THE INCIDENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN MÄRCHEN.
{71}
We have found the story of Perseus to consist of three leading
trains of incident, namely, the Supernatural Birth, the Quest of the
Gorgon’s Head, and the Rescue of Andromeda. In a large number of
modern variants, however, the hero is duplicated, or even tripled.
This introduces a fresh element, that of the Life-token. And in nearly
all the modern European variants the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head
undergoes a modification, and suffers a displacement to the end of the
narrative. Other incidents are of course frequently mixed up with
these, or even substituted for one or other of them. But, speaking
broadly, the tale may be taken to consist essentially of the four
elements I have named, which I now propose to examine separately.
The first in order is the Supernatural Birth. Stories of supernatural
birth may be said to have a currency as wide as the world. Heroes of
extraordinary achievement or extraordinary qualities were necessarily
of extraordinary birth. The wonder or the veneration they inspired
seemed to demand that their entrance upon life, and their departure
from it, should correspond with the impression left by their {72}
total career. Tales of supernatural birth are accordingly so numerous
that it is hopeless to give an adequate account of them here. The
utmost that can be done is to lay before the reader a few of the most
interesting and important examples analogous to those we have been
considering in previous chapters.
If we examine stories of the Danae type, or The King of the Fishes
type, we find that when, as usually in the former case, a maiden is
the hero’s mother, only one child is born of her. It is sufficiently
remarkable for a virgin to bring forth one child. But when, as in the
greater number of variants of the latter type, a married woman is the
mother, the prodigy must be placed beyond doubt by a double or
threefold birth, and often by its repetition upon other animals who
partake of the impregnating influence. This influence is generally
conveyed in food. The peoples among whom the stories originated were
either savages, or in a stage of civilisation but little advanced
beyond that of savagery. They credited every marvel because they knew
little of the properties of nature. Of the organisation of their own
bodies they entertained the most rudimentary notions. Whether from an
analogy between the normal act of impregnation and that of eating and
drinking, or because they had learned that at least one mode of
operating effectively on the organism, for purposes alike of injury
and healing, was by drugs taken through the mouth, this was the
favourite method of supernatural impregnation. In the stories we have
already considered, fish or fruit has been the kind of food oftenest
employed. Similar incidents are very numerous outside the Perseus
group.
Among Slavonic nations, the agency of a fish, even in the special form
in which it appears in the story of _The King {73} of the Fishes_, is
not uncommon as an opening to other tales. Several are cited by
Leskien and Brugman in the notes to their _Litauische Märchen_; and
of them we may mention one or two. A Serbo-Croatian tale exhibits an
eel cut into four pieces, of which the woman, the mare and the bitch
eat one each and bear twins; the remaining piece, being buried, grows
up into two golden swords. In a tale from the seaboard of Croatia a
fisherman cuts a fish into three, giving a part each to his wife, the
mare and the bitch, and hanging the scales in the chimney. The latter
are forgotten in the sequel; but twins are born to the woman and the
animals. A king in a Czech tale causes two fish with golden and silver
fins to be caught. He eats one and his consort the other, with the
result that she bears two boys, one with a golden, the other with a
silver, star on his forehead. One of Afanasief’s Russian tales relates
how a beggar advised a king to assemble boys and girls of seven years
old, and let the maidens spin and the boys in one night knit together
a net with which a carp having golden fins is to be caught for the
queen to eat. The dog, however, gets the intestines, and the three
mares the water wherein the fish has been washed; while the cookmaid
gnaws the bones. Queen, cook and dog bear each a son named Ivan, of
whom the dog’s son is the strongest; and he makes a successful raid
underground on the realm of the monsters. The mares bear a foal each.
A childless king, in another of Afanasief’s tales, builds a bridge
over a pathless swamp; and when it is finished he sends a servant to
hide and listen to the remarks of the wayfarers. Two beggars approach.
The one praises the king; the other says: “One ought to wish him
posterity.” And he goes on to prescribe a silken draw-net knit by
night {74} before cock-crow. This, if let down into the sea, would
catch a golden fish; and the queen, eating thereof, would bear a son.
A Polish tale represents a Gipsy woman as counselling a noble, but
barren, lady to catch a fish full of roe in the sea, and to eat the
roe at sunset at full-moontide. Her chambermaid, however, tastes it
also, and, like her mistress, bears a son.[74.1] In Bohemia the tale
is related of a childless monarch, who issues a proclamation offering
a reward to any one who will find means whereby he may obtain an heir.
An old woman presents herself and offers her help, on condition of
being maintained until her death in honour in the royal palace. Her
terms being accepted, she hastens to the brook which flows through the
royal gardens and draws forth a gold-fish and a silver-fish. When
these are cooked the queen eats the gold-fish and the beldam the
silver-fish. The former bears a son on whose forehead beams a golden
star, and the latter a son similarly adorned with a star of
silver.[74.2]
The population of Eastern Pomerania is probably in the main Slavonic.
There the people tell of a queen to whom a beggar-woman brought two
fishes to be eaten by herself; nobody else was to taste them. The cat,
however, stole one; and she and the queen bore a son apiece.[74.3]
Outside the Slavonic populations, the incident in this form does not
seem a favourite in Europe. But we find in Iceland a story of an
earl’s wife, to whom three women in blue mantles appear in a dream,
and command her to go to a stream at hand, and, laying herself down,
to drink of it and try to get into her mouth a certain trout she will
see {75} there, when she will at once conceive. These women are
doubtless Norns, for they appear again at the birth and pronounce the
fate of the daughter who is born to the lady in consequence.[75.1]
Among the Eskimo it is also a woman who provides the fish. She meets
the husband, and from her bag produces two small dried fishes, a male
and a female. His wife is to eat the former if a son be desired, the
latter if a daughter. As he does not want a daughter, he himself eats
the female fish, with the wholly unexpected result that he himself
gives birth to the daughter.[75.2]
Two curious tales are recorded from Annam. One of them, thought by M.
Landes, who collected it, to be of Chinese provenience, speaks of a
childless man who determined to eat an enormous eel known to inhabit a
certain river-confluence. To him a bonze comes and begs him to spare
it. When he cannot prevail, the holy man asks for food ere he retires.
He is given the usual vegetables, cooked according to Buddhist ritual
for this purpose without salt or seasoning, and then goes away. The
other man catches the eel by poisoning the water; and when it is
cooked the food offered to the bonze is found in its stomach: hence it
is known that the bonze was no other than a manifestation of the eel.
After the man has eaten the eel, his wife becomes pregnant and gives
birth to a son, who ultimately proves the ruin of his parents. In
short, he is no other than the eel, who thus avenges itself on its
murderer.[75.3] Here we find expressly asserted the identity of the
progeny with the mysterious fish, a subject whereto {76} I shall have
to return in a future chapter. The other Annamite story is a variant
of the well-known group of _The Lucky Fool_. A lazy man was once lying
on a raft when a fish leaped upon it. The man caught the fish, scraped
off its scales; and, being too slothful to rise and wash it in the
water, he rinsed it in his own urine, and threw it on the raft to dry.
It is, however, carried off by a raven into the king’s daughter’s
garden. Her maids bring it to her; and when it is cooked she eats it,
and immediately becomes pregnant. In due time she gives birth to a
son; and the king summons all the men of his kingdom that he may
choose a husband for her. The lazy man floats his raft to the front of
the palace. The princess’ son sees him from the palace-roof, and hails
him as his father. Believing in this wise child, the king sends for
the lazy man to his presence, and gives him the princess in
marriage.[76.1] Such was the reward of laziness.
In India the ordinary mode of supernatural conception is by the eating
of fruit. A few examples will suffice. I have in a previous chapter
related Somadeva’s tale of Indívarasena and his brother, who were
born in consequence of their mother’s eating two heavenly fruits. The
_Kathá-sarit-Ságara_, or _Ocean of the Streams of Story_, contains
other narratives to the same effect. Concerning the birth of the
famous hero Vikramáditya, it tells us that Siva appeared to his
mother in a dream and gave her a fruit.[76.2] Another childless queen,
after propitiating Siva, receives a fruit in a dream from “a certain
man with matted locks,” no doubt a fakir.[76.3] In modern folklore
Siva appears in the garb of a _jogí_, or fakir, to a childless king
{77} and hands him four fruits, which the queen is to eat the
following Sunday before sunrise, and she will then bear four sons, who
will be exceedingly clever and good.[77.1] Elsewhere we are told of a
rajah, who has seven wives, but no offspring. He is given by a fakir a
stick, with instructions to knock down seven mangoes from a certain
tree and, catching them as they fall, to take them home to his seven
wives. Six of the wives eat the seven mangoes; and the seventh wife is
reduced to eating one of the mango-stones thrown away by the other
wives. All seven give birth to sons; but the son of the seventh is
born in monkey-form. He is, of course, the hero, his brothers playing
the same part towards him as those of Joseph, or those of Khodadad in
the _Arabian Nights_.[77.2] A barren woman in another tale goes to
Mahadeo, or Siva. He meets with her in his customary disguise as a
fakir, and gives her a mango, whereof she and two other women, who
desire the same boon but have been deterred from reaching the god by
the dangers of the way, are to eat. She is blessed with a son, and the
other women with a daughter each.[77.3] Mangoes, indeed, seem the
usual prescription in Indian folktales.
Other fruits are not wanting. A fakir gives to a monarch who is
without issue one hundred and sixty _lichí_ fruits, which resemble
plums--one for each of his wives.[77.4] Barleycorns are given by
another holy man for the same pious purpose.[77.5] The _Adventures of
Kâmrûp_, a literary romance {78} in Hindustani, tells of a king who
had no children. He is presented by a fakir with a fruit of _srî_, or
prosperity. It is eaten by his queen; and she and six other ladies who
taste it add to the population on the same day.[78.1] The youngest of
seven brothers, in a Santali story, plants a certain vegetable which
bears a fruit. He measures its growth daily, until it becomes a span
long and then remains stationary. He warns his sisters-in-law: “Do not
eat my fruit, for whoever does so will give birth to a child only one
span long.” The temptation is too great for one of them. She plucks
the fruit and eats it; and though she, in common with the other
sisters-in-law, positively denies the theft, she is found out in due
time by the advent of a baby one span long--a Santali Tom Thumb.[78.2]
According to a tale of the Altaic tribes of South Siberia, a girl when
married is found to be already pregnant. On being questioned, her
account of the matter was that she had picked up a lump of ice which
had fallen with a heavy rain, and on breaking it in pieces she had
found inside, and eaten, two grains of wheat. When her time came she
bore twin boys.[78.3] A curious legend obtained by Professor Haddon
from an islander of Torres Straits declares that a woman, who had been
deprived of her husband by a supernatural female and set adrift on the
sea, was cast away on an island where she had no other food than some
seeds which ornamented her ear-pendants. After consuming them she
discovered that she was in the way to become a mother, and laid an
egg, like a sea-eagle’s, out of which she hatched a bird. The bird
supported her, and at length brought her back to her husband.[78.4]
{79}
Mohammedan stories attach, as we might expect, inordinate value to the
male sex. They represent the fruit as eaten by the father, rather than
by the mother. The _Qissa Agar o Gul_ is an Urdu adaptation of a
Persian romance. It was published as lately as 1880 at Lucknow. Here
the fruit, a couple of apples, is given by a dervish to a king and his
vizier, neither of whom has issue. Each of them eats his apple, and
begets--the king, a son, and the vizier, twins, boy and girl.[79.1] I
have already referred incidentally to the case of Khodadad, who was
one of fifty brethren begotten by a childless monarch upon his fifty
wives, after eating as many pomegranate seeds. He had incessantly
prayed for offspring, and was commanded in a dream by a man “of
semblance like unto a prophet” to rise at dawn, and, saying certain
prayers, to go to his Chief Gardener, from whom he was to require a
pomegranate and to take of it as many seeds as seemed best to
him.[79.2] Another sultan is represented in the same great collection
as receiving from a _Takrúri_, one of a Moslem negroid people
credited by the Arabs with magical powers, a portion of certain
medicinal roots, to be eaten by himself.[79.3] So in the Turkish
_History of Forty Vezirs_, where a childless king beseeches the
intercession of a convent of dervishes, and sends them a fat ram and
an offering of rice, honey and oil, the sheykh of the convent returns
him a bowlful “of that meat,” ordering him to “desire a son and eat of
the dervishes’ portion.”[79.4] Yet the rule is not without exception.
A sovereign of Serendib, in the _Bahar Danush_, receives from a
religious recluse an apple with instructions to give {80} it to his
consort.[80.1] A tale told by the Kabyles of the Lower Atlas speaks of
a man who bought seven apples for his seven wives. Growing hungry, he
ate half of one, or, according to a variant, he gave it to a man who
met him. The result was that the wife who had only the other half
brought forth a dwarf.[80.2] And in a Balochi tale a fakir gives a
king two kunar-fruits (_Zizyphus Jujuba_), one to be eaten by himself
and the other by his wife.[80.3] These exceptions, however, are more
apparent than real. The _Bahar Danush_ is an Indian work, composed in
the reign of Shah Jehan by Ināyatu ’llāh of Delhi, who professed to
have received the stories of which it is composed from a Brahman. This
is merely another way of saying that they are drawn from earlier
Indian sources. The Kabyles are mountain tribes related to the
Berbers. The religion of the Apostle of Allah sits lightly upon them.
Their aboriginal precepts are at least as much regarded as those of
the Koran; and so far are their social relations from being dominated
by Arab customs, that their women enjoy free and unrestricted
intercourse with both sexes, and are looked upon as almost if not
quite the equals of men. The Balochis pay little more respect than the
Kabyles to Islam; and their religious practices are largely tinged
with their ancestral paganism and that of their neighbours.
When a European folktale, on the other hand, exhibits the husband as
devouring the magical fruit meant for his wife, it does not fail to
make him repent it. For example, in a Portuguese tale from Algarve, a
woman who confesses to Saint Antony, and confides to him her despair
of children, receives from the saint three apples to be eaten fasting.
Arrived at home, she puts the apples down and {81} prepares breakfast.
Her husband, meanwhile, coming in, finds and eats them. When he
learned what he had done he was terrified, and sent his wife back to
the holy man, only to have his terrors confirmed. As the time arrived
he began to scream; nor had he any alleviation of his agony until a
person who understood came and cut him open, and brought forth a
daughter.[81.1] But in cases where both parents partake of the fruit,
the natural way of birth is the result. An old woman in an Abruzzian
tale gives a fisherman’s wife an orange, to be eaten, half by herself
and the other half by her husband. The rind is to be thrown at the
foot of an orange-tree in the garden. A boy is born, and a sword grows
at the foot of the orange-tree.[81.2] A Greek tradition belonging to
the Bluebeard cycle relates that an ogre divided an apple between a
king and his wife, on condition that the eldest son was to be given to
him. The queen thereafter bears three boys. This is from the island of
Syra. A story from Ziza in Epirus speaks of two spouses who had lived
with one another for forty years without issue, and who obtained a boy
under similar conditions; and a mare to which they give the
apple-parings bore a foal.[81.3] On the whole we are probably
warranted in {82} conjecturing that Mohammedanism has influenced all
the stories where the husband consumes the fruit without evil results;
and that they are a departure from the earlier form, in which the wife
eats it alone. A variant of the last-mentioned _märchen_, also from
Epirus, follows the usual rule. There a queen was presented with an
apple by a Jew. She ate it and threw the peel away, and the mare
devoured it. By and by the queen and the mare were both found
pregnant.[82.1] Beyond the Ægean Sea the Hellenic population has
preserved the same version of the incident in a tale from Smyrna of a
queen on whom a dervish confers three apples, with directions to eat
them and she will have three boys.[82.2] So, in a French tale from
Louisiana, a lady is given an apple by an old woman. She eats the
apple and throws the peel in the yard, where it is eaten by a mare.
The next morning, so rapid is the effect of magical power, both she
and the mare have brought forth young.[82.3]
The Russians have the story in a shape recalling some of the variants
of the Danae type. A Tsaritsa, to quench her thirst, draws water from
a white marble well in a golden cup. She drinks eagerly, and with the
water swallows a pea, thus becoming pregnant of a son who is destined
to achieve the destruction of the Savage Serpent.[82.4] In White
Russia we hear of a woman who, having drawn water, is returning with
her bucket when she sees a pea rolling along. Saying to herself, “This
is the gift of God,” she picks it up, eats it, and in course of time
becomes the {83} mother of a tiny boy, “who grew not by years, but by
hours, like millet-dough when leavened,” and became a hero of enormous
strength and wisdom, called Little Rolling-pea.[83.1]
The consumption of some kind of drug, or enchanted compound, is also
an approved method of causing pregnancy, especially (if we may judge
by the proportion of tales wherein it appears) in India. In the
Bengali tale of _Life’s Secret_ a fakir offers a drug to a childless
queen, to remove her barrenness, telling her that if she swallow it
with the juice of a pomegranate flower a son will be born, whose life
shall be bound up in a golden necklace, in a wooden box, in the heart
of a big boal-fish, in the tank in front of the palace.[83.2] A
Buddhist tale, originally from India, has been found, containing the
incident, in Ceylon, and also in the _Kah-gyur_, a Tibetan version of
an Indian collection no longer extant. It narrates how Indra, the king
of the gods, taking pity on his friend, King Sakuni, sends him a
medicine, of which his wives are to drink, and he will thereby obtain
sons and daughters.[83.3] Often a bargain is made, as in some of the
European tales already cited, that the queen shall bear twins, one of
whom is to be given to the holy man, or supernatural being, through
whose gift the curse of barrenness has been taken away. So in another
Bengali tale a religious mendicant came to a king who had no issue,
and said: “As you are anxious to have a son, I can give the queen a
drug, by swallowing which she will give birth to twin sons; but I will
give the medicine on this condition, that of those twins you will {84}
give one to me and keep the other yourself.”[84.1] And the same
bargain is made by a _jogi_ in a folktale from the Kamaon in the
Himalaya, in giving a fruit, which, divided between a king’s seven
wives, causes them to bear a son apiece.[84.2] Nor is the bargain
confined to India. In a tale told by the Swahili, or mongrel
inhabitants, half Negro half Arab, of Zanzibar, a demon came disguised
as a man to a sultan who lacked a son, and asked: “If I give you a
medicine, and you get a son, what will you give me?” The sultan offers
half his property; but it is rejected. He then offers half his towns.
The demon replies: “I am not satisfied.” The sultan inquires: “What do
you want, then?” And he said: “If you get two children, give me one,
and take one yourself.” The sultan said: “I have consented.” The demon
accordingly brings him a medicine, which his wife takes and bears
three sons.[84.3]
Sometimes the drug is given by one of the lower animals, most of
which, it is hardly necessary to remind the reader, are regarded by
peoples in the lower culture as of superhuman power or knowledge. In a
Kaffir story, a bird gives a childless wife some pellets to be taken
before food, and she consequently bears a beautiful daughter.[84.4] A
curious tale was related to the Rev. Charles Swynnerton in the Panjab
of a snake who was about to eat a young man, when his wife wept and
asked the creature what would become of her when her husband was
eaten;--why was he {85} going to inflict this injury upon her? The
serpent in remorse crept back to his hole and fetched two magical
globules, saying: “Here, foolish woman, take these two pills and
swallow them, and you will have two sons to whom you can devote
yourself, and who will take good care of you!” The girl, however,
replied: “But what about my good name?” The snake, who knew not that
she was already wed, became exasperated. “Women are such preposterous
beings!” he cried, as he fetched two more pills. These he gave to the
disconsolate girl, telling her: “When any of your neighbours revile
you on account of your sons, take one of these pills between finger
and thumb, hold it over them, rubbing it gently so that some of the
powder may fall on them, and immediately you will see them consume
away to ashes.” Tying the former pills in her cloth, the girl looked
at these new pills incredulously. Then, with a sudden thought, she
gently rubbed them over the snake, saying with an innocent air: “O
snake, explain this mystery to me again! Is this the way I am to rub
them?” The moment the magical powder touched the snake he was set on
fire; and in another instant he was merely a long wavy line of grey
dust lying on the ground.[85.1] In one of the _Arabian Nights_ the
potent drug is the flesh of two serpents. It is prescribed by King
Solomon to a king of Egypt and his vizier, both of whom were without
issue. The serpents in question were remarkable: the one had a head
like an asp’s, the other a head like an ifrit’s. And their flesh forms
an exception to the Mohammedan rule already noted in these cases, for
it was to be given to the wives of the childless men.[85.2]
Coming to Europe, we find a story told at Torricella {86} Pelligna, in
the Abruzzi, where a fairy, under the form of an old woman, tells the
king that he will have no children until the queen shall drink a
decoction made with three hairs from the devil’s beard. A servant is
accordingly despatched for these precious materials; and when, after
various adventures, he returns with them, the prescription proves so
successful that the queen bears a daughter fair as the sun.[86.1] The
medicine, however, is more frequently used in European _märchen_ to
gratify spite against an unfortunate maiden, by putting her
unwittingly into a condition inconsistent with maidenhood. In a Tuscan
tale, for example, a stepmother hates her stepdaughter, and is taught
by a beggar-woman how to injure her. She accordingly prepares, from
the blood of seven wild beasts, a philtre whose property it is to
cause pregnancy. Her father consents to her being put to death; but
the ruffians charged with the crime content themselves by simply
abandoning her in the wood. She is delivered in due time of a dragon
with seven heads of different animals, who becomes his mother’s
guardian, procures for her an honourable marriage with a king, and
ultimately transforms himself into a man.[86.2] A South Slavonic tale
from Varadzin yields a similar plot. There it is a queen whose
daughter is beloved by her father to such an extent as to rouse her
jealousy. She is advised by a tramp to go on Good Friday to a
churchyard, dig up a bone, grate it, and give the gratings to her
daughter next {87} morning in her coffee. The girl becomes pregnant,
and is set adrift on a ship. She bears a son who is spotted, but who,
after various adventures, is disenchanted of his foul deformity.[87.1]
We shall hereafter have to consider several superstitious beliefs and
practices in connection with the dead. Here I simply pause to mention
two other Slav stories attributing to portions of dead human bodies
the reproductive faculty. The first comes to us from Bohemia, where it
is said that a gravedigger’s beautiful daughter was followed about by
a skull that never quitted her feet. By a witch’s advice her father
burned it and made his daughter swallow the ashes. In consequence of
so doing, she gave birth to a son who held mysterious converse with
the Sleeping Heroes beneath Mount Blanik.[87.2] The other is a
Lithuanian story from Godleva, concerning a hermit who, in obedience
to God’s express command, burned himself alive by way of penance. The
day after his immolation a hunter passed by the place, and turned
aside to see the remains of the pyre, and ascertain the cause of the
strange smell. Poking among the ashes he found the hermit’s heart,
which he took home to his daughter to cook for his supper. She,
however, ate it herself and in two hours bore a son of powers, it need
hardly be said, as remarkable as his parentage.[87.3] It is {88}
interesting to observe that in India potency of this kind is attached
to fakirs and religious mendicants. A special privilege would seem to
belong in the popular mind to such religious consecration. Vows of
celibacy and other ascetic usages have their compensation. In all ages
and countries, indeed, the virtue of asceticism, of self-sacrifice, or
of suffering however caused, has been recognised. The Egyptian
_märchen_ of _The Two Brothers_, which was written down more than
twelve hundred years before the Christian era, exhibits this as one of
its central ideas. I shall have to refer to this legend again. It is
enough to remark here that, just as the self-immolation of the hermit
in the Lithuanian story seems to have conferred upon his heart the
strange quality we are discussing, Bata, the younger of the Two
Brothers, by his unmerited sufferings acquired an inherent and
miraculous capacity of metamorphosis and reproduction. When the
persea-trees, in whose form he found himself during his chequered
career, were being cut down, a chip flew from one of them and entered
the mouth of the king’s favourite, once his own wife. She swallowed it
and, conceiving, gave birth to a male child, who was no other than a
new manifestation of her former husband, Bata.[88.1]
For in these tales not only the fruit but also other parts of a tree
or shrub are endowed with the power of causing conception. In Denmark
we are told of a wise woman, by whose counsel a childless queen goes
down before sunrise into the royal garden and eats the three buds of a
certain {89} thorny bush. After six months the queen bears a daughter,
who must be kept from her parents’ sight until her fourteenth
birthday, else both mother and child will suffer a dire
misfortune.[89.1] An Icelandic tale gives, by a beggar-woman’s mouth,
the following recipe for growing the magical plant: “Your majesty must
make them bring in two pails of water some evening before you go to
bed. In each of them you must wash yourself, and afterwards throw away
the water under the bed. When you look under the bed next morning, two
flowers will have sprung up, one fair and one ugly. The fair one you
must eat; the ugly one you must let stand.” The temptation, however,
was too great for the lady. Having eaten the fair one and found it
delicious, she proceeded to eat the ugly one, and gave birth in due
time to two daughters, a fair and a loathly one. The latter, though
hideous, is her sister’s good angel, and eventually wedding the king’s
son, becomes the most beautiful woman in the world.[89.2] It will be
remembered that the fakir in one of the Bengali tales already cited
prescribes the juice of a pomegranate-flower to be taken with his
drug. Annamese folklore recounts the history of a maiden who, walking
in a garden, plucks and eats a lovely flower. Her parents (who seem to
have had a shrewd opinion of religious celibates) suspected the bonze
of a neighbouring pagoda of having dishonoured her, and sent her to
the pagoda, where she was delivered of no fewer than five sons of
marvellous powers, and all exactly alike. Questioned as to their
names, the first calls himself The Strong, the second
Steel-body-iron-liver, the third Search-cloud-drive-dust, the fourth
The Dry, and the fifth The Damp. They get up a quarrel with the king,
and ultimately compel him {90} to yield his throne to Search-cloud,
who is the wisest of the brothers.[90.1] In the _Pentameron_ a
nobleman’s sister offers a prize to that one of her maids who succeeds
in clearing a certain rosebush at a jump. All fail; and the lady
herself, trying it, knocks off a leaf. With great adroitness she picks
it up and swallows it unobserved, and thus wins the prize. After three
days, mysterious pains seize her; and she learns with horror from a
friendly fairy that no doubt she is pregnant from the roseleaf she has
swallowed. This turns out to be the fact. A lovely baby-girl is born,
for whom a strange destiny is in store. A spell is laid upon her by
the fairies that if, at seven years of age, her mother be allowed to
comb her, the comb will be left stuck in her hair, and she will
thereupon die. The story follows a similar course to that of the
Danish one just cited.[90.2] In a Tuscan folktale a woman wedded for
many years, but childless, obtains a son by eating “a certain herb”
pointed out to her by a fairy, to whom she promises in return a fair
present. But she and her husband neglect to fulfil the promise; and to
punish them the boy is born and remains of diminutive size.[90.3] The
Passamaquoddies, a North American tribe of tolerably pure blood in New
England, attribute the birth of a medicine-man, a hero of their
folklore, to his mother’s biting off every bush as she travelled
through the woods. From one of these bushes, the narrative does not
say which of them, she comes to be with child.[90.4]
Romances are, of course, literature, not folklore. In {91} other
words, they are the deliberate productions of civilisation, they are
works of conscious art. Their authority, therefore, as evidence of
tradition is greatly inferior to that with which the report of a
folktale is invested. Folktales, when written down, cease to be
traditions. They are merely evidence of tradition preserved for us by
reporters. Their value depends on the accuracy and knowledge with
which they have been reported. The more closely they represent the
very words of the tellers of the tales--the bearers of the
traditions--the more valuable, the more authentic, they are. Romances,
on the other hand, cannot claim to be reports of traditions. They are
subject to the laws of art, as developed under the influences of
civilisation. Even when starting from real traditions, their aim is
not accuracy but amusement. Whatever changes are required by the
development of taste or fashion, whatever changes will from any cause
add to the pleasure of the reader, their authors are at liberty--nay,
they are bound--to make. But when all this is conceded there remains
the fact that an immense number of romances start from tradition, and
embody its characteristic barbarisms and its fantastic
impossibilities. Of this kind is an incident in the Spanish _Romance
de don Tristan_ by Alonso de Salaya, written towards the end of the
fifteenth century. It is related there that, Tristram being wounded in
a transport of jealousy by King Mark, Isolte visited him; and the two
lovers shed abundant tears. From these tears a lily sprang. “Every
woman who eats of it forthwith feels herself pregnant; Queen Isolte
ate of it to her sorrow.”[91.1]
In the Annamite story of _The Lazy Man_ mentioned {92} just now, the
fish had been washed in the man’s urine. A variant, also from Annam,
describes a sort of female Tom Thumb, born in answer to prayer, as
eating the rind of a water-melon, the substance of which had been
eaten by a prince. The prince, before throwing the rind away, had made
water into it; and the heroine consequently became pregnant.[92.1] In
both these cases it is the man’s urine that confers the efficacy upon
the food. A nasty Nubian tale ascribes the same result to a woman’s
drinking, under stress of great thirst, the urine of an ass.[92.2]
Other stories recall the German _Water Peter and Water Paul_,
discussed in a previous chapter. A maiden in a Tjame tale, being
thirsty, sees water spring from the midst of some rocks in the forest
and fill a rocky basin. There she drinks and bathes. But when, on
returning to her father who is at work hard by, he asks her to show
him the spring that he may drink also, it is already dried up. Her
subsequent pregnancy is said to be the result of having drunk of that
spring. She gives birth to a son round as a cocoa-nut, and covered
with a cocoa-nut envelope. He turns out to be a great magician. A
princess penetrates his disguise and marries him. At night when he
comes out of his envelope, his wife buries it and persuades him to
exhibit himself in his true and beautiful manhood.[92.3] A Wallachian
_märchen_ brings before us a maiden condemned by the king, her
father, to seclusion from her earliest infancy in a castle to which no
men were allowed access. {93} His precautions were vain. At the age of
sixteen a Gipsy woman gives her a flower she declares herself to have
found in the forest, not far from the castle. The princess plays with
it until the evening, and then puts it in water until the morning. The
water becomes purple-red, like the lovely flower itself, with little
golden and silver stars swimming in it, like the fragrant dust on the
petals. The princess had never seen anything of the kind. She was so
delighted that she dipped the whole flower into the water and crumpled
it up. At last she lifted up the glass, and, finding the water had
taken a delicious scent, she drank it to the bottom. Before long she
had reason to repent. Her condition became manifest, and her stern
father would listen to no denials. Beside himself with rage, he caused
her to be fastened up in a cask and thrown into the sea. There she
bore a son, and was, with the child, cast after a while on shore. The
rest of the story unfortunately is not so much to her credit; for she
forms a tender connection with an ogre, and plots against the son who
has been her support and comforter in her outcast condition.[93.1] A
Gipsy story from southern Hungary represents a childless woman as
given by a witch a certain liquid, with instructions to pour it into a
gourd, and drink it in the waxing of the moon. Unhappily, however, the
child is born dead. Now, a stillborn child becomes a Mulo, a kind of
ghoul dwelling in the mountains and guarding hidden treasure. This
prospect was so terrible to the woman and her husband, that the latter
made a journey to the mountains, and at last got the child back from
the Mulo-folk, and he grew up a clever man.[93.2]
{94}
Nor is it only by the mouth that supernatural impregnation has been
fabled to take place. A variant from Varadzin of one of the South
Slavonic tales quoted a few paragraphs back mentions a youth who was
fated to kill his parents. Rather than fulfil so horrible a doom he
burnt himself to death. But his heart remained intact and palpitating.
A maiden passed by, saw and smelt the heart, and gave birth to a boy,
who was no other than the first come to life again. He had struggled
against his fate in vain, and in due course, though unwittingly, he
slew his former parents.[94.1] In a Sanskrit romance, the Princess
Chand Ráwati, bathing in the Ganges, sees a flower afloat on the
water and takes it up to smell. It contains some _sperma genitale_
which has escaped from a Rishi; the lady inhales this, with
consequences readily guessed, having regard to the holiness of the
ascetic. But in this case her son appropriately finds his way into the
world by his mother’s nose. It is satisfactory to add that she
eventually marries the lad’s father, and that the lad himself by his
filial obedience and courage obtains immortality.[94.2] Even without
the adventitious aid of a saint, the scent or the touch of flowers has
been known in traditional songs and fairy tales to produce the same
result. A Gipsy story from the Land beyond the Forest speaks of a
woman who, by smelling a certain flower, became pregnant of a son,
born in the form of a serpent; and in another, from southern Hungary,
a childless queen receives from a beldam a camomile flower to bear in
her bosom, on the stipulation she should give in exchange one of the
sons whom she would bring into the world.[94.3] A Portuguese {95}
_romanceiro_ speaks of an enchanted herb, which any woman who touched
would at once feel herself fertilised. A ballad current in Asturia
narrates that the princess Alexandra was fated to tread on so
apparently innocent a herb as borage. The king of Spain, her father,
with his parental eyes, detected that there was something the matter.
He summoned the doctors; and when she had given birth to a boy he
executed summary justice upon her by cutting off her head.[95.1] In
Sardinia the folk tell of a maiden who, while buying some roses from a
woman, took them up to examine, when they all fell to pieces. The
woman, annoyed, cursed her to become pregnant by the petals; and her
imprecation was only too effective.[95.2] Here it is the curse which
provides the magical power. A different origin is attributed to it in
a Bulgarian ballad. A widow, we are told, had nine sons who were all
carried off by the plague. One of them was his mother’s idol. She
buried him in her courtyard, and every day she came to weep upon his
grave. In obedience to a voice proceeding from the earth, she gathered
two hyacinth flowers which grew upon the tomb, hid them in her bosom,
and thus conceived afresh. A son was born, over whom she uttered the
wish: “Mayest thou one day reave the kingdom from the king!” When her
words were reported to the monarch he ordered the boy to be thrown
into an underground dungeon, and there left. After several years the
king was attacked by a horrible malady; grass grew between his bones
and his eyes littered mice. He naturally believed that this was the
consequence of the widowed mother’s curses, and sent to the dungeon
for the boy’s bones, for the purpose of forwarding them to her, as the
only consolation in his power to give her. But {96} the messengers
found the boy alive and reading the gospel, which was held before him
by Saint Friday, while Saint Sunday further contributed to his
convenience by holding the candle. The youth, fated by his mother’s
words, arose from his pious exercises, and going to the king, tore out
his eyes, cut off his hands, and turned him out of doors to beg his
bread. Then he placed himself upon the throne, trifling the while with
a sceptre that weighed, mere toy that it was, some three hundred
pounds.[96.1]
I have cited fully the substance of this ballad as given by M.
Dragomanov, because that scholar is inclined to trace the influence of
Buddhism in the last touch. Buddha, he says, is considered as a man of
great physical force, and in several places his sceptres of
considerable weight are shown. The learned critic specifies none of
the places in question; but we may for the nonce admit the literal
accuracy of his statement. He does not commit himself, however, to the
assertion that no other hero of legend or fairy tale had ever been
possessed of gigantic strength or material “properties” of unusual
proportions. He merely assumes it; and upon the validity of this
assumption his reasoning is founded. Gautama no doubt underwent many
incarnations; and perhaps European students may yet be persuaded to
hold that the paladin Roland was a Bodisat and Thor a full-blown
Buddha. They will then probably extend their articles of belief over
the rest of the world, including the countless personages of wondrous
might and bulk that swarm in the traditions of the Slavonic race, to
which, in great part at all events, the Bulgars belong. The task of
converting them may be commended to M. Dragomanov; {97} and,
meanwhile, we may dismiss the suggestion of Buddhist influence on this
Bulgarian ballad.
But it is not only flowers and herbs that possess the magical virtue
of causing conception by the touch. In an Eskimo tradition a man who
longs for offspring is advised to set off in his kayak to the open
sea. When he hears a voice like that of a child crying, he must go
towards it; and he will then find a worm, which he must bring home and
throw on his wife’s body. Having followed this counsel, he beholds the
worm disappear in the woman’s body; and soon afterward she gives birth
to a son, who becomes a seal-fisher of marvellous powers.[97.1]
According to a story given by Dr. von Wlislocki as current among the
Armenian settlers at the foot of the Carpathians, a childless queen
picked up in her garden a half-dead bird. She restored it to life,
putting its bill between her lips to give it breath. Her saliva
touched its tongue and gave it human speech. By its directions she hid
in the garden at midnight and watched until a Luckwife--that is to
say, a Fate or Norn--came to bathe in the pool. Then she caught up the
golden veil left by the Luckwife lying on the margin, and ran off with
it. Binding it round her body, she wore it next her skin for nine
months, until she at length brought forth a lovely daughter.[97.2]
Another form of assistance by birds is found among the Zulus. The
birth of Unthlatu was on this wise. Two pigeons came to his mother,
who was a chief’s wife. One said: “Vukutu;” the other asked: “Why do
you say ‘Vukutu,’ since she has no children?” They bargain with {98}
her for a feed of castor-oil berries in exchange for the promise of a
child. When they had eaten the berries they scarified her in two
places on the loins, saying: “You will now have a child.” She
accordingly gave birth to a beautiful boy, whom she hid in a boa’s
skin to save him from the envy of her fellow-wives; for they had only
given birth to brutes. In a variant the pigeons direct the woman to
take a horn and cup herself, draw out a clot of blood, place it in a
pot, lute it down and only uncover it in the ninth month. She acts
accordingly; and on opening the pot a child is found within, to the
astonishment of herself and her husband. Here, too, she has to hide
the boy from the envy of the other women.[98.1]
A favourite _märchen_ in Italy and Sicily is one which approaches far
more nearly to the Danae type of the Perseus group. As told in Sicily,
a king unblessed with {99} issue summons a wizard, to inquire of him
whether his queen will have a babe, or not. The wizard replies that
she will have a daughter, who in her fourteenth year will be
impregnated by the sun. The child is accordingly born, and shut up
with her nurse in a tower where the sun cannot penetrate. One day the
little maiden finds a pointed bone in her food; and with its aid she
scratches the wall of the tower until she scrapes a hole in it.
Through this hole the sun shines on her and fulfils the prediction. A
daughter is born in due course and exposed, but found by a king’s son,
who ultimately falls in love with her, and weds her after learning of
what ancestry she comes.[99.1] The opening of this tale admits of many
variations having nothing to do with the Supernatural Birth. Thus, in
a Greek story from Epirus, a woman prays to the sun for a daughter,
promising him that he may take her away when she is twelve years old.
When she obtains the child, however, she seeks to evade the fulfilment
of her promise, and hides the girl in the house, stopping up all
windows, chinks and holes whereby the sun can reach her. But she
forgets to stop up the keyhole; and the sun sends a ray that way into
the house to seize and bring him the maiden.[99.2] A Florentine story
represents the astrologer as predicting that the lass will be carried
away by the wind; and all {100} precautions against her destiny are
vain.[100.1] In another Sicilian tradition the soothsayer is wisely
vaguer, his denunciations only extending to a dreadful fate at the age
of eleven. A bird comes in through the hole the maiden has bored in
the wall of her tower, and becomes a man. He is, in fact, an enchanted
prince; and the misfortune she undergoes is the loss of her beauty in
disenchanting him--a woe of light account in fairyland, where the
virtuous are ever rewarded.[100.2] A tale from the Azores relates that
a king to whom a daughter had been born consulted his book of
astrology; and in obedience to the directions he there found he
confined her at the age of twelve in a tower having only one aperture,
by which food was conveyed to her, and commanded that no bones be left
in the meat supplied. By accident his command was disobeyed; a duke
dressed, like MacKineely in the Irish tale, in female attire gains an
opportunity of talking with her through the aperture. Who could resist
such a temptation? The bone she had found in her food she utilises to
enlarge the opening, so as to get out and flee with him.[100.3] A
similar illustration of the impossibility of cheating fate occurs in
an old Hebrew manuscript. King Solomon, we learn from this veracious
authority, had a beautiful daughter whose horoscope disclosed that she
was to marry a poor Israelite of low birth. He therefore built a very
high tower with no entrance, and there he imprisoned her with a stock
of victuals. For some time his precautions appeared successful; but
after a while a poor youth, exhausted from long travel, took shelter
for the night in the carcase of an ox. When he had fallen asleep a
large bird obligingly carried {101} carcase and youth up to the roof
of the tower. There to his great surprise he found himself the next
morning; and, like the prince borne by the Enchanted Horse in the
_Arabian Nights_, he lost no time in making the princess’
acquaintance. They speedily fell in love with one another; but, with
scruples that King Solomon perhaps would hardly have appreciated, he
wrote a marriage contract in his own blood, calling upon God and the
angels Michael and Gabriel to witness it.[101.1] In a modern
Transylvanian Gipsy version the foreign “common” man is carried up by
a magical wooden bird, with which he has been gifted by Saint Nicholas
in return for hospitality when the saint appeared to him in beggar’s
guise. Though a favourite with the saint, his conscience does not seem
to have been quite so tender as that of the poor Israelite.[101.2]
These tales carry us back to that of Gilgamos, as it is recounted by
Ælian.
Happily I am not called upon to stand sponsor here for every irregular
birth in a fairy tale. Cases of birth direct from fruit, diminutive
births, impregnation in the ordinary way but by a supernatural being,
and other instances, therefore need not detain us. But we ought not
altogether to overlook the widespread story of _The Lucky Fool_. In
the _Pentameron_ Basile has given us what may be regarded as the
typical form. Pervonto is a ninny who, going to cut wood in the
forest, finds three youths asleep and perspiring in the hot sunshine.
Taking pity on them, he sets up a shade of oak-leaves over their
heads; and on their awaking they endow him with the power of obtaining
anything by a wish. When the hero has made up a bundle of wood he sets
himself astride of it and wishes it to carry him home. On the {102}
way he passes on his strange palfrey the king’s palace; and the
princess Vastolla, beholding him from the window, bursts out into loud
laughter. Pervonto retorts by wishing her to become pregnant by him.
The wish takes effect. Her children are twin boys; and at a banquet
given by the king, to which all his male subjects are summoned, they
identify their father. The king, enraged, encloses them with his
daughter and Pervonto in a cask, and flings the cask into the sea.
Again Pervonto’s magical wish becomes useful; for by its means he
saves them all from peril, changes himself into a fair youth, and at
last is reconciled to the king and recognised as Vastolla’s husband.
Whence Basile, or the lady into whose mouth he puts the tale, draws
the very relevant moral: Man proposes, God disposes.[102.1]