of the Russians, it will therefore not be surprising to find among
their popular tales a number of variants closely allied to the
Rumanian animal tales, and, what is of the utmost importance in
this connection, not a few of the "creation" tales. No country
perhaps has been so much torn by religious discussions and sects
as Russia. The number of sects is legion. The most extraordinary
notions, extreme views on dogma and practice, heterodox principles
expressed in worship, belief and popular song or tale are all found
in Russia: unadulterated Dualism, Bogomilism, Manichaean teaching are
openly professed by a number of the sects persecuted and condemned
by the Orthodox Church. Almost all the books condemned as heretical
in the early Indices Expurgatoria put forth by Councils and Church
Assemblies, have been preserved almost intact in the old Slavonic
and Russian language, and the religious and epic songs of the "blind"
minstrels of Russia are full of the legendary lore of those heterodox
sects. This fact has been established beyond doubt by the researches
of Russian scholars, and notably by Wesselofsky. Among the Russians,
then, we find the nearest parallels to the Rumanian "creation"
stories; a clear evidence of common origin, both drawing upon the
same source of information; the religious in the form of apologues,
legends and tales, so prominent a feature of heterodox propaganda.
The weapons used by the Catholic Church in its persecution of
heretical sects are, almost every one of them, borrowed from the
Greek armoury. One learns to know this fact more and more from a
closer enquiry into the inner history of Byzance, its laws, decrees,
administration and practice. And, precisely the same influence
destroyed later the heretical teaching in the West as it destroyed it
among the Greeks. The power of the Church and the secular arm were
both used ruthlessly for exterminating any idea or any belief that
ran counter to the doctrines taught by the established Church. The
Cathars had also a much more difficult task in converting the East of
Europe, inasmuch as they were also confronted there by some amount of
literary tradition. Illiterate as were the masses, there were still
among them and among their clerics, men of ability, men of learning,
men trained in the scholastic schools, able, if not to refute, at
any rate to confuse, the strange doctrine.
All these forces combined, produced in the East the same result
as they have produced among the Greeks. We are thus on the track
of one of the most important sources of Western European folk-lore,
always remembering that the medium in which this propaganda flourished
differed considerably in the West from that in the East. In the former
such propaganda met with a more ancient layer of well-established
literary tradition. The Catholic Church, as mentioned above, was first
in possession. It was not a tabula rasa on which the new teaching
could be written, but yet that which existed was profoundly modified
and a new fund of highly poetic yet popular material was added to the
small store of knowledge possessed by the common people. But in time
the Church took up the challenge, and remorselessly hunted down the
apostles of popular heterodox teaching, just as the Greeks had done,
going even further. It punished with sword and fire the followers of
unauthorised practices, and branded every deviation from the strait
path as rank heresy. The books containing legends and tales were burnt,
and their possessors were often treated in like fashion.
Inquisition, Church and other influences helped, as already mentioned,
to destroy them. In the tragedy of heresy-hunting and burning
of witches, the charge of devil worship was the basic principle,
the chief head of accusation. It was clearly devised against the
followers of the dualistic teaching. To tell a tale like any of these
Rumanian "creation" tales, would have been inviting the heaviest
punishment--to believe in it would have meant sure death. No wonder
that they disappeared quickly, or were changed into harmless satires,
as in the Reynard Cycle, or were even used for political cartoons,
in broadsides, like the Cock Robin Cycle in the time of Charles II.,
which, when transplanted to Russia, became a political lampoon on
Peter and his Court.
Heresy-hunting becomes a popular distraction only when the official
clergy find it profitable to make it so, and when the people are made
to trace their own ills and troubles, their losses in field and stable,
to the evil machinations of these tools of the devil. So long as they
are not suffering in body or purse, the folk are absolutely indifferent
to dogmas, and they will eagerly accept anything that pleases them. It
will therefore not come as a surprise, in view of what has been stated,
if we find some weird conceptions among the Rumanian peasantry.
Studied from the point of view of heresiology or rather of popular
psychology, some of these tales will appear to us as so many living
records of the great spiritual movement, which for centuries dominated
Europe, and which has since died out.
Too little attention has been given hitherto to the influence of those
numerous sects, which stretched from Asia Minor to the south of France,
and overflowed even into England. Their dualism, the strong belief
in the Power of Evil, Satan and his host, the consequent duty of the
faithful to banish him or to subdue him, thus developed into belief in
sorcery and witchcraft, with the attending horrors of the Inquisition.
Then came a period of wider education still less tolerant of old
women's superstition and nursery tales. What was left still standing
has been, and is being, finally destroyed by our modern schools and
schoolmasters. From this dire fate, the folk-lore of the nearer East
has as yet been preserved. The importance of the study of folk-lore
has happily been recognised in those countries, early enough to stop
the blight which had set in and which threatened to destroy it more
ruthlessly than even in the West. The modern "man of science" is a
more relentless iconoclast than the religious fanatic. He starts
from the mind in his attempt to destroy folk-lore, using to this
end cold reasoning, logical conclusions, spiritual prepossession
and intolerance. The religious fanatic starts from the heart, with
overwhelming passion, fiery zeal, unreasoning hatred, from which
there is a possible escape for mysticism and mythical lore, whilst
from the former there is none. Happily, our science of folk-lore with
its deep sympathy and profound appreciation of these manifestations
of the popular psyche has come in the nick of time to rescue from
total extinction what the schoolmaster and the heresy-hunter have
not yet annihilated.
I turn now to another aspect of these bird and beast tales. If, as I
believe, they show us what is at the back of the mind of the people,
they are of invaluable service to the student of anthropology, above
all to him who seeks enlightenment in the grave problems of education
and civilization; and they are not without importance for the solution
of political problems.
Attempts are made--well meant, no doubt--to foist that state of culture
which the West calls "modern civilization," or "civilization" pure
and simple, upon the reluctant people of the Near and Far East. We
are forgetful of the fact that these nations have had a civilization
of their own, and that something more important is included in this
forcible change than the change of a dress.
As the outcome of a long-drawn battle between feudalism and modern
society, as a result of political and economic evolutions, the
civilization of the West, when introduced among nations that have not
gone through the same experience, acts like the Juggernaut car, which
crushes under its wheels the worshippers of this new god and destroys
at the same time the foundations of the old order of things. Only
students of folk-lore, those who try to reach the hidden depths, nay,
to penetrate the inner soul of the people, are in a position to judge
of the results of these civilizing attempts. They can compare the past
with the present, and draw a proper balance between gain and loss. Are
the people happier, more contented, more moral, and even more religious
after the change, than they were before it? Surely not. And if not,
why not? The answer is very simple: because in this violent change no
tenderness is shown to those beliefs and practices which are dear to
the people and which help to lighten the burden of life by innocent
mirth and the wholesome play of fancy. Wire brooms may sweep well; but
they may do it too well, and they can sweep everything away, leaving
the home bare and the gardens stripped of every leaf and flower.
A few words concerning the order and grouping of these tales. They
have been arranged in three main groups. The first comprises those
tales which I have characterised as creation legends. In them the
origin of birds, beasts and insects is explained as the result of
some direct act of God, or the Saints, or the Devil. An attempt has
been made to follow a certain chronological order. Those tales stand
first in which God is acting at the beginning of the creation. Then,
following the Biblical order, the legends connected with the persons
of sacred history from Adam to the Apostles, including St. Mary
and St. Anne. Mystical Christmas carols or rather epic ballads,
in which similar subjects are treated, have been inserted between
the legends. The second section comprises such legends as are more
like fairy tales. The mythical personages are no longer those known
through the Scriptures. On the contrary, there are in these tales
reminiscences of ancient heathen gods and heroes, chief among them
being Alexander the Great.
In the third section the animal fables are grouped together. It
is the literature of the apologues without any framework or moral
setting. The parallels, as far as could be found, are given briefly at
the end of each legend, tale or fable. I have striven to be concise in
my references to the best-known collections of tales, such as Grimm,
Hahn, Cosquin, and Gonzenbach, where the student of fairy tales can
easily find the whole comparative literature.
For the genuine and unadulterated popular origin of these tales I
can vouch absolutely. Some I have heard in my early youth, but the
majority have been culled from the works of S. Fl. Marian (Ornitologia
poporana Româna, 2 vols., Cernauti 1883; and Insectele, Bucharest
1903), than whom a more painstaking trustworthy collector could
not be imagined. Some have been taken from the Folk-lore reviews,
Sezatoarea, ed. by A. Gorovei (i.-xii., Falticeni 1892 to 1912),
and Ion Creanga, published by the Society of that name (i.-viii.,
Barlad 1908-1915). Anton Pann (Poveste si istoriaire, Bucharest 1836)
has given us a few stories, as well as A. and A. Schott (Walachische
Maehrchen, Stuttgart and Tübingen 1845). The Pilgrimage of the Soul is
from S. Mangiuca, Calindariu, pe. 1882, Brasiovu 1881 and the Story
of Man and his Years, No. 113, from M. Gaster, Chrestomatie Romana,
vol. ii., Bucharest 1891. These tales have been collected from every
country where Rumanians live, not only in the Kingdom of Rumania,
but also from the Rumanians of Transylvania and Bukovina, as well as
from the Kutzo-Vlachs of Macedonia.
I have added a few charms and also a few more mystical religious
songs and carols, which throw light on some of the beliefs underlying
the tales and legends, taken mostly from the great collection of
G. Dem. Teodorescu (Poesii Popularare Romane, Bucharest 1885).
In some cases I have given also variants of the same tale.
I have endeavoured to render the stories as faithfully as the spirit
of the Rumanian and English languages allows, and I fear that I have
on sundry occasions forced the latter in my desire to preserve as far
as possible the quaintness and the flavour of the Rumanian original.
There is one characteristic feature in the collection of animal tales
and legends given here, upon which I should like to lay great stress,
and that is the complete purity which pervades them all. There is
no playing with moral principles. No double meaning is attached to
any story: and this, to my mind, is the best proof of their popular
origin. These tales are not sullied by a morbid imagination, nor
contaminated by sexual problems. The people are pure at heart and in
the stories their simplicity and purity appear most beautifully.
In these tales and legends we have syncretism in full swing. It is
not a picture of the past which we have to piece laboriously together
from half-forgotten records, from writing half obliterated by the
action of time and by changes which have swept over those nations of
the past, whose life and thought we are endeavouring to conjure up
and to understand. In our midst, at our door, under our own eyes,
this process of mixing and adjusting, of change and evolution, of
differentiation, combination and assimilation is still going on. It
is a wonderful picture for any one who is able to discover the forces
that are at work, who can trace every strand of the webbing, every
thread in the woof and warp, to its immediate and to its remoter
source. We see the shuttle of human imagination, of human belief,
flying busily through the loom, charged at one time with one thread,
at another with a different one. Many of the ways of the human mind
meet here, cross one another, and new roads are thus created by busy
wayfarers. And thus paganism sustains a busy and robust life. The old
Pantheon is still peopled with the old gods, or, shall we better say,
the Pandaemonium in its highest and best sense is displaying itself
with unexpected vigour. The heathen gods, the Christian saints, God and
the devil legends, fairy tales, oriental imagery, mystical traditions
and astrological lore are all inextricably blended together. The line
of demarcation between man and animal has not been clearly drawn, or
it has not yet been attempted. These multifarious elements have not
yet been combined into one homogeneous structure. The problem arises
whether other nations have also passed through a similar mental and
psychical process; whether they have had a similar Pandaemonic mixture,
out of which their more colourless folk-lore had been distilled in
the crucible of "civilization."
Primitive people can often hear the footfall of men by putting the
ear to the ground. We may, by putting an ear to the ground, hear the
footfalls of the Past, and listen to the echo before it dies away
into eternity.
BIRD AND BEAST STORIES
I.
WHY IS THE BEE BLACK, AND WHY IS IT MAKING HONEY? HOW DID THE BEE
OUTWIT THE DEVIL?
In the beginning only water and God and the devil existed. These two
were all the time moving about upon the surface of the waters. After
some time God, feeling rather tired of this flitting about without
rest or peace, said to the devil, "Go down to the bottom of the sea
and bring up in my name a handful of the seed of the earth." The devil
did as he was told, but whilst he was plunging in the depths he said
to himself, "Why shall I bring up the seed in his name? I will take
it in my own." And so he did. When he came up God asked him, "Hast
thou brought the seed?" The devil replied, "Yes, here it is." But
when he opened his hand to show the seed to God, lo, it was quite
empty. The water had wasted the seed away.
Then God told him to plunge again and bring up the seed of the earth
in his name. The devil, however, again took the seed from the bottom
of the sea in his own name, and when he opened his hand to give
the seed to God the waters had again washed his hand clean. For a
third time God sent him down to the bottom of the sea to bring up
seed. This time the devil bethought himself, and instead of taking
the seed in his own name as he had determined, now took it in God's
name and in his own. He would not do it in God's name alone. When he
came up the waters had this time also washed everything away that he
had taken in his hand. Only a few grains, however, remained under the
nails of his fingers. God asked him whether he had brought the seed
up, and he replied "To be sure." But when he opened his hand it was
again empty. Still, there were the few grains which had stuck under
the nails. God greatly rejoiced at these few, which he carefully
scraped out from under the nails, and made of them a small cake
which he put upon the water, where it floated, and God sat upon it
to rest. Being now very tired, God fell asleep on that little cake
of earth. When the devil saw God fast asleep, what did the unclean
one think? "What a lucky thing that is for me," he said to himself,
"I can now drown him." And so he tried to turn the cake over, so
that God should fall into the water. But what happened? In whatever
direction God rolled, the cake of earth expanded and stretched
under him. He first rolled him towards the east, and the earth grew
under God. The devil then tried to upset the cake towards the west,
and again the earth stretched under God. Now, said the devil, "Now
there is also room for me to rest," and he sat down on the opposite
side where the earth had grown bigger. There again he endeavoured
with all his weight to press down the earth, so as to make the earth
turn turtle, once towards the north, once towards the south; and God
rolled towards them and the earth grew in all directions.
Now by this continual rolling the earth grew so big that it became
wider and larger than the waters. When God awoke and saw what the
devil had done he did not know what to do with this huge earth,
which had become far too big. The devil, seeing what he had done,
and being afraid of God's wrath, ran away and hid himself in one of
the clefts of the earth. God then decided to ask the devil what he
was to do with this earth, which had become so big.
Now, of all the beasts and creatures which God had made, none was more
pleasing in his sight than the bee, which was then playing in Paradise.
The bee was white, and not black as she is now, and I will tell you
presently how it came about that she changed her colour.
God sent the bee to ask the devil what he was to do and what good
advice he could give him. The bee, at once, went as she was commanded,
and came to the place where the devil lived.
"Good morning, uncle," said the bee.
"Good morning, sister," said the devil. "What has brought thee to me?"
"Well, you see, God has sent me to ask what he was to do with this
huge earth."
But the devil grumpily and sneeringly replied, "If he is God he ought
to know better than to ask a poor devil for advice. I am not going
to tell him. Let him find it out for himself."
The bee, who was a clever little thing--it was not for nothing that
God's choice had fallen upon her--pretended to fly away. But she soon
crept back quite stealthily and settled noiselessly on the upper
beam of the door. She knew that the devil cannot keep any secrets,
and he would surely speak out. So, indeed, it happened. No sooner
did he believe himself alone, than he started muttering to himself,
chuckling all the time.
"A clever man that God really is. He asks me what to do. Why does
he not think of mountains and valleys?" You must know that the earth
when first made was quite flat, like a pancake.
"Let him take the earth in his arms and squeeze it a bit, and it will
fit all right."
The bee overheard what he said, for he spoke loud enough, and rejoicing
that she had got the answer, spread out her wings and started flying
away. The buzzing of her wings betrayed her, and the devil, hearing
the noise, rushed out of his cave with his whip in his hand and said:
"O you thief! So that is the way you have cheated me. Mayst thou feed
on what comes out of thy body." And he struck the bee with his whip.
This changed her white colour into black. Moreover, he hit her so
badly that he nearly cut her in two. That is why the bee has such
a narrow waist, that she looks as if she were cut in two and barely
hanging together by a thread.
Limping and sore, the bee came back to God and told him what she
had overheard from the devil. God was greatly pleased and, squeezing
the earth in his arms, he made mountains and valleys, and the earth
grew smaller.
Then turning to the bee he said, "Out of thy body henceforth shall
come only honey to sweeten the life of man and he shall bless thee for
that gift; also shalt thou bring forth wax for candles on the altar."
And God went on to ask the bee what reward she would claim for the
errand which she had so well fulfilled. The bee, impudent and greedy,
replied: "Why should man share in my gift and have my honey? Give me
the power to kill with my sting."
And God was angry at the impudence of the bee, and replied: "All the
honey shall be thine alone, if thou art able to make a gallon of it
during the summer: if not, man may share it with thee. And because
thou hast asked for the power of killing with thy sting, meaning to
kill man by it, thine own death shall be by thy sting."
This is the reason why the bees work so industriously and indefatigably
during the summer. Each hopes to make a gallon of honey, but they can
never succeed. And this, too, is the reason why the bee dies when it
stings anyone.
There is another variant of the cosmogonic part.
The place of the devil is taken by the mole [1] whom the Rumanians
believe to be a very deep fellow.
The story then runs as follows:
When God had made the heavens there was as yet no earth. So God took
a ball of string and measured the span of heaven. Then he called
the mole and told him to keep the ball whilst he was busy making the
earth, according to the measure which he had taken. But whilst God
went on measuring by the string which he had rolled off the ball,
the mole very slyly let the ball roll on whilst God was tugging at
the string. And so it came to pass that the earth made thus by God
was larger than the span of heaven, and could not be got under it.
The mole, seeing what he had done, went away and hid himself in his
earth. Hither the bee was sent to get the secret from him how the
earth could be made smaller.
The story then runs on like the one just told, without the explanation
of the dark colour and of the narrow waist. Nor is any reference made
in that version to the sting and the gallon of honey.
The dualistic conception of the creation of the world is here clearly
set out. The people believe in it. In the formation of the earth the
devil has his full, nay an equal share, though he always is fooled
in the end and is cheated even by a little bee.
To this creation story a few variants can be found among the
Bulgarians and Letts, but they are neither so full nor so complete
as the Rumanian version.
They are given by Dähnhardt, Natursagen, i. pp. 127-128 (Leipzig and
Berlin 1907). The first part of the story of the devil being sent
down to bring up seed from the bottom, and only that part, is found
among the Gipsy tales from Transylvania, published by Wlislocki,
Zigeuner-märchen aus Transylvania, p. 1, No. 1.
Among the Russians, Ralston gives a short variant in which only God
and the devil are mentioned, nothing of the bee, and even the first
part is extremely short. (Russian Folk Tales, p. 329, London 1873.)
The existence of hills is accounted for by legendary lore in this
wise. When the Lord was about to fashion the face of the earth he
ordered the devil to dive into the watery depths and bring thence
a handful of the soil he found at the bottom. The devil obeyed,
but when he filled his hand he filled his mouth also. The Lord
took the soil, sprinkled it around, and the earth appeared, all
perfectly flat. The devil, whose mouth was quite full, looked on
for some time in silence. At last he tried to speak, but choked,
and fled in terror. After him followed the thunder and lightning,
and so he rushed over the whole face of the earth, hills springing
up where he coughed, and sky-cleaving mountains where he leaped.
I. B.
HOW DID THE BEE OUTWIT THE MOLE?
Another Version.
When the Lord made the heavens he took a ball and spanned the heavens,
and after he had finished spanning the heavens he started making
the earth. The mole, cunning little beast, came to him and said:
"O Lord, let me help thee in making the earth"; and the Lord, who is
always good, said in the goodness of his heart: "Very well," and he
gave the ball to the mole to keep it.