'That these stories rest upon a common mythological foundation, there
is strong evidence to prove. The gold-dropping animal, the magic table
or napkin, the self-acting cudgel, appear in some of the tales of
ancient India, and their original signification is made apparent.
'The master, who gives the three precious gifts, is the All
Father--the Supreme Spirit. The gold and jewel dropping ass is the
spring cloud hanging in the sky, and shedding the bright productive
Vernal showers. The table which covers itself is the earth becoming
covered with flowers and fruit at the bidding of the New Year. But
there is a check; rain is withheld, the process of vegetation is
stayed, by some evil influence. Then comes the Thunder cloud, out of
which leaps the bolt and rains pour down, the earth receives them, and
is covered with abundance--all that was lost is restored.'
The incident of the dropping of jewels only appears in the Neapolitan
version, given in the 'Pentamerone' of Giambattista Basile,[17] and is
apparently an addition made by him to the original story. The
explanation of the meaning of the tale, it appears to me, might as
fittingly have been taken from the region of science, or of history,
and might have been as easily interpreted in a thousand and one other
ways as in this. So that if, originally, the folk-tale embodied a
mythological truth, which, however, may be affirmed or denied with
equal right, the fact is of no value in aiding us to determine what
the intentions of the inventor of the tale must have been.
[17] Naples, 1837.
Mythological symbolism, like very much of what passes current as
ecclesiastical symbolism, is a testimony to the ingenuity of the
interpreter; it has, oftentimes, no existence in the object
interpreted. We may, to our own satisfaction, perhaps, resolve the
sternest facts into impalpable fancies; the fact remains, and will
remain when the fancy has faded into its original nothingness or
lingers only as a beautiful freak of fancy. The twelve Cæsars were
living and historical personages, though an ingenious apologist has
reduced them into mythological non-existences, and has traced in them
a likeness to the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Mythological and
legendary incidents, it is true, have a tendency to fasten themselves
upon real men and women until, like parasitical plants round the trunk
of a tree, they conceal the true character of those who are thus
clothed. Sir Richard Whittington, however, was Lord Mayor of London,
though the sounds heard from the brow of Highgate Hill--
'When he, a friendless and a drooping boy,
Sat on a stone, and heard the bells speak out--
Articulate music'--[18]
had no more real existence than his famous cat, and though we are
indebted for the means by which his great wealth was acquired only to
the pleasant invention of the popular-romance writer.
[18] Wordsworth, 'The Prelude.'
Probably many of these stories possess an historical origin, and could
we recover their original form, they might be found to record real
incidents in the life of an historical personage or of a nation. The
original form, however, can now hardly be even guessed at. Successive
generations of story-tellers have added to the original tale, and have
changed archaic incidents for those better understood by the audience,
and therefore appealing the readier to their sympathies. When
transplanted from its home to a distant land the local colouring has
been changed, unintelligible customs have been made to give place to
vernacular ones, until so little remains of the old tale that even
with the help of comparative analysis it is now impossible to recover
the form in which it was given out at the first. Even with a written
literature and with diffused information, Shakespeare found it
necessary to the stories which he dramatized to interweave appliances
made known by modern discoveries, and, accordingly, anachronisms
abound in his plays. If this has been the case even where the national
literature was a written one, we might be confident beforehand that we
should find the story-teller of the Southern Slavs lengthening out and
giving variety to his tale, not from the stores of archæology, but
from such common, every-day customs as would appeal forcibly to his
simple audience.
The reader who is familiar with the stories accumulated by recent
collectors, will trace, without difficulty, in the present volume,
those fragments of the primary tales out of which story-tellers in all
parts of the world have for many generations constructed or expanded
their own tales. It is, therefore, unnecessary for me to do this. I
add, however, a few notices of some of the tales included in this
volume, merely as illustrations of the way in which they have been
built up out of older materials: like the palaces of the modern Roman
nobility, out of the marbles which were originally intended to
perpetuate the memory of the victories of the Republic and the
magnificence of the ministers of the Empire.
In the tale which is entitled 'Justice or Injustice,'[19] the manner
in which the king's daughter is enticed on ship-board, and carried off
with her attendant maidens, will at once recall the incident related
in the opening paragraph of the history of Herodotus. The resemblance
between the narrative of the abduction of the daughter of Inachus by
the Phoenician merchants, and that in the tale, is so close that it
can hardly be accidental. Some will think that this lends some support
to the notion that the account in Herodotus is mythological; others
that the Serb tale is probably based on an historical fact. That the
tale in this volume is not of Serbian origin, is evident from the
introduction of the elephants, and the description of their capture
after being intoxicated. The restoration of the hero by means of 'the
water of life,' is an incident common to very many of these
folk-tales, and may fairly be regarded as a 'story-radical.' In the
tale of 'Bash-Chalek,' this water of life is changed and christianized
into 'the water of Jordan,' whereas in its North Slavonic variant it
is still the 'water of life' which is retained as the means by which
the hero is recalled from death. In most particulars the Serbian tale
closely follows the Russian type, and may be compared with the tale
which Mr. Ralston has translated under the title of 'Marya
Morevna.'[20] The 'True Steel' of the Serbian tale is the Koshchei
the Deathless of the Russian story; and the younger brother of the
North Slavonic story is evidently the Prince Ivan of the South
Slavonic tale. Again, two of the wooers are the same in both stories,
the chief variation being that in the Serbian folk-tale the raven is
introduced instead of the dragon of the Russian story.
[19] Ralston's 'Russian Folk-Tales,' p. 85.
[20] Ralston's 'Russian Folk-Tales,' p. 85.
The Bosniac story of 'The Three Brothers' is a good example of the way
in which the expansion of these stories is effected. We have here
three separate stories thrown into one; the various incidents of which
are to be sought for in a variety of tales and in different countries.
In part the tale seems to be an echo of the Egyptian story, which,
written on papyrus and believed to be of the date of the Exodus of the
Israelites, is preserved in the Bibliothèque Impériale. Of this story,
Mr. Goodwin has given an abstract in the Cambridge Essays of 1858. The
astonishing leap made by the horse of the younger brother is but an
exaggeration of the sufficiently exaggerated exploit of Buddha's
horse, Kantako, which was thirty-six feet long, was able to go three
hundred miles in one night, and, when impeded by the Déwas, overcame
the obstacles interposed in the way of its progress by leaping across
the river Anoma, a distance of two hundred and ten feet.[21] In part,
however, the details of this part of the story accords with the
account of the leap made by the horse Rama Rajah which took three
successive leaps, not only over a wide river, but also over four
thick and tall groves of copal, soparee, guava, and cocoa-nut trees,
as told in the story of 'Rama and Luxman.'[22] Again, the iron teeth
of the sister in the Bosniac story make part of the marvels in the
Russian story of 'The Witch,'[23] and has its counterpart in the
incident of the Syriote story of 'The Striga.'[24] The way in which
the old woman destroys her victims by throwing around them a hair of
her head is also common to these folk-tales, and to several which may
be found in the collections of similar tales told in widely separated
countries.
[21] Hardy's 'Legends and Theories of the Buddhists,' p. 134.
[22] Frere's 'Old Deccan Days,' p. 76.
[23] Ralston's 'Russian Folk-Tales,' p. 163.
[24] Hahn's 'Modern Greek Household Tales,' No. lxv.
The incident of the tree growing out of the grave in the Serb story of
'The Golden-haired Twins,' makes also part of the story of 'Punchkin'
in the collection of stories from the Deccan, where a pomelo tree
which springs from the grave of a murdered person leads to the
knowledge of the murder.[25] The same incident again occurs in
'Truth's Triumph' in the same collection,[26] where the hundred and
one children of the king and Guzra Bai, after having been destroyed by
the ranee, their stepmother, and buried by her orders, have their
grave marked by a tree springing spontaneously from it; and when the
mango tree has been cut down by the orders of the ranee and directed
to be burnt, a sudden rising of the water prevents the order from
being carried out, and the trunk is floated down to a place of
security, stranded on a bank, and again changed into children.
[25] 'Old Deccan Days,' p. 4.
[26] _Ibid_, p. 54.
Another of what I have ventured to call 'primitive fragments,' because
commonly made use of in the construction of the folk-tales of various
races, makes its appearance in the story of 'The Biter Bit.' In that
story the giant demands as his reward that he should receive what the
old man had 'forgotten at home;' and obtains one of his sons, who had
been left behind when his numerous brothers had set out on their
bride-seeking expedition. This reappears in the Russian tale of 'The
Water King and Vasilissa the Wise,'[27] and also in the story of 'The
Youth' from the same lands.[28] The latter part of the story resembles
the incidents in the Indian tale of 'Sringabhuja.' In 'Peppercorn' the
episode of the maces which the hero requires, and with which he is
unsatisfied until the third has been made to stand the test of being
thrown into the air and descending on the forehead of 'Peppercorn'
without breaking the mace, but merely bruising the forehead of the
hero, occurs not only in the Serbian tale of 'The Bear's Son,' but
also the Russian story of 'Ivan Popyalof,' of which Mr. Ralston has
given us a translation; whilst the fraud practised on 'Peppercorn' by
his two companions who leave him in the deep hole down which he has
descended, and his subsequent adventures both below and on the earth,
are almost identical with incidents in another Russian folk-tale, 'The
Norka.'[29]
[27] Ralston's 'Russian Folk-Tales,' p. 120.
[28] _Ibid_, p. 139.
[29] _Ibid_, p. 73.
I have noted these various resemblances and borrowings, or rather
variations from one and the same original, because they illustrate the
way in which the tales found in all parts of the world have been built
up of fragments which are the common property of mankind. I have not
thought it necessary to trace out all the resemblances to other
tales--all the borrowings from the common stock. Most of my readers
will be able to do that for themselves. I have but adduced them by way
of example of story-building. They, however, show us that the stock of
original materials out of which these folk-tales have been constructed
is, comparatively speaking, of but limited extent, and also that the
large number of tales which compose the popular literature of the
world are but evidences of the skill with which these scanty materials
have been combined by the folk-teachers. The literature of a nation is
after all but the result of the combination of some five-and-twenty
sounds and letters.
In Serbia there is a curious distinction in the use of prose and
rhythm in these folk-stories. Prose is the vehicle for tales related
by women; rhythm the prerogative of men. Prose stories are usually
told in the domestic circle, and in gatherings of women at Selo or
Prelo. During the summer evenings when field labour and household
occupations have come to a close, it was, and indeed still is,
customary in Serbian villages for young girls, accompanied by some
older female friends, to gather in groups under the branches of some
wide-spreading tree, and then, whilst the younger people occupy
themselves in spinning, some of the older women interest the rest of
the company by relating these traditionary stories. Men are excluded
from these gatherings, and the story-telling which fills up the chief
part of these evenings is looked on as exclusively a feminine
occupation. These stories are always in prose.
There are, indeed, men story-tellers. Their tales or stories,
however, invariably assume the character of poems, and they are
generally--indeed almost always--accompanied by the monotonous sounds
of the "gusle." Generally speaking, these poems relate to historical
or mythical incidents in the life of the nation; though sometimes
they are of the same kind as the folk-tales which are given in this
volume, and which are related in the feminine circle. When this is
the case the distinction already noted is, however, strictly
observed. The folk-tale related by a woman is in prose; the same tale
told by a man is cast into the form of a poem. Even the purely
Christian legends, of which the reader is presented in this volume
with a specimen popular in Bosnia and the Herzégovina, 'The Legend of
St. George,' is related with the aid of rhythm. Legends of the latter
kind may have been, as some suppose, originally related by priests in
their churches, and possibly in prose. Now, however, that they have
passed into the possession of the professional story-tellers they
have put on the masculine garb of verse. This Homeric feature of Serb
customs is indeed now dying out with other national peculiarities. It
is, however, far from being dead, nor are such verses employed only
in celebrating the glories of the reign of Stephen Dushan, the
heroism of George Brankovich, or the mournful defeat of Kossovo. Long
tedious debates in the National Parliament, or Skoupshtina, of 1870,
on the liberty of opening and keeping shops in villages as
distinguished from towns, were summed up and reported throughout the
country in a way which would astonish the readers of the debates in
our English Parliament. The whole discussion, with the arguments of
the various speakers, took the form of a long song or poem, which was
recited in the open air before the villagers assembled to hear the
course and result of the debate. Perhaps in a similar manner the
military and naval incidents, the contentions of mighty chiefs, the
debates before the tent of Agamemnon, or in the council-house of
Troy, were thrown into verse by the Father of poetry, the Prince of
story-tellers, or, if the reader holds to the Wolfian theory, by the
professional rhapsodists, and thus made known throughout Greece in
the form of the Iliad. At any rate we have, in the practice still
living in Serbia, an instance of the way in which a Serbian Homer
would naturally have communicated to his countrymen all the details
of meetings at the council-board and skirmishes in the plain which
diversified the history of a siege, in the varying fortunes of which
their interest was enlisted.