to the youngest child. Cinderella, to be sure, is a stepchild, and
therefore interesting; but it is no great stretch of conjecture to infer
that she may have originally been only the youngest child of the house.
The nickname which connects her with the fireside and the ashes is also
given, in one form or another, to the youngest son (Sir George Dasent,
for some reason, calls him 'Boots') in Scandinavian tales. Cinderella,
like the youngest son, is taunted with sitting in the ashes of the
hearth. This notion declares itself in the names Cucendron,
Aschenpuettel, Ventafochs, Pepelluga, Cernushka[86], all of them titles
implying blackness, chiefly from contact with cinders. It has frequently
been suggested that the success of the youngest child in fairy tales is
a trace of the ideas which prevailed when _Juengsten-Recht_,
'Junior-Right' or Borough English, was a prevalent custom of
inheritance[87]. The invisible Bridegroom, of the Zulu _Maerchen_, is in
hiding under a snake's skin, because he was the youngest, and his
jealous brethren meant to kill him, for he would be the heir. It was
therefore the purpose of his brethren to slay the young child in the
traditional Zulu way, that is, to avoid the shedding of 'kindred blood'
by putting a clod of earth in his mouth. Bishop Callaway gives the
parallel Hawaian case of Waikelenuiaiku. The Polynesian case of Hatupati
is also adduced. In Grimm's _Golden Bird_ the jealousy is provoked, not
by the legal rights of the youngest, but by his skill and luck. The idea
of fraternal jealousy, with the 'nice opening for a young man,' which it
discovered (like Joseph's brethren) in a pit, occurs in Peruvian myth as
reported by Cieza de Leon (_Chronicles of the Yncas_, Second Part). The
diffusion of _Juengsten-Recht_, or _Mainete_, the inheritance by the
youngest, has been found by Mr. Elton among Ugrians, in Hungary, in
Slavonic communities, in Central Asia, on the confines of China, in the
mountains of Arracan, in Friesland, in Germany, in Celtic countries. In
Scandinavia Liebrecht adduces the Edda, '_der juengste Sohn Jarl's der
erste Koenig ist_.' Albericus Trium Fontium mentions Prester John, 'qui
cum fratrum suorum minimus esset, omnibus praepositus est.' In Hesiod we
meet _droit de juveignerie_, as he makes Zeus the _youngest_ of the
Cronidae, while Homer, making Zeus the eldest, is all for primogeniture
(Elton, _Origins of English History_, ch. viii. Liebrecht, _Zur
Volkskunde_).
The authorities quoted raise a presumption that _Juengsten-Recht_, an old
and widely diffused law, might have left a trace on myth and _Maerchen_.
If _Juengsten-Recht_ were yielding place to primogeniture, if the elders
were using their natural influence to secure advantages, then the
youngest child, still heir by waning custom, would doubtless suffer a
good deal of persecution. It may have been in this condition of affairs
that the myths of the brilliant triumph of the rightful but despised
heir, Cinderella, or Boots, were developed.
On the other hand, it is obvious that the necessities of fiction demand
examples of _failure_ in the adventures, to heighten the effect of the
final success. Now the failures might have begun with the youngest, and
the eldest might be the successful hero. But that would have reversed
the natural law by which the eldest goes first out into danger.
Moreover, the nursery audience of a _conte de nourrice_ is not
prejudiced in favour of the Big but of the Little Brother.
These simple facts of everyday life, rather than some ancient custom of
inheritance, may be the cause of the favouritism always shown to the
youngest son or daughter. (Compare Ralston, _Russian Folk Tales_, p. 81.
The idea of jealousy of the youngest brother, mixed up with a
miscellaneous assortment of _motifs_ of folk tales, occurs in
_Katha-sarit-sagara_, ch. xxxix.)
Against the notion that the successful youngest son or daughter of the
_contes_ is a descendant of the youngest child who is heir by _droit de
juveignerie_, it has been urged that the hero, if the heir, would 'not
start from the dust-bin and the coal-hole.' But if his heirship were
slipping from him, as has been suggested, the ashes of the hearth are
just what he _would_ start from. The 'coal-hole,' of course, is a modern
innovation. The hearth is the recognised legal position of the youngest
child in Gavel-kind. 'Et la mesuage seit autreci entre eux departi, mes
le ASTRE demorra al pune (ou al punee)[88].' In short, 'the Hearth-place
shall belong to the youngest,' and as far as forty feet round it. After
that the eldest has the first choice, and the others in succession
according to age. The Custumal of Kent of the thirteenth century is the
authority.
These rules of inheritance show, at least (and perhaps at most), a
curious coincidence between the tales which describe the youngest child
as always busy with the hearth, and the custom which bequeaths the
hearth (_astre_) to the youngest child. To _prove_ anything it would be
desirable to show that this rule of Gavel-kind once prevailed in all the
countries where the name of the heroine corresponds in meaning to
_Cendrillon_.
The attention of mythologists has long been fixed on the _slipper_ of
Cinderella. There seems no great mystery in the Prince's proposal to
marry the woman who could wear the tiny _mule_. It corresponds to the
advantages which, when the hero is a man, attend him who can bend the
bow, lift the stone, draw the sword, or the like. In a woman's case it
is beauty, in a man's strength, that is to be tested. Whether the
slipper were of _verre_ or of _vair_ is a matter of no moment. The
slipper is of red satin in Madame d'Aulnoy's _Finette Cendron_, and of
satin in _Rashin Coatie_. The Egyptian king, in Strabo and AElian, merely
concluded that the loser of the slipper must be a pretty woman, because
she certainly had a pretty foot. The test of fitting the owner recurs in
_Peau d'Ane_, where a ring, not a slipper, is the object, as in the
Finnish _Wonderful Birch tree_.
M. de Gubernatis takes a different view of Cinderella's slipper. The
Dawn, it appears, in the Rig Veda is said to leave no footsteps behind
her (_apad_). This naturally identifies her with Cinderella, who not
only leaves footsteps, probably, but one of her slippers. M. de
Gubernatis reasons that _apad_ 'may mean, not only she who has no feet,
but also she who has no footsteps ... or again, she who has no slippers,
the aurora having, as it appears, lost them.... The legend of the lost
slipper ... seems to me to repose entirely upon the double meaning of
the word _apad_, _i.e._ who has no foot, or what is the measure of the
foot, which may be either the footstep or the slipper....' (_Zoolog.
Myth._ i. 31). M. de Gubernatis adds that 'Cinderella, when she loses
the slipper, is overtaken by the prince bridegroom.' The point of the
whole story lies in this, of course, that she is _not_ overtaken. Had
she been overtaken, there would have been no need for the trial with the
slipper (_op. cit._ i. 161). M. de Gubernatis, in this passage, makes
the overtaking of Cinderella serve his purpose as proof; on p. 31 he
derives part of his proof from the statement (correct this time) that
Cinderella is _not_ overtaken, 'because a chariot bears her away.'
Another argument is that the dusky Cinderella is only brilliantly clad
'in the Prince's ball-room, or in church, in candle-light, and near the
Prince,--the aurora is beautiful only when the sun is near.' Is the sun
the candle-light, and is the Prince also the sun? If a lady is only
_belle a la chandelle_, what has the Dawn to do with that?
M. Andre Lefevre calls M. de Gubernatis's theory _quelque peu
aventureuse_ (_Les Contes de Charles Perrault_, p. lxxiv), and this
cannot be thought a severe criticism. If we supposed the story to have
arisen out of an epithet of Dawn, in Sanskrit, the other incidents of
the tale, and their combination into a fairly definite plot, and the
wide diffusion of that plot among peoples whose ancestors assuredly
never spoke Sanskrit, would all need explanation.
In Perrault's _Cinderella_, we have not the adventure of the False or
Substituted Bride, which usually swells out this and many other
_contes_, and which, indeed, is apparently brought in by popular
_conteurs_, whenever the tale is a little short. Thus it frequently
winds up the story which Perrault gives so briefly as _Les Fees_. Among
the Zulus[89], the Birds of the Thorn country warn the bridegroom that
he has the wrong girl,--she is a beast (_mbulu_) in Zululand. The birds
give the warning in _Rashin Coatie_[90], and birds take the same part in
Swedish, Russian, German, but a dog plays the _role_ in Breton (Reinhold
Koehler, _op. cit._ p. 373). In a song of Fauriel's _Chansons Romaiques_
the birds warn the girl that she is riding with a corpse. Birds give the
warning in Gaelic (Campbell, No. 14).
Perrault did more than suppress the formula of the False Bride. By an
artistic use of his Fairy Godmother he gave Cinderella her excellent
reason for leaving the ball, not because _cupit ipsa videri_, but in
obedience to the fairy dame. He made Cinderella forgive her stepsisters,
and get them good marriages, in place of punishing them, as even Psyche
does so treacherously in Apuleius, and as the wild justice of folk tales
usually determines their doom. An Italian Cinderella breaks her
stepmother's neck with the lid of a chest. But Cendrillon 'douce et
bonne au debut reste jusqu'a la fin douce et bonne' (Deulin, _Contes de
Ma Mere l'Oye_, p. 286). These are examples of Perrault's refined way of
treating the old tales. But in his own country there survives a version
of _Cendrillon_ in which a _Blue Bull_, not a Fairy Godmother, helps the
heroine. From the ear of the Bull, as from his horn in Kaffir lore, the
heroine draws her supplies. She is Jaquette de Bois, and reminds us of
Katie Wooden cloak. Her mother is dead, but the Bull is not said to have
been the mother in bestial form. (Sebillot, _Contes Pop. de la Haute
Bretagne_, Charpentier, Paris, 1880, p. 15). In these versions the
formula of _Cendrillon_ shifts into that of _The Black Bull o'
Norroway_.
[Footnote 68: H. H. Risley, _Asiatic Quarterly_, Number III. 'Primitive
Marriage in Bengal.']
[Footnote 69: Demosth. _De Corona_, 313, Harpocration, apomattein.
Theal, _Kaffir Folk Lore_, p. 22.]
[Footnote 70: _Izinganekwane_, p. 1.]
[Footnote 71: Theal, p. 158.]
[Footnote 72: _Indian Evangelical Review_, Oct. 1886. The collector is
Mr. A. Campbell.]
[Footnote 73: Maspero, _Contes Egyptiens_, p. 4.]
[Footnote 74: _Finnische Maerchen_, uebersetzt von Emmy Schreck. Weimar,
1887.]
[Footnote 75: Gustav Meyer, _op. cit._ p. xix.]
[Footnote 76: Theal, _op. cit._ p. 3.]
[Footnote 77: Compare the revived Ox. Callaway, _Zulu Nursery Tales_, p.
230; The _Edda_, Mallet, p. 436; _South African Folk Lore Journal_,
March, 1880; Aschenpuettel (The Dove and the Hazel tree), Grimm, 21.]
[Footnote 78: In the Catalan version _Ventafochs_, fire-lighter, Italian
_Cenerentola_. Deulin _Contes de Ma Mere l'Oye_, pp. 265, 266. In Emmy
Schreck the Finnish girl is _Aschenbroedel_, and foul with ashes.]
[Footnote 79: Exophagy.]
[Footnote 80: This is the _Mouton_ of Madame D'Aulnoy, but _he_ is a
prodigiously courtly creature, and becomes the _Beast_ who half dies for
love and is revived by a kiss. 'Un joli Mouton, brebis doux, bien
caressant, ne laisse pas de plaire, surtout quand on scait qu'il est
roi, et que la metamorphose doit finir.' But the heroine came too late,
and the gallant _Mouton_ expired.]
[Footnote 81: _Revue Celtique_, vol. iii. p. 365.]
[Footnote 82: In the Scandinavian _Katie Wooden cloak_ the buried bull
does all for Katie that the Ram, or Cow, or Calf, or Fairy Godmother
does for the other Cinderellas.]
[Footnote 83: Herr Koehler quotes M. Luzel's _Chat Noir_, a Breton tale,
in which a stepmother kills a cow that befriends Yvonne. Within the dead
cow were found two golden slippers. Then comes in the formula of the
False Bride (_Rev. Celtique_, 1870, p. 373).]
[Footnote 84: Among the Basutos this happens in 'The Murder of
Maciloniane.' Casalis, p. 309: 'The bird was the heart of
Maciloniane.']
[Footnote 85: Apoll. Rhod. i. 256. The story of Athamas is an ingenious
medley of _Maerchen_, including, as will be shown, part of _Hop o' my
Thumb_.]
[Footnote 86: Gubernatis, _Zoolog. Myth._ ii. 5.]
[Footnote 87: A Zulu tale in Callaway, pp. 64, 65, is proof that this
was once the Zulu custom.]
[Footnote 88: Elton, _op. cit._ p. 190.]
[Footnote 89: Callaway, p. 121.]
[Footnote 90: _Revue Celtique_, Jan., Nov. 1878, p. 366.]
RIQUET A LA HOUPPE.
_Riquet of the Tuft._
Of all Perrault's tales _Riquet_ is the least popular. Compared with the
stories of Madlle. L'Heritier or of the Comtesse de Murat, even _Riquet_
is short and simple. But it could hardly be told by a nurse, and it
would not greatly interest a child. We want to know what became of the
plain but lively sister, and she drops out of the narrative unnoticed.
The touch of the traditional and popular manner in the story is the love
of a woman redeeming the ugliness of a man. In one shape or another,
from the Kaffir _Bird who made Milk_, or _Five Heads_, to what was
probably the original form of _Cupid and Psyche_, this is the
fundamental notion of _Beauty and the Beast_[91]. But Perrault hints
that the miracle was purely 'subjective.' 'Some say that the Princess,
reflecting on the perseverance of her lover, and all his good qualities,
ceased to see that his body was deformed, and his face ugly.' There is
therefore little excuse for examining here the legends of ladies, or
lords, who marry a Tick (in Portugal), a Frog (in Scotland and India), a
Beaver (in North America), a Pumpkin (in Wallachia), an Iron Stove (in
Germany), a Serpent (in Zululand), and so forth. These tales are
usually, perhaps, of moral origin, and convey the lesson that no magic
can resist kindness. The strange husbands or wives are enchanted into an
evil shape, till they meet a lover who will not disdain them. Moral,
don't disdain anybody. Some have entertained angels unawares. But this
apologue could only have been invented when there was a general belief
in powers of enchantment and metamorphosis, a belief always more
powerful in proportion to the low culture of the people who entertain
it. In the Kaffir tale, where the girl disenchants the Crocodile by
_licking_ him (kissing, perhaps, being unfamiliar), the man who comes
out of the crocodile skin merely says that the girl's 'power' (her
native magical force) is greater than that of 'the enemies of his
father's house,' who had enchanted him (Theal, _The Bird who made
Milk_). This idea may and does exist apart from the notion, which so
commonly accompanies it, of a taboo, or prohibition on freedom of
intercourse between the lover and the lady, either of whom has been
disenchanted by the other.
If the original and popular basis of this kind of story was moral, the
moral was strangely coloured by the fancy of early men. In Perrault
little but the moral, told in a gallant apologue, remains. It may be
compared with a Thibetan story, analysed by M. Gaston Paris[92].
[Footnote 91: Theal's _Kaffir Folk Lore_, p. 37.]
[Footnote 92: _Revue Critique_, July, 1874.]
LE PETIT POUCET.
_Hop o' my Thumb._
Perrault's tale of _Le Petit Poucet_ has nothing but the name in common
with the legend of _Le Petit Poucet_ (our 'Tom Thumb') on which M.
Gaston Paris has written a learned treatise. The Poucet who conducts the
Walloon _Chaur-Poce_, our 'Charles's Wain,' merely resembles Hop o' my
Thumb in his tiny stature, and little can be gained by a comparison of
two personages so unlike in their adventures (Gaston Paris, _Mem. de la
Societe de Linguistique_, i. 4, p. 372).
In _Hop o' my Thumb_, as Perrault tells it, there are many traces of
extreme antiquity.
The incidents are (1) Design of a distressed father and mother to expose
their children in a forest. (2) Discovery and frustration of the scheme
by the youngest child, whose clue leads him and his brethren home again.
(3) The same incident, but the clue (scattered crumbs) spoiled by birds.
(4) Arrival of the children at the house of an ogre. They are
entertained by his wife, but the ogre discovers them by the smell of
human flesh. (5) Hop o' my Thumb shifts the golden crowns of the ogre's
children to the heads of his brethren, and the ogre destroys his own
family in the dark. (6) Flight of the boys, pursued by the ogre in
Seven-Leagued Boots. (7) There is a choice of conclusion. In one (8) Hop
o' my Thumb steals the boots of the sleeping ogre, and gets his
treasures from the ogre's wife. (9) Hop o' my Thumb steals the boots and
by their aid wins court favour. Throughout the tale the skill of an
extremely small boy is the subject of admiration.
(1) The opening of the story has nothing supernatural or unusual in it.
During the famines which Racine and Vauban deplored, peasants must often
have been tempted to 'lose' their children (Sainte-Beuve, _Port Royal_,
vi. 153; _Memoires sur la Vie de Jean Racine_. A Geneve, M.DCCXLVII, pp.
271-3).
(2) The idea of dropping objects which may serve as a guide or 'trail'
is so natural and obvious that it is used in 'paper-chases' every day.
In the Indian story[93] of _Surya Bai_, a handful of grains is
scattered, the pearls of a necklace are used in the _Raksha's Palace_,
in Grimm (15, _Haensel and Grethel_) white pebbles and crumbs of bread
are employed. The Kaffir girl drops ashes[94]. In _Nennilloe Nennella_
(_Pentamerone_, v. 8) the father of the children has pity on them, and
makes a trail of ashes. Bran is used on the second journey, but it is
eaten by an ass[95].
(4) The children arrive at the house of an ogre, whose wife treats them
kindly; the ogre, however, smells them out.
This incident, quite recognisable, is found in Namaqua folklore (Bleek,
_Bushman Folk Lore_). A Namaqua woman has married an elephant. To her
come her two brothers, whom she hides away. 'Then the Elephant, who had
been in the veldt, arrived, and smelling something, rubbed against the
house.' His wife persuades him that she has slain and cooked a wether,
indeed she does cook a wether, to hide the smell of human flesh.
Compare Perrault, 'L'Ogre flairoit droite et a gauche, disant qu'il
sentoit la chair fraiche. Il faut, luy dit sa femme, que ce soit ce veau
que je viens d'habiller que vous sentez.' But the ogre, like the blind
mother of the Elephant in Namaqua, retains his suspicions. In the Zulu
tale of Uzembeni (Callaway, p. 49) there is an ogress very hungry and
terrible, who has even tried to eat her own daughters. She comes home,
where Uzembeni is concealed, and says, 'My children, in my house here
today there is a delicious odour!' As Callaway remarks, this
'Fee-fo-fum' incident recurs in Maori myth, when Maui visits
Murri-ranga-whenua, and in the legend of Tawhaki, where the ogre is a
submarine ogre (Grey's _Polynes. Myth._ pp. 34, 64). In a more familiar
passage the Eumenides utter their _fee-fo-fum_ when they smell out
Orestes[96].
In the extreme north-west of America this world-wide notion meets us
again, among the Dene Hareskins (Petitot, _Traditions Indiennes du
Canada Nord-Ouest_, Paris, 1886, p. 171). The stranger comes to strange
people, 'un jeune garcon sort d'une maison et dit, Moi, je sens l'odeur
humaine ... ce disant, il humait l'air, et reniflait a la maniere d'un
limier qui est sur une piste.' In the Aberdeenshire _Mally Whuppy_, we
have the old
Fee, fie, fo, fum,
I smell the blood of some earthly one![97]
The idea of cannibalism, which inspires most of these tales, like the
Indian stories of _Rakshas_, is probably derived from the savage state
of general hostility and actual anthropophagy (_Die Anthropophagie_,
Ueberlebsel im Volksglauben.' Andree, Leipzig, 1887). We know that
Basutos have reverted to cannibalism in this century; in Labrador and
the wilder Ojibbeway districts, Weendigoes, or men returned to
cannibalism, are greatly dreaded (Hind's _Explorations in Labrador_, i.
p. 59). There are some very distressing stories in Kohl (_Kitchi Gami_,
p. 355-359). A prejudice against eating kindred flesh, (as against
eating Totems or kindred animals and vegetables,) is common among
savages. Hence the wilder South American tribes, says Cieza de Leon,
bred children they might lawfully eat from wives of alien stock, the
father being reckoned not akin to his children, who follow the maternal
line. Thus the great prevalence of cannibalism in European _Maerchen_
seems a survival from the savage condition. In savage _Maerchen_, where
cannibalism is no less common, it needs little explanation; not that all
savages are cannibals, but most live on the frontier of starvation, and
have even less scruple than Europeans in the ultimate resort.
(5) Arrived at the ogre's house, Hop o' my Thumb deceives the cannibal,
and makes him slay his own children.
This is decidedly a milder form of the incident in which the captive
either cooks his captor, or makes the captor devour some of his own
family. In Zululand (Callaway, pp. 16-18, _Uhlakanyana_) we find the
former agreeable adventure. Uhlakanyana, trapped by the cannibal, gets
the cannibal's mother to play with him at boiling each other. The old
lady cries out that she is 'being done,' but the artful lad replies,
'When a man has been thoroughly done, he does not keep crying I am
already done. He just says nothing when he is already done.... Now you
have become silent; that is the reason why I think you are thoroughly
done. You will be eaten by your children.' Callaway justly compares the
Gaelic Maol a Chliobain, who got the Giant's mother to take her place in
the Giant's game-bag,--with consequences (Campbell, i. 255). In Grimm's
_Haensel and Grethel_ Peggy bakes the ogress. The trick recurs in the
Kaffir _Hlakanyana_[98]. There are two ways of doing this trick in
popular tales: either the prisoner is in a sack, and induces another
person to take his place (as in the Aberdonian _Mally Whuppy_, and among
the Kaffirs); or they play at cooking each other; or, in some other way,
the captive induces the captor to enter the pot or oven, and, naturally,
keeps him there. This is the device of the German Grethel and the Zulu
Uhlakanyana. The former plan, of the game-bag, prevails among the South
Siberian peoples of the Turkish race. Tardanak was caught by a
seven-headed monster and put in a bag. He made his way out, and induced
the monster's children to take his place. The monster, Jalbagan, then
cooked his own children. Perrault wisely makes his ogre a little
intoxicated, but he did not carry his mistake so far as to _eat_ his
children.
The expedient by which Hop o' my Thumb saves his company, and makes the
ogre's children perish, differs from the usual devices of the game-bag
and the oven. Hop o' my Thumb exchanges the nightcaps of himself and his
brothers for the golden crowns of the ogre's daughters. But even this is
not original. In the many _Maerchen_ which are melted together into the
legend of the Minyan House of Athamas, this idea occurs. According to
Hyginus, Themisto, wife of Athamas, wished to destroy the children of
her rival Ino. She, therefore, to distinguish the children, bade the
nurse dress her children in white night-gowns, and Ino's children in
black. But this nurse (so ancient is the central idea of _East Lynne_)
was Ino herself in disguise, and she reversed the directions she had
received. Themisto, therefore, murdered her own children in the dusk, as
the ogre slew his own daughters. M. Deulin quotes a Catalan tale, in
which the boys escape from a cupboard, where they place the daughters of
the ogress, and they then sleep in the daughters' bed.
(6) The flight of Hop o' my Thumb and his brethren is usually aided, in
Zulu, Kaffir, Iroquois, Samoan, Japanese, Scotch, German, and other
tales, by magical objects, which, when thrown behind the fugitives,
become lakes, forests, and the like, thus detaining the pursuer.
Perrault knows nothing of this. His seven-leagued boots, used by the
ogre and stolen by the hero, doubtless are by the same maker as the
sandals of Hermes; the goodly sandals, golden, that wax never old
(_Odyssey_, v. 45).
In addition to these shoon, and the shoon of Loki, and the slippers of
Poutraka in the _Kathasaritsagara_ (i. 13), we may name the
seven-leagued boots in the very rare old Italian rhymed _Historia
delliombruno_, a black-letter tract, which contains one of the earliest
representations of these famous articles.
While these main incidents of Hop o' my Thumb are so widely current, the
general idea of a small and tricksy being is found frequently, from the
Hermes of the Homeric Hymn to the Namaqua Heitsi Eibib, the other
_Poucet_, or Tom Thumb, and the Zulu Uhlakanyana. Extraordinary
precocity, even from the day of birth, distinguishes these beings (as
Indra and Hermes) in _myth_. In _Maerchen_ it is rather their smallness
and astuteness than their youth that commands admiration, though they
are often very precocious. The general sense of the humour of 'infant
prodigies' is perhaps the origin of these romances.