a great black dog, that sprang upon her with
fiery throat and glowing eyes. She just had time to scream out when the
door slammed to, the steps sank, and she fell back into the vault in
darkness. She has sat there now for four hundred years, waiting until a
pure youth shall find his way down in the same manner on St. John's
night, shall bow to her thrice and silently kiss her. He may then take
her hand and lead her forth to be his bride; and he will inherit such
riches as a whole kingdom cannot buy.[172]
But goddesses do not always play so secondary a part. In a wood in
Pomerania stands a round, flat hill called the Castle Hill, and at its
foot lies a little lake known as the Hertha Lake. By its name it is thus
directly connected with one of the old divinities, like that lake on the
island of Rügen referred to in Chapter IV. And here, too, a mysterious
lady has been seen to wash, a young and lovely maiden, clad in
black--not in secret, as in the former instance, but openly, as if for
the purpose of attracting attention from passers-by, and of being spoken
to. At last a broad-shouldered workman, named Kramp, ventured to give
the maiden "the time of day," and to get her into conversation. She told
him she was a princess, who, with her castle, had been from time
immemorial enchanted, and that she was still waiting for her deliverer.
The mode of loosing the spell was by carrying her on his back in silence
to the churchyard of Wusseken and there putting her down, being careful
not to look round the while; for, happen what would, he could take no
harm, even if it were threatened to tear his head off. He undertook the
task, and had nearly accomplished it without troubling in the least
about the troops of spirits which followed him, when suddenly, as he
drew near the churchyard, a hurricane arose and took his cap off.
Forgetful of his promise, he looked round; and the maiden rose into the
air, weeping and crying out that she could never be delivered now. A
story told in Mecklenburg is more picturesque. It concerns the daughter
of a lake-king, who leagued himself with other knights against a robber,
the owner of a castle called the Glamburg, which was a place of some
strength, being entirely surrounded by the water of the Lake of Glam.
The confederates were defeated; and nine large round barrows were raised
the next day over the slain, among whom was the lake-king. His daughter
wept upon her father's grave, and her tears, as they touched the earth,
became lovely blue flowers. These flowers still grow upon the loftiest
of the nine barrows, while the others are quite destitute of them. The
princess threw herself that night--it was St. John's night--into the
lake; and now every year on St. John's night, between twelve and one
o'clock, a bridge of copper rises out of the lake, and the princess
appears upon it, sighing for her deliverance.[173]
The typical form of the tale is as follows: In the Buchenberg by Doberan
dwells an enchanted princess, who can only be released once in a hundred
years, on St. John's Day between twelve and one. In the year 1818 a
servant boy was watching sheep on the eastern side of the Buchenberg the
day before St. John's day. About noon a white lady appeared to him and
told him that he could deliver her, if he would, the next day at the
same hour, kiss her. She would then come to him in the form of a toad
with a red band round its neck. The shepherd promised; but the next day
when he saw the toad he was so horrified that he ran away. A variant
records the hour as between twelve and one at night, and the form of the
lady as a snake which sought to twine round the shepherd's neck. A
great treasure buried in the hill would have been his had he stood the
proof; but now the lady will have to wait until a beech tree shall have
grown up on the spot and been cut down, and of its timber a cradle made:
the child that is rocked in that cradle will have power to save her.
This is in effect the story told by Sir John Maundeville concerning the
daughter of Hippocrates, the renowned physician, who was said to have
been enchanted by Diana on the island of Cos, or (as he calls it) Lango,
and given with so much of Mr. William Morris' power in "The Earthly
Paradise."[174] "Then listen!" says the damsel in the ruined castle to
the seaman whom she meets--
"Then listen! when this day is overpast,
A fearful monster I shall be again,
And thou may'st be my saviour at the last,
Unless, once more, thy words are nought and vain;
If thou of love and sovereignty art fain,
Come thou next morn, and when thou seest here
A hideous dragon, have thereof no fear,
"But take the loathsome head up in thine hands,
And kiss it, and be master presently
Of twice the wealth that is in all the lands,
From Cathay to the head of Italy;
And master also, if it pleaseth thee,
Of all thou praisest as so fresh and bright,
Of what thou callest crown of all delight."
* * * * *
"Ah, me! to hold my child upon my knees,
After the weeping of unkindly tears,
And all the wrongs of these four hundred years."
But the horrible apparition of the dragon was too much for the
adventurer's courage:
"He cried out and wildly at her smote,
Shutting his eyes, and turned and from the place
Ran swiftly, with a white and ghastly face,"
to die within three days, a raving maniac. And
"Never any man again durst go
To seek her woman's form, and end her wo."
It would be too tedious to run through even a small proportion of the
examples of this tale, almost innumerable in Germany alone. Fortunately,
it will only be necessary to allude to a few of its chief features. When
the enchanted princess assumes a monstrous form, the usual ordeal of the
would-be deliverer is to kiss her. A toad or a snake is, perhaps, her
favourite form; but occasionally she is half woman, half toad, or half
woman, half snake. Further transformations now and then take place, as
from a snake into a fiery dog, or from a bear into a lion, from a lion
into a snake. Sometimes as a bear alone she threatens her deliverer. In
a Carinthian saga he is to cut three birch rods at the full of the moon,
and then wait at the appointed place. The damsel approaches in the guise
of a snake, with a bunch of keys in her mouth, and menaces him, hissing
and snorting fire. Unmoved by the creature's rage, he is to strike her
thrice on the head with each rod and take the keys from her mouth. In
the Duchy of Luxemburg the favourite form assumed by the princess is
that of a fire-breathing snake, bearing in her mouth a bunch of keys, or
a ring; and the deliverer's task then is to take the keys or ring away
with his own mouth. It is believed that Melusina, whose story we shall
deal with in the following chapters, is enchanted beneath the Bockfels,
a rock near the town of Luxemburg. There she appears every seventh year
in human form and puts one stitch in a smock. When she shall have
finished sewing the smock she will be delivered; but woe then to the
town! for its ruins will be her grave and monument. Men have often
undertaken her earlier deliverance. This is to be effected at midnight,
when she appears as a snake, by taking with the mouth a key from her
mouth and flinging it into the Alzet. No one, however, has yet succeeded
in doing this; and meantime when a calamity threatens the town, whose
faithful guardian she is, she gives warning by gliding round the
Bockfels uttering loud laments.[175]
But in many of the sagas the princess meets her hero in her own proper
shape, and then the feat to be performed varies much more. In a Prussian
tale she comes out of a deep lake, which occupies the site of a
once-mighty castle, at sunset, clothed in black, and accompanied by a
black dog. The castle belonged to the young lady's parents, who were
wicked, though she herself was pious; and it was destroyed on account of
their evil doings. Since that time she has wandered around, seeking some
bold and pious man who will follow her into the depths of the lake, and
thus remove the curse. This would seem but another form of the tradition
of the lake at the foot of the Herthaburg on the isle of Rügen. In
another story the lady must be brought an unbaptized child to kiss. In
yet another the deliverer is led down through a dark underground passage
into a brilliantly lighted room, where sit three black men writing at a
table, and is bidden to take one of two swords which lie on the table
and strike off the enchanted lady's head. To cut off the head of a
bewitched person is an effectual means of destroying the spell. So, in
the Gaelic story of the Widow and her Daughters, the heroine
decapitates the horse-ogre, who thereupon returns to his true form as a
king's son, and marries her. A large number of parallel instances might
easily be given; but they would lead us too far afield. The lady of the
Princess Hill, near Warin, in Mecklenburg, has to be held fast from
midnight until one o'clock in spite of all frightful apparitions of
snakes, dragons, and toads which crowd around and threaten the
adventurer. In the same way Peleus, desiring to secure Thetis, had to
hold her fast through her various magical changes until she found
resistance useless, and returned to her true form. In a modern Cretan
tale the hero, by the advice of an old woman, seizes at night a Nereid
by the hair and holds her until the cock crows, in spite of her changes
successively into a dog, a snake, a camel, and fire. The process of
disenchanting Tam Lin, in the ballad of that name, was for his lady-love
to take him in her arms and hold him, notwithstanding his transformation
into a snake, a bear, a lion, a red-hot iron, and lastly into a "burning
gleed," when he was to be immediately flung into a well.[176]
We have already seen that the task is sometimes to carry the maiden to a
churchyard. At the Castle Hill of Bütow she was to be carried to the
Polish churchyard and there thrown to the ground with all the
deliverer's might. A castle is said to have stood formerly on the site
of Budow Mill in Eastern Pomerania. An enchanted princess now haunts the
place. She is only to be freed by a bachelor who will carry her in
silence, and without looking behind him, around the churchyard; but the
spirits which hold her under their spell will seek in every way to
hinder her deliverance. On the Müggelsberg is, or was (for it is said to
be now destroyed), a large stone under which a treasure lies. It was
called the Devil's Altar; and at night it often seemed, from the
neighbouring village of Müggelsheim, to be in a blaze; but on drawing
near the fire would vanish from sight. At Köpenick, another village not
far off, it was called the Princesses' Stone, but the lake at the foot
of the hill was called the Devil's Lake. The stone was said to occupy
the site of a castle, now enchanted and swallowed up in the earth.
Beneath it a hole ran deep into the mountain, out of which a princess
was sometimes of an evening seen to come, with a casket of pure gold in
her hand. He who would carry her thrice round the church of Köpenick
without looking about him, would win the casket of gold and deliver her.
The names of the stone and of the lake, as well as the attendant
circumstances, are strong evidence in favour of the conclusion that we
have in this superstition a relic of heathen times, and a record of some
divinity believed to reside at that spot. A princess, clad in white and
having a golden spinning-wheel in her hand, was believed to appear on
the Castle Hill at Biesenthal, at midday. Once at midnight she appeared
to a gardener who had often heard voices at night summoning him to the
castle garden. At first he was frightened at the vision, but at length
consented to carry her to the church, which stands near the hill. He
took her on his back; but when he entered the churchyard gate he
suddenly met a carriage drawn by coal-black horses, which vomited fire.
So terrified was he that he shrieked aloud, whereupon the carriage
vanished, and the princess flew away moaning: "For ever lost!" In a case
where a prince had been enchanted, the feat was to wrestle with him
three nights in succession.[177]
But it was not always that so hard a task was set before the deliverer.
To our thinking, it says little for the German way of doing business
that the difficulty in unspelling the castle near Lossin, and the
maiden who dwelt therein, was to buy a pair of shoes without bargaining
and cheapening their price, but to pay for them exactly the piece of
money which the maiden handed to the youth who undertook the enterprise.
In another case a maiden was seen to scour a kettle at a little lake.
She was enchanted. The man who beheld her thought the kettle would prove
useful at his approaching wedding, and borrowed it on the express
condition of returning it at a fixed time. He failed to do so, and the
Evil One came and fetched it; and the maiden had to wait longer for her
deliverance. There are stories similar to this of fairies lending such
articles on this condition. If the condition be not complied with, the
fairies are never seen again. Aubrey relates that in the vestry of
Frensham Church, in Surrey, is a great kettle, which was borrowed from
the fairies who lived in the Borough Hill, about a mile away. It was not
returned according to promise, and though afterwards taken back, it was
not received, nor since that time had there been any borrowing
there.[178]
A man who was in the habit of meeting in a certain wood an adder, which
always sneezed thrice as he passed, consulted his parish priest on the
subject. The priest advised him to say the next time, as he would to a
human friend who sneezed: "God help thee!" The man did so, whereupon the
adder shot forth before him with fiery body and terrible rattling, so
startling him that he turned and fled. The snake hurried after him,
crying out that it would not hurt him, but that if he would take (not,
however, with naked hands) the bunch of keys that hung about its neck,
it would then lead the way to a great treasure and make him happy. He
turned a deaf ear to these entreaties; and as he ran away he heard the
snake exclaim that now it must remain enchanted until yon little oak
tree had grown great, and a cradle had been made out of the timber: the
first child that lay in that cradle would be able to deliver it. The
same incident reappears in another saga, in which some men passing
through the forest hear a sneeze, and one of them says: "God help thee!"
The sneeze and the blessing are repeated; but when the sneeze was heard
a third time, the man exclaimed: "Oh, go to the devil!" "I believe
somebody is making game of us," said another. But a mannikin stepped
forward and said: "If you had said a third time 'God help thee!' I
should have been saved. Now I must wait until an acorn falls from yonder
tree and becomes an oak, and a cradle is made out of its timber. The
child that comes to lie in that cradle will be able to deliver me." In
this case all that was required was a thrice-repeated blessing. Another
curious means of deliverance is found in a story from Old Strelitz.
There an enchanted princess haunted a bridge a short distance from one
of the gates of the town, on the road to Woldegk. Whoever in going over
this bridge uttered a certain word, could unspell her if he would
afterwards allow her to walk beside him the rest of the way over the
bridge without speaking; but the difficulty was that nobody knew what
the powerful word was.[179]
Two other legends may be noticed on the mode of undoing the spell. The
White Lady who haunts the White Tower on the White Hill at Prague was
married to a king. She betrayed him, and married his enemy, from whom
she subsequently fled with an officer of his army. She was, however,
caught, and walled up in the White Tower. From this she may be delivered
if she can find any one who will allow her to give him three stabs in
the breast with a bayonet without uttering a sound. Once she prevailed
on a young recruit, who was placed as sentinel before the magazine of
the castle, to stand the necessary trial; but on receiving the first
blow he could not forbear crying aloud: "Jesus! Mary! thou hast given
it me!" Another old castle in Bohemia has twelve ladies enchanted by day
as fish in the fountain of the castle garden, and appearing only at
night in their true shape. They can not be disenchanted unless by twelve
men who will remain in the castle for twelve months without once going
outside the walls.[180]
These bring us to a number of _märchen_ in which the bespelled heroine
is released by a youth who suffers torture on her account. The
Transylvanian gipsies tell a tale of a very poor man who, instructed by
a dream, climbed a certain mountain and found a beautiful maiden before
a cavern, spinning her own golden hair. She had been sold by her
heartless parents to an evil spirit, who compelled her to this labour;
but she could be saved if she could find any one willing to undergo in
silence, for her sake, an hour's torture from the evil spirit on three
successive nights. The man expressed himself ready to make the attempt;
he entered the cave, and at midnight a gigantic Prikulich, or evil
spirit, appeared, and questioned him as to who he was and what he wanted
there. Failing to get any reply, the Prikulich flung him to the ground
and danced about madly on him. The man endured without a moan; and at
one o'clock the Prikulich disappeared. The second night the man was
beaten with a heavy hammer, and so tortured that the maiden had great
difficulty in persuading him to stand the third proof. While she was
praying him, however, to stay, the Prikulich appeared the third time,
and beat him again with the hammer until he was half dead. Then the
goblin made a fire and flung him into it. The poor fellow uttered not a
single sound, in spite of all this torment; and the maiden was saved and
wedded her deliverer. This is a tale by no means uncommon. Want of space
forbids us to follow it in detail, but a few references in the note
below will enable the reader to do so if he please. Meantime, I will
only say that sometimes the princess who is thus to be rescued is
enchanted in the form of a snake, sometimes of a she-goat, sometimes of
a bird; and in one of the stories she herself, in the shape of a monster
like a hedgehog, comes out of a coffin to tear the hero in pieces.[181]
The group is allied, on the one hand, to that of Fearless Johnny who,
passing the night in a haunted house, expelled the ghosts, or goblins,
which had taken possession of it; on the other hand, to that of the
Briar Rose, illustrated by Mr. Burne Jones' series of paintings.
The Briar Rose, or The Beauty of Sleeping Wood, as it comes to us from
Perrault's hands, is the story of a maiden who was cursed by an offended
fairy to pierce her hand with a spindle and to die of it--a curse
afterwards mitigated into a sleep of a hundred years. Every effort was
made by the king, her father, to avert the doom, but in vain; and for a
whole century the princess and all her court remained in the castle in a
magical sleep, while the castle itself and all within it were protected
from intrusion by an equally magical growth of brambles and thorns,
which not only prevented access, but entirely hid it from view. At
length a king's son found his way in at the very moment the fated period
came to an end; or, as we have it in other versions, he awakened the
maiden with a kiss. In the old stories of the Niblungs and the Volsungs
Odin has pricked the shield-maid Brynhild with a sleep-thorn, and thus
condemned her to sleep within the shield-burg on Hindfell. Attracted by
the appearance of fire, Sigurd comes to the shield-burg and, finding
Brynhild, releases her from her slumber by ripping up her armour with
his sword. This is chronologically the earliest form of the myth of the
Enchanted Princess with which we are acquainted; and it is interwoven
with the very fibres of the Teutonic mythology. It is no wonder,
therefore, that the Germans have given it so prominent a place in their
folklore. So far as now appears it is less conspicuous in the folklore
of the other European races with the exception of the Slaves, and when
it does show itself it shows itself chiefly as a _märchen_. But,
although what we know of the folklore of the Teutonic and Slavonic races
may suggest reasons for this, we must not forget how rarely we can
dogmatize with safety on national characteristics. To this rule the
folklore of a nation is no exception; nay, rather, the rule applies with
a double emphasis to a subject the scientific investigation of which has
so lately begun and has yet achieved so little.
Declining this speculation, therefore, we turn to a last point in the
sagas before us, namely, the propitious time for the disenchantment.
Different times of the year are spoken of for this purpose. In some
stories it is Advent, or New Year's night, when the lady makes her
appearance and may be delivered. In a Pomeranian saga, where a woman
cursed her seven daughters and they became mice, a woman, who is of the
same age as the mother when she uttered the curse, must come with seven
sons of the same ages as the daughters were when they were cursed, on
Good Friday at noon, to the thicket where the mice are, and put her sons
on a certain round stone there. The seven mice will then return to human
shape; and when the children are old enough they will marry, and become
rich and happy for the rest of their lives. A Carinthian tale requires
the deliverer to come the next full moon after "May-Sunday"; and
May-night is the date fixed in another case. But the favourite time is
St. John's Day, either at noon or midnight.[182] Some of these days are
ecclesiastical festivals; but perhaps the only one which has not
superseded an ancient heathen feast is Good Friday. The policy of the
Church, in consecrating to Christian uses as many as possible of the
seasons and customs she found already honoured among the peoples she had
conquered, seized upon their holy days and made them her own. And if the
science of Folklore has taught us anything, it is that the observances
on these converted holy days external to the rites demanded by the
Church are relics of the ceremonies performed in pagan days to pagan
deities. In none of these instances has the proof been more conclusive
than in that of St. John's, or Midsummer Day. Grimm, first, with
abundant learning, and more recently Mr. Frazer, with a wealth of
illustration surpassing that of Grimm himself, and indeed inaccessible
in his day, have shown that the Midsummer festival was kept in honour of
the sun; that it consisted of the ceremonial kindling of fire, the
gathering and use of floral garlands, the offering of human and other
sacrifices, and the performance of sacred dances; and that its object
was to increase the power of the sun by magical sympathy, to obtain a
good harvest and fruitfulness of all creatures, and to purge the sins of
the people. It was, in fact, the chief ceremony of the year among the
European races.
Prominent among the remnants of these ceremonies continued down to
modern days are the Midsummer bonfires. These were lighted on the tops
of mountains, hills, or even barrows. This situation may be thought to
have symbolic reference to the solstice; but probably a still more
powerful reason for it was the already sacred character of such places.
But we need hardly consider whether the ceremonies of which the bonfires
are the remnant, were observed on the hill-tops and other high places
because the latter were already sacred, or, conversely, the hill tops
and other high places were held sacred because of the ceremonies enacted
there; for in either case the sanctity remains. Wells and pools, too,
many of them still held sacred, were in various ways the objects of
superstition at the Midsummer festival; for which the Church, when she
chose to take the practices under her protection, had an ample excuse in
St. John's mission to baptize.[183] Now, whatever spots were the haunt
of pagan divinities, there it was doubtless that those divinities were
expected to appear; and by the same reasoning they would be most likely
to appear during the favoured hours of the holy days. This is exactly
what we find to be the case with Enchanted Princesses, and, so far as
the days are recorded, with Sleeping Heroes. The heroes lie within the
hills, which in many legends are only open on certain days. The
princesses appear upon the hills, or by the sides of pools, the sites,
if we believe the legends, of ancient castles where they dwelt. Once in
the year, or once in a cycle of years, on a certain day, usually
Midsummer Day or Midsummer Eve, they come to wash, or to fetch water, in
their own form, either compelled or permitted by the terms of the curse
that has bound them; and then it is that mortals are admitted to an
interview and may render them the service of disenchantment. The
instances in which the days are specified are so frequent we may perhaps
suspect that they were originally mentioned in all, but that time and
other circumstances have caused them to be forgotten. However this may
be, it is only reasonable to conclude that, in the number of instances
remaining, we have a tradition of the honours long ago paid to these
degraded divinities on the days appointed for their worship.
I may be going too far in suggesting that the feats to be performed
afford some confirmation of this conclusion; yet it seems to me there is
much to be said for such an opinion. The appearance of a god in animal
form--even in a loathsome animal form--would not derogate from his
essential godhead. Where in these stories the deliverer has to deal with
an animal, a kiss is the usual task prescribed. Kissing is a very
ancient and well-known act of worship, which survives among us in many a
practice of the Roman Catholic Church, as well as in the form of oath
taken daily in our law courts; and it may be that the more repulsive the
object to be kissed, the greater the merit of kissing it. Again, the
lady who required to be followed into the depths of a lake may be
matched with the goddess Hertha, whose slaves were drowned in the
self-same waters wherein they had washed her; nor does it seem more
menial to carry a princess than to wash a goddess. The ceremony of
carrying may indeed be the relic of a solemn procession, or of a sacred
drama. The words of blessing following on a sneeze need no explanation;
and the omission to return at the promised time a borrowed kettle would
be more likely to provoke the anger of a god than to retard the
deliverance of a mortal. This is implied by the statement that the devil
fetched the kettle himself; and we need have little doubt that in an
earlier form the story so described it. I am unable to explain the
unknown word which would deliver the lady who haunted the bridge at Old
Strelitz, unless it be a reminiscence of an incantation.
There remain the demand for an unbaptized child to kiss, the torture to
which the heroes of the two Bohemian sagas submit, the requirement in
the Pomeranian tale to place seven brothers on the stone haunted by the
seven mice, and lastly the personal violence to the damsel involved in
striking her with a birch-rod or a bunch of juniper and in beheadal. In
all these we probably have traces of sacrifice. The offering of an
innocent child is familiar, if not comprehensible, enough to any one who
has the most superficial acquaintance with savage rites. We have already
seen that an unbaptized child is regarded as a pagan, and is an object
of desire on the part of supernatural beings. The same reasons which
induce fairies to steal it would probably render it an acceptable
offering to a pagan divinity. No words need be wasted on the torture, or
the tale of the mice. But the personal violence, if indeed the remnant
of a tradition of sacrifice, involves the slaughter of the divinity
herself. This might be thought an insuperable objection; but it is not
really so. For, however absurd it may seem to us, it is a very
widespread custom to sacrifice to a divinity his living representative
or incarnation, whether in animal or human form. It is believed in such
cases that the victim's spirit, released by sacrifice, forthwith finds a
home in another body. The subject is too vast and complex to be
discussed here at length; the reader who desires to follow it out can do
so in Mr. Frazer's profoundly interesting work on "The Golden Bough."
Assuming, however, the custom and belief, as here stated, to be
admitted, it will be seen that the underlying thought is precisely that
which we want in order to explain this mode of disenchantment. For if,
on the one hand, what looks like murder be enjoined in a number of
stories for the purpose of disenchanting a bewitched person; and if, on
the other hand, the result of solemnly slaughtering a victim be in fact
held to be simply the release of the victim's spirit--nay, if it was the
prescribed mode of releasing that spirit--to seek a new, sometimes a
better, abode in a fresh body, we may surely be satisfied that both
these have the same origin. We may then go further, and see in this
unspelling incident, performed, as in the Enchanted Princess stories, in
this way, at a haunted spot, frequently on a day of special sanctity,
one more proof that the princess herself was in the earlier shape of
the traditions no other than a goddess.
Finally: the myth of the Enchanted Princess has preserved in many of its
variants a detail more archaic than any in that of the Sleeping Hero,
and one which is decisive as to the lady's real status. If Frederick
were to arise and come forth from his sleeping-place, the Kyffhäuser
itself would remain. If Arthur were to awake and quit the Castle Rock,
the rock itself wherein he lay would still be there. But the lake or
mountain haunted by an enchanted maiden often owes its very existence,
if not to her, at least to the spell which holds her enthralled. When
she is delivered the place will be changed: the lake will give way to a
palace; the earth will open and a buried castle will reascend to the
surface; what is now nothing but an old grey boulder will forthwith
return to its previous condition of an inhabited and stately building;
or what is now a dwelling of men will become desolate. One of the best
examples of this is the superstition I have already cited concerning
Melusina. When she finishes her needlework she will be disenchanted, but
only to die; and the ruins of the town of Luxemburg will be her grave
and monument. In other words, the existence of the town is bound up with
her enchantment,--that is to say, with her life. In the same way the
bespelled damsel of the Urschelberg, near Pfullingen, in Swabia, is
called by the very name of the mountain--the Old Urschel. This can only
be the survival of a belief in the enchanted lady as the indwelling
spirit, the soul, the real life of the spot she haunted: a belief which
goes back to a deeper depth of savagery than one that regards her as a
local goddess, and out of which the latter would be easily
developed.[184]
These considerations by no means exhaust the case; but I have said
enough in support of conclusions anticipated by Grimm's clear-sighted
genius and confirmed by every fresh discovery. Let me, therefore,
recapitulate the results of the investigations contained in this and the
two preceding chapters. We have rapidly examined several types of fairy
tales in which the hero, detained in Fairyland, is unconscious of the
flight of time. These tales are characteristic of a high rather than a
low stage of civilization. Connected with them we have found the story
of King Arthur, the Sleeping Hero, "_rex quondam, rex que futurus_," the
expected deliverer, sometimes believed to be hidden beneath the hills,
at other times in a far-off land, or from time to time traversing the
world with his band of attendants as the Wild Hunt. This is a tradition
of a heathen god put down by Christianity, but not destroyed in the
hearts and memories of the people--a tradition independent of political
influences, but to which oppression is apt to give special and enduring
vitality. The corresponding tradition concerning a heathen goddess is
discovered in the Enchanted Princess of a thousand sagas, whose peculiar
home, if they have one, is in Teutonic and Slavonic countries.
FOOTNOTES:
[166] Howells, p. 120; "Count Lucanor," p. 77.
[167] Knowles, p. 17.
[168] Im Thurn, pp. 352, 354. _Cf._ Brett, p. 375. So Leland, p. 3: "The
Indian _m'téoulin_, or magician, distinctly taught that every created
thing, animate or inanimate, had its indwelling spirit. Whatever had an
_idea_ had a soul."
[169] _Cf._ Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 962, quoting Harry, "Nieders.
Sagen"; Jahn, p. 228, quoting Temme. Many of the sanctuaries of the
Celts were upon mounds, which were either barrows of the dead, or were
expressly made for temples; and the god was called in Irish _Cenn
Cruaich_, in Welsh _Penn Cruc_ (now _Pen Crûg_), both meaning the Head
or Chief of the Mound (Rhys, "Hibbert Lectures," p. 201). Many mounds in
England, now crowned by churches, have been conjectured to be old Celtic
temples. See an able paper by Mr. T. W. Shore on "Characteristic
Survivals of the Celts in Hampshire," _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, vol. xx.
p. 9. Mont St. Michel, near Carnac, in Brittany, is a chambered barrow
surmounted by a little chapel. From the relics found in the tomb, as
well as the size of the barrow itself, some person, or persons, of
importance must have been buried there. The mound may well have been a
haunted, a sacred spot ever since the ashes of the dead and their costly
weapons and ornaments were committed to its keeping far back in the
Neolithic age. Instances might easily be multiplied.
[170] Müller, p. 203; Map, Dist. iv. c. 13.
[171] Gerv. Tilb., Dec. ii. c. 12; "Book of Days," vol. i. p. 154;
Augustine, "De Civ. Dei," l. ii. c. 25.
[172] Jahn, p. 182, quoting Arndt.
[173] Knoop, p. 10; Bartsch, vol. i. p. 273.
[174] Bartsch, vol. i. p. 271; "Early Trav.," p. 138.
[175] Bartsch, vol. i. pp. 269 (citing Niederhöffer, below), 271, 272,
273, 274, 318. In this last case it is a man who is to be saved by a
kiss from a woman while he is in serpent form. Niederhöffer, vol. i. pp.
58, 168, vol. ii. p. 235; Meier, pp. 6, 31, 321; Kuhn und Schwartz, pp.
9, 201; Baring-Gould, p. 223, citing Kornemann, "Mons Veneris," and
Prætorius, "Weltbeschreibung"; Jahn, p. 220; Rappold, p. 135. Gredt, pp.
8, 9, 215, 228, &c. In one of Meier's Swabian tales the princess appears
as a snake and flings herself round the neck of her would-be
deliverer--a woman--who is to strike her lightly with a bunch of
juniper: Meier, p. 27. In one of Kuhn und Schwartz' collection, where
the princess becomes a toad, no ceremony is prescribed: Kuhn und
Schwartz, p. 9.
[176] Von Tettau, p. 220; Kuhn, pp. 66, 99; Bartsch, vol. i. p. 272;
Jahn, p. 249; Ovid, "Metam." l. xi. f. 5; Child, vol. i. pp. 336 (citing
Schmidt, "Volkleben der Neugriechen," p. 115), 340.
[177] Knoop, pp. 6, 57; Kuhn, pp. 113, 172; Kuhn und Schwartz, p. 1. The
prohibition to look back was imposed on Orpheus when he went to rescue
Eurydice from Hades.
[178] Knoop, pp. 51, 59; Keightley, p. 295, quoting Aubrey's "Natural
History of Surrey"; "Gent. Mag. Lib." (Pop. Supers.), p. 280.
[179] Meier, pp. 209, 87; Niederhöffer, vol. iii. p. 251.
[180] Grohmann, pp. 56, 50.
[181] Von Wlislocki, p. 76; Campbell, vol. ii. p. 293; Luzel, "Contes,"
vol. i. pp. 198, 217; "Annuaire des Trad. Pop." 1887, p. 53; Pitré, vol.
v. pp. 238, 248; Grundtvig, vol. i. p. 148; Schneller, pp. 103, 109.
[182] Meier, p. 26; Bartsch, vol. i. pp. 271, 272, 274; Jahn, p. 185;
Rappold, p. 135; Bartsch, vol. i. pp. 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 283, 308,
318; Niederhöffer, vol. i. p. 168, vol. ii. p. 235, vol. iii. p. 171;
Knoop, p. 10; Jahn, pp. 182, 185, 206, 207, 217, 220, 221; and many
others.
[183] "Gent. Mag. Lib." (Pop. Superst.) p. 51; Brand, vol. i. p. 250,
note; Pitré, vol. xii. pp. 304, 307; Bartsch, vol. ii. p. 288;
"Antiquary," vol. xxi. p. 195, vol. xxii. p. 67. _Cf._ a legend in which
the scene haunted by the enchanted lady is a Johannisberg on the top of
which is a chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist, to which
pilgrimages were made and the lady appeared on Midsummer Day (Gredt, pp.
215, 219, 225, 579).
[184] Von Tettau, p. 220; Kuhn und Schwartz, pp. 9, 200; Meier, pp. 6,
8; Gredt, pp. 7, 228, 281. In another story, quoted by Meier (p. 34),
from Crusius' "Schwäb. Chron.", the enchanted maiden is called "a
heathen's daughter"--pointing directly to pagan origin.