Cambodia, include all these four incidents. The Greek Perseus legend,
for instance, has not the Life Token. Cosquin, i., 67, knows of only
eighteen which have the full contingent, one in Brittany, two in
Greece, one in Sicily, four in Italy, one each--Basque, Spanish,
Catalan, Portuguese, Danish, and Swedish; two German; one Lithuanian;
and a Russian variant. There must be many more in Bolte's notes to
Grimm, 60. These are sufficient to prove that the whole concatenation
of incident is European, though it is difficult to understand how the
Medusa incident got tacked on to the preceding three, with which it is
very loosely combined, the only point of connection being with the
Life Token. Strangely enough, in the ancient form of the folk-tale,
the Gorgon is an almost essential part of the story, though the Life
Token has disappeared, and the Supernatural Birth only applies to the
hero and not to his animal companions. In the modern European
folk-tales these animal friends are rather supernumeraries and are
occasionally replaced by the formula of the Grateful Animals, to whom
the hero does some service during his wanderings, in reward for which
they rescue him from some extremity. In some ancient variants of the
Perseus legend there are traces of the Substituted Champion in the
form of Pentheus, a former suitor of Andromeda, who had failed to meet
the dragon.
It would be impossible here to consider the folk-lore analogies of the
four chief incidents of the tale which have occupied Mr. Hartland for
three fairly large volumes to develop, out of which have grown two
more (_Primitive Paternity_, London, 1910). It is only necessary here
to refer to a few points in their relation to the tale itself. The
Supernatural Birth, which is also treated by M. Saintyves (?) is found
attributed to heroes among all nations; it is only of significance in
the story here in its bearing upon the Life Token of the hero, which
is connected with it. With regard to the Life Token, Major Temple has
a full analysis in the notes to _Wide Awake Stories_, 1884, pp. 404-5,
under the title of the "Life Index," and is closely connected with
the idea of the External Soul, which Sir James G. Frazer has studied
in his _Balder_, London, 1913, pp. 95-152. The Fight with the Dragon
is celebrated outside folk-tales in the lives of the saints (whence
St. George, the titular saint of England, gets his emblem) in the saga
of Siegfried, and in the poetry of Schiller, where it is made the
subject of a moral apologue. The Medusa-witch, who transforms into
stone, or destroys life in other ways, is quite a familiar figure in
folk tales, but is usually thwarted, as here, by some means of cure.
The chief interest, however, of the "King of the Fishes," from a
folk-tale point of view, is the remarkable similarity of the later
folk-tales with the Greek legend, from which they are separated by so
many centuries. The absence of the Life Token in the Greek version and
the comparative insignificance of Medusa in the modern tales are
sufficient evidence that these latter are not directly derived from
the former. Yet even Mr. Hartland, who is a strong adherent of the
anthropological treatment of folk-tales, fully agrees that this
particular tale must have, at one time, been composed in artistic
unity, if not containing all the four chains of incidents at least
containing two of them (_Legend of Perseus_, iii., 151). It should be
added that Rassmann and the Grimms connect the folk-tales with the
Siegfried saga (Bolte, i., 547, 555).
IV. SCISSORS
This familiar story is found as early as Pauli, "Schimpf und Ernst,"
No. 595. It is frequent in Italy, especially in Pitre's Selections.
Koehler has references to the other European versions in Blade, p.
155. Crane, _Italian Popular Tales_, No. xcvi, has rendered one of
Pitre's versions.
V. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
This rather artificial tale has never-the-less spread through all
Europe. One finds it in Italy almost in the same form as in the
original French by the Princesse de Beaumont, from whom it has got
into the ordinary fairy books of England, France and Germany. See
Crane II., "Zelinda and the Monster," pp. 7-11, with note 6, p. 324,
which contain a reference to Miss Stokes's _Indian Fairy Tales_, p.
292. The Grimm story No. 108, "Hans the Hedgehog," is more primitive
in character, and we get there the story how the Beast obtained his
terrible form. I have, however, rejected this form of it as it is not
so widespread as "Beauty and the Beast," which is one of the few
stories that we can trace, spreading through Europe practically within
our own time. The artificiality of the leading motive is sufficient
proof of the late origin of the tale. But, after all, tradition does
not distinguish between primitive or later strata. Ralston dealt with
the whole formula from the sun-moon point of view in _Nineteenth
Century_, Dec., 1878.
VI. REYNARD AND BRUIN
The main incidents of "Reynard the Fox" occur in folk-tales throughout
Europe, and it has often been discussed whether the folk-tales were
the foundation of the beast epic or vice versa. Since, however, it has
been proven that many other incidents besides those used in the beast
satire are found among the folk, it is generally allowed nowadays
that, apart from a few AEsopic fables included in the satire, the main
incidents were derived from the folk. On this subject see my
introduction to "Reynard the Fox" in the Cranford Series.
I have selected a number of the most characteristic of these
folk-tales relating to the former friendship and later enmity of the
Fox and the Bear, basing my compilation on the admirable monographs
of Prof. K. Krohn of Helsingfors, "Mann und Fuchs," 1891, "Baer (Wolf)
und Fuchs; eine nordische Tiermaerchenkette," in _Journal de la Societe
Finno-Ougrienne_, vi., Helsingissa, 1889, and "Die geografische
Verbreitung einer nordischen in Finnland," in _Fennia_, iv., 4. The
latter monograph is accompanied by an interesting map of Finland,
showing the distribution of the Scandinavian form of these stories, in
which the Bear is the opponent of the Fox, and the Slavonic form in
which the Wolf takes that position. As there is obviously a
mythological tendency at the root of the stories, intending to account
for the shortness of the Bear's tail and the white tip of the Fox's,
it is clear that the Scandinavian form is the more original.
I have tried to collect together in a logical narrative:
(a) Fox and Bear in partnership--(Top-off, Half-gone, All-gone).
(b) Fox in fish cart.
(c) Iced Bear's tail.
(d) Fox and cream jug.
(e) Fox on Bear's back.
(f) Fox in briar bush.
(g) Man promises Fox two geese for freeing him from Bear.
(h) Gives him two dogs.
(k) Fox and limbs; sacrifices tail.
In his article in _Fennia_, Prof. Krohn refers to no less than 708
variants of these different episodes, of which, however, 362 are from
the enormous Finnish collections of folk lore in possession of the
Finnish Literary Society at Helsingfors. The others include the
majority of European folk-tale collections with a goodly sprinkling of
Asiatic, African and American ones, the last, however, being confined
to "Uncle Remus," in which four out of the ten incidents occur in
isolated adventures of Brer Rabbit.
Many of the incidents occur separately in early literature; (g) (h)
(k) for example, which form one sequence, are found not alone in
Renard but also in Alfonsi, 1115, and Waldis. (c) The iced bear's tail
occurs in the Latin _Ysengrimus_, of the twelfth century, in the
_Renart_ of the thirteenth, and, strangely enough, in the Hebrew _Fox
Fables_ of Berachyah ha-Nakadan, whom I have identified with an Oxford
Jew late in the twelfth century. See my edition of Caxton, _Fables of
Europe_, i., p. 176. The fact that ice is referred to in the last case
would seem to preclude an Indian origin for this part of the
collection.
It is not quite certain however that all the above incidents were
necessarily connected together originally. The fish cart (b), and the
iced bear's tail (c), are so closely allied that they probably formed
a unity in the original conception, though they are often found
separately nowadays among the folk. Bear and Fox in partnership (a),
is found elsewhere told of other animals, notably of the firm of Cat
and Mouse in Grimm No. 2. It is difficult to determine at present
whether stories relating to other animals, or even to associations of
men, have been applied by peasant narrators to the general opposition
of the sly _versus_ the strong animal, which they have dramatized in
the beast satire of Reynard and Bruin.
For a discussion of the whole subject, see A. Gerber, _Great Russian
Animal Tales_, Baltimore, 1891, who discusses the incidents included
in the above compilation in his notes on v. (a), i. (b), ii. (c), iii.
(d), iv. (e), iva. (f), ix. (g), x. (h), xi. (k). It will be found
that few of the other incidents contained in Gerber can be traced
throughout Europe except when they are evidently derived from AEsop.
VII. DANCING WATER
This story has the peculiarity, that it occurs in the Arabian Nights
as well as in so many European folk-tales. Hahn includes it under his
formula No. 4, Genoveva (add Gonz. 5, Dozon 2, Denton 238, Day xix.),
H. Coote, in _Folk-Lore Record_, vol. iii., part 2, in a paper on
"Folk-Lore, the Source of some of M. Galland's Tales," contends that
the "Tale of the Two Sisters who Envied their Cadette," as well as Ali
Baba, Aladdin, and Ahmed and Paribanou, were derived from Arabic
folk-lore rather than from any Arabic manuscript version. We know now
that this is not true of Aladdin; and Zotenberg has traced all these
extra tales of Galland to the oral recitation of his Christian
dragoman Hanna. Coote finds the two envious sisters to be an enormous
favorite in Italy and Sicily, being found in Pitre, Berti, Imbriani,
Nerucci, and Comparetti. The story of the girl is sometimes told
separately as a _fiaba_. Coote remarks that Leon Bruno is Greek (see
Hahn, p. 131 and F. L. R., i., 209), and is derived from the _Arabian
Nights_ in the story of the princess of the islands of Wakwak; it also
occurs in Straparola and Madame D'Aulnoy; Brueyre has something
similar in Brittany, p. 93; Kohler in _Melusine_, pp. 213, 214,
compares the Breton tale, given there, with the _Arabian Nights_.
The boy with the moon or the sun on his forehead is a frequent
character in Indian folk-tales (see Temple, _Wide Awake Stories_). The
possibility of Galland's version having passed into the East from
Europe does not seem to have been considered till I suggested it in my
Introduction to the _Arabian Nights_. There is little doubt that Open
Sesame is European, and similarly this story occurs in Straparola
early enough to prevent any possibility of doubt on the subject. The
sequel of incidents appears to be as follows:
Overheard Boasting--Three Marriages--Substituted Children--Quest
Tasks--Life Token--Speech Taboo--Brother's Failure--Sister's
Success--Guilt Revelation--Punishment of Envious Sisters. Some of
these incidents, like the Life Token, occur in other collocations but
are sufficiently appropriate here; Imbriani has three versions, vi.,
vii., viii., with notes.
I have mostly followed Crane, pp. 17-25 (see also his notes, pp.
325-6).
VIII. LANGUAGE OF ANIMALS
_Source._--Sir J. G. Frazer, in _Archaeological Review_, i., 81-91,
161-81, who made an attempt, the first of its kind, to restore the
original archetype of the story of "The Boy Who Became Pope," on the
same principle as classical scholars restore readings from families of
MSS. He uses Grimm, xxxiii.; Crane, xliii.; Sebillot, 2d series xxv.;
and Fleury, 123 _seq._ I have, on the whole, followed his
reconstruction, but have introduced, from the version in the "Seven
Wise Masters," the motive for the father's anger when learning that he
would have, some day, to offer his son water to wash in; Sir James, in
a private communication, concurs in the insertion. The folk versions
are, in this instance, peculiarly poor, and I have therefore had
largely to rewrite, preserving, however, the common incidents.
_Formula._--The following formula gives the common elements of the
four parallels used by Sir James Frazer, with my insertion of the bird
prophecy (father-water, mother-towel):
Simple Boy--Sent to School--Learns Language of Dogs, Frogs and
Birds--Bird Prophecy (Father-Water, Mother-Towel)--Hero
Exposed--Intended Murderer Brings Back Deer's Heart--Three adventures
on Road--Dogs Warn Burglary--Frog Restores Host to Sick Girl--Bird
Prophesies Papacy (one of three companions)--Pope Election--Heavenly
Sign (dove and bell)--Bird Prophecy Fulfilled--Father Repentance.
_Parallels._--Besides the four sources used by Sir James Frazer, he
gives two variants of the Breton from _Melusine_, i., cols. 300, 374,
and the "Seven Wise Masters" version, with six variants: Russian,
Masurian, two Basques, and a Turkish one. In the Russian version the
father-water, mother-towel prophecy occurs, which could not have
arisen independently. In the Masurian version the prophecy is more
primitive ("Your mother will wash your feet, and your father will
drink the water"). In the remaining versions the prophecy is more
vague, that the parents shall be the son's servants. In the
_Pentamerone_ there is a story in which a father has five simple sons
whom he sends into the world to learn experience. The younger returns
with a knowledge of the language of birds. But the rest of the story
is not of our type.
_Remarks._--In his second paper (_Arch. Rev._ i., 161 _seq._) Sir
James Frazer has many interesting remarks upon the folk conception of
the means of acquiring a knowledge of the language of animals. This is
generally done by a gift of magic rings, or by eating magic plants
(mainly fern) or eating serpents (generally white). Sir James Frazer
connects the rings with serpents by suggesting that serpents are
supposed to have stones in their head which confer magic powers (_As
You Like It_, iv., 2.) He further connects the notion of eating
serpents with acquiring the language of birds by referring to the
views of Democritus that serpents are generated from the mixed blood
of diverse birds and are therefore in a strict sense blood relations
of them; this idea, he suggests, may have arisen from the fact that
serpents eat birds' eggs. It would be an easy transition in
folk-thought to consider that serpents would understand the language
of the birds they ate and that persons eating serpents would
understand the language of both. So Sigurd understands the language of
birds, after eating the blood of Fafnir the Worm. But all this throws
little light upon the story itself.
Bolte gives, i., 323-4, many folk-tales in which the hero becomes not
a pope but a king and compares the story of Joseph in the Bible as
possibly a source of the Prophetic Dream of the father and mother
waiting upon the son. The transference to the pope may have been
influenced by the tradition given by Vincent of Beauvais (_Spec.
Hist._, xxiv., 98) that Sylvester II. learned at Seville the language
of birds. There was also the tradition that at the election of
Innocent III., 1198, three doves flew about the cathedral, one of
which, a white one, at last settled down upon his shoulder. Raumer,
_Gesch. d. Hohenstaufen_, ii., 595.
IX. THE THREE SOLDIERS
This tale is widely spread through Europe, being found from Ireland to
Greece, from Esthonia to Catalonia. It is generally told of three
soldiers, or often brothers, but more frequently casual comrades. In
Kohler's notes on Imbriani, p. 356-7, he points out that there are
three different forms, in the first of which the fairy's gifts are
recovered by means of a defect produced, which only one of the
soldiers can cure. In the second form the latter part is wanting, and
in the third the two gifts are restored by means of the third, which
is generally in the form of a stick. See _English Fairy Tales_, No.
32. In my reconstruction I have followed the first form. Cosquin, XI.,
has a fairly good variant of this, with comparative notes. Crane,
XXXI., gives, from Gonzenbach, the story of the shepherd boy who makes
the princess laugh, which is allied to our formula, mainly by its
second part. And it is curious to find the three soldiers reproduced
in Campbell's Gaelic, No. 10. In this version the magic gifts are
wheedled out of the soldiers by the princess, but they get them back
and go back to their "girls."
In the Chinese version of the Buddhist Tripitaka, a monk presents a
man who has befriended him with a copper jug, which gives him all he
wishes. The king gets this from the monk, but has to return it when he
gets another jar which is full of sticks and stones. Aarne in
_Fennia_, xxvii., 1-96, 1909, after a careful study of the numerous
variants of the East and West, declares that the original contained
three gifts and arose in southern Europe. From the three gifts came
three persons and afterwards the form in which only two gifts occur.
Against this is the earliest of the Tripitaka versions, 516 A.D.,
which has only two magic gifts. Albertus Magnus was credited with a
bag out of which used to spring lads with cudgels to assail his
enemies.
X. DOZEN AT ONE BLOW
This story is familiar to English-speaking children as Jack the Giant
Killer, but it is equally widespread abroad as told of a little tailor
or cobbler. In the former case there is almost invariably the
introduction of the ingenious incident, "Seven at a Blow," the number
varying from three to twenty-seven. I have adopted a fair average. The
latter part of the story is found very early in M. Montanus,
_Wegfuehrer_, Strassburg, 1557, though most of the incidents occur in
folk tales scattered throughout the European area. Bolte even suggests
that the source of the whole formula is to be found in Montanus and
gives references to early chapbook visions in German, Dutch, Danish,
Swedish and English (i., 154-6). But the very numerous versions in
East Europe must in that case have been derived from oral tradition
from these. Something similar has even spread to Greenland, where the
story of the Giant and the boy is told by Rae, _Great White
Peninsula_. (See Grimm, tr. Hunt, i., 364.) The Dutch version is told
of Kobis the Dauntless. Cosquin, who has two versions (8 and 25), has
more difficulty than usual in finding the full plot in Oriental
sources, though various incidents have obviously trickled through to
the East, as for example the hero Nasnai Bahadur in the Caucasus, who
overcomes his three narts, or giants, very much in the same manner as
our tailor.
XI. EARL OF CATTENBOROUGH
This Puss-in-Boots formula has become universally European from
Perrault's version, to whom we owe the boots that occur in no other
version, so that I have been reluctantly obliged to take them off. But
apart from this the story in its entirety existed earlier in
Straparola, xi., 1, and in the _Pentamerone_, and is found widely
spread through Italy (Pitre, 88; Imbriani, 10; Gonzenbach, 65, etc.),
as well as in Hungary (Jones and Kropf, No. 1), Germany (Grimm, 33a),
and even in Finland (see Jones and Kropf, p. 305). In some of these
cases the cat is a vixen (or female fox), and the incident of the
false bathing and the marriage occurs before reaching the ogre's
castle, as is indeed more natural. I have, therefore, so far amended
Perrault. In most of the folk versions the miller's son betrays
ingratitude towards his animal protector, who sometimes reduces him to
his original state. This final incident, unknown to Perrault, shows
the independence of these versions from that contained in his Mother
Goose Stories. In Sweden the hero, if one may speak Hibernically, is a
girl, who turns up her nose at everything in the palace as not being
so good as in her castle of Cattenburg (Thorpe quoted by Lang,
_Perrault_, p. lxxi.). In India it is found in Day, _Folk Tales of
Bengal_, under the title of "The Matchmaking Jackal," which has
numerous Indian touches; thus the jackal remembers the grandeur of the
weaver's forefathers and rolls himself in betel leaves. Sultan Darai,
in the Swahili version (Steere), has the stripping incident and the
no-talking trick, as well as the ingratitude at end. Lang argues
elaborately that it is impossible to determine the original home of
Puss-in-Boots, though he seems to own that it had one. His criterion
is the absence or presence of a moral in the story, in this case the
incident showing the ingratitude of the Marquis. This occurs, as we
have seen, as far south as Madagascar, and as far east as India, but,
after all, does not seem to be the essence of the story, though in one
of the versions the cat does his tricks for the miller because he had
previously saved him from the hunters. The late Mr. Ralston has an
interesting article on Puss-in-Boots in the _Nineteenth Century_,
August, 1883, though in his days there was a tendency to explain all
fairy tales as variants of the Sun and Moon myths.
It is right that I should add that the servant's evening salute has
nothing to do with the story but is a tradition in my own family,
where my grandfather's servant used to utter this rhyme in a sort of
chant when bidding the family good-night.
XII. THE SWAN MAIDENS
The Swan Maidens occur very widely spread and have been studied with
great diligence by Mr. E. S. Hartland in two chapters (x., xi.) of his
_Science of Fairy Tales_ (pp. 255-347). In consonance with his general
principle of interpretation, Mr. Hartland is mainly concerned with the
traces of primitive thought and custom to be seen in the Swan Maidens.
Originally these were, according to him, probably regarded as actual
swans, the feathery robe being a later symbolic euphemism, though I
would incidentally remark that the whole of the story _as a story_
depends upon the seizure of a separate dress involving the capture of
the swan bride. Mr. Hartland is inclined to believe partly with F.
Liebrecht in _Zur Volkskunde_, pp. 54-65, that these mysterious
visitors from another world are really the souls of deceased persons
(probably regarded as totemistic ancestresses). In some forms of the
story, enumerated by Mr. Hartland, the captured wife returns to her
original home, not when she recovers her robe of feathers but when the
husband breaks some tabu (strikes her, chides her, refers to her
sisters, sees her nude, etc.).
From the standpoint of "storyology" from which we are mainly
considering the stories here purely as stories, the Swan Maidens
formula is especially interesting as showing the ease with which a
simple theme can be elaborated and contaminated by analogous ones. The
essence of the story is the capture of a bride by a young man who
seizes her garment and thus gets her _in manu_, as the Roman lawyers
say. She bears him children, but, on recovering her garment, flies
away and is no more heard of. Sometimes she superfluously imposes a
tabu upon her husband, which he breaks and she disappears (Melusine
variant; compare Lohengrin). This is the effective and affecting
incident of which Matthew Arnold makes such good use in his _Merman_.
It could obviously be used, as Mr. Hartland points out, in a
quasi-mythological manner to account for supernatural ancestry, as in
the cases of the physicians of Myddvai in Wales, or of the Counts of
Lusignan. But on this simple basis folk tellers have developed
elaborations derived from other formulae. In several cases, notably in
the _Arabian Nights_ (Jamshah and Hasan of Bassora), the capture of
the swan maiden is preceded by the Forbidden Chamber formula. Then
when the bride flies away there is the Bride-Quest, which is often
helped by Thankful Animals and aided by the Magical Weapons. When the
hero reaches the home of the bride he has often to undergo a
Recognition-Test, or even is made to undertake Acquisition Tasks
derived from the Jason formula; and even when he obtains his wishes in
many versions of the story there is the Pursuit with Obstacles also
familiar from the same formula.