Lacroix has probably gone too far in attributing to Perrault's son the
complete authorship of the Tales. It is true that the title of the Dutch
reprint of 1697 describes the book as 'par le fils de Monsieur
Perrault.' The Abbe de Villiers, however, in his _Entretiens sur les
Contes des Fees_ (a Paris chez Jacques Collombat, 1699), makes one of
his persons praise the stories 'que l'on attribue au fils d'un celebre
Academicien,' for their freshness and imitation of the style of nurses.
Another speaker in the dialogue, The Parisian, replies, 'quelque estime
que j'aie pour le fils de l'Academicien, j'ai peine a croire que le pere
n'ait pas mis la main a son ouvrage,' p. 109. This opinion is probably
correct. It seems that Perrault was not troubled by attacks on his
_Contes_, and, in biographical works the tales were long attributed to
his son. But M. Paul Lacroix declares that this son was nineteen years
of age when the stories appeared. This looks incredible on the face of
it. Mlle. L'Heritier could hardly have said about a young man of
nineteen, that he 'occupe si spirituellement les amusemens de son
enfance' in writing out _Contes naifs_. Nor would a man of that age, in
a century too, when the young took on them manly duties so early,
describe himself in his dedicatory letter as 'un enfant.' M. Charles
Giraud gives the boy's age as ten, without citing his authority. (Lyons
Edition of 1865, p. lxxiv.) Moreover the idea of educating a young man
of that age by making him write out fairy tales would have seemed, and
would justly have seemed, ridiculous. We must believe that P. Darmancour
was a child when the stories were published, and we may agree with the
Abbe Villiers that the Academician 'put a hand to them.' M. Lacroix's
authority is the discovery by M. Jal of the birth of Pierre Perrault, a
son of Charles, who would have been nineteen in 1697. (Jal's
_Dictionnaire Critique_, p. 1321.) But Jal did not find the register of
baptism of Mademoiselle Perrault. It follows that he may have also
failed to find that of other young Perraults, including 'P. Darmancour.'
Each of Perrault's first sons (May 25, 1675; Oct. 20, 1676), was called
Charles, the second had a Samuel added to the name. Perrault may also
have had two or more Pierres; in any case, unless P. Darmancour were an
idiot, his education could not have been conducted by making him write
out nursery tales at nineteen.]
[Footnote 20: Even in the popular mouth almost any formula may glide
into almost any other, and there is actually a female Hop o' My Thumb in
Aberdeenshire folklore. But Madame d'Aulnoy's seems a wanton confusion.
The Aberdeen female _Hop o' My Thumb_ is _Malty Whuppy_, Folk Lore
Journal, p. 68, 1884. For _Finette Cendron_, see _Nouveaux Contes des
Fees_, par Madame D----, Amsterdam, Roger, 1708.]
[Footnote 21: Paul de Saint Victor, _Hommes et Dieux_, p. 474.]
[Footnote 22: _L'Histoire de Melusine_ (Barbin, Paris, 1698) is
dedicated like _Histoires et Contes du Tems Passe_ to _Mademoiselle_.
The author says, 'Si tost que la plus celebre des Fees a sceu que votre
Altesse Royale avoit eu la bonte de donner de favourables audiences aux
Fees du bas ordre, et qu'elle avoit pris quelque plaisir au recit de
leurs avanteures,' she came forward and asked Mademoiselle to patronise
her own. A burlesque 'Privilege en faveur des Fees dans ce temps ou l'on
a tant d'engouement pour les Contes des Fees' ends the volume.]
FAIRIES AND OGRES.
The stories of Perrault are usually called 'Fairy Tales,' and they
deserve the name more than most _contes_, except the artificial
contemporary tales, because in them Fairies or Fees do play a
considerable part. Thus there were seven Fairies, and an old one
'supposed dead or enchanted,' in the _Sleeping Beauty_. There is a Fairy
Godmother in _Cinderella_, and, as will be shown in the study on
_Cinderella_, she takes the part usually given, in traditional versions,
to a cow, a sheep, or a dead mother who has some mystic connection with
the beast. The same remarks apply to the Fairy Godmother in _Peau
d'Ane_. She, too, does for the heroine what beasts do in purely popular
European variants, and in analogous tales from South Africa.
The fairies in _Riquet of the Tuft_ are of little importance, as the
narrative is not really traditional, but of literary invention for the
most part. The fairy in _The Two Wishes_ is not a fairy in the South
African variants where divers magical or animal characters appear, nor
can _Mother Holle_ in Grimm (24) be properly styled a fairy. Thus, of
all Perrault's Fairies only the Fairies of the _Sleeping Beauty_
(repeated in _Riquet of the Tuft_) answer to Fairies as they appear in
genuine popular traditions, under such names as Moirai, or Hathors, in
ancient Greek, and Egyptian versions. These beings attend women in
child-bed, as they attended Althea when she bore Meleager, and they
predict the fortunes of the infant.
Perrault's fairy godmothers (unlike the fairies of real legend) are
machinery of his own, and even he dispenses with Fairies altogether in
_Blue Beard_, _Hop o' my Thumb_, and _Puss in Boots_; while in _Les
Trois Souhaits_ the mythological machinery of the classics is employed,
and Jupiter does what a fairy might have done. It is true that the key
of the forbidden door, in _Blue Beard_, is said to be _Fee_; but this
only means that, like the seven-leagued Boots in _Hop o' my Thumb_
('elles estoient Fees'), the key has magical qualities. The part of
Fairies, then, is very restricted, even in Perrault, while, in
traditional _Maerchen_ all over the world, Fairies or beings analogous to
the Fairies appear comparatively seldom.
In spite of this the Fairies have so successfully asserted their title
over popular tales, that a few words on their character and origin seem
not out of place. Fairies are doubtless much older than their name; as
old as the belief in spirits of woods, hills, lonely places, and the
nether world. The familiar names, _fees_, _fades_, are apparently
connected with _Fatum_, the thing spoken, and with _Fata_, the Fates who
speak it, and the God _Fatuus_, or Faunus, and his sister or wife
_Fatua_[23]. Preller quotes the _Fatuae_ as spiritual maidens of the
forests and elements, adding the other names of _Sagae_ and _Sciae_, to
Fatuae, and Fata[24]. He compares the Slavonic Wilis: and, to be brief,
the Apsaras of India, the Nereids of ancient and modern Greece, and the
Good Ladies and Fairies of Scotland, with many of the Melanesian Vuis,
forest-haunting spirits, are all of the same class, are fairy beings
informing the streams and wilds. To these good folk were ascribed gifts
of prophecy, commonly exercised beside the cradle of infancy, _deabus
illis quae fata nascentibus canunt, et dicuntur Carmentes_[25]. As Maury
shows[26], the local Fairies of Roman Gaul were propitiated with altars:
FATIS
DERVONIBUS
V. S. L. M. M. RVFNVS
SEVERVS.
Just as the Scotch Fairies are euphemistically styled 'The Good Folks,'
'The People of Peace,' the 'Good Ladies,' so it befell the daughter of
Faunus. She was styled 'The Good Goddess,' and her real name was
tabooed[27].
It was natural that when Christianity reached Gaul, where the native
spirits of woods and wells had acquired the name of _Fata_, these minor
goddesses should survive the official heathen religion. The temples of
the high gods were overthrown, or turned into churches, but who could
destroy all the woodland fanes of the Fata, who could uproot the dread
of them from the hearts of peasants? Saints and Councils denounced the
rural offerings to fountains and the roots of trees, but the secret
shame-faced worship lasted deep into the middle ages[28]. It is
conjectured by Maury, as by Walckenaer (_Lettres sur les Contes de
Fees_; Paris, 1826), that the functions of prophetic Gaulish Maidens and
Druidesses were confused with those of the Fairies. Certainly
superstitious ideas of many kinds came under the general head of belief
in _Fata_, _Faes_, _Fadae_, and the _Fees_ of the forest of Broceliande.
The _Fees_ answered, as in the _Sleeping Beauty_, to Greek _Moirai_ or
Egyptian _Hathors_[29]. They nursed women in labour: they foretold the
fate of children. It is said that when a Breton lady was giving birth to
a child, a banquet for the _Fees_ was set in the neighbouring
chamber[30]. But, in popular superstition, if not in Perrault's tales,
the _Fees_ had many other attributes. They certainly inherited much from
the pre-Christian idea of Hades. In the old MS. _Prophesia Thomae de
Erseldoun_[31] the subterranean fairy-world is the under-world of pagan
belief. In the mediaeval form of Orpheus and Eurydice (_Orfeo and
Heurodis_), it is not the King of the Dead, but the king of Fairy that
carries off the minstrel's bride. Fairyland, when Orpheus visits it, is
like Homer's Hades.
'_And sum thurch the bodi hadde wounde
Wives ther lay on childe bedde
Sum dede and sum awedde._'
In the same way Chaucer calls Pluto 'King of Fayrie,' and speaks of
'Proserpine and all her fayrie,' in the _Merchant's Tale_. Moreover
Alison Pearson, when she visited Elfland, found there many of the dead,
among them Maitland of Lethington, and one of the Buccleughs. For all
this dealing with fairies and the dead was Alison burned (Scott, _Border
Minstrelsy_, ii. 137-152).
Because the mediaeval Fairies had fallen heir to much of the
pre-Christian theory of Hades, it does not follow, of course, that the
Fairies were originally ancestral ghosts. This origin has been claimed
for them, however, and it is pointed out that the stone arrow-heads of
an earlier race are, when found by peasants, called 'elf-shots,' and
attributed to the Fairies. Now the real owners and makers were certainly
a race dead and gone, as far as a race can die. But probably the
ownership of the arrows by elves is only the first explanation that
occurs to the rural fancy. On the other hand, it is candid to note that
the Zulu Amatongo, certainly 'ancestral ghosts,' have much in common
with Scotch and Irish fairies. 'It appears to be supposed,' says Dr.
Callaway, 'that the dead become "good people," as the dead among the
Amazulu become Amatongo, and, in the funeral processions of the "good
people" which some profess to see, are recognised the forms of those who
have lately died, as Umkatshana saw his relatives among the Abapansi,'
and as Alison saw Maitland of Lethington and Buccleuch in Elfland. This
Umkatshana followed a deer into a hole in the ground, where he found
dead men whom he knew[32]. Compare Campbell, _Tales from the West
Highlands_, ii. 56, 65, 66, 106, where it is written, 'the Red Book of
Clanranald is said not to have been dug up, but found _on_ the moss. It
seemed as if the ancestors sent it.'
Those rather gloomy fairies of the nether-world have little but the name
in common with the fairies of Herrick, of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_,
and of Drayton's _Nymphidia_. The gay and dancing elves have a way, in
Greece, of making girls 'dance with the Nereids' till they dance
themselves to death. In the same way it is told of Anne Jefferies, of
St. Teath in Cornwall (born 1626), that one had seen her 'dancing in the
orchard, among the trees, and that she informed him she was then dancing
with the Fairies.' She lived to be seventy, in spite of the Fairies and
the local magistrates who tried her case (Scott, _B.M._ ii. 156).
Perrault's fairies do not wed mortal men, in this differing from the
Indian Apsaras, and the fairies of New Zealand and of Wales. (Taylor's
_New Zealand_, p. 143. Compare story of Urvasi and Pururavas, Max
Mueller, _Selected Essays_, i. 408. A number of other examples of Fairy
loves, including one from America, is given in _Custom and Myth_, pp.
68-86.)
On a general view of the evidence, it appears as if the fashion for
fairy tales, in Perrault's time, had made rather free with the old
_Fata_ or _Fees_. Perrault sins much less than the Comtesse d'Aulnoy, or
the Comtesse de Murat, but even he brings in a _Fatua ex machina_ where
popular tradition used other expedients.
As to the Ogres in Perrault, a very few words may suffice. They are
simply the survival, in civilised folklore, of the cannibals,
_Rakshasas_, _Weendigoes_, and man-eating monsters who are the dread of
savage life in Africa, India, and America. Concerning them, their
ferocity, and their stupidity, enough will be said in the study of _Le
Petit Poucet_. As to the name of Ogre, Walckenaer derives it from
_Oigour_, a term for the Hungarian invaders of the ninth century, a
Tartar tribe[33]. Hence he concludes that the Ogre-stories are later
than the others, though, even if 'Ogre' meant 'Tartar,' only the name is
recent, and the Cannibal tales are of extreme antiquity. Littre, on the
other hand, derives _ogre_ from _Orcus_, _cum Orco rationem habere_
meaning to risk one's life. Hop o' my Thumb certainly risked his, when
he had to do 'cum Orco,' if Orcus be _Ogre_ (_Lettres sur les Contes de
Fees_, p. 169-172).
[Footnote 23: Fauno fuit uxor nomine Fatua. Justin, xliii. I. Preller,
_R. M._ I. 385.]
[Footnote 24: _Roemische Mythologie_, i. 100. Berlin, 1881.]
[Footnote 25: Preller, _op. cit._ ii. 194, quoting Tertullian, _De An._
39, and Augustine, _Civitas Dei_, iv. 11.]
[Footnote 26: _Les Fees du Moyen Age_, p. 13. Paris, 1843.]
[Footnote 27: Quam quidam, quod nomine dici prohibitum fuerat, _Bonam
Deam_ appellatam volunt. Servius, _AEneid_, viii. 315.]
[Footnote 28: Maury, _Les Fees du Moyen Age_, pp. 15, 16, and his
authorities in the _Capitulaires_ and _Life of Saint Eloi_.]
[Footnote 29: Amyot, in his Plutarch, actually renders _Moirai_ by
_Fees_ (1567).]
[Footnote 30: Maury, p. 31.]
[Footnote 31: Scott, _Border Minstrelsy_, iii. 381.]
[Footnote 32: _Nursery Tales of the Zulus_, p. 317; _Amatongo_, p. 227.]
[Footnote 33: In popular French versions the Ogre is often called _Le
Sarrasin_ to this day (Sebillot in _Melusine_, May 5, 1887).]
NOTES ON THE
SEVERAL TALES BY PERRAULT,
AND THEIR VARIANTS.
LES TROIS SOUHAITS.
_The Three Wishes._
The story of _The Three Wishes_ is very valuable as an illustration of
the difficulties which baffle, and perhaps will never cease to baffle,
the student of popular Tales and their diffusion. The fundamental idea
is that a supernatural being of one sort or another can grant to a
mortal the fulfilment of a wish, or wishes, and that the mortal can
waste the boon. Now probably this idea might occur to any human mind
which entertained the belief in communication between men, and powerful
persons of any sort, Gods, Saints, Tree-spirits, fairies, _follets_ or
the like. The mere habit of prayer, universally human as it is, contains
the germs of the conception. But the notion, as we find it in story,
branches out into a vast variety of shapes, and the problem is to
determine which of these, or whether any one of these is the original
type, and whether the others have been adapted or burlesqued from that
first form, and whether these processes have been the result of literary
transmission, and literary handling, or of oral traditions and popular
fancy. Perhaps a compact statement of some (by no means all) of the
shapes of _The Three Wishes_ may here be serviceable.
1. The granters of the Wishes are gods. The gift is accepted in a pious
spirit, and the desires are noble, and worthy of the donors.
This tale occurs in Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, viii. 610-724. Baucis and
Philemon entertain the gods, who convert their hut into a Temple. They
_wish_ (the man is the speaker) to serve the gods in this fane, and that
neither may outlive the other:
Nec conjugis umquam
Busta meae videam: neu sim tumulandus ab illa.
Their wishes are fulfilled.
2. In German popular tales, this idea appears, with additions, in _Rich
and Poor_ (Grimm 87). Here the virtue of the good is contrasted with the
folly of the bad. The Poor man hospitably receives our Lord, and, for
his three wishes, chooses eternal happiness, health and daily bread, and
a new house. The Rich man rejects our Lord, but getting a second chance,
loses his temper, wishes his horse dead, the saddle on his wife's back,
and--the saddle off again!
Now popular fancy has been better pleased with the burlesque ideas in
the second part of this fable, than with the serious moral; and most of
the tales turn on burlesque wishes, leaving the virtuous wishers out of
the story. The narrative also shews a Protean power of altering details,
the wishes vary, the power who grants the wish is different in different
_Maerchen_, the person whose folly wastes the wish may be the husband, or
may be the wife.
A very old form of the Wasted Wish, originally no doubt a popular form,
won its way into literature in the _Pantschatantra_. The tale has also
been annexed by Buddhism, as Buddhism annexed most tales, by the simple
process of making Sakya Muni the hero or narrator of the adventures.
The _Pantschatantra_ is a collection of fables in Sanskrit. In its
original form, according to Mr. Max Mueller, its date can be fixed, by
aid of an ancient Persian translation, as previous to 550 A.D. 'At that
time a collection somewhat like the Pa_n_katantra, though much more
extensive, must have existed[34].' By various channels the stories of
the _Pantschatantra_ reached Persia, Arabia, Greece, and thence were
rendered into Latin, and again, were paraphrased in different vernacular
languages, by literary people. But when we find, as we do, a story in
the _Pantschatantra_ and a similar or analogous story in the Arabic
_Book of Sindibad_ (earlier than the tenth century), and again in the
Greek _Syntipas_ (eleventh and twelfth century), and again in Latin, or
Spanish, or French literature, we cannot, perhaps, always be sure that
the tale is derived from India through literary channels. Whoever will
compare the _Wish_ story of the _Double-headed Weaver_ in the
_Pantschatantra_[35] with _The Three Wishes_ in the _Book of Sindibad_
(Comparetti. _Folk Lore Society_, 1882, p. 147), and again, with Marie
de France's twenty-fourth Fable (_Dou Vilain qui prist un folet_), and
yet again with Perrault's _Trois Souhaits_, and, lastly, with the
popular tales among Grimm's variants, will find many perplexing problems
before him[36]. The differences in the details and in the conduct of the
story are immense. Did the various authors borrow little but the main
conception--the wasted wishes? Are the variations the result of literary
caprice and choice? Has the story travelled from India by two
channels,--(1) literary, in _Pantschatantra_, and _Syntipas_ with the
translations; (2) oral, by word of mouth from people to people? Are the
_popular_ versions derived from literature, or from oral tradition? Is
the oldest literary version, that of the _Pantschatantra_, more akin to
the _original_ version than some of the others which meet us later?
Finally, might not the idea of wasted wishes occur independently to
minds in different ages and countries, and may not some of the versions
be of independent origin, and in no way borrowed from India? Is there,
indeed, any reason at all for supposing that so simple a notion was
invented, once for all, in India?
It is easy to ask these questions, it is desirable to bear them in mind,
so that we may never lose sight of the complexity and difficulty of the
topic. But it is practically impossible to answer them once for all.
The nature of the problem may now be illustrated by a few examples. In
the story of the _Pantschatantra_, the granter of the wish (there is but
one wish) is a tree-dwelling spirit. A very stupid weaver one day broke
part of his loom. He went out to cut down a tree near the shore, meaning
to fashion it for his purpose, when a spirit, who dwelt in the timber,
cried, 'Spare this tree.' The weaver said he must starve if he did not
get the wood, when the spirit replied, 'Ask anything else you please.'
The barber, being consulted, advised the weaver to wish to be king. The
weaver's wife cried, 'No, stay as you are, but ask for two heads, and
four hands, to do double work.' He got his wish, but was killed by the
villagers, who very naturally supposed him to be a Rakshasa, or ogre.
The moral is enunciated by the barber, 'Let no man take woman's
counsel.' The poor woman's lack of immoderate ambition might seem
laudable to some moralists.
Here the peculiarities are: A tree-ghost grants the wish.
There is only one wish.
It is made on a woman's advice.
It causes the death of the wisher[37].
The story is next found in the various forms of the _Book of Sindibad_,
Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Arabic, and old Spanish, a book mentioned by all
Arabic authors of the tenth century, and of Indian and Buddhistic
origin[38]. As told in the various forms of _Sindibad_, the tale of _The
Three Wishes_ takes this shape. A man has a friendly spirit (a she-devil
in the Spanish _Libro de los Engannos_), who is obliged to desert his
company, but leaves him certain formulae, by dint of repeating which he
will have Three Wishes granted to him. The tree-spirit has disappeared,
the one wish has become three. The man consults with his wife, who
suggests that he should desire, not two heads and four hands, but an
obscene and disgusting bodily transformation of another sort. He wishes
the wish, is horrified by the result, and, on the woman's hint, asks to
have all that embarrasses him removed. The granting of the wish leaves
him with 'a frightful _minus_ quantity,' and he expends the third wish
in getting restored to his pristine and natural condition. The woman
explains that she had not counselled him to desire wealth, lest he
should weary of her and desert her. This, at least, is the conclusion in
the Hebrew version, in the _Parables of Sandabas_ (Deulin, _Contes de Ma
Mere L'Oye_, p. 71).
How are we to account for this metamorphosis of the story in the
_Pantschatantra_? Is the alteration a piece of Arabian humour? Was there
another Indian version corresponding to the shape of the tale in the
_Book of Sindibad_? The questions cannot be answered with our present
knowledge.
Another change, and a very remarkable one, occurs in the _Fables_ of
Marie de France. Of Marie not much is known. In the _Conclusion_ of her
Fables, she says--
'Au finement de cest escrit
K'en Romanz ai turne et dit,
Me numerai par remembraunce
Marie ai num, si sui de Fraunce.
* * * * *
Pur amur le cumte Willaume
Le plus vaillant de cest Royaume,
M'entremis de cest livre feire
E de l'Angleiz en Roman treire,
Ysopet apeluns ce livre
Qu'il traveilla et fist escrire;
De Griu en Latin le turna.
Li Rois Henris qui moult l'ama
Le translata puis en Engleiz
E jeo l'ai rime en Franceiz.'
That is to say, King Henry had translated into English a collection of
fables and _contes_ attributed to AEsop, and Marie rendered the English
into French. Now AEsop certainly did not write the story of _The Three
Wishes_. The text before Marie was probably a mere congeries of tales
and fables, some of the set usually attributed to AEsop, some from
various other sources. The Latin version, the model of the English
version, was that assigned to a certain, or uncertain Romulus, whom
Marie, in her preface, calls an emperor. Probably he borrowed from
Phaedrus, though he boasts that he rendered his fables out of the Greek.
M. de Roquefort thinks he did not flourish before the eleventh or
twelfth century[39]. Who was _li rois Henris_ who turned the fables into
Marie's English text? She lived under our Henry III. Perhaps conjecture
may prefer Henry Beauclerk, our Henry I.
In any case Marie manifestly did render the fables, or some of the
fables, in _Le dit d'Ysopet_ out of English. The presence of English
words in her French seems to raise a strong presumption in favour of the
truth of the assertion. One of these English words occurs in her form of
_The Three Wishes_ (Fable xxiv), called _Dou Vilain qui prist un Folet_,
also _Des Troiz Oremens_, or _Du Vileins et de sa Fame_. A Vilein
captured a Folet (fairy or brownie?) who granted him Three Wishes. The
_Folet_ resembles the tree-bogle of the _Pantschatantra_. The vilein
gave two wishes to his wife. Long they lived without using the wishes.
One day, when they had a marrow bone for dinner, and found it difficult
to extract the marrow, the wife wished that her husband had--
'tel bec came li plereit
E cum li Huite cox aveit.'
The Huite cox is an English word, woodcock, in disguise. The husband, in
a rage, wished his wife a woodcock's beak also, and there they sat, each
with a very long bill, and two wishes wasted. There Marie leaves them--
'Deus Oremanz unt ja perduz
Que nus n'en est a bien venuz,'
'with two wishes lost, and no good gained thereby.' Manifestly the third
wish was expended in a restoration of human noses to each of them. The
moral is that ill befalls them--
'qui trop creient autrui parole.'