stands acquitted, if another of no less difficulty is devised which must
be performed first. This preliminary may be something that is essential
for the execution of the other, as in the German ballads, or equally
well something that has no kind of relation to the original requisition,
as in the English ballads.
An early form of such a story is preserved in Gesta Romanorum, c. 64,
Oesterley, p. 374. It were much to be wished that search were made for a
better copy, for, as it stands, this tale is to be interpreted only by
the English ballad. The old English version, Madden, XLIII, p. 142, is
even worse mutilated than the Latin. A king, who was stronger, wiser,
and handsomer than any man, delayed, like the Marquis of Saluzzo, to
take a wife. His friends urged him to marry, and he replied to their
expostulations, "You know I am rich enough and powerful enough; find me
a maid who is good looking and sensible, and I will take her to wife,
though she be poor." A maid was found who was eminently good looking and
sensible, and of royal blood besides. The king wished to make trial of
her sagacity, and sent her a bit of linen three inches square, with a
promise to marry her if she would make him a shirt of this, of proper
length and width. The lady stipulated that the king should send her "a
vessel in which she could work," and she would make the shirt: "michi
vas concedat in quo operari potero, et camisiam satis longam ei
promitto." So the king sent "vas debitum et preciosum," the shirt was
made, and the king married her.[14] It may be doubted whether the
sagacious maid did not, in the unmutilated story, deal with the problem
as is done in a Transylvanian tale, Haltrich, Deutsche Volksmärchen,
u.s.w., No 45, p. 245, where the king requires the maid to make a shirt
and drawers of two threads. The maid, in this instance, sends the king a
couple of broomsticks, requiring that he should first make her a loom
and bobbin-wheel out of them.
The tale just cited, 'Der Burghüter und seine kluge Tochter,' is one of
several which have been obtained from tradition in this century, that
link the ballads of The Clever Lass with oriental stories of great age.
The material points are these. A king requires the people of a parish
to answer three questions, or he will be the destruction of them all:
What is the finest sound, the finest song, the finest stone? A poor
warder is instructed by his daughter to reply, the ring of bells, the
song of the angels, the philosopher's stone. "Right," says the king,
"but that never came out of your head. Confess who told you, or a
dungeon is your doom." The man owns that he has a clever daughter, who
had told him what to say. The king, to prove her sagacity further,
requires her to make a shirt and drawers of two threads, and she
responds in the manner just indicated. He next sends her by her father
an earthen pot with the bottom out, and tells her to sew in a bottom so
that no seam or stitch can be seen. She sends her father back with a
request that the king should first turn the pot inside out, for cobblers
always sew on the inside, not on the out. The king next demanded that
the girl should come to him, neither driving, nor walking, nor riding;
neither dressed nor naked; neither out of the road nor in the road; and
bring him something that was a gift and no gift. She put two wasps
between two plates, stripped, enveloped herself in a fishing net, put
her goat into the rut in the road, and, with one foot on the goat's
back, the other stepping along the rut, made her way to the king. There
she lifted up one of the plates, and the wasps flew away: so she had
brought the king a present and yet no present. The king thought he could
never find a shrewder woman, and married her.
Of the same tenor are a tale in Zingerle's Tyrolese Kinder u.
Hausmärchen, 'Was ist das Schönste, Stärkste und Reichste?' No 27, p.
162, and another in the Colshorns' Hanoverian Märchen u. Sagen, 'Die
kluge Dirne,' No 26, p. 79. Here a rich and a poor peasant [a farmer and
his bailiff] have a case in court, and wrangle till the magistrate, in
his weariness, says he will give them three questions, and whichever
answers right shall win. The questions in the former tale are: What is
the most beautiful, what the strongest, what the richest thing in the
world? In the other, What is fatter than fat? How heavy is the moon? How
far is it to heaven? The answers suggested by the poor peasant's
daughter are: Spring is the most beautiful of things, the ground the
strongest, autumn the richest. And the bailiff's daughter answers: The
ground is fatter than fat, for out of it comes all that's fat, and this
all goes back again; the moon has four quarters, and four quarters make
a pound; heaven is only one day's journey, for we read in the Bible,
"Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise." The judge sees that these
replies are beyond the wit of the respondents, and they own to having
been prompted by a daughter at home. The judge then says that if the
girl will come to him neither dressed nor naked, etc., he will marry
her; and so the shrewd wench becomes a magistrate's wife.
'Die kluge Bauerntochter,' in the Grimms' K. u. H. märchen, No 94, and
'Die kluge Hirtentochter,' in Pröhle's Märchen für die Jugend, No 49, p.
181, afford another variety of these tales. A peasant, against the
advice of his daughter, carries the king a golden mortar, as he had
found it, without any pestle. The king shuts him up in prison till he
shall produce the pestle [Grimms]. The man does nothing but cry, "Oh,
that I had listened to my daughter!" The king sends for him, and,
learning what the girl's counsel had been, says he will give her a
riddle, and if she can make it out will marry her. She must come to him
neither clothed nor naked, neither riding nor driving, etc. The girl
wraps herself in a fishing net [Grimms, in bark, Pröhle], satisfies the
other stipulations also, and becomes a queen.[15]
Another story of the kind, and very well preserved, is No 25 of Vuk's
Volksmärchen der Serben, 'Von dem Mädchen das an Weisheit den Kaiser
übertraf,' p. 157. A poor man had a wise daughter. An emperor gave him
thirty eggs, and said his daughter must hatch chickens from these, or it
would go hard with her. The girl perceived that the eggs had been
boiled. She boiled some beans, and told her father to be ploughing along
the road, and when the emperor came in sight, to sow them and cry, "God
grant my boiled beans may come up!" The emperor, hearing these
ejaculations, stopped, and said, "My poor fellow, how _can_ boiled beans
grow?" The father answered, according to instructions, "As well as
chickens can hatch from boiled eggs." Then the emperor gave the old man
a bundle of linen, and bade him make of it, on pain of death, sails and
everything else requisite for a ship. The girl gave her father a piece
of wood, and sent him back to the emperor with the message that she
would perform what he had ordered, if he would first make her a distaff,
spindle, and loom out of the wood. The emperor was astonished at the
girl's readiness, and gave the old man a glass, with which she was to
drain the sea. The girl dispatched her father to the emperor again with
a pound of tow, and asked him to stop the mouths of all the rivers that
flow into the sea; then she would drain it dry. Hereupon the emperor
ordered the girl herself before him, and put her the question, "What is
heard furthest?" "Please your Majesty," she answered, "thunder and
lies." The emperor then, clutching his beard, turned to his assembled
counsellors, and said, "Guess how much my beard is worth." One said so
much, another so much. But the girl said, "Nay, the emperor's beard is
worth three rains in summer." The emperor took her to wife.
With these traditional tales we may put the story of wise Petronelle and
Alphonso, king of Spain, told after a chronicle, with his usual
prolixity, by Gower, Confessio Amantis, Pauli, I, 145 ff. The king
valued himself highly for his wit, and was envious of a knight who
hitherto had answered all his questions. Determined to confound his
humbler rival, he devised three which he thought unanswerable, sent for
the knight, and gave him a fortnight to consider his replies, which
failing, he would lose his goods and head. The knight can make nothing
of these questions, which are, What is that which needs help least and
gets most? What is worth most and costs least? What costs most and is
worth least? The girl, who is but fourteen years old, observing her
father's heavy cheer, asks him the reason, and obtains his permission to
go to court with him and answer the questions. He was to say to the king
that he had deputed her to answer, to make trial of her wits. The answer
to the first question is the earth, and agrees in the details with the
solution of the query, What is fatter than fat? in the Tyrolese and the
Hanoverian tale. Humility is the answer to the second, and pride the
third answer. The king admires the young maid, and says he would marry
her if her father were noble; but she may ask a boon. She begs for her
father an earldom which had lately escheated; and, this granted, she
reminds the king of what he had said; her father is now noble. The king
marries her.
In all these seven tales a daughter gets her father out of trouble by
the exercise of a superior understanding, and marries an emperor, a
king, or at least far above her station. The Grimms' story has the
feature, not found in the others, that the father had been thrown into
prison. Still another variety of these stories, inferior, but preserving
essential traits, is given by Schleicher, Litauische Märchen, p. 3, 'Vom
schlauen Mädchen.'
A Turkish tale from South Siberia will take us a step further, 'Die
beiden Fürsten,' Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen
Stämme Süd-Sibiriens, I, 197. A prince had a feeble-minded son, for whom
he wished to get a wife. He found a girl gathering fire-wood with
others, and, on asking her questions, had reason to be pleased with her
superior discretion. He sent an ox to the girl's father, with a message
that on the third day he would pay him a visit, and if by that time he
had not made the ox drop a calf and give milk, he would lose his head.
The old man and his wife fell to weeping. The daughter bade them be of
good cheer, killed the ox, and gave it to her parents to eat. On the
third day she stationed herself on the road by which the prince would
come, and was gathering herbs. The prince asked what this was for. The
girl said, "Because my father is in the pangs of child-birth, and I am
going to spread these herbs under him." "Why," said the prince, "it is
not the way, that men should bear children." "But if a man can't bear
children," answered the girl, "how can an ox have a calf?" The prince
was pleased, but said nothing. He went away, and sent his messenger
again with three stones in a bag. He would come on the third day, and if
the stones were not then made into boots, the old man would lose his
head. On the third day the prince came, with all his grandees. The girl
was by the roadside, collecting sand in a bag. "What are you going to do
with that sand?" asked the prince. "Make thread," said she. "But who
ever made thread out of sand?" "And who ever made boots out of stones?"
she rejoined. The prince laughed in his sleeve, prepared a great
wedding, and married the girl to his son. Soon after, another prince
wrote him a letter, saying, "Do not let us be fighting and killing, but
let us guess riddles. If you guess all mine, I will be your subject; if
you fail, I will take all your having." They were a whole year at the
riddles. The other prince "knew three words more," and threw ours into a
deep dungeon. From the depths of this dungeon he contrived to send a
profoundly enigmatic dispatch to his daughter-in-law, who understood
everything, disguised herself as one of his friends, and proposed to the
victor to guess riddles again. The clever daughter-in-law "knew seven
words more" than he, took her father-in-law out of the dungeon, threw
his rival in, and had all the people and property of the vanquished
prince for her own.
This Siberian tale links securely those which precede it with a
remarkable group of stories, covering by representatives still extant,
or which may be shown to have existed, a large part of Asia and of
Europe. This group includes, besides a Wallachian and a Magyar tale from
recent popular tradition, one Sanskrit form; two Tibetan, derived from
Sanskrit; one Mongol, from Tibetan; three Arabic and one Persian, which
also had their source in Sanskrit; two Middle-Greek, derived from
Arabic, one of which is lost; and two old Russian, from lost
Middle-Greek versions.[16]
The gist of these narratives is that one king propounds tasks to
another; in the earlier ones, with the intent to discover whether his
brother monarch enjoys the aid of such counsellors as will make an
attack on him dangerous; in the later, with a demand that he shall
acquit himself satisfactorily, or suffer a forfeit: and the king is
delivered from a serious strait by the sagacity either of a minister
(whom he had ordered to be put to death, but who was still living in
prison, or at least seclusion) or of the daughter of his minister, who
came to her father's assistance. Which is the prior of these two last
inventions it would not be easy to say. These tasks are always such as
require ingenuity of one kind or another, whether in devising practical
experiments, in contriving subterfuges, in solving riddles, or even in
constructing compliments.[17]
One of the Tibetan tales, which, though dating from the beginning of
our era, will very easily be recognized in the Siberian tradition of
this century, is to this effect. King Rabssaldschal had a rich minister,
who desired a suitable wife for his youngest son. A Brahman, his trusty
friend, undertook to find one. In the course of his search, which
extended through many countries, the Brahman saw one day a company of
five hundred maidens, who were making garlands to offer to Buddha. One
of these attracted his notice by her behavior, and impressed him
favorably by replies to questions which he put.[18] The Brahman made
proposals to her father in behalf of the minister's son. These were
accepted, and the minister went with a great train to fetch home the
bride. On the way back his life was twice saved by taking her advice,
and when she was domiciliated, she so surpassed her sisters-in-law in
housekeeping talents and virtues that everything was put under her
direction. Discord arose between the king of the country she had left
and Rabssaldschal, under whom she was now living. The former wished to
make trial whether the latter had an able and keen-witted minister or
not, and sent him two mares, dam and filly, exactly alike in appearance,
with the demand that he should distinguish them. Neither king nor
counsellor could discern any difference; but when the minister's
daughter heard of their difficulty, she said, "Nothing is easier. Tie
the two together and put grass before them; the mother will push the
best before the foal." This was done; the king decided accordingly, and
the hostile ambassador owned that he was right. Soon after, the foreign
prince sent two snakes, of the same size and form, and demanded which
was male, which female. The king and his advisers were again in a
quandary. The minister resorted to his daughter-in-law. She said, "Lay
them both on cotton-wool: the female will lie quiet, the male not; for
it is of the feminine nature to love the soft and the comfortable, which
the masculine cannot tolerate." They followed these directions; the king
gave his verdict, the ambassador acquiesced, the minister received
splendid presents. For a final trial the unfriendly king sent a long
stick of wood, of equal thickness, with no knots or marks, and asked
which was the under and which the upper end. No one could say. The
minister referred the question to his daughter. She answered, "Put the
stick into water: the root end will sink a little, the upper end float."
The experiment was tried; the king said to the ambassador, "This is the
upper end, this the root end," to which he assented, and great presents
were again given to the minister. The adverse monarch was convinced that
his only safe course was peace and conciliation, and sent his ambassador
back once more with an offering of precious jewels and of amity for the
future. This termination was highly gratifying to Rabssaldschal, who
said to his minister, How could you see through all these things? The
minister said, It was not I, but my clever daughter-in-law. When the
king learned this, he raised the young woman to the rank of his younger
sister.
The wise daughter is not found in the Sanskrit tale,[19] which also
differs from the Buddhist versions in this: that in the Sanskrit the
minister had become an object of displeasure to the king, and in
consequence had long been lying in prison when the crisis occurred which
rendered him indispensable, a circumstance which is repeated in the tale
of The Wise Heykar (Arabian Nights, Breslau transl., XIII, 73 ff,
Cabinet des Fées, XXXIX, 266 ff) and in the Life of Æsop. But The Clever
Wench reappears in another tale in the same Sanskrit collection (with
that express title), and gives her aid to her father, a priest, who has
been threatened with banishment by his king if he does not clear up a
dark matter within five days. She may also be recognized in Moradbak, in
Von der Hagen's 1001 Tag, VIII, 199 ff, and even in the minister's wife
in the story of The Wise Heykar.
The tasks of discriminating dam and filly and the root end from the tip
end of a stick, which occur both in the Tibetan tales and the
Shukasaptati, are found again, with unimportant changes, in the
Wallachian popular story, and the Hungarian, which in general resemble
the Arabic. Some of those in the Arabian tale and in the Life of Æsop
are of the same nature as the wit-trials in the Servian and German
popular tales, the story in the Gesta Romanorum, and the German and
English ballads. The wise Heykar, e.g., is required to sew together a
burst mill-stone. He hands the king a pebble, requesting him first to
make an awl, a file, and scissors out of that. The king of Egypt tells
Æsop, the king of Babylon's champion sage, that when his mares hear the
stallions neigh in Babylon, they cast their foal. Æsop's slaves are told
to catch a cat, and are set to scourging it before the Egyptian public.
Great offense is given, on account of the sacred character of the
animal, and complaint is made to the king, who sends for Æsop in a rage.
Æsop says his king has suffered an injury from this cat, for the night
before the cat had killed a fine fighting-cock of his. "Fie, Æsop!" says
the king of Egypt; "how could the cat go from Egypt to Babylon in one
night?" "Why not," replies Æsop, "as well as mares in Egypt hear the
stallions neigh in Babylon and cast their foal?"
The tales in the Shukasaptati and in the Dsanglun represent the object
of the sending of the tasks to be to ascertain whether the king retains
the capable minister through whom he has acquired supremacy. According
to the Arabian tale, and those derived from it, tribute is to be paid by
the king whose riddles are guessed, or by him who fails to guess. This
form of story, though it is a secondary one, is yet by no means late, as
is shown by the anecdote in Plutarch, Septem Sapientum Convivium (6),
itself probably a fragment of such a story, in which the king of the
Æthiops gives a task to Amasis, king of Egypt, with a stake of many
towns and cities. This task is the favorite one of draining [drinking]
all the water in the sea, which we have had in the Servian tale (it also
is in the Life of Æsop), and Bias gives the customary advice for dealing
with it.[20]
From the number of these wise virgins should not be excluded the king's
daughter in the Gesta Romanorum who guesses rightly among the riddles of
the three caskets and marries the emperor's son, though Bassanio has
extinguished her just fame: Madden's Old English Versions, p. 238, No
66; Collier, Shakspere's Library, II, 102.
The first three or four stanzas of #A-E# form the beginning of 'Lady
Isabel and the Elf-Knight,' and are especially appropriate to that
ballad, but not to this. The two last stanzas of #A#, #B#, make no kind
of sense here, and these at least, probably the opening verses as well,
must belong to some other and lost ballad. An elf setting tasks, or even
giving riddles, is unknown, I believe, in Northern tradition, and in no
form of this story, except the English, is a preternatural personage of
any kind the hero. Still it is better to urge nothing more than that the
elf is an intruder in this particular ballad, for riddle-craft is
practised by a variety of preternatural beings: notoriously by Odin,
Thor, the giant Vafþrúðnir, and the dwarf Alwíss in the Edda, and again
by a German "berggeist" (Ey, Harzmärchenbuch, p. 64, 'Die verwünschte
Prinzessin'), a Greek dragon (Hahn, Griechisebe u. Albanesische
Märchen, II, 210), the Russian rusalka, the Servian vila,[21] the Indian
rakshas. For example: a rusalka (water-nymph) pursues a pretty girl, and
says, I will give you three riddles: if you guess them, I will let you
go home to your father; if you do not, I shall take you with me. What
grows without a root? What runs without any object? What blooms without
any flower? She answers, Stones grow without a root; water runs without
any object; the fern blooms without any flower. These answers seem
satisfactory, as riddles go, but the ballad concludes (with an injustice
due to corruption?), "The girl did not guess the riddles: the rusalka
tickled her to death." (Wojcicki, Pieśni, I, 205.) A rakshas (ogre)
says he will spare a man's life if he can answer four questions, and
shall devour him if he cannot. What is cruel? What is most to the
advantage of a householder? What is love? What best accomplishes
difficult things? These questions the man answers, and confirms his
answers by tales, and gains the rakshas' good will. (Jacob, Hindoo
Tales, or the Adventures of Ten Princes, a translation of the Sanskrit
Dasakumaracharitam, p. 260 ff.)
The auld man in #J# is simply the "unco knicht" of #1 C#, #D#, over
again. He has clearly displaced the elf-knight, for the elf's attributes
of hill-haunting and magical music remain, only they have been
transferred to the lady. That the devil should supplant the knight, unco
or familiar, is natural enough. He may come in as the substitute of the
elfin knight because the devil is the regular successor to any heathen
sprite, or as the embodiment of craft and duplicity, and to give us the
pleasure of seeing him outwitted. We find the devil giving riddles, as
they are called (tasks), in the Grimms' K. u. H. märchen, No 125 (see
also the note in vol. III); Pröhle's K. u. V. märchen, No 19;
Vernaleken, Oesterreichische K. u. H. märchen, No 37. He also appears as
a riddle-monger in one of the best stories in the Golden Legend. A
bishop, who was especially devoted to St Andrew, was tempted by Satan
under the semblance of a beautiful woman, and was all but lost, when a
loud knocking was heard at the door. A pilgrim demanded admittance. The
lady, being asked her pleasure about this, recommended that three
questions should be put to the stranger, to show whether he were fit to
appear in such presence. Two questions having been answered
unexceptionably, the fiend proposed a third, which was meant to be a
clincher: How far is it from earth to heaven? "Go back to him that sent
you," said the pilgrim (none other than St Andrew) to the messenger,
"and say that he himself knows best, for he measured the distance when
he fell." _Antiquus hostis de medio evanuit._ Much the same is related
in the legend of St Bartholomew, and, in a Slovenian ballad, of St
Ulrich, who interposes to save the Pope from espousing Satan in
disguise.[22]
#J#, #K#, #L#, have completely lost sight of the original story.
Translated, after #A#, #C#, and #D#, in Grundtvig's Engelske og skotske
Folkeviser, p. 251; R. Warrens, Schottische Lieder der Vorzeit, p. 8;
Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen Alt-Englands, No 54.
A