SWAN-MAIDENS.
The _märchen_ of Hasan of Bassorah--The Marquis of the Sun--The
feather robe and other disguises--The taboo--The Star's
Daughter--Melusina--The Lady of the Van Pool and other
variants--The Nightmare.
The narratives with which we have hitherto been occupied belong to the
class called Sagas. But our discussions of them have led us once and
again to refer to the other class mentioned in the second Chapter--that
of Nursery Tales or _Märchen_. For, as I have already pointed out, there
is no bridgeless gulf between them. We have seen the very same incidents
narrated in Wales or in Germany with breathless awe as a veritable
occurrence which in India, or among the Arabs, are a mere play of fancy.
Equally well the case may be reversed, and what is gravely told at the
antipodes as a series of events in the life of a Maori ancestor, may be
reported in France or England as a nursery tale. Nay, we need not go out
of Europe itself to find the same plot serving for a saga in one land
and a _märchen_, detached from all circumstances of time and place, in
another.
An excellent example of this is furnished by the myth of the
Swan-maiden, one of the most widely distributed, and at the same time
one of the most beautiful, stories ever evolved from the mind of man. As
its first type I shall take the tale of Hasan of Bassorah, where it has
been treated with an epic grandeur hardly surpassed by any of its
companions in the famous "Nights," and perhaps only by one of the less
famous but equally splendid Mabinogion of old Wales.
Hasan is a worthless boy who falls under the influence of a Magian, who
professes to be an alchemist, and who at length kidnaps him. Having used
him with great cruelty the Magian takes him fifteen days' journey on
dromedaries into the desert to a high mountain, at the foot whereof the
old rascal sews him up in a skin, together with a knife and a small
provision of three cakes and a leathern bottle of water, afterwards
retiring to a distance. One of the vultures which infest the mountain
then pounces on Hasan and carries him to the top. In accordance with the
Magian's instructions, the hero, on arriving there, slits the skin, and
jumping out, to the bird's affright, picks up and casts down to the
Magian bundles of the wood which he finds around him. This wood is the
means by which the alchemy is performed; and having gathered up the
bundles the Magian leaves Hasan to his fate. The youth, after despairing
of life, finds his way to a palace where dwell seven maidens, with whom
he remains for awhile in Platonic friendship. When they are summoned
away by their father for a two months' absence, they leave him their
keys, straitly charging him not to open a certain door. He disregards
their wishes, and finds within a magnificent pavilion enclosing a basin
brimful of water, at which ten birds come to bathe and play. The birds
for this purpose cast their feathers; and Hasan is favoured with the
sight of "ten virgins, maids whose beauty shamed the brilliancy of the
moon." He fell madly in love with the chief damsel, who turns out to be
a daughter of a King of the Jann. On the return of the maidens of the
palace he is advised by them to watch the next time the birds come, and
to take possession of the feather-suit belonging to the damsel of his
choice, for without this she cannot return home with her attendants. He
succeeds in doing so, and thus compels her to remain with him and
become his wife. With her he departs to his own country and settles in
Bagdad, where his wife bears him two sons. During his temporary absence,
however, she persuades her mother-in-law--who, unfortunately for the
happiness of the household, lives with the young couple--to let her have
the feather-suit which her husband has left under her charge. Clad with
this she takes her two boys in her arms and sails away through the air
to the islands of Wák, leaving a message for the hapless Hasan that if
he loves her he may come and seek her there. Now the islands of Wák were
seven islands, wherein was a mighty host, all virgin girls, and the
inner isles were peopled by satans and marids and warlocks and various
tribesmen of the Jinn, and whoso entered their land never returned
thence; and Hasan's wife was one of the king's daughters. To reach her
he would have to cross seven wadys and seven seas and seven mighty
mountains. Undaunted, however, by the difficulties wherewith he is
threatened, he determines to find her, swearing by Allah never to turn
back till he regain his beloved, or till death overtake him. By the help
of sundry potentates of more or less forbidding aspect and supernatural
power, to whom he gets letters of introduction, and who live in gorgeous
palaces amid deserts, and are served by demons only uglier and less
mighty than themselves, he succeeds in traversing the Land of Birds, the
Land of Wild Beasts, the country of the Warlocks and the Enchanters, and
the Land of the Jinn, and enters the islands of Wák--there to fall into
the hands of that masterful virago, his wife's eldest sister. After a
preliminary outburst against Hasan, this amiable creature pours, as is
the wont of women, the full torrent of her wrath against her erring
sister. From the tortures she inflicts, Hasan at length rescues his
wife, with their two sons, by means of a cap of invisibility and a rod
conferring authority over seven tribes of the Jinn, which he has stolen
from two boys who are quarrelling over them. When his sister-in-law
with an army of Jinn pursues the fugitives, the subjects of the rod
overcome her. His wife begs for her sister's life and reconciles her
husband to her, and then returns with her husband to his home in Bagdad,
to quit him no more.[185]
Such in meagre outline is this wonderful story. Its variants are legion,
and I can only refer to a few of them which are of special interest. In
dealing with these I shall confine my attention to the essential points
of the plot, touching only such details as are germane to the questions
thus evoked. We shall accordingly pass in review the maiden's disguise
and capture, her flight and her recapture; and afterwards turning to
other types of the tale, we shall look at the corresponding incidents to
be met with therein, reserving for another chapter the consideration of
the meaning of the myth, so far as it can be traced.
The bird whose shape is assumed by the Jinn in the foregoing tale is not
specified; but in Europe, where beauty and grace and purity find so apt
an emblem in the swan, several of the most important variants have
naturally appropriated that majestic form to the heroine, and have thus
given a name to the whole group of stories. In Sweden, for example, we
are told of a young hunter who beheld three swans descend on the
seashore and lay their plumage aside before they plunged into the water.
When he looked at the robes so laid aside they appeared like linen, and
the forms that were swimming in the waves were damsels of dazzling
whiteness. Advised by his foster-mother, he secures the linen of the
youngest and fairest. She, therefore, could not follow her companions
when they drew on their plumage and flew away; and being thus in the
hunter's power, she became his wife. The hero of a story current among
the Germans of Transylvania opens, like Hasan, a forbidden door, and
finds three swan-maids bathing in a blue pool. Their clothes are
contained in satchels on its margin, and when he has taken the satchel
of the youngest he must not look behind until he has reached home. This
done, he finds the maiden there and persuades her to marry him. Mikáilo
Ivanovitch, the hero of a popular Russian ballad, wanders by the sea,
and, gazing out upon a quiet bay, beholds a white swan floating there.
He draws his bow to shoot her, but she prays him to desist; and rising
over the blue sea upon her white wings, she turns into a beautiful
maiden. Surprised with love, he offers to kiss her; but she reveals
herself as a heathen princess and demands first to be baptized, and then
she will wed him. In a Hessian story a forester sees a fair swan
floating on a lonely lake. He is about to shoot it when it warns him to
desist, or it will cost him his life. Immediately the swan was
transformed into a maiden, who told him she was bewitched, but could be
freed if he would say a Paternoster for her every Sunday for a
twelvemonth, and meantime keep silence concerning his adventure. The
test proved too hard, and he lost her.[186]
The swan, however, by no means monopolizes the honour of concealing the
heroine's form. In a Finnish tale from OEsterbotten, a dead father
appears in dreams to his three sons, commanding them to watch singly by
night the geese on the sea-strand. The two elder are so frightened by
the darkness that they scamper home. But the youngest, despised and
dirty, watches boldly, till at the first flush of dawn three geese fly
thither, strip off their feathers, and plunge, as lovely maidens, into
the water to bathe. Then the youth chooses the most beautiful of the
three pairs of wings he finds on the shore, hides them, and awaits
events; nor does he give them up again to the owner until she has
betrothed herself to him. Elsewhere the damsels are described as ducks;
but a more common shape is that of doves. A story is current in Bohemia
of a boy whom a witch leads to a spring. Over the spring stands an old
elm-tree haunted by three white doves, who are enchanted princesses.
Catching one and plucking out her wings, he restores her to her natural
condition; and she brings him to his parents, whom he had lost in the
sack of the city where they dwelt. The Magyars speak of three pigeons
coming every noontide to a great white lake, where they turn somersaults
and are transformed into girls. They are really fairy-maidens; and a boy
who can steal the dress of one of them and run away with it, resisting
the temptation to look back when she calls in caressing tones, succeeds
in winning her. In the "Bahar Danush" a merchant's son perceives four
doves alight at sunset by a piece of water, and, resuming their natural
form (for they are Peries), forthwith undress and plunge into the water.
He steals their clothes, and thus compels the one whom he chooses to
accept him as her husband. The extravagance characteristic of the
"Arabian Nights," when, in the story of Janshah, it represents the
ladies as doves, expands their figures to the size of eagles, with far
less effect, however, than where they retain more moderate dimensions.
No better illustration of this can be given than the story from South
Smaland of the fair Castle east of the Sun and north of the Earth,
versified so exquisitely in "The Earthly Paradise." There a peasant,
finding that the fine grass of a meadow belonging to him was constantly
trodden down during the summer nights, set his three sons, one after
another, to watch for the trespassers. The two elder, as usual in these
tales, are unsuccessful, but the youngest keeps wide awake until the sun
is about to rise. A rustling in the air, as of birds, then heralds the
flight of three doves, who cast their feathers and become fair maidens.
These maidens begin to dance on the green grass, and so featly do they
step that they scarce seem to touch the ground. To the watching youth,
one among them looked more beautiful than all other women; and he
pictured to himself the possession of her as more to be longed for than
that of every other in the world. So he rose and stole their plumage,
nor did he restore it until the king's daughter, the fairest of them
all, had plighted her troth to him.[187]
The story is by no means confined to Europe and Asia. The Arawàks, one
of the aboriginal tribes of Guiana, relate that a beautiful royal
vulture was once captured by a hunter. She was the daughter of Anuanima,
sovereign of a race whose country is above the sky, and who lay aside
there the appearance of birds for that of humanity. Smitten with love
for the hunter, the captive divested herself of her feathers and
exhibited her true form--that of a beautiful girl. "She becomes his
wife, bears him above the clouds, and, after much trouble, persuades her
father and family to receive him. All then goes well, until he expresses
a wish to visit his aged mother, when they discard him, and set him on
the top of a very high tree, the trunk of which is covered with
formidable prickles. He appeals pathetically to all the living creatures
around. Then spiders spin cords to help him, and fluttering birds ease
his descent, so that at last he reaches the ground in safety. Then
follow his efforts, extending over several years, to regain his wife,
whom he tenderly loves. Her family seek to destroy him; but by his
strength and sagacity he is victorious in every encounter. The birds at
length espouse his cause, assemble their forces, and bear him as their
commander above the sky. He is at last slain by a valiant young warrior,
resembling himself in person and features. It is his own son, born after
his expulsion from the upper regions, and brought up there in ignorance
of his own father. The legend ends with the conflagration of the house
of the royal vultures, who, hemmed in by crowds of hostile birds, are
unable to use their wings, and forced to fight and die in their human
forms."[188] This tale, so primitive in form, can hardly have travelled
round half the globe to the remote American Indians among whom it was
discovered. And yet in many of its features it presents the most
striking likeness to several of the versions current in the Old World.
Sometimes, however, as in the tale of Hasan, the species is left
undescribed. Among the Eskimo the heroine is vaguely referred to as a
sea-fowl. The Kurds have a strange tale of a bird they call the Bird
Simer. His daughter has been ensnared by a giant when she and three
other birds were out flying; but she is at length rescued by two heroes,
one of whom she weds. When she becomes homesick she puts on her
feather-dress and flies away.[189]
A Pomeranian saga forms an interesting link between the Swan-maiden
group and the legends of Enchanted Princesses discussed in the last
chapter. A huntsman, going his rounds in the forest, drew near a pool
which lies at the foot of the Hühnerberg. There he saw a girl bathing;
and thinking that she was from the neighbouring village, he picked up
her clothes, with the intention of playing her a trick. When she saw
what he had done, she left the water and hastened after him, begging him
to give back her clothes--or at any rate her shift. He, however, was not
to be moved; and she then told him she was an enchanted princess, and
without her shift she could not return. _Now_ he was fully determined
not to give up the precious article of apparel. She was, therefore,
compelled to follow him to his hut, where his mother kept house for him.
The huntsman there put the shift into a chest, of which he took the key,
so that the maiden could not escape; and after some time she accepted
the position, and agreed to become his wife. Years passed by, and
several children had been born, when one day he went out, leaving the
key of the chest behind. When the heroine saw this she begged her
mother-in-law to open the chest and show her the shift; for, we are
told, the enchanted princess could not herself open the trunk. She
begged so hard that her mother-in-law at last complied; and no sooner
had she got the shift into her hands than she vanished out of sight.
When the husband returned and heard what had happened, he made up his
mind to seek her. So he climbed the Hühnerberg and let himself down the
opening he found there. He soon arrived at the underground castle.
Before its closed gate lay a great black dog, around whose neck a paper
hung which conveniently contained directions how to penetrate into the
castle. Following these, he presently found himself in the presence of
the princess, his wife, who was right glad to see him, and gave him a
glass of wine to strengthen him for the task before him; for at midnight
the Evil One would come to drive him out of the castle and prevent the
lady's deliverance. At this point, unfortunately, the reciter's memory
failed: hence we do not know the details of the rescue. But we may
conjecture, from the precedents, that the huntsman had to endure
torture. The issue was that he was successful, the castle ascended out
of the earth, and husband and wife were reunited.[190]
This story differs in many important respects from the type; and it
contains the incident, very rare in a modern European saga belonging to
this group, of the recovery of the bride. I shall have occasion to
revert to the curious inability of the enchanted princess to open the
chest containing the wonderful shift. Meanwhile, let me observe that in
most of the tales the feather-dress, or talisman, by which the bride may
escape, is committed to the care of a third person--usually a kinswoman
of the husband, and in many cases his mother; and that the wife as a
rule only recovers it when it is given to her, or at least when that
which contains it has been opened by another: she seems incapable of
finding it herself.
There is another type of the Swan-maiden myth, which appears to be the
favourite of the Latin nations, though it is also to be met with among
other peoples. Its outline may, perhaps, best be given from the nursery
tale of the Marquis of the Sun, as told at Seville. The Marquis of the
Sun was a great gamester. A man played with him and lost all he had, and
then staked his soul--and lost it. The Marquis instructed him, if he
desired to recover it, to come to him when he had worn out a pair of
iron shoes. In the course of his wanderings he finds a struggle going on
over a dead man, whose creditors would not allow him to be buried until
his debts had been paid. Iron Shoes pays them, and one shoe goes to
pieces. He afterwards meets a cavalier, who reveals himself as the dead
man whose debts had been paid, and who is desirous of requiting that
favour. He therefore directs Iron Shoes to the banks of a river where
three white doves come, change into princesses, and bathe. Iron Shoes is
to take the dress of the smallest, and thus get her to tell him whither
he has to go. Obeying this direction, he learns from the princess that
the Marquis is her father; and she shows him the way to his castle.
Arrived there, he demands his soul. Before conceding it the Marquis sets
him tasks: to level an inconvenient mountain, so that the sun may shine
on the castle; to sow the site of the mountain with fruit trees, and
gather the fruit of them in one day for dinner; to find a piece of plate
which the Marquis's great-grandfather had dropped into the river; to
catch and mount a horse which is no other than the Marquis himself; and
to choose a bride from among the princesses, his daughters. The damsel
who had shown Iron Shoes the way to the palace performs the first two of
these tasks: and she teaches him how to perform the others. For the
third, he has to cut her up and cast her into the river, whence she
immediately rises whole again, triumphantly bringing the lost piece of
plate. In butchering her he has, however, clumsily dropped a piece of
her little finger on the ground. It is accordingly wanting when she
rises from the river; and this is the token by which Iron Shoes
recognizes her when he has to choose a bride; for, in choosing, he is
only allowed to see the little fingers of these candidates for
matrimony. He and his bride afterwards flee from the castle; but we need
not follow their adventures now.[191]
In stories of this type doves are the shape usually assumed by the
heroine and her comrades; but swans and geese are often found, and in a
Russian tale we are even introduced to spoonbills. Nor do the birds I
have mentioned by any means exhaust the disguises of these supernatural
ladies. The stories comprised under this and the foregoing type are
nearly all _märchen_; but when we come to other types where sagas become
more numerous, we find other animals favoured, well-nigh to the
exclusion of birds. In the latter types there is no recovery of the wife
when she has once abandoned her husband. An inhabitant of Unst, one of
the Shetland Islands, beholds a number of the sea-folk dancing by
moonlight on the shore of a small bay. Near them lie several sealskins.
He snatches up one, the property, as it turns out, of a fair maiden, who
thereupon becomes his wife. Years after, one of their children finds her
sealskin, and runs to display it to his mother, not knowing it was hers.
She puts it on, becomes a seal, and plunges into the waters. In Croatia
it is said that a soldier once, watching in a haunted mill, saw a
she-wolf enter, divest herself of her skin, and come out of it a damsel.
She hangs the skin on a peg and goes to sleep before the fire. While she
sleeps the soldier takes the skin and nails it fast to the mill-wheel,
so that she cannot recover it. He marries her, and she bears him two
sons. The elder of these children hears that his mother is a wolf. He
becomes inquisitive, and his father at length tells him where the skin
is. When he tells his mother, she goes away and is heard of no more. A
Sutherlandshire story speaks of a mermaid who fell in love with a
fisherman. As he did not want to be carried away into the sea he, by
fair means or foul, succeeded in getting hold of her pouch and belt, on
which her power of swimming depended, and so retained her on land; and
she became his bride. But we are not surprised to hear that her tail was
always in the way: her silky hair grew tangled too, for her comb and
glass were in the pouch; the dogs teased her, and rude people mocked
her. Thus her life was made wretched. But one day in her husband's
absence the labourers were pulling down a stack of corn. As she watched
them, weeping for her lost freedom, she espied her precious pouch and
belt, which had been built in and buried among the sheaves. She caught
it and leaped into the sea.[192]
In the last tale there is no change of form: the hero simply possesses
himself of something without which the supernatural maiden has no power
to leave him. Even in the true Hasan of Bassorah type, the magical
change does not always occur. A variant translated by Jonathan Scott
from a Syrian manuscript merely enwraps the descending damsels in robes
of light green silk. When her robe is taken the chosen beauty is kept
from following her companions in their return flight. Similar to this is
the Pomeranian saga already cited. In the New Hebrides there is a legend
of seven winged women whose home was in heaven, and who came down to
earth to bathe. Before bathing, they put off their wings. According to
the version told in Aurora island, Qatu one day, seeing them thus
bathing, took the wings of one and buried them at the foot of the main
post of his house. In this way he won their owner as his wife; and she
so remained until she found her wings again. In modern Greece it is
believed that Nereids can be caught by seizing their wings, their
clothes, or even their handkerchiefs. The Bulgarians, who have similar
tales, call the supernatural ladies Samodivas; and they are captured by
means of their raiment. A number of parallels have been cited from
various sources by M. Cosquin, a few of which may be mentioned. A
Burmese drama, for instance, sets before us nine princesses of the city
of the Silver Mountain, who wear enchanted girdles that enable them to
fly as swiftly as a bird. The youngest of these princesses is caught
while bathing, by means of a magical slip-knot. A divine ancestress of
the Bantiks, a tribe inhabiting the Celebes Islands, came down from the
sky with seven companions to bathe. A man who saw them took them for
doves, but was surprised to find that they were women. He possessed
himself of the clothes of one of them, and thus obliged her to marry
him. In a story told by the Santals of India, the daughters of the sun
make use of a spider's thread to reach the earth. A shepherd, whom they
unblushingly invite to bathe with them, persuades them to try which of
them all can remain longest under water; and while they are in the river
he scrambles out, and, taking the upper garment of the one whom he
loves, flees with it to his home. In another Indian tale, five apsaras,
or celestial dancers, are conveyed in an enchanted car to a pool in the
forest. Seven supernatural maidens, in a Samoyede _märchen_, are brought
in their reindeer chariot to a lake, where the hero possesses himself of
the best suit of garments he finds on the shore. The owner prays him to
give them up; but he refuses, until he obtains a definite pledge of
marriage, saying: "If I give thee the garments thou wilt fare up again
to heaven."[193]
In none of these stories (and they are but samples of many) does the
feather dress occur; yet it has left reminiscences which are
unmistakable. The variants hitherto cited have all betrayed these
reminiscences as articles of clothing, or conveyance, or in the
pardonable mistake of the Bantik forefather at the time of capture. I
shall refer presently to cases whence the plumage has faded entirely out
of the story--and that in spite of its picturesqueness--without leaving
a trace. But let me first call attention to the fact that, even where it
is preserved, we often do not find it exactly how and where we should
have expected it. Witness the curious Algonkin tale of "How one of the
Partridge's wives became a Sheldrake Duck." A hunter, we are told,
returning home in his canoe, saw a beautiful girl sitting on a rock by
the river, making a moccasin. He paddled up softly to capture her; but
she jumped into the water and disappeared. Her mother, however, who
lived at the bottom, compelled her to return to the hunter and be his
wife. The legend then takes a turn in the direction of the Bluebeard
myth; for the woman yields to curiosity, and thus deprives her husband
of his luck. When he finds this out he seizes his bow to beat her. "When
she saw him seize his bow to beat her she ran down to the river, and
jumped in to escape death at his hands, though it should be by drowning.
But as she fell into the water she became a sheldrake duck." The
Passamaquoddies, who relate this story, have hardly yet passed out of
the stage of thought in which no steadfast boundary is set between men
and the lower animals. The amphibious maiden, who dwelt in the bottom of
the river, could not be drowned by jumping into the stream; and it is
evident that she only resumes her true aquatic form in escaping from her
husband, who, it should be added, is himself called Partridge and seems
to be regarded as, in fact, a fowl of that species. A still more
remarkable instance is to be found among the Welsh of Carnarvonshire,
who, it need hardly be said, are now on a very different level of
civilization from that of the Passamaquoddies. They tell us that when
the fairy bride of Corwrion quitted her unlucky husband, she at once
flew through the air and plunged into the lake; and one account
significantly describes her as flying away _like a wood-hen_. Can it
have been many generations since she was spoken of as actually changing
into a bird?[194]
We may now pass to wholly different types of the tradition. In all the
stories where the magical dress appears, whether as a feather-skin, the
hide of a quadruped, or in the modified form of wings, a robe, an apron,
a veil or other symbol, the catastrophe is brought about by the wife's
recovery, usually more or less accidental, of the article in question.
But it is obvious that where the incident of the dress is wanting, the
loss of the supernatural bride must be brought about by other means. In
some traditions, the woman's caprice, or the fulfilment of her fate, is
deemed enough for this purpose; but in the most developed stories it is
caused by the breach of a _taboo_. _Taboo_ is a word adopted from the
Polynesian languages, signifying, first, something set apart, thence
holy and inviolable, and lastly something simply forbidden. It is
generally used in English as a verb of which the nearest equivalent is
another curious verb--to boycott. A person or thing _tabooed_ is one
avoided by express or tacit agreement on the part of any class or number
of persons; and _to taboo_ is to avoid in pursuance of such an
agreement. In Folklore, however, the word is used in a different and
wider sense. It includes every sort of prohibition, from the social or
religious boycott (if I may use the word), to which it would be more
properly applied, down to any injunction addressed by a supernatural
being to the hero or heroine of a tale. Folklore students of the
anthropological school are so apt to refer these last prohibitions for
their origin to the more general prohibitions of the former kind, that
perhaps this indiscriminate use of the word may be held to beg some of
the questions at issue. It is certain, however, that the scholars who
originally applied it to what I may call private prohibitions, had no
such thought in their minds. They found it a convenient term, applicable
by no great stretch of its ordinary meaning, and they appropriated it
to the purposes of science. I shall therefore use it without scruple as
a well recognized word, and without any question-begging intent.
Having premised so much, I will proceed to set forth shortly the balder
type of the story, where there is no taboo, then the fuller type. Their
relations to one another will be dealt with in the next chapter.
An Algonkin legend relates that a hunter beheld a basket descend from
heaven, containing twelve young maidens of ravishing beauty. He
attempted to approach, but on perceiving him they quickly re-entered the
basket and were drawn up again out of his sight. Another day, however,
he succeeded, by disguising himself as a mouse, in capturing the
youngest of the damsels, whom he married and by whom he had a son. But
nothing could console his wife for the society of her sisters, which she
had lost. So one day she made a small basket; and having entered it with
her child she sang the charm she and her sisters had formerly used, and
ascended once more to the star from whence she had come. It is added
that when two years had elapsed the star said to his daughter: "Thy son
wants to see his father; go down, therefore, to the earth and fetch thy
husband, and tell him to bring us specimens of all the animals he
kills." This was done. The hunter ascended with his wife to the sky; and
there a great feast was given, in which the animals he brought were
served up. Those of the guests who took the paws or the tails were
transformed into animals. The hunter himself took a white feather, and
with his wife and child was metamorphosed into a falcon.[195] I will
only now remark on the latter part of the tale that it is told by the
same race as the Sheldrake Duck's adventures; and if we deem it probable
that the heroine of that narrative simply resumed her pristine form in
becoming a duck, the same reasoning will hold good as to the falcons
here. This type of the myth we may call the "Star's Daughter type."
The other type may be named after Melusina, the famous Countess of
Lusignan. The earliest writer to mention the legend which afterwards
became identified with her name, was Gervase of Tilbury, who relates
that Raymond, the lord of a certain castle a few miles from Aix in
Provence, riding alone on the banks of the river, unexpectedly met an
unknown lady of rare beauty, also alone, riding on a splendidly
caparisoned palfrey. On his saluting her she replied, addressing him by
name. Astonished at this, but encouraged, he made improper overtures to
her; to which she declined to assent, intimating, however, in the most
unabashed way, that she would marry him if he liked. He agreed to this;
but the lady imposed a further condition, namely, that he should never
see her naked; for if once he did so, all the prosperity and all the
happiness with which he was about to be blessed would depart, and he
would be left to drag out the rest of his life in wretchedness. On these
terms they were married; and every earthly felicity followed,--wealth,
renown, bodily strength, the love of his fellow-men, and children--boys
and girls--of the greatest beauty. But one day his lady was bathing in
the bedroom, when he came in from hunting and fowling, laden with
partridges and other game. While food was being prepared the thought
struck him that he would go and see her in her bath. So many years had
he enjoyed unalloyed prosperity that, if there ever were any force in
her threat, he deemed it had long since passed away. Deaf to his wife's
pleadings, he tore away the curtain from the bath and beheld her naked;
but only for an instant, for she was forthwith changed into a serpent,
and, putting her head under the water, she disappeared. Nor ever was she
seen again; but sometimes in the darkness of night the nurses would
hear her busy with a mother's care for her little children. Gervase adds
that one of her daughters was married to a relative of his own belonging
to a noble family of Provence, and her descendants were living at the
time he wrote.[196]
The story, as told of Melusina, was amplified, but in its substance
differed little from the foregoing. Melusina does not forbid her husband
to see her naked, but bargains for absolute privacy on Saturdays. When
Raymond violates this covenant he finds her in her bath with her lower
extremities changed into a serpent's tail. The lady appears to be
unconscious of her husband's discovery; and nothing happens until, in a
paroxysm of anger and grief, arising from the murder of one of his
children by another, he cries out upon her as an odious serpent, the
contaminator of his race. It will be remembered that in the Esthonian
tale cited in Chapter VIII the youth is forbidden to call his mistress
mermaid; and all goes well until he peeps into the locked chamber, where
she passes her Thursdays, and finds her in mermaid form. Far away in
Japan we learn that the hero Hohodemi wedded Toyotamahime, a daughter of
the Sea-god, and built a house for her on the strand where she might
give birth to her child. She strictly forbade him to come near until the
happy event was over: he was to remain in his own dwelling, and on no
account to attempt to see her until she sent for him. His curiosity,
however, was too much for his happiness. He peeped, and saw his wife
writhing to and fro on the floor in the shape of a dragon. He started
back, shocked; and when, later on, Toyotamahime called him to her, she
saw by his countenance that he had discovered the secret she had thought
to hide from all mankind. In spite of his entreaties she plunged into
the sea, never more to see her lord. Her boy, notwithstanding, was still
the object of her care. She sent her sister to watch over him, and he
grew up to become the father of the first Emperor of Japan. In a Maori
tale the hero loses his wife through prematurely tearing down a screen
he had erected for her convenience on a similar occasion. A Moravian
tale speaks of a bride who shuts herself up every eighth day, and when
her husband looks through the keyhole, he beholds her thighs clad with
hair and her feet those of goats. This is a _märchen_; and in the end,
having paid the penalty of his rashness by undergoing adventures like
those of Hasan, the hero regains his love. A Tirolese _märchen_ tells us
of a witch who, in the shape of a beautiful girl, took service with a
rich man and made a conquest of his son. She wedded him on condition
that he would never look upon her by candlelight. The youth, like a
masculine Psyche, breaks the taboo; and a drop of the wax, falling on
her cheek, awakens her. It was in vain that he blew out the taper and
lay down. When he awoke in the morning she was gone; but a pair of shoes
with iron soles stood by the bed, with a paper directing him to seek her
till the soles were worn out, and then he should find her again. By the
aid of a mantle of invisibility, and a chair which bore him where he
wished, he arrived in the nick of time to prevent her marriage with
another bridegroom. The proper reconciliation follows, and her true
husband bears her home in triumph. Not so happy was the hero of a
Corsican saga, who insisted on seeing his wife's naked shoulder and
found it nothing but bones--the skeleton of their love which he had thus
murdered.[197]
At the foot of the steep grassy cliffs of the Van Mountains in
Carmarthenshire lies a lonely pool, called Llyn y Fan Fach, which is the
scene of a variant of Melusina, less celebrated, indeed, but equally
romantic and far more beautiful. The legend may still be heard on the
lips of the peasantry; and more than one version has found its way into
print. The most complete was written down by Mr. William Rees, of Tonn
(a well-known Welsh antiquary and publisher), from the oral recitation
of two old men and a woman, natives of Myddfai, where the hero of the
story is said to have dwelt. Stated shortly, the legend is to the
following effect: The son of a widow who lived at Blaensawdde, a little
village about three-quarters of a mile from the pool, was one day
tending his mother's cattle upon its shore when, to his astonishment, he
beheld the Lady of the Lake sitting upon its unruffled surface, which
she used as a mirror while she combed out her graceful ringlets. She
imperceptibly glided nearer to him, but eluded his grasp and refused the
bait of barley bread and cheese that he held out to her, saying as she
dived and disappeared:
"Cras dy fara;
Nid hawdd fy nala!"
("Hard-baked is thy bread;
It is not easy to catch me!")
An offer of unbaked dough, or _toes_, the next day was equally
unsuccessful. She exclaimed:
"Llaith dy fara!
Ti ni fynna'."
("Unbaked is thy bread!
I will not have thee.")
But the slightly baked bread, which the youth subsequently took, by his
mother's advice, was accepted: he seized the lady's hand and persuaded
her to become his bride. Diving into the lake she then fetched her
father--"a hoary-headed man of noble mien and extraordinary stature, but
having otherwise all the force and strength of youth"--who rose from the
depths with _two_ ladies and was ready to consent to the match, provided
the young man could distinguish which of the two ladies before him was
the object of his affections. This was no small test of love, inasmuch
as the maidens were exactly alike in form and features. One of them,
however, thrust her foot a little forward; and the hero recognized a
peculiarity of her shoe-tie, which he had somehow had leisure to notice
at his previous interviews. The father admits the correctness of his
choice, and bestows a dowry of sheep, cattle, goats, and horses, but
stipulates in the most business-like way that these animals shall return
with the bride, if at any time her husband prove unkind and strike her
thrice without a cause.
So far Mr. Rees' version. A version published in the "Cambro-Briton" is
somewhat different. Three beautiful damsels appear from the pool, and
are repeatedly pursued by the young farmer, but in vain. They always
reached the water before him and taunted him with the couplet:
"Cras dy fara,
Anhawdd ein dala!"
One day some moist bread from the lake came floating ashore. The youth
seized and devoured it; and the following day he was successful in
catching the ladies. The one to whom he offers marriage consents on the
understanding that he will recognize her the next day from among the
three sisters. He does so by the strapping of her sandal; and she is
accompanied to her new home by seven cows, two oxen, and a bull from the
lake. A third version presents the maiden as rowing on New Year's Eve up
and down the lake in a golden boat with a golden oar. She disappears
from the hero's gaze, without replying to his adjurations. Counselled by
a soothsayer, who dwells on the mountain, he casts loaves and cheese
night after night from Midsummer Eve to New Year's Eve into the water,
until at length the magic skiff again appears, and the fairy, stepping
ashore, weds her persistent wooer.
In all three versions the bridegroom is forbidden to strike "three
causeless blows." Of course he disobeys. According to the
"Cambro-Briton" version it happened that one day, preparing for a fair,
he desired his wife to go to the field for his horse. Finding her
dilatory in doing so, he tapped her arm thrice with his glove, saying,
half in jest: "Go, go, go!" The blows were slight, but they were blows;
and, the terms of the marriage contract being broken, the dame
departed--she and her cattle with her--back into the lake. The other two
accounts agree in spreading the blows over a much greater length of
time. Mr. Rees' version relates that once the husband and wife were
invited to a christening in the neighbourhood. The lady, however, seemed
reluctant to go, making the feminine excuse that the distance was too
far to walk. Her husband told her to fetch one of the horses from the
field. "I will," said she, "if you will bring me my gloves, which I left
in the house." He went, and, returning with the gloves, found that she
had not gone for the horse, so he jocularly slapped her shoulder with
one of the gloves, saying: "Go, go!" Whereupon she reminded him of the
condition that he was not to strike her without a cause, and warned him
to be more careful in future. Another time, when they were together at a
wedding, she burst out sobbing amid the joy and mirth of all around her.
Her husband touched her on the shoulder and inquired the cause of her
weeping. She replied: "Now people are entering into trouble; and your
troubles are likely to commence, as you have the second time stricken me
without a cause." Finding how very wide an interpretation she put upon
the "causeless blows," the unfortunate husband did his best to avoid
anything which could give occasion for the third and last blow. But one
day they were together at a funeral, where, in the midst of the grief,
she appeared in the highest spirits and indulged in immoderate fits of
laughter. Her husband was so shocked that he touched her, saying:
"Hush, hush! don't laugh!" She retorted that she laughed "because
people, when they die, go out of trouble"; and, rising up, she left the
house, exclaiming: "The last blow has been struck; our marriage contract
is broken, and at an end! Farewell!" Hurrying home, she called together
all her fairy cattle, walked off with them to the lake, and vanished in
its waters. Even a little black calf, slaughtered and suspended on the
hook, descended alive and well again to obey his mistress' summons; and
four grey oxen, which were ploughing, dragged the plough behind them as
they went, leaving a well-marked furrow, that remains to this day "to
witness if I lie." The remaining version, with some differences of
detail, represents the same eccentric pessimism on the lady's part
(presumably attributable to the greater spiritual insight of her
supernatural character), as the cause of the husband's not unwarranted
annoyance and of his breach of the agreement. She had borne him three
fair sons; and although she had quitted her husband for ever, she
continued to manifest herself occasionally to them, and gave them
instruction in herbs and medicine, predicting that they and their issue
would become during many generations the most renowned physicians in the
country.[198]
Such is the legend of the Van Pool. It has a number of variants, both in
Wales and elsewhere, the examination of which I postpone for the
present. Hitherto I have been guided in the mention of variants of this
myth chiefly by the desire of showing how one type insensibly merges
into another. The only type I have now left for examination may be
called the "Nightmare type." It is allied not so much to the stories of
Melusina and the Lady of the Van Pool as to stories like that of the
Croatian wolf-maiden. According to German and Slavonic belief the
nightmare is a human being--frequently one whose love has been slighted,
and who in this shape is enabled to approach the beloved object. It
slips through the keyhole, or any other hole in a building, and presses
its victim sometimes to death. But it can be caught by quickly stopping
the hole through which it has entered. A certain man did so one night;
and in the morning he found a young and lovely maiden in the room. On
asking her whence she came, she told him from Engelland (angel-land,
England). He hid her clothes, married her, and had by her three
children. The only thing peculiar about her was that she used constantly
to sing while spinning:
"Now calls my mother (_or_, blows my father) in Engelland,
Mary Catharine,
Drive out thy swine."
One day her husband came home and found that his wife had been telling
the children that she had come as a nightmare from Engelland. When he
reproached her for it, she went to the cupboard where her clothes were
hidden, threw them over herself, and vanished. Yet she could not quite
forsake her husband and little ones. On Saturdays she came unseen and
laid out their clean clothes; and every night she appeared while others
slept, and taking the baby out of the cradle quieted it at her breast.
The allusion to the nightmare's clothes is uncommon; but it is an
unmistakable link with the types we have been considering. In other
tales she is caught in the shape of a straw; and she is generally
released by taking the stopper out of the hole whereby she entered. The
account she gives of herself is that she has come out of England, that
the pastor had been guilty of some omission in the service when she was
baptized, and hence she became a nightmare, but to be re-christened
would cure her. She often hears her mother call her. In one story she
vanished on being reproached with her origin, and in another on being
asked how she became a nightmare.[199]
An Esthonian tale speaks of a father who found his little boy one night
in an unquiet slumber. He noticed over the bed a hole in the wall
through which the wind was whistling, and thought it was this which was
disturbing him. Wherefore he stopped it up; and no sooner had he done so
than he saw on the bed by the boy's side a pretty little girl, who
teased and played with him so that he could not sleep in peace. The
child was thus forced to stay in the house. She grew up with the other
children, and being quick and industrious was beloved by all. Specially
was she dear to the boy in whose bed she was found; and when he grew up
he married her. One Sunday in church she burst out laughing during the
sermon. After the service was over the husband inquired what she was
laughing at. She refused to tell him, save on condition of his telling
her in return how she came into his father's house. When she had
extracted this promise from him, she told him she saw stretched on the
wall of the church a great horse-skin, on which the Evil One was writing
the names of all those who slept or chattered in church, and paid no
heed to God's word. The skin was at last full of names; and in order to
find room for more the Devil had to pull it with his teeth, so as to
stretch it further. In so doing he bumped his head against the wall, and
made a wry face: whereat she, who saw it, laughed. When they got home
her husband pulled out the piece of wood which his father had put into
the hole; and the same instant his wife was gone. The husband was
disconsolate, but he saw her no more. It was said, however, that she
often appeared to his two children in secret, and brought them precious
gifts. In Smaland a parallel legend is current, according to which the
ancestress of a certain family was an elf-maid who came into the house
with the sunbeams through a knot-hole in the wall, and, after being
married to the son and bearing him four children, vanished the same way
as she had come. In North Germany it is believed that when seven boys,
or seven girls, are born in succession, one among them is a nightmare. A
man who had unknowingly wedded such a nightmare found that she
disappeared from his bed at nights; and on watching her he discovered
that she slipped through the hole for the strap by which the latch was
lifted, returning the same way. So he stopped up the opening, and thus
always retained her. After a considerable time he wanted to use the
latch, and thinking she had forgotten her bad habit and he might safely
take the peg out, he did so; but the next night she was missing, and
never came back, though every Sunday morning the man found clean linen
laid out for him as usual.[200]
A Pomeranian tradition relates the adventure of an officer who was much
troubled by the nightmare. He caught her in the usual manner and wedded
her, although he could not persuade her to say whence she came. After
some years she induced her husband to open the holes he had stopped up;
and the next morning she had disappeared. But he found written in chalk
on the table the words: "If thou wilt seek me, the Commander of London
is my father." He sought her in London and found her; and having taken
the precaution to rechristen her he lived happily with her ever
after.[201] This is the only instance I have met with where the
nightmare-wife is recovered. It would be interesting to know why England
is assigned as the home of these perturbed spirits.
FOOTNOTES:
[185] Burton, "Nights," vol. viii. p. 7.
[186] Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 69, quoting Afzelius; Haltrich, p. 15;
Hapgood, p. 214; Meier, "Volksmärchen," p. 39; Baring-Gould, p. 575. No
authority is given by Mr. Baring-Gould, and I have been unable to trace
the Hessian tale; but I rely on his correctness. He also cites an
incoherent Swan-maiden tale from Castrén, of which he manages to make
more sense than I can (Castrén, "Altaischen Völker," p. 172). In an
Irish tale Oengus, the son of the Dagda, falls in love, through a dream,
with Caer ib Ormaith, who is one year in the form of a swan and the next
in human shape. After union with her he seems to have undergone the same
alternation of form (_Revue Celtique_, vol. iii. p. 342, from a MS. in
the British Museum).
[187] Schreck, p. 35; Vernaleken, pp. 274, 287; Jones and Kropf, p. 95;
"Bahar-Danush," vol. ii. p. 213 (an abstract of this story will be found
in Keightley, p. 20); Burton, "Nights," vol. v. p. 344; Steere, p. 349;
Cavallius, p. 175, freely translated by Thorpe, "Yule-Tide Stories," p.
158. Mr. Morris turns the doves into swans. _Cf._ a South-Slavonic tale
from Varazdina, Krauss, vol. i. p. 409.
[188] Brett, "Legends and Myths," p. 29. This legend is told with
further details by Im Thurn, p. 381.
[189] Rink, p. 145; Prym und Socin, p. 51.
[190] Knoop, p. 104.
[191] "F. L. Españ." vol. i. p. 187.
[192] Keightley, p. 169, from Hibbert, "Description of the Shetland
Islands"; Wratislaw, p. 290; "F. L. Journal," vol. vi. p. 165. As a
point of resemblance with the Lady of the Van Pool, quoted further on,
it may be noted that these seal-women (the legend of their capture is a
common one in the Shetland Islands) had the power to conjure up from the
deep a superior breed of horned cattle, many of whose offspring are
still to be seen (Dr. Karl Blind in "Contemp. Rev." 1881, quoted by Mac
Ritchie, p. 4).
[193] Kirby, p. 319; "Arch. Rev." vol. ii. p. 90; Schmidt, p. 133; Bent,
p. 13; Von Hahn, vol. i. p. 295 (_cf._ vol. ii. p. 82); Garnett, p. 352,
translating Dozon's "Chansons Populaires Bulgares"; Cosquin, vol. ii. p.
18. _Cf._ Ralston, "Tibetan Tales," p. 53; Landes, p. 123; Comparetti,
vol. i. p. 212, translated "F. L. Record," vol. ii. p. 12; Grimm,
"Tales," vol. ii. p. 331; Poestion, p. 55; Vernaleken, p. 274; Pitré,
vol. iv. p. 140; Sastri, p. 80.
[194] Leland, p. 300. _Cf._ ibid. p. 140, where the maidens are called
weasels, and ultimately marry stars. "Y Cymmrodor," vol. iv. p. 201. In
a tale rendered from the modern Greek by Von Hahn the name Swan-maiden
is preserved in the title, though the plumage has disappeared from the
text. Stress can hardly be laid upon this, as the title is no part of
the tale. Von Hahn, vol. i. p. 131.
[195] "La Tradition," March 1889, p. 78, quoting the Abbé Domenech,
"Voyage pittoresque dans les déserts du Nouveau Monde," p. 214. Mr.
Farrer gives the same story from "Algic Researches" (Farrer, "Primitive
Manners," p. 256).
[196] Gerv. Tilb. Dec. i. c. 15.
[197] Brauns, p. 138; White, vol. ii. p. 141; Vernaleken, p. 294;
Schneller, p. 23; Ortoli, p. 284.
[198] "The Physicians of Myddfai--Meddygon Myddfai," translated by John
Pughe, Esq., F.R.C.S., and edited by Rev. John Williams ab Ithel, M.A.
(1861), p. xxi. "Cambro-Briton," vol. ii. p. 315; Sikes, p. 40. Mr.
Sikes gives no authority for the third version. I have assumed its
genuineness, though I confess Mr. Sikes' methods are not such as to
inspire confidence.
[199] Jahn, p. 364, _et seqq._; Knoop, pp. 26, 83, 103; Kuhn, pp. 47,
197, 374; Kuhn und Schwartz, pp. 14, 91, 298; Schleicher, p. 93; Thorpe,
vol. ii. p. 169, quoting Thiele. Note the suggestion of Pope Gregory's
pun in the name of the native land of the nightmare. Elsewhere a child
becomes a nightmare who is born on a Sunday and baptized on a Sunday at
the same hour, or one at whose baptism some wicked person has secretly
muttered in response to one of the priest's questions some wrong words,
or "It shall become a nightmare" (Lemke, p. 42). Similar superstitions
attached to somnabulism; see Lecky, "History of Rationalism," vol. i. p.
81, note 2.
[200] Jannsen, vol. i. p. 53; Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 70, quoting Afzelius,
vol. ii. p. 29, quoting Müllenhoff. It is a common Teutonic belief that
knot-holes are attributable to elves (Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 461).
[201] "Am Urds-Brunnen," vol. vi. p. 58.