'brought no women with them, but took wives of the women of the
Carians, whose fathers they had slain. Therefore the women made a law
for themselves, and handed it down to their daughters, that they
should never sit at meat with their husbands, and _that none should
ever call her husband by his name_.' In precisely the same way, in
Zululand the wife may not mention her husband's name, just as in the
Welsh fairy tale the husband may not even know the name of his fairy
bride, on pain of losing her for ever. These ideas about names, and
freakish ways of avoiding the use of names, mark the childhood of
languages, according to Mr. Max Mueller,[74] and, therefore, the
childhood of Society. The Kaffirs call this etiquette 'Hlonipa.' It
applies to women as well as men. A Kaffir bride is not called by her
own name in her husband's village, but is spoken of as 'mother of so
and so,' even before she has born a child. The universal superstition
about names is at the bottom of this custom. The Aleutian Islanders,
according to Dall, are quite distressed when obliged to speak to their
wives in the presence of others. The Fijians did not know where to
look when missionaries hinted that a man might live under the same
roof as his wife.[75] Among the Turkomans, for six months, a year, or
two years, a husband is only allowed to visit his wife by stealth.
The number of these instances could probably be increased by a little
research. Our argument is that the widely distributed myths in which a
husband or a wife transgresses some 'custom'--sees the other's face or
body, or utters the forbidden name--might well have arisen as tales
illustrating the punishment of breaking the rule. By a very curious
coincidence, a Breton sailor's tale of the 'Cupid and Psyche' class is
confessedly founded on the existence of the rule of nuptial
etiquette.[76]
In this story the son of a Boulogne pilot marries the daughter of the
King of Naz--wherever that may be. In Naz a man is never allowed to
see the face of his wife till she has born him a child--a modification
of the Futa rule. The inquisitive French husband unveils his wife,
and, like Psyche in Apuleius, drops wax from a candle on her cheek.
When the pair return to Naz, the king of that country discovers the
offence of the husband, and, by the aid of his magicians, transforms
the Frenchman into a monster. Here we have the old formula--the
infringement of a 'taboo,' and the magical punishment--adapted to the
ideas of Breton peasantry. The essential point of the story, for our
purpose, is that the veiling of the bride is 'the custom of women,' in
the mysterious land of Naz. 'C'est l'usage du pays: les maris ne
voient leurs femmes sans voile que lorsqu'elles sont devenues meres.'
Now our theory of the myth of Urvasi is simply this: 'the custom of
women,' which Pururavas transgresses, is probably a traditional Aryan
law of nuptial etiquette, _l'usage du pays_, once prevalent among the
people of India.
If our view be correct, then several rules of etiquette, and not one
alone, will be illustrated in the stories which we suppose the rules
to have suggested. In the case of Urvasi and Pururavas, the rule was,
not to see the husband naked. In 'Cupid and Psyche,' the husband was
not to be looked upon at all. In the well-known myth of Melusine, the
bride is not to be seen naked. Melusine tells her lover that she will
only abide with him _dum ipsam nudam non viderit_.[77] The same taboo
occurs in a Dutch _Maerchen_.[78]
We have now to examine a singular form of the myth, in which the
strange bride is not a fairy, or spiritual being, but an animal. In
this class of story the husband is usually forbidden to perform some
act which will recall to the bride the associations of her old animal
existence. The converse of the tale is the well-known legend of the
Forsaken Merman. The king of the sea permits his human wife to go to
church. The ancient sacred associations are revived, and the woman
returns no more.
She will not come though you call all day
Come away, come away.
Now, in the tales of the animal bride, it is her associations with her
former life among the beasts that are not to be revived, and when they
are re-awakened by the commission of some act which she has
forbidden, or the neglect of some precaution which she has enjoined,
she, like Urvasi, disappears.
* * * * *
The best known example of this variant of the tale is the story of
Bheki, in Sanskrit. Mr. Max Mueller has interpreted the myth in
accordance with his own method.[79] His difficulty is to account for
the belief that a king might marry a frog. Our ancestors, he remarks,
'were not idiots,' how then could they tell such a story? We might
reply that our ancestors, if we go far enough back, were savages, and
that such stories are the staple of savage myth. Mr. Mueller, however,
holds that an accidental corruption of language reduced Aryan fancy to
the savage level. He explains the corruption thus: 'We find, in
Sanskrit, that Bheki, the frog, was a beautiful girl, and that one
day, when sitting near a well, she was discovered by a king, who asked
her to be his wife. She consented, _on condition that he should never
show her a drop of water_. One day, being tired, she asked the king
for water; the king forgot his promise, brought water, and Bheki
disappeared.' This myth, Mr. Mueller holds, 'began with a short saying,
such as that "Bheki, the sun, will die at the sight of water," as we
should say that the sun will set, when it approaches the water from
which it rose in the morning.' But how did the sun come to be called
Bheki, 'the frog'? Mr. Mueller supposes that this name was given to the
sun by some poet or fisherman. He gives no evidence for the following
statement: 'It can be shown that "frog" was used as a name for the
sun. Now at sunrise and sunset, when the sun was squatting on the
water, it was called the "frog."' At what historical period the
Sanskrit-speaking race was settled in seats where the sun rose and set
in water, we do not know, and 'chapter and verse' are needed for the
statement that 'frog' was actually a name of the sun. Mr. Mueller's
argument, however, is that the sun was called 'the frog,' that people
forgot that the frog and sun were identical, and that Frog, or Bheki,
was mistaken for the name of a girl to whom was applied the old saw
about dying at sight of water. 'And so,' says Mr. Mueller, 'the change
from sun to frog, and from frog to man, which was at first due to the
mere spell of language, would in our nursery tales be ascribed to
miraculous charms more familiar to a later age.' As a matter of fact,
magical metamorphoses are infinitely more familiar to the lowest
savages than to people in a 'later age.' Magic, as Castren observes,
'belongs to the lowest known stages of civilisation.' Mr. Mueller's
theory, however, is this--that a Sanskrit-speaking people, living
where the sun rose out of and set in some ocean, called the sun, as he
touched the water, Bheki, the frog, and said he would die at the sight
of water. They ceased to call the sun the frog, or Bheki, but kept the
saying, 'Bheki will die at sight of water.' Not knowing who or what
Bheki might be, they took her for a frog, who also was a pretty wench.
Lastly, they made the story of Bheki's distinguished wedding and
mysterious disappearance. For this interpretation, historical and
linguistic evidence is not offered. When did a Sanskrit-speaking race
live beside a great sea? How do we know that 'frog' was used as a name
for 'sun'?
* * * * *
We have already given our explanation. To the savage intellect, man
and beast are on a level, and all savage myth makes men descended from
beasts; while stories of the loves of gods in bestial shape, or the
unions of men and animals, incessantly occur. 'Unnatural' as these
notions seem to us, no ideas are more familiar to savages, and none
recur more frequently in Indo-Aryan, Scandinavian, and Greek
mythology. An extant tribe in North-West America still claims descent
from a frog. The wedding of Bheki and the king is a survival, in
Sanskrit, of a tale of this kind. Lastly, Bheki disappears, when her
associations with her old amphibious life are revived in the manner
she had expressly forbidden.
* * * * *
Our interpretation may be supported by an Ojibway parallel. A hunter
named Otter-heart, camping near a beaver lodge, found a pretty girl
loitering round his fire. She keeps his wigwam in order, and 'lays his
blanket near the deerskin she had laid for herself. "Good," he
muttered, "this is my wife."' She refuses to eat the beavers he has
shot, but at night he hears a noise, '_krch, krch_, as if beavers were
gnawing wood.' He sees, by the glimmer of the fire, his wife nibbling
birch twigs. In fact, the good little wife is a beaver, as the pretty
Indian girl was a frog. The pair lived happily till spring came and
the snow melted and the streams ran full. Then his wife implored the
hunter to build her a bridge over every stream and river, that she
might cross dry-footed. 'For,' she said, 'if my feet touch water, this
would at once cause thee great sorrow.' The hunter did as she bade
him, but left unbridged one tidy runnel. The wife stumbled into the
water, and, as soon as her foot was wet, she immediately resumed her
old shape as a beaver, her son became a beaverling, and the brooklet,
changing to a roaring river, bore them to the lake. Once the hunter
saw his wife again among her beast kin. 'To thee I sacrificed all,'
she said, 'and I only asked thee to help me dry-footed over the
waters. Thou didst cruelly neglect this. Now I must remain for ever
with my people.'
* * * * *
This tale was told to Kohl by 'an old insignificant squaw among the
Ojibways.'[80] Here we have a precise parallel to the tale of Bheki,
the frog-bride, and here the reason of the prohibition to touch water
is made perfectly unmistakable. The touch magically revived the
bride's old animal life with the beavers. Or was the Indian name for
beaver (_temakse_) once a name for the sun?
A curious variant of this widely distributed _Maerchen_ of the animal
bride is found in the mythical genealogy of the Raja of Chutia Nagpur,
a chief of the Naga, or snake race. It is said that Raja Janameja
prepared a _yajnya_, or great malevolently magical incantation, to
destroy all the people of the serpent race. To prevent this
annihilation, the supernatural being, Pundarika Nag, took a human
form, and became the husband of the beautiful Parvati, daughter of a
Brahman. But Pundarika Nag, being a serpent by nature, could not
divest himself, even in human shape, of his forked tongue and venomed
breath. And, just as Urvasi could not abide with her mortal lover,
after he transgressed the prohibition to appear before her naked, so
Pundarika Nag was compelled by fate to leave his bride, if she asked
him any questions about his disagreeable peculiarities. She did, at
last, ask questions, in circumstances which made Pundarika believe
that he was bound to answer her. Now the curse came upon him, he
plunged into a pool, like the beaver, and vanished. His wife became
the mother of the serpent Rajas of Chutia Nagpur. Pundarika Nag, in
his proper form as a great hooded snake, guarded his first-born child.
The crest of the house is a hooded snake with human face.[81]
Here, then, we have many examples of the disappearance of the bride or
bridegroom in consequence of infringement of various mystic rules.
Sometimes the beloved one is seen when he or she should not be seen.
Sometimes, as in a Maori story, the bride vanishes merely because she
is in a bad temper.[82] Among the Red Men, as in Sanskrit, the taboo
on water is broken, with the usual results. Now for an example in
which the rule against using _names_ is infringed.[83]
This formula constantly occurs in the Welsh fairy tales published by
Professor Rhys.[84] Thus the heir of Corwrion fell in love with a
fairy: 'They were married on the distinct understanding that the
husband was not to know her name, ... and was not to strike her with
iron, on pain of her leaving him at once.' Unluckily the man once
tossed her a bridle, the iron bit touched the wife, and 'she at once
flew through the air, and plunged headlong into Corwrion Lake.'
A number of tales turning on the same incident are published in
_Cymmrodor_, v. i. In these we have either the taboo on the name, or
the taboo on the touch of iron. In a widely diffused superstition iron
'drives away devils and ghosts,' according to the Scholiast on the
eleventh book of the _Odyssey_, and the Oriental Djinn also flee from
iron.[85] Just as water is fatal to the Aryan frog-bride and to the
Red Indian beaver-wife, restoring them to their old animal forms, so
the magic touch of iron breaks love between the Welshman and his fairy
mistress, the representative of the stone age.
In many tales of fairy-brides, they are won by a kind of force. The
lover in the familiar Welsh and German _Maerchen_ sees the swan-maidens
throw off their swan plumage and dance naked. He steals the
feather-garb of one of them, and so compels her to his love. Finally,
she leaves him, in anger, or because he has broken some taboo. Far
from being peculiar to Aryan mythology, this legend occurs, as Mr.
Farrer has shown,[86] in Algonquin and Bornoese tradition. The Red
Indian story told by Schoolcraft in his _Algic Researches_ is most
like the Aryan version, but has some native peculiarities. Wampee was
a great hunter, who, on the lonely prairie, once heard strains of
music. Looking up he saw a speck in the sky: the speck drew nearer and
nearer, and proved to be a basket containing twelve heavenly maidens.
They reached the earth and began to dance, inflaming the heart of
Wampee with love. But Wampee could not draw near the fairy girls in
his proper form without alarming them. Like Zeus in his love
adventures, Wampee exercised the medicine-man's power of
metamorphosing himself. He assumed the form of a mouse, approached
unobserved, and caught one of the dancing maidens. After living with
Wampee for some time she wearied of earth, and, by virtue of a 'mystic
chain of verse,' she ascended again to her heavenly home.
Now is there any reason to believe that this incident was once part of
the myth of Pururavas and Urvasi? Was the fairy-love, Urvasi,
originally caught and held by Pururavas among her naked and struggling
companions? Though this does not appear to have been much noticed, it
seems to follow from a speech of Pururavas in the Vedic dialogue[87]
(x. 95, 8, 9). Mr. Max Mueller translates thus: 'When I, the mortal,
threw my arms round those flighty immortals, they trembled away from
me like a trembling doe, like horses that kick against the cart.'[88]
Ludwig's rendering suits our view--that Pururavas is telling how he
first caught Urvasi--still better: 'When I, the mortal, held converse
with the immortals who had laid aside their raiment, like slippery
serpents they glided from me, like horses yoked to the car.' These
words would well express the adventure of a lover among the naked
flying swan-maidens, an adventure familiar to the Red Men as to
Persian legends of the Peris.
To end our comparison of myths like the tale of 'Cupid and Psyche,' we
find an example among the Zulus. Here[89] the mystic lover came in
when all was dark, and felt the damsel's face. After certain rites,
'in the morning he went away, he speaking continually, the girl not
seeing him. During all those days he would not allow the girl (_sic_),
when she said she would light a fire. Finally, after a magical
ceremony, he said, "Light the fire!" and stood before her revealed, a
shining shape.' This has a curious resemblance to the myth of Cupid
and Psyche; but a more curious detail remains. In the Zulu story of
Ukcombekcansini, the friends of a bride break a taboo and kill a
tabooed animal. Instantly, like Urvasi and her companions in the Yajur
Veda, the bride and her maidens disappear _and are turned into
birds_![90] They are afterwards surprised in human shape, and the
bride is restored to her lover.
Here we conclude, having traced parallels to Cupid and Psyche in many
non-Aryan lands. Our theory of the myth does not rest on etymology. We
have seen that the most renowned scholars, Max Mueller, Kuhn, Roth, all
analyse the names Urvasi and Pururavas in different ways, and extract
different interpretations. We have found the story where these names
were probably never heard of. We interpret it as a tale of the
intercourse between mortal men and immortal maids, or between men and
metamorphosed animals, as in India and North America. We explain the
separation of the lovers as the result of breaking a taboo, or law of
etiquette, binding among men and women, as well as between men and
fairies.
* * * * *
The taboos are, to see the beloved unveiled, to utter his or her name,
to touch her with a metal 'terrible to ghosts and spirits,' or to do
some action which will revive the associations of a former life. We
have shown that rules of nuptial etiquette resembling these in
character do exist, and have existed, even among Greeks--as where the
Milesian, like the Zulu, women made a law not to utter their husbands'
names. Finally, we think it a reasonable hypothesis that tales on the
pattern of 'Cupid and Psyche' might have been evolved wherever a
curious nuptial taboo required to be sanctioned, or explained, by a
myth. On this hypothesis, the stories may have been separately
invented in different lands; but there is also a chance that they have
been transmitted from people to people in the unknown past of our
scattered and wandering race. This theory seems at least as probable
as the hypothesis that the meaning of an Aryan proverbial statement
about sun and dawn was forgotten, and was altered unconsciously into a
tale which is found among various non-Aryan tribes. That hypothesis
again, learned and ingenious as it is, has the misfortune to be
opposed by other scholarly hypotheses not less ingenious and learned.
* * * * *
As for the sun-frog, we may hope that he has sunk for ever beneath the
western wave.
FOOTNOTES:
[58] That Pururavas is regarded as a mortal man, in relations with
some sort of spiritual mistress, appears from the poem itself (v. 8,
9, 18). The human character of Pururavas also appears in R. V., i. 31,
4.
[59] _Selected Essays_, i. 408.
[60] The Apsaras is an ideally beautiful fairy woman, something
'between the high gods and the lower grotesque beings,' with 'lotus
eyes' and other agreeable characteristics. A list of Apsaras known by
name is given in Meyer's _Gandharven-Kentauren_, p. 28. They are often
regarded as cloud-maidens by mythologists.
[61] _Selected Essays_, i. 405.
[62] Cf. _ruber_, _rufus_, O.H.G. _rot_, _rudhira_, ~erythros~; also
Sanskrit, _ravi_, sun.
[63] R. V., iii. 29, 3.
[64] The passage alluded to in Homer does not mean that dawn 'ends'
the day, but 'when the fair-tressed Dawn brought the full light of the
third day' (_Od._, v. 390).
[65] Liebrecht (_Zur Volkskunde_, 241) is reminded by Pururavas (in
Roth's sense of _der Brueller_) of loud-thundering Zeus, ~erigdoupos~.
[66] _Herabkunft des Feuers_, pp. 86-89.
[67] Liebrecht (_Zur Volkskunde_, p. 241) notices the reference to the
'custom of women.' But he thinks the clause a mere makeshift,
introduced late to account for a prohibition of which the real meaning
had been forgotten. The improbability of this view is indicated by the
frequency of similar prohibitions in actual custom.
[68] Astley, _Collection of Voyages_, ii. 24. This is given by Bluet
and Moore on the evidence of one Job Ben Solomon, a native of Bunda in
Futa. 'Though Job had a daughter by his last wife, yet he never saw
her without her veil, as having been married to her only two years.'
Excellently as this prohibition suits my theory, yet I confess I do
not like Job's security.
[69] Brough Smyth, i. 423.
[70] Bowen, _Central Africa_, p. 303.
[71] Lafitau, i. 576.
[72] Lubbock, _Origin of Civilisation_ (1875), p. 75.
[73] _Chansons Pop. Bulg._, p. 172.
[74] _Lectures on Language_, Second Series, p. 41.
[75] J. A. Farrer, _Primitive Manners_, p. 202, quoting Seeman.
[76] Sebillot, _Contes Pop. de la Haute-Bretagne_, p. 183.
[77] Gervase of Tilbury.
[78] Kuhn, _Herabkunft_, p. 92. See also _South African Journal of
Folklore_, May, 1879, p. 46: 'As a rule, the bridegroom never sees his
bride.'
[79] _Chips_, ii. 251.
[80] _Kitchi Gami_, p. 105.
[81] Dalton's _Ethnol. of Bengal_, pp. 165, 166.
[82] Taylor, _New Zealand_, p. 143.
[83] Liebrecht gives a Hindoo example, _Zur Volkskunde_, p. 239.
[84] _Cymmrodor_, iv. pt. ii.
[85] _Prim. Cult._, i. 140.
[86] _Primitive Manners_, p. 256.
[87] See Meyer, _Gandharven-Kentauren_, Benfey, _Pantsch._, i. 263.
[88] _Selected Essays_, i. 411.
[89] _Callaway_, p. 63.
[90] _Ibid._, p. 119.
_A FAR-TRAVELLED TALE._
A modern novelist has boasted that her books are read 'from Tobolsk to
Tangiers.' This is a wide circulation, but the widest circulation in
the world has probably been achieved by a story whose author, unlike
Ouida, will never be known to fame. The tale which we are about to
examine is, perhaps, of all myths the most widely diffused, yet there
is no ready way of accounting for its extraordinary popularity. Any
true 'nature-myth,' any myth which accounts for the processes of
nature or the aspects of natural phenomena, may conceivably have been
invented separately, wherever men in an early state of thought
observed the same facts, and attempted to explain them by telling a
story. Thus we have seen that the earlier part of the myth of Cronus
is a nature-myth, setting forth the cause of the separation of Heaven
and Earth. Star-myths, again, are everywhere similar, because men who
believed all nature to be animated and personal, accounted for the
grouping of constellations in accordance with these crude beliefs.[91]
Once more, if a story like that of 'Cupid and Psyche' be found among
the most diverse races, the distribution becomes intelligible if the
myth was invented to illustrate or enforce a widely prevalent custom.
But in the following story no such explanation is even provisionally
acceptable.
The gist of the tale (which has many different 'openings,' and
conclusions in different places) may be stated thus: A young man is
brought to the home of a hostile animal, a giant, cannibal, wizard, or
a malevolent king. He is put by his unfriendly host to various severe
trials, in which it is hoped that he will perish. In each trial he is
assisted by the daughter of his host. After achieving the adventures,
he elopes with the girl, and is pursued by her father. The runaway
pair throw various common objects behind them, which are changed into
magical obstacles and check the pursuit of the father. The myth has
various endings, usually happy, in various places. Another form of the
narrative is known, in which the visitors to the home of the hostile
being are, not wooers of his daughter, but brothers of his wife.[92]
The incidents of the flight, in this variant, are still of the same
character. Finally, when the flight is that of a brother from his
sister's malevolent ghost, in Hades (Japan), or of two sisters from a
cannibal mother or step-mother (Zulu and Samoyed), the events of the
flight and the magical aids to escape remain little altered. We shall
afterwards see that attempts have been made to interpret one of these
narratives as a nature-myth; but the attempts seem unsuccessful. We
are therefore at a loss to account for the wide diffusion of this
tale, unless it has been transmitted slowly from people to people, in
the immense unknown prehistoric past of the human race.
* * * * *
Before comparing the various forms of the myth in its first
shape--that which tells of the mortal lover and the giant's or
wizard's daughter--let us give the Scottish version of the story. This
version was written down for me, many years ago, by an aged lady in
Morayshire. I published it in the _Revue Celtique_; but it is probably
new to story-comparers, in its broad Scotch variant.
NICHT NOUGHT NOTHING.