whatever, except in so far as he was a _chevalier d'industrie_, thanks
to his cat. These obvious truths pained Mr. George Cruikshank when he
tried to illustrate _Puss in Boots_, and found that the romance was
quite unfit for the young. 'When I came to look carefully at that story,
I felt _compelled_ to rewrite it, and alter the character of it to a
certain extent, for, as it stood, the tale was a succession of
successful falsehoods--a _clever_ lesson in lying, a system of
_imposture_ rewarded by the greatest worldly advantages. A _useful_
lesson, truly, to be impressed upon the minds of children.' So Mr.
Cruikshank made the tale didactic, showing how the Marquis de Carabas
was the real heir, 'kep' out of his own' by the landgrabbing ogre, and
how puss was a gamekeeper metamorphosed into a cat as a punishment for
his repining disposition. This performance of Mr. Cruikshank was
denounced by Mr. Dickens in _Household Words_ as a 'fraud on the
fairies,' and 'the intrusion of a whole hog of unwieldy dimensions into
the fairy flower-garden[52].'
The Master-Cat probably never made any child a rogue, but no doubt his
conduct was flagrantly immoral. And this brings us to one of the
problems of the science of nursery tales. When we find a story told by
some peoples _with_ a moral, and by other peoples _without_ a moral, are
we to suppose that the tale was originally narrated for the moral's
sake, and that the forms in which there is _no_ moral are degenerate and
altered versions? For example, the Zulus, the Germans, the French, and
the Hindoos have all a nursery tale in which someone, by a series of
lucky accidents and exchanges, goes on making good bargains, and rising
from poverty to wealth. In French Flanders this is the tale of _Jean
Gogue_; in Grimm it is _The Golden Goose_; in Zulu it is part of the
adventures of the Hermes of Zulu myth, Uhlakanyana. In two of these the
hero possesses some trifling article which is injured, and people give
him something better in exchange, till, like Jean Gogue, for example, he
marries the king's daughter[53]. Now these tales have no moral. The hero
is thought neither better nor worse of because of his series of
exchanges. But in modern Hindostan the story _has_ a moral. The rat,
whose series of exchanges at last win him a king's daughter, is held up
to contempt as a warning to bargain-hunters. He is not happy with his
bride, but escapes, leaving his tail, half his hair, and a large piece
of his skin behind him, howling with pain, and vowing that 'never,
never, never again would he make a bargain[54].' Here then is a tale
told with a moral, and _for_ the moral in India, but with no moral in
Zululand and France. Are we to suppose that India was the original
source of the narrative, that it was a parable invented for the moral's
sake, and that it spread, losing its moral (as the rat lost his tail),
to Europe and South Africa? Or are we to suppose that originally the
narrative was a mere _Schwank_, or popular piece of humour, and that the
mild, reflective Hindoo moralised it into a parable or fable? The
question may be argued either way; but the school of Benfey and M.
Cosquin, holding that almost all our stories were invented in India,
should prefer the former alternative.
Now _Puss in Boots_ has this peculiarity, that out of France, or rather
out of the region influenced by Perrault's version of the history, a
moral usually does inform the legend of the Master-Cat, or master-fox,
or master-gazelle, or master-jackal, or master-dog, for each of these
animals is the hero in different countries. Possibly, then, the story
had originally what it sadly lacks in its best-known shape, a moral; and
possibly _Puss in Boots_ was in its primitive shape (like _Toads and
Diamonds_) a novel with a purpose. But where was the novel first
invented?
We are not likely to discover for certain the cradle of the race of the
Master-Cat--the 'cat's cradle' of _Puss in Boots_. But the record of his
achievements is so well worth studying, because the possible area from
which it may have arisen is comparatively limited.
There are many stories known all the world over, such as the major part
of the adventures of _Hop o' My Thumb_, which might have been invented
anywhere, and might have been invented by men in a low state of
savagery. The central idea in _Hop o' My Thumb_, for example, is the
conception of a hero who falls into the hands of cannibals, and by a
trick makes the cannibal slay, and sometimes eat, his own kinsfolk,
mother, or wife, or child, while the hero escapes. This legend is well
known in South Africa, in South Siberia, and in Aberdeenshire; and in
Greece it made part of the Minyan legend of Athamas and Ino, murder
being substituted for cannibalism. Namaquas, in Southern Africa; Eskimo,
in Northern America, and Athenians (as Aeschylus shows in the
_Eumenides_, 244), are as familiar as Maoris, or any of us, with the
ogre's favourite remark, 'I smell the smell of a mortal man.'
Now it is obvious that these ideas--the trick played by the hero on the
cannibal, and the turning of the tables--might occur to the human mind
wherever cannibalism was a customary peril: that is, among any low
savages. It does not matter whether the cannibal is called a _rakshasa_
in India, or an _ogre_ in France, or a _weendigo_ in Labrador, the
notion is the same, and the trick played by the hero is simple and
obvious[55]. Therefore _Hop o' My Thumb_ may have been invented
anywhere, by any people on a low level of civilisation. But _Puss in
Boots_ cannot have been invented by savages of a very backward race or
in a really 'primitive' age. The very essence of _Puss in Boots_ is the
sudden rise of a man, by aid of a cunning animal, from the depths of
poverty to the summit of wealth and rank. Undeniably this rise could
only occur where there were great differences of social status, where
rank was a recognised institution, and where property had been amassed
in considerable quantities by some, while others went bare as lackalls.
These things have been of the very essence of civilisation (the more's
the pity), therefore _Puss in Boots_ must have been invented by a more
or less civilised mind; it could not have been invented by a man in the
condition of the Fuegians or the Digger Indians. Nay, when we consider
the stress always and everywhere laid in the story on snobbish pride and
on magnificence of attire and equipment, and on retinue, we may conclude
that _Puss in Boots_ could hardly have been imagined by men in the
middle barbarism; in the state, for example, of Iroquois, or Zulus, or
Maoris. Nor are we aware that _Puss in Boots_, in any shape, is found
among any of these peoples. Thus the area in which the origin of _Puss
in Boots_ has to be looked for is comparatively narrow.
_Puss in Boots_, again, is a story which, in all its wonderfully varying
forms, can only, we may assume, have sprung from one single mind. It is
extremely difficult to assert with confidence that any plot can only
have been invented once for all. Every new successful plot, from _Dr.
Jekyl_ to _She_, from _Vice Versa_ to _Dean Maitland_, is at once
claimed for half a dozen authors who, unluckily, did not happen to write
_She_ or _Dr. Jekyl_. But if there can be any assurance in these
matters, we may feel certain that the idea of a story, wherein a young
man is brought from poverty to the throne by aid of a match-making and
ingenious beast, could only have been invented once for all. In that
case _Puss in Boots_ is a story which spread from one centre, and was
invented by one man in a fairly civilised society. True, he used certain
hereditary and established _formulae_; the notion of a beast that can
talk, and surprises nobody (except in the Zanzibar version) by this
accomplishment, is a notion derived from the old savage condition of the
intellect, in which beasts are on a level with, or superior to,
humanity. But we can all use these _formulae_ now that we possess them.
Could memory of past literature be wholly wiped out, while civilisation
still endured, there would be no talking and friendly beasts in the
children's tales of the next generation, unless the children wrote them
for themselves. As Sainte-Beuve says, 'On n'inventerait plus aujourd'hui
de ces choses, si elles n'avaient ete imaginees des longtemps[56].'
If we are to get any light on the first home of the tale--and we cannot
get very much--it will be necessary to examine its different versions.
There is an extraordinary amount of variety in the incidents subordinate
to the main idea, and occasionally we find a heroine instead of a hero,
a Marquise de Carabas, not a marquis. Perhaps the best plan will be to
start with the stories near home, and to pursue puss, if possible, to
his distant original tree. First, we all know him in English
translations, made as early as 1745, if not earlier, of Perrault's
_Maitre Chat, ou Chat botte_, published in 1696-7. Here his motives are
simple fun and friendliness. His master, who owns no other property,
thinks of killing and skinning puss, but the cat prefers first to make
acquaintance with the king, by aid of presents of game from an imaginary
Marquis de Carabas; then to pretend his master is drowning and has had
his clothes stolen (thereby introducing him to the king in a court suit,
borrowed from the monarch himself); next to frighten people into saying
that the Marquis is their _seigneur_; and, finally, to secure a property
for the Marquis by swallowing an ogre, whom he has induced to assume the
disguise of a mouse. This last trick is as old as Hesiod[57], where Zeus
persuades his wife to become a fly, and swallows her.
The next neighbour of the French _Puss in Boots_ in the north is found
in Sweden[58] and in Norway[59]. In the Swedish, a girl owns the cat.
They wander to a castle gate, where the cat bids the girl strip and hide
in a tree; he then goes to the castle and says that his royal mistress
has been attacked by robbers. The people of the palace attire the girl
splendidly, the prince loses his heart to her, the queen-mother lays
traps for her in vain. Nothing is so fine in the castle as in the girl's
chateau of Cattenburg. The prince insists on seeing that palace, the cat
frightens the peasants into saying that all the land they pass is the
girl's; finally, the cat reaches a troll's house, with pillars of gold.
The cat turns himself into a loaf of bread and holds the troll in talk
till the sun rises on him and he bursts, as trolls always do if they see
the sun. The girl succeeds to the troll's palace, and nothing is said as
to what became of the cat.
Here is even less moral than in _Puss in Boots_, for the Marquis of
Carabas, as M. Deulin says, merely lets the cat do all the tricks,
whereas the Swedish girl is his active accomplice. The change of the cat
into bread (which can talk), and the bursting of the ogre at dawn, are
very ancient ideas, whether they have been tacked later on to the
_conte_ or not. In _Lord Peter_ the heroine gives place to a hero, while
the cat drives deer to the palace, saying that they come from Lord
Peter. The cat, we are not told how, dresses Lord Peter in splendid
attire, kills a troll for him, and then, as in Madame d'Aulnoy's _White
Cat_, has its head cut off and becomes a princess. Behold how fancies
jump! All the ogre's wealth had been the princess's, before the ogre
changed her into a cat, and took her lands. Thus George Cruikshank's
moral conclusion is anticipated, while puss acts as a match-maker
indeed, but acts for herself. This form of the legend, if not immoral,
has no moral, and has been mixed up either with Madame d'Aulnoy's
_Chatte Blanche_, or with the popular traditions from which she
borrowed.
Moving south, but still keeping near France, we find _Puss in Boots_ in
Italy. The tale is told by Straparola[60]. A youngest son owns nothing
but a cat which, by presents of game, wins the favour of a king of
Bohemia. The drowning trick is then played, and the king gives the cat's
master his daughter, with plenty of money. On the bride's journey to her
new home, the cat frightens the peasants into saying all the land
belongs to his master, for whom he secures the castle of a knight dead
without heirs.
Here, once more, there is no moral.
In a popular version from Sicily[61], a fox takes the cat's place, _from
motives of gratitude_, because the man found it robbing and did not kill
it. The fox then plays the usual trick with the game, and another
familiar trick, that of leaving a few coins in a borrowed bushel measure
to give the impression that his master does not _count_, but measures
out his money. The trick of frightening the peasants follows, and
finally, an ogress who owns a castle is thrown down a well by the fox.
Then comes in the new feature: the _man is ungrateful and kills the
fox_; nevertheless he lives happy ever after.
Now, at last, we have reached the moral. A beggar on horseback will
forget his first friend: _a man will be less grateful than a beast_.
This moral declares itself, with a difference (for the ingrate is
coerced into decent behaviour), in a popular French version, taken down
from oral recitation[62].
Here, then, even among the peasantry of Perrault's own country, and as
near France as Sicily, too, we have _Puss in Boots_ with a moral: that
of human ingratitude contrasted with the gratitude of a beast. May we
conclude, then, that _Puss in Boots_ was originally invented as a kind
of parable by which this moral might be inculcated? And, if we may draw
that conclusion, where is this particular moral most likely to have been
invented, and enforced in an apologue?
As to the first of these two questions, it may be observed that the
story with the moral, and with a fox in place of a cat, is found among
the Avars, a Mongolian people of Mussulman faith, on the northern slopes
of the Caucasus. Here the man is ungrateful, but the fox, as in Sicily,
coerces him, in this case by threatening to let out the story of his
rise in life[63]. In Russia, too, a fox takes the cat's _role_, and the
part of the ogre is entrusted to the Serpent Uhlan, a supernatural
snake, who is burned to ashes[64].
It is now plain that the tale with the moral, whether that was the
original motive or not, is more common than the tale without the moral.
We find the moral among French, Italians, Avars, Russians; among people
of Mahommedan, Greek, and Catholic religion. Now M. Emmanuel Cosquin is
inclined to believe that the moral--the ingratitude of man contrasted
with the gratitude of beasts,--is Buddhistic. If that be so, then India
is undeniably the original cradle of _Puss in Boots_. But M. Cosquin has
been unable to find any _Puss in Boots_ in India; at least he knew none
in 1876, when he wrote on the subject in _Le Francais_ (June 29, 1876).
Nor did the learned Benfey, with all his prodigious erudition, know an
Indian _Puss in Boots_[65]. Therefore the proof of this theory, that
Buddhistic India may be the real cat's cradle, is incomplete; nor does
it become more probable when we actually do discover _Puss in Boots_ in
India. For in the Indian _Puss in Boots_, just as in Perrault's, _there
is no moral at all_, and the notion of gratitude, on either the man's
side or the beast's, is not even suggested.
There could scarcely be a more disappointing discovery than this for the
school of Benfey which derives our fairy tales from Buddhism and India.
First, the tale which we are discussing certainly did not find a place
in the _Pantschatantra_, the _Hitopadesa_, or any other of the early
Indian literary collections of _Maerchen_ which were translated into so
many Western languages. Next, the story does not present itself, for
long, to European students of living Indian folklore. Finally, when puss
_is_ found in India, where the moral element (if it was the original
element, and if its origin was in Buddhist fancy) should be particularly
well preserved, there is not any moral whatever.
The Indian _Puss in Boots_ is called _The Match-making Jackal_, and was
published, seven years after M. Cosquin had failed to find it, in the
Rev. Lal Behari Day's _Folk Tales of Bengal_ (Macmillan). Mr. Day, of
the Hooghly College, is a native gentleman well acquainted with European
folklore. Some of the stories in his collection were told by a Bengali
Christian woman, two by an old Brahman, three by an old barber, two by a
servant of Mr. Day's, and the rest by another old Brahman. Unluckily,
the editor does not say which tales he got from each contributor. It
might therefore be argued that _The Match-making Jackal_ was perhaps
told by the Christian woman, and that she adapted it from _Puss in
Boots_, which she might have heard told by Christians. Mr. Day will be
able to settle this question; but it must be plain to any reader of _The
Match-making Jackal_ that the story, as reported, is too essentially
Hindoo to have been 'adapted' in one generation. It is not impossible
that a literary Scandinavian might have introduced the typically Norse
touches into the Norse _Puss in Boots_, but no illiterate woman of
Bengal could have made Perrault's puss such a thoroughly Oriental jackal
as the beast in the story we are about to relate.
There was once a poor weaver whose ancestors had been wealthy men. The
weaver was all alone in the world, but a neighbouring jackal,
'remembering the grandeur of the weaver's forefathers, had compassion on
him.' This was pure sentiment on the jackal's part; his life had not
been spared, as in some European versions, by the weaver. There was no
gratitude in the case. 'I'll try to marry you,' said the jackal,
off-hand, 'to the daughter of the king of this country.' The weaver
said, 'Yes, when the sun rises in the west.' But the jackal had his
plan. He trotted off to the palace, many miles away, and on the road he
plucked quantities of the leaves of the betel plant. Then he lay down at
the entrance of the tank where the princess bathed twice a day, and
began ostentatiously chewing betel-leaves. 'Why,' said the princess,
'what a rich land this jackal must have come from. Here he is chewing
betel, a luxury that thousands of men and women among us cannot afford.'
The princess asked the jackal whence he came, and he said he was the
native of a wealthy country. 'As for our king, his palace is like the
heaven of Indra; your palace here is a miserable hovel compared to it.'
So the princess told the queen, who at once, and most naturally, asked
the jackal if his king were a bachelor. 'Certainly,' said the jackal,
'he has rejected princesses from all parts.' So the queen said _she_ had
a pretty daughter, still _zu haben_, and the jackal promised to try to
persuade his master to think of the princess. The jackal returned on his
confidential mission, telling the weaver to follow his instructions
closely. He went back to court, and suggested that his master should
come in a private manner, not in state, as his retinue would eat up the
substance of his future father-in-law. He returned and made the weaver
borrow a decent suit of clothes from the washermen. Then he made
interest with the king of the jackals, the paddy-birds, and the crows,
each of whom lent a contingent of a thousand beasts or birds of their
species. When they had all arrived within two miles of the palace, the
jackal bade them yell and cry, which they did so furiously that the king
supposed an innumerable company of people were attending his son-in-law.
He therefore implored the jackal to ask his master to come quite alone.
'My master will come alone in undress,' said the jackal; 'send a horse
for him.' This was done, and the jackal explained that his master
arrived in mean clothes that he might not abash the king by his glory
and splendour. The weaver held his tongue as commanded, but at night his
talk was of looms and beams, and the princess detected him. The jackal
explained that his philanthropic prince was establishing a colony of
weavers, and that his mind ran a good deal on this benevolent project.
Here the _Puss in Boots_ character of the tale disappears. The weaver
and the princess go home, but the jackal does _not_ cajole anyone out of
a castle and lands. He has made the match, and there he leaves it. The
princess, however, has fortunately a magical method of making gold, by
virtue of which she builds the weaver a splendid palace, and 'hospitals
were established for diseased, sick, and infirm animals,' a very Indian
touch. The king visits his daughter, is astonished at her wealth, and
the jackal says, 'Did I not tell you so?'
Here, as we said, there is no moral, or if any moral, it is the
gratitude of man, as displayed in founding hospitals for beasts, not, as
M. Cosquin says, 'l'idee toute bouddhique de l'ingratitude de l'homme
opposee a la bonte native de l'animal.' Plainly, if any moral was really
intended, it was a satire on people who seek great marriages, just as in
the story of _The Rat's Wedding_, the moral is a censure on
bargain-hunters.
The failure of the only Indian _Puss in Boots_ we know to establish a
theory of an Indian origin, does not, of course, prove a negative. We
can only say that puss certainly did not come from India to Europe by
the ordinary literary vehicles, and that, when he is found in India, he
does not preach what is called the essentially Buddhist doctrine of the
ingratitude of man and the gratitude of beasts.
There remains, however, an Eastern form of the tale, an African version,
which is of morality all compact. This is the Swahili version from
Zanzibar, and it is printed as _Sultan Darai_, in Dr. Steere's _Swahili
Tales, as told by Natives of Zanzibar_ (Bell and Daldy, London, 1870).
If a tale first arose where it is now found to exist with most moral,
with most didactic purpose, then _Puss in Boots_ is either Arab or
Negro, or a piece in which Negroes and Arabs have collaborated. For
nowhere is the _conte_ so purposeful as among the Swahilis, who are by
definition 'men of mixed Negro and Arab origin.' There may be Central
African elements in the Swahili tales, for most of them have 'sung
parts,' almost unintelligible even to the singers. 'I suppose,' says Dr.
Steere, 'they have been brought down from the interior by the slaves,
and perhaps corrupted by them as they gradually forgot their own
language.' Thus Central Africa may have contributed to the Swahili
stories, but the Swahili _Puss in Boots_, as it at present exists, has
been deeply modified by Mussulman ideas.
_Sultan Darai_, the Swahili _Puss in Boots_, really contains two tales.
The first is about a wicked step-mother; the second begins when the
hero, losing his wife and other kinsfolk, takes to vicious courses, and
becomes so poor that he passes his time scratching for grains of millet
on the common dustheap. While thus scratching he finds a piece of money,
with which he buys a gazelle. The gazelle has pity on him, and startles
him by saying so: 'Almighty God is able to do all things, to make me to
speak, and others more than I.' The story comes, therefore, through
narrators who marvel, as in the fairy world nobody does marvel, at the
miracle of a speaking beast.
The gazelle, intent on helping the man, finds a splendid diamond, which
he takes to the sultan, just as puss took the game, as 'a present from
Sultan Darai.' The sultan is much pleased; the gazelle proposes that he
shall give his daughter to Sultan Darai, and then comes the old trick of
pretending the master has been stripped by robbers, 'even to his
loin-cloth.' The gazelle carries fine raiment to his master, and, as in
the French popular and traditional form, bids him speak as little as may
be. The marriage is celebrated, and the gazelle goes off, and kills a
great seven-headed snake, which, as in Russia, is the owner of a rich
house. The snake, as he travels, is accompanied (as in the Kaffir story
of _Five Heads_) by a storm of wind, like that which used to shake the
'medicine lodges' of the North American Indians, puzzling the
missionaries. The snake, like the ogre in all _Hop o' My Thumb_ tales,
smells out the gazelle, but is defeated by that victorious animal. The
gazelle brings home his master, Sultan Darai, and the Princess to the
snake's house, where they live in great wealth and comfort.