shape of _Syntipas_. If it was, did the change come in the Latin
handling of it, or in the English? Or is it not possible that the
version worked on by Marie had a _popular_ origin, whether derived by
oral transmission from some popular Indian shape of the story, which had
filtered through to the West, or the child of native Teutonic wit? There
seems to be no certain criterion in a case like this. Certainly no
mediaeval wag was likely to alter, out of modesty, the form of the tale
in _Syntipas_ and its derivatives, though Marie would not have rhymed
that offensive _conte_ if she had met with it in the English collection.
Unluckily one is not acquainted with any version of _The Three Wishes_
among backward and remote races, American or African. If such a version
were known (and it may, of course, exist), we might argue that the tale
was 'universally human.' There is nothing in it, as told in
_Pantschatantra_, to make it seem essentially and peculiarly Indian, and
incapable of having been invented elsewhere.
A fourteenth-century version (quoted by M. Deulin from _Fabliaux et
Contes_ published by St. Meon, vol. iv. p. 386) amplifies all that is
least refined in _Sendabar_ and in _Sindibad_. St. Martin grants the
wishes, there are four of them, and nobody is one penny the better. With
Philippe de Vigneules (1505-1514, the seventy-eighth of his hundred
_Nouvelles_), God grants three wishes to a wedded pair. The woman wishes
a new leg for her pot, the man wishes her _le pied au ventre_, and then
wishes it back again. M. Deulin found this form in living popular
tradition, at Leuze in Hainaut.
The _Souhaits_ of La Fontaine (_Fables_, vii. 6) has this peculiarity,
that the giver of the wishes, as in Marie de France and in _Sindibad_,
is a Follet or brownie, or familiar spirit, obliged to leave his
friends. He offers them three wishes; first, they ask for wealth and are
embarrassed by their riches, then for a restoration of their mediocrity,
then for wisdom.
'C'est un tresor qui n'embarrasse point.'
La Fontaine's source is obscure; had he known _Syntipas_, he might (or
might not) have introduced the story among his _Contes_. Perhaps it was
too rude even for that unabashed collection.
As for Perrault, he probably drew from a popular tradition his _Aune de
Boudin_. Collin de Plancy (_OEuvres Choisies de Ch. Perrault_, Paris,
1826, 240) gives a curious rustic version. Three brothers dance with the
Fairies, who offer them a wish apiece. The eldest, as heir of the
paternal property, wants no more, but, as wish he must, asks that their
calf may cure the colic of every invalid who seizes it by the tail. (How
manifestly Indian in origin is this introduction of the sacred beast
whose tail is grasped by the pious Hindoo in his latest hours!) The
youngest brother wishes the horns of cow and calf on his brother's head,
the second wishes a bull's head on his brother's shoulders, and the
Fairies make these wild wishes of none avail.
Manifestly the fundamental idea is capable of infinite transformations,
literary or popular: a good example is the play of _Le Bucheron_, by
Guichard and Philidor, acted in 1763.
The story has no connection with the three successful wishes by aid of
which the devil is defeated in a number of popular tales belonging to a
different cycle. All these are inspired, however, by the great god
Wunsch, who presides over Wishing Gates.
'Would I could wish my wishes all to rest,
And know to wish the wish that should be best,
says Clough, better inspired than Perrault's _Bucheron_.
[Footnote 34: _Selected Essays_, i. 504.]
[Footnote 35: Benfey, ii. 341.]
[Footnote 36: See _Poesies de Marie de France, Poete Anglo-Normande du
xiiie Siecle_, vol. ii. p. 140. Paris, 1820.]
[Footnote 37: Benfey, _Pantschatantra_, ii. 341.]
[Footnote 38: Comparetti, _Book of Sindibad_, p. 3. Benfey,
_Pantschatantra_, i. 38.]
[Footnote 39: _Poesies de Marie de France_, vol. ii. p. 53.]
LA BELLE AU BOIS DORMANT.
_The Sleeping Beauty._
The idea of a life which passes ages in a secular sleep is as old as the
myth of Endymion. But it would be difficult to name any classical legend
which closely corresponds with the story of the Sleeping Beauty. The
first incident of importance is connected with the very widely spread
belief in the Fates, or Moirai, or Hathors (in Ancient Egypt), or
fairies, who come to the bedside of Althaea, or of the Egyptian Queen, or
to the christening of the child in _La Belle au Bois Dormant_, and
predict the fortunes of the newly born. In an Egyptian papyrus of the
Twentieth Dynasty there is a tale, beginning, just like Perrault's, with
the grief of a king and queen, who have no child, or at least no son.
Instead of going _a toutes les Eaux du monde_, they appeal to the gods,
who hear their prayers, and the queen gives birth to a little boy.
Beside his cradle the Hathors announce that he shall perish by a
crocodile, a serpent, or a dog. The story, in Egyptian, now turns into
one of the common myths as to the impossibility of evading Destiny[40].
In Perrault's _Conte_, of course, fairies take the place of the Fates
from whom perhaps _Fee_ is derived. When the fairies have met comes in
another old incident--one of them, like Discord at the wedding of
Peleus, has not been invited, and she prophesies the death of the
Princess. This is commuted, by a friendly fay, into a sleep of a hundred
years: the sleep to be caused, as the death was to have been, by a prick
from a spindle. The efforts of the royal family to evade the doom by
proscribing spindles are as futile as usual in these cases. The Princess
and all her people fall asleep, and the story enters the cycle of which
Brynhild's wooing, in the _Volsung's Saga_, is the heroic type. Brynhild
is thus described by the singing wood-peckers,--
'Soft on the fell
A shield-may sleepeth,
The lime-trees' red plague
Playing about her.
The sleep-thorn set Odin
Into that maiden
For her choosing in war
The one he willed not.'
Sigurd is bidden to awaken her, and this he does, rending her mail with
his magic sword. But the rest of the tragic story does not correspond
with _La Belle au Bois Dormant_. Perrault's tale has its closest
companion in Grimm's _Little Briar Rose_ (90), which lacks the
conclusion about the wicked mother-in-law. Her conduct, again, recurs in
various tales quite unlike _La Belle_ in general plot. The incident of
the sleep-thorn, or something analogous, occurs in _Surya Bai_ (_Old
Deccan Days_), where a prick from the poisoned nail of a demon acts as
the soporific. To carry poison under the nail is one of the devices of
the Voudou or Obi man in Hayti. Surya Bai, when wakened and married by a
Rajah, is the victim of the jealousy, not of an ogress mother-in-law,
but of another wife, and _that_ story glides into a form of the Egyptian
tale _The Two Brothers_ (Maspero, i.). The sleep-thorn, or poisoned
nail, takes again in Germany the shape of the poisoned comb.
_Snow-white_ is wounded therewith by the jealousy of a beautiful
step-mother, with a yet fairer step-daughter (Grimm, 53). In mediaeval
romances, as in _Perceforest_, an incident is introduced whereby the
sleeping maid becomes a mother. Lucina, Themis, and Venus take the part
of the Fairies, Fates, or Hathors. In the Neapolitan _Pentamerone_ the
incident of the girl becoming a mother in her sleep is repeated. The
father (as in _Surya Bai_) is a married man, and the girl, Thalia,
suffers from the jealousy of the first wife, as Surya Bai does. The
first wife wants to eat Thalia's children, _a diverses sauces_, which
greatly resembles Perrault's _sauce Robert_. The children of Thalia are
named Sun and Moon, while those of the Sleeping Beauty are L'Aurore et
Le Jour. The jealous wife is punished, like the Ogre mother-in-law[41].
While the idea of a long sleep may possibly have been derived from the
repose of Nature in winter, it seems useless to try to interpret _La
Belle au Bois Dormant_ as a Nature myth throughout. The story, like all
_contes_, is a patchwork of incidents, which recur elsewhere in
different combinations. Even the names Le Jour and L'Aurore only appear
in such late and literary forms as the _Pentamerone_, where they are
mixed up with Thalia, clearly a fanciful name for the mother, as
fanciful as that of the sleeping Zellandine, who marries the god Mars in
_Perceforest_. As an example of the length to which some mythologists
will go, may be mentioned M. Andre Lefevre's discovery that Poufle, the
dog of the Sleeping Beauty, is the Vedic Sarama in search of the
Dawn.
[Footnote 40: Maspero, _Contes Egyptiens_, p. 33.]
[Footnote 41: _Contes de Ma Mere L'Oye_, p. 157.]
LE PETIT CHAPERON ROUGE[42].
_Little Red Riding Hood._
Perrault has not concealed the moral which he thought obvious in this
brief narrative. There are wolves--
'_Qui suivent les jeunes Demoiselles
Jusques dans les maisons, jusques dans les Ruelles!_'
Racine, in an early letter, admits that he himself has been one of these
wolves.
'Il faut etre regulier avec les Reguliers, comme j'ai ete
loup avec vous, et avec les autres loups, vos comperes.[43]'
But the nurses from whom Perrault or his little boy heard _Le petit
Chaperon Rouge_ had probably no such moral ideas as these. They _may_
have hinted at the undesirable practice of loitering when one is sent on
an errand, but the punishment is out of all proportion to the offence.
As it stands, the tale is merely meant to waken a child's terror and
pity, and probably the narrator ends it by making a pounce, in the
character of Wolf, _c'est pour te manger_, at the little listener. This
was the correct 'business' in our old Scotch nurseries, when we were
told _The Cattie sits in the Kiln-Ring Spinning_.
'By cam' a cattie and ate it a' up my loesome,
Loesome Lady!
And sae will I you--worrie, worrie, gnash, gnash,
Said she, said she!'
'The old nurse's imitation of the _gnash_, _gnash_, which she played off
upon the youngest urchin lying in her lap, was electric' (Chambers,
_Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, 1842, p. 54).
If _Little Red Riding Hood_ ended, in all variants, where it ends in
Perrault, we might dismiss it, with the remark that the _machinery_ of
the story is derived from 'the times when beasts spoke,' or were
believed to be capable of speaking. But it is well known that in the
German form, _Little Red Cap_ (Grimm 26), the tale by no means ends with
the triumph of the wolf. Little Red Cap and her grandmother are
resuscitated, 'the wolf it was that died.' This may either have been the
original end, omitted by Perrault because it was too wildly impossible
for the nurseries of the time of Louis XIV, or children may have
insisted on having the story 'turn out well.' In either case the German
_Maerchen_ preserves one of the most widely spread mythical incidents in
the world,--the reappearance of living people out of the monster that
has devoured them.
In literature, this incident first meets us in the myth of Cronus
(Hesiod, _Theog._ 497; Pausanias, x. 24), where Cronus disgorges his
swallowed children alive, after gulping up the stone in swaddling bands
which he had taken for Zeus, his youngest infant. He had previously
dined on a young foal that he was assured his wife had just borne, when,
in reality, the child was Poseidon. In this adventure Cronus united the
mistake of the ogress mother-in-law, in _La Belle au Bois Dormant_, who
ate the kid in place of the Sleeping Beauty's boy, the adventure of the
king who hears his wife has borne a beast-child, and the adventure of
the Wolf who disgorges his prey alive. The local fancy of Arne in
Arcadia had combined all these ideas of _Maerchen_ into one divine myth
(Pausan. viii. 8, 2). It would be superfluous to enumerate here all the
savage and civilised stories of beings first swallowed and then
disgorged alive. A fabulous monster Kwai Hemm is the swallower in
Bushman story. The Iqong qongqo takes the _role_ among the Kaffirs.
There are some five examples in Callaway's _Zulu Nursery Tales_. _Night_
is the swallower in Melanesia (Codrington, _Journal Anthrop. Inst._ Feb.
1881), while the Sun swallows the stars in a Piute myth. It is quite
possible that a savage theory of Night swallowing and restoring Light,
or of the Sun swallowing the stars, is the origin of the conception[44].
The Australians tell it in a shape not unlike Grimm's. The Eagle met the
Moon and offered him some Kangaroo meat. The Moon ate up the Kangaroo,
and then swallowed the Eagle. The wives of the Eagle met the Moon, who
asked them the way to a spring. As he stooped to drink, they cut him
open with a stone tomahawk, and extracted the Eagle, who came alive
again[45]. In Germany it was with a pair of scissors that the Wolf was
cut up, and he was then stuffed with stones (as in Grimm 5, _The Wolf
and the Seven Little Kids_). The stones kill him in _Little Red Cap_; in
the German tale, their weight drags him into the well, where he, like
the Australian Moon, wants to drink after his banquet. In Pomerania a
ghost takes the Wolf's _role_, the stones are felt to be rather 'heavy'
by the ghost, and the child escapes[46].
The whole story has been compared by M. Husson to the adventure of
Vartika, whom the Asvins rescue from the throat of a wolf. Little Red
Riding Hood thus becomes the Dawn. Vartika is a bird, the Quail, 'i.e.
the returning bird. But as a being delivered by the Asvins, the
representatives of Day and Night, Vartika can only be the returning
Dawn, delivered from the mouth of the wolf, i. e. the dark night[47].'
It is hard to see why the Night, as one of the Asvins, should deliver
the Dawn from the Night, as the Wolf. On the identification of the
Asvins with this or that aspect of Light and Darkness, Muir may be
consulted. 'This allegorical interpretation seems unlikely to be
correct, as it is difficult to suppose that the phenomena in question
should have been alluded to under such a variety of names and
circumstances.' (_Sanskrit Texts_, v. 248. Prof. Goldstuecker thinks the
Asvins are themselves the crepuscular mingling of light and dark, which,
in the other theory, is the struggle of quail and wolf, _op. cit._ v.
257. M. Bergaigne supposes that the Asvins are deities of dawn, _La
Religion Vedique_, ii. 431.)
These considerations lead us far enough from Perrault into 'worlds not
realised.' Vartika (who, in these theories, answers to _Le Petit
Chaperon Rouge_) has been compared by Mr. Max Mueller, not only to the
returning Dawn, but to the returning year, _Vertumnus_. He notes that
the Greek word for quail is _ortyx_, that Apollo and Artemis were born
in Ortygia, an old name of Delos, and that 'here is a real traditional
chain.' But 'it would be a bold assertion to say that the story of _Red
Riding Hood_ was really a metamorphosis of an ancient story of the
rosy-fingered Eos, or the Vedic Eos with her red horses, and that the
two ends, Ushas and Rothkaeppchen, are really held together by an
unbroken traditional chain.'
We shall leave the courage of this opinion to M. Husson, merely
observing that, as a matter of fact, Dawn is _not_ swallowed by Night.
Sunset (which is red) is so swallowed, but then sunset is not 'a young
maiden carrying messages,' like Red Riding Hood and Ushas. To be sure,
the convenient Wolf is regarded by mythologists as 'a representative of
the sun or of the night,' at will. He 'doubles the part,' and 'is the
useful Wolf,' as the veteran Blenkinsopp, in _Pendennis_, was called
'The useful Blenkinsopp.'
[Footnote 42: _Contes de Charles Perrault_, Paris, _s. a._ p. lxiv.
Perrault's love of refining is not idle in _Le Chaperon Rouge_. In the
_popular_ versions, in Brittany and the Nievre, the wolf puts the
grandmother in the pot, and her blood in bottles, and makes the
unconscious child eat and drink her ancestress! The cock or the robin
redbreast warns her in vain, and she is swallowed. (_Melusine_, May 5,
1887.)]
[Footnote 43: A. M. de la Fontaine, a Usez, le ii. Nov. 1661.]
[Footnote 44: Tylor, _Prim. Cult._ i. 338.]
[Footnote 45: Brough Smyth, _Natives of Victoria_, i. p. 432.]
[Footnote 46: Grimm, Note on 5.]
[Footnote 47: Max Mueller's _Selected Essays_, i. 565.]
LA BARBE BLEUE.
_Blue Beard._
The story of Blue Beard, as told by Perrault, is, of all his collection,
the most apt to move pity and terror. It has also least of the
supernatural. Here are no talking beasts, no fairies, nor ogres. Only
the enchanted key is _fee_, or _wakan_ as the Algonkins say, that is,
possesses magical properties. In all else the story is a drama of daily
and even of contemporary life, for Blue Beard has the gilded coaches and
embroidered furniture of the seventeenth century, and his wife's
brothers hold commissions in the dragoons and musketeers. The story
relies for its interest on the curiosity of the wife (the moral motive),
on the vision of the slain women, and on the suspense of waiting while
Sister Anne watches from the tower. These simple materials, admirably
handled, make up the terrible story of _Blue Beard_.
Attempts have been made to find for _Blue Beard_ an historical
foundation. M. Collin de Plancy mentions a theory that the hero was a
seigneur of the house of Beaumanoir (_OEuvres Choisies de Ch. Perrault_,
p. 40, Paris, 1826). Others have fancied that Blue Beard was a popular
version of the deeds of Gilles de Retz, the too celebrated monster of
mediaeval history, or of a more or less mythical Breton prince of the
sixth century, Cormorus or Comorre, who married Sainte Trophime or
Triphime, and killed her, as he had killed his other wives, when she was
about to become a mother. She was restored to life by St. Gildas[48]. If
there is a trace of the _Blue Beard_ story in the legend of the Saint,
it does not follow that the legend is the source of the story. The
_Maerchen_ of _Peau d'Ane_ has been absorbed into the legend of Sainte
Dipne or Dympne, and the names of saints, like the names of gods and
heroes in older faiths, had the power of attracting _Maerchen_ into their
cycle.
_Blue Beard_ is essentially popular and traditional. The elements are
found in countries where Gilles de Retz and Comorre and Sainte Triphime
were never known. The leading idea, of curiosity punished, of the box or
door which may not be opened, and of the prohibition infringed with evil
results, is of world-wide distribution. In many countries this notion
inspires the myths of the origin of Death[49]. In German _Maerchen_ there
are several parallels, more or less close, to _Blue Beard_ (Grimm 3, 40,
46). In _Our Lady's Child_ (3) the Virgin entrusts a little girl with
keys of thirteen doors, of which she may only open twelve. Behind each
door she found an apostle, behind the thirteenth the Trinity, in a glory
of flame, like Zeus when he consumed Semele. The girl's finger became
golden with the light, as Blue Beard's key was dyed with the blood. The
child was banished from heaven, and her later adventures are on the
lines of the falsely accused wife, like those of the _Belle au Bois
Dormant_, with the Virgin for mother-in-law and with a repentance for a
moral conclusion. In the _Robber Bridegroom_ there is a girl betrothed
to a woman-slayer; she detects and denounces him, pretending, as in the
old English tale, she is describing a dream. 'Like the old tale, my
Lord, it is not so, nor 'twas not so; but indeed God forbid that it
should be so[50].' Except for the 'larder' of the Robber, and of Mr. Fox
in the English variant, these stories do not closely resemble _Blue
Beard_. In Grimm's _Fitcher's Bird_ (46) the resemblance is closer. A
man, apparently a beggar, carries off the eldest of three sisters to a
magnificent house, and leaves her with the keys, an egg, and the
prohibition to open a certain door. She opens it, finds a block, an axe,
a basin of blood, and the egg falling into the blood refuses to be
cleansed. The man slays her, her second sister shares her fate, the
third leaves the egg behind when she visits the secret room, and
miraculously restores her sisters to life by reuniting their limbs. The
same idea occurs in the Kaffir tale of the Ox (Callaway, _Nursery Tales
of the Zulus_, p. 230). The rest of the story, with the escape from the
monster, has no connection with _Blue Beard_, except that the wretch is
put to death. Indeed, it would have been highly inconvenient for Blue
Beard's surviving bride if the dead ladies had been resuscitated. Her
legal position would have been ambiguous, and she could not have
inherited the gold coaches and embroidered furniture. Grimm originally
published another German form of _Blue Beard_ (62 in first edition), but
withdrew it, being of opinion that it might have been derived from
Perrault. The story of the Third Calender in the _Arabian Nights_ (Night
66) has nothing in common with Blue Beard but the prohibition to open a
door.
In Italy[51] the Devil is the wooer, the closed door opens on hell: the
rest, the adventures of three sisters, resembles Grimm's _Fitcher's
Bird_, with a touch of humour. The Devil, seeing the resuscitated girls,
is daunted by the idea of facing three wives, and decamps. He had no
scruple, it will be seen, about marrying his deceased wife's sister. The
Russian like the Oriental stories generally make a man indulge the fatal
curiosity, and open the forbidden door. Mr. Ralston quotes from Loewe's
_Esthnische Maerchen_ (No. 20) a tale almost too closely like Perrault's.
There is a sister, and the goose boy takes the _role_ of rescuer. M. de
Gubernatis thinks that the key 'is perhaps the Moon!' (_Zoological
Mythology_, 1. 168). In the Gaelic version the heroine is cleansed of
blood by a grateful Cat, whose services her sisters had neglected
(Campbell, _Tales of West Highlands_, No. 41). In the _Katha Sarit
Sagara_ (iii. p. 223) a hero, Saktideva, is forbidden to approach a
certain palace terrace. He breaks the taboo, and finds three dead
maidens in three pavilions. A horse then kicks him into a lake, and,
whereas he had been in the Golden City, hard to win, he finds himself at
home in Vardhamana. The affair is but an incident in the medley of
incidents, some resembling passages in the Odyssey, which make up the
story (compare Ralston's note, _Russian Fairy Tales_, p. 99).
From these brief analyses it will be plain that, in point of art,
Perrault's tale has a great advantage over its popular rivals. It is at
once more sober and more terrible, and (especially when compared with
the confusion of incidents in the _Katha Sarit Sagara_) possesses an
epical unity of idea and action.
In spite of this artistic character, Perrault's tale is clearly of
popular origin, as the existence of variants in the folklore of other
countries demonstrates. But the details are so fluctuating, that we need
not hope to find in them memories of ancient myth, nor is it safe to
follow M. Andre Lefevre, when he thinks that, in the two avenging
brothers, he recognises the Vedic Asvins.
[Footnote 48: The passages in the legend of Sainte Triphime are quoted
by M. Deulin, _Contes de Ma Mere l'Oye_, p. 178. See also _Annuaire
Hist. et Arch. de Bretagne_, Annee 1862. The Saint has a warning vision
of the dead wives, but not in consequence of opening a forbidden door.]
[Footnote 49: A partial collection of these will be found in _La
Mythologie_, Lang. Paris 1886. Australians, Ningphos, Greeks (Pandora's
box), the Montaguais of Labrador (_Relations de la Nouvelle France_,
1634), the Odahwah Indians (Hind's _Explorations in Labrador_, i. 61,
note 2), are examples of races which believe death to have come into the
world as the punishment of an infringed prohibition of this sort. The
deathly swoon of Psyche, in _The Golden Ass_ of Apuleius, when she has
opened the pyx of Proserpine, is another instance.]
[Footnote 50: Compare Mrs. Hunt's note to Grimm, i. 389.]
[Footnote 51: Crane, p. 78.]
LE MAISTRE CHAT, OU LE CHAT BOTTE.
_Puss in Boots._
Everybody knows Puss in Boots. He is, as Nodier says, the Figaro of the
nursery, as Hop o' My Thumb is the Ulysses, and Blue Beard the Othello;
and thus he is of interest to all children, and to all men who remember
their childhood. Ulysses himself did not travel farther than the story
of the patron of the Marquis de Carabas has wandered, and few things can
be more curious than to follow the Master-Cat in his migrations. For
many reasons the history of _Puss in Boots_, though it has been rather
neglected, throws a good deal of light on that very dark question, the
diffusion of popular tales. As soon as we read it in Perrault, we find
that Monsieur Perrault was at a loss for a moral to his narrative. In
fact, as he tells it, there is _no_ moral to the Master-Cat. Puss is a
perfectly unscrupulous adventurer who, for no reason but the fun of the
thing, dubs the miller's son marquis, makes a royal marriage for him, by
a series of amusing frauds, and finally enriches him with the spoils of
a murdered ogre. In the absence of any moral Perrault has to invent
one--which does not apply.
'Aux jeunes gens pour l'ordinaire,
L'industrie et le savoir-faire
Valent mieux que des biens acquis.'