and had no bairns: but at last the queen had a bairn, when
the king was away in far countries. The queen would not
christen the bairn till the king came back, and she said, 'We
will just call him _Nicht Nought Nothing_ until his father
comes home.' But it was long before he came home, and the boy
had grown a nice little laddie. At length the king was on his
way back; but he had a big river to cross, and there was a
spate, and he could not get over the water. But a giant came
up to him, and said, 'If you will give me Nicht Nought
Nothing, I will carry you over the water on my back.' The
king had never heard that his son was called Nicht Nought
Nothing, and so he promised him. When the king got home
again, he was very happy to see his wife again, and his young
son. She told him that she had not given the child any name
but Nicht Nought Nothing, until he should come home again
himself. The poor king was in a terrible case. He said, 'What
have I done? I promised to give the giant who carried me over
the river on his back, Nicht Nought Nothing.' The king and
the queen were sad and sorry, but they said, 'When the giant
comes we will give him the hen-wife's bairn; he will never
know the difference.' The next day the giant came to claim
the king's promise, and he sent for the hen-wife's bairn; and
the giant went away with the bairn on his back. He travelled
till he came to a big stone, and there he sat down to rest.
He said,
'Hidge Hodge, on my back, what time of day is it?'
The poor little bairn said, 'It is the time that my mother,
the hen-wife, takes up the eggs for the queen's breakfast.'
The giant was very angry, and dashed the bairn on the stone
and killed it.
* * * * *
The same adventure is repeated with the gardener's son.
* * * * *
Then the giant went back to the king's house, and said he
would destroy them all if they did not give him Nicht Nought
Nothing this time. They had to do it; and when he came to the
big stone, the giant said, 'What time of day is it?' Nicht
Nought Nothing said, 'It is the time that my father the king
will be sitting down to supper.' The giant said, 'I've got
the right ane noo;' and took Nicht Nought Nothing to his own
house and brought him up till he was a man.
The giant had a bonny dochter, and she and the lad grew very
fond of each other. The giant said one day to Nicht Nought
Nothing, 'I've work for you to-morrow. There is a stable
seven miles long and seven miles broad, and it has not been
cleaned for seven years, and you must clean it to-morrow, or
I will have you for my supper.'
The giant's dochter went out next morning with the lad's
breakfast, and found him in a terrible state, for aye as he
cleaned out a bit, it aye fell in again. The giant's dochter
said she would help him, and she cried a' the beasts o' the
field, and a' the fowls o' the air, and in a minute they a'
came, and carried awa' everything that was in the stable and
made a' clean before the giant came home. He said, 'Shame for
the wit that helped you; but I have a worse job for you
to-morrow.' Then he told Nicht Nought Nothing that there was
a loch seven miles long, and seven miles deep, and seven
miles broad, and he must drain it the next day, or else he
would have him for his supper. Nicht Nought Nothing began
early next morning and tried to lave the water with his pail,
but the loch was never getting any less, and he did no ken
what to do; but the giant's dochter called on all the fish in
the sea to come and drink the water, and very soon they drank
it dry. When the giant saw the work done he was in a rage,
and said, 'I've a worse job for you to-morrow; there is a
tree seven miles high, and no branch on it, till you get to
the top, and there is a nest, and you must bring down the
eggs without breaking one, or else I will have you for my
supper.' At first the giant's dochter did not know how to
help Nicht Nought Nothing; but she cut off first her fingers
and then her toes, and made steps of them, and he clamb the
tree, and got all the eggs safe till he came to the bottom,
and then one was broken. The giant's dochter advised him to
run away, and she would follow him. So he travelled until he
came to a king's palace, and the king and queen took him in
and were very kind to him. The giant's dochter left her
father's house, and he pursued her and was drowned. Then she
came to the king's palace where Nicht Nought Nothing was. And
she went up into a tree to watch for him. The gardener's
dochter, going to draw water in the well, saw the shadow of
the lady in the water, and thought it was herself, and said,
'If I'm so bonny, if I'm so brave, do you send me to draw
water?' The gardener's wife went out, and she said the same
thing. Then the gardener went himself, and brought the lady
from the tree, and led her in. And he told her that a
stranger was to marry the king's dochter, and showed her the
man: and it was Nicht Nought Nothing asleep in a chair. And
she saw him, and cried to him, 'Waken, waken, and speak to
me!' But he would not waken, and syne she cried,
'I cleaned the stable, I laved the loch, and I clamb
the tree,
And all for the love of thee,
And thou wilt not waken and speak to me.'
The king and the queen heard this, and came to the bonny
young lady, and she said,
'I canna get Nicht Nought Nothing to speak to me for all that
I can do.'
Then were they greatly astonished when she spoke of Nicht
Nought Nothing, and asked where he was, and she said, 'He
that sits there in the chair.' Then they ran to him and
kissed him and called him their own dear son, and he wakened,
and told them all that the giant's dochter had done for him,
and of all her kindness. Then they took her in their arms and
kissed her, and said she should now be their dochter, for
their son should marry her.
And they lived happy all their days.
In this variant of the story, which we may use as our text, it is to
be noticed that a _lacuna_ exists. The narrative of the flight omits
to mention that the runaways threw things behind them which became
obstacles in the giant's way. One of these objects probably turned
into a lake, in which the giant was drowned.[93] A common incident is
the throwing behind of a comb, which changes into a thicket. The
formula of leaving obstacles behind occurs in the Indian collection,
the 'Kathasarit sagara' (vii. xxxix.). 'The Battle of the Birds,' in
Campbell's _Tales of the West Highlands_, is a very copious Gaelic
variant. Russian parallels are 'Vasilissa the Wise and the Water
King,' and 'The King Bear.'[94] The incident of the flight and the
magical obstacles is found in Japanese mythology.[95] The 'ugly woman
of Hades' is sent to pursue the hero. He casts down his black
head-dress, and it is instantly turned into grapes; he fled while she
was eating them. Again, 'he cast down his multitudinous and
close-toothed comb, and it instantly turned into bamboo sprouts.' In
the Gaelic version, the pursuer is detained by talkative objects which
the pursued leave at home, and this marvel recurs in Zululand, and is
found among the Bushmen. The Zulu versions are numerous.[96] Oddly
enough, in the last variant, the girl performs no magic feat, but
merely throws sesamum on the ground to delay the cannibals, for
cannibals are very fond of sesamum.[97]
* * * * *
Here, then, we have the remarkable details of the flight, in Zulu,
Gaelic, Norse, Malagasy,[98] Russian, Italian, Japanese. Of all
incidents in the myth, the incidents of the flight are most widely
known. But the whole connected series of events--the coming of the
wooer; the love of the hostile being's daughter; the tasks imposed on
the wooer; the aid rendered by the daughter; the flight of the pair;
the defeat or destruction of the hostile being--all these, or most of
these, are extant, in due sequence, among the following races. The
Greeks have the tale, the people of Madagascar have it, the Lowland
Scotch, the Celts, the Russians, the Italians, the Algonquins, the
Finns, and the Samoans have it. Now if the story were confined to the
Aryan race, we might account for its diffusion, by supposing it to be
the common heritage of the Indo-European peoples, carried everywhere
with them in their wanderings. But when the tale is found in
Madagascar, North America, Samoa, and among the Finns, while many
scattered incidents occur in even more widely severed races, such as
Zulus, Bushmen, Japanese, Eskimo, Samoyeds, the Aryan hypothesis
becomes inadequate.
To show how closely, all things considered, the Aryan and non-Aryan
possessors of the tale agree, let us first examine the myth of Jason.
* * * * *
The earliest literary reference to the myth of Jason is in the _Iliad_
(vii. 467, xxiii. 747). Here we read of Euneos, a son whom Hypsipyle
bore to Jason in Lemnos. Already, even in the _Iliad_, the legend of
Argo's voyage has been fitted into certain well-known geographical
localities. A reference in the _Odyssey_ (xii. 72) has a more antique
ring: we are told that of all barques Argo alone escaped the jaws of
the Rocks Wandering, which clashed together and destroyed ships. Argo
escaped, it is said, 'because Jason was dear to Hera.' It is plain,
from various fragmentary notices, that Hesiod was familiar with
several of the adventures in the legend of Jason. In the _Theogony_
(993-998) Hesiod mentions the essential facts of the legend: how Jason
carried off from AEetes his daughter, 'after achieving the adventures,
many and grievous, which were laid upon him.' At what period the home
of AEetes was placed in Colchis, it is not easy to determine.
Mimnermus, a contemporary of Solon, makes the home of AEetes lie 'on
the brink of ocean,' a very vague description.[99] Pindar, on the
other hand, in the splendid Fourth Pythian Ode, already knows Colchis
as the scene of the loves and flight of Jason and Medea.
* * * * *
'Long were it for me to go by the beaten track,' says Pindar, 'and I
know a certain short path.' Like Pindar, we may abridge the tale of
Jason. He seeks the golden fleece in Colchis: AEetes offers it to him
as a prize for success in certain labours. By the aid of Medea, the
daughter of AEetes, the wizard king, Jason tames the fire-breathing
oxen, yokes them to the plough, and drives a furrow. By Medea's help
he conquers the children of the teeth of the dragon, subdues the snake
that guards the fleece of gold, and escapes, but is pursued by AEetes.
To detain AEetes, Medea throws behind the mangled remains of her own
brother, Apsyrtos, and the Colchians pursue no further than the scene
of this bloody deed. The savagery as this act survives even in the
work of a poet so late as Apollonius Rhodius (iv. 477), where we read
how Jason performed a rite of savage magic, mutilating the body of
Apsyrtos in a manner which was believed to appease the avenging ghost
of the slain. 'Thrice he tasted the blood, thrice spat it out between
his teeth,' a passage which the Scholiast says contains the
description of an archaic custom popular among murderers.
Beyond Tomi, where a popular etymology fixed the 'cutting up' of
Apsyrtos, we need not follow the fortunes of Jason and Medea. We have
already seen the wooer come to the hostile being, win his daughter's
love, achieve the adventures by her aid, and flee in her company,
delaying, by a horrible device, the advance of her pursuers. To these
incidents in the tale we confine our attention.
Many explanations of the Jason myth have been given by Scholars who
thought they recognised elemental phenomena in the characters. As
usual these explanations differ widely. Whenever a myth has to be
interpreted, it is certain that one set of Scholars will discover the
sun and the dawn, where another set will see the thunder-cloud and
lightning. The moon is thrown in at pleasure.
Preller[100] is a learned Scholar, with his own set of etymologies.
Jason is derived, he thinks, from ~iaomai~, to heal, because Jason
studied medicine under the Centaur Chiron. This is the view of the
Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius (i. 554). Jason, to Preller's mind, is
a form of Asclepius, 'a spirit of the spring with its soft suns and
fertile rains.' Medea is the moon. Medea, on the other hand, is a
lightning goddess, in the opinion of Schwartz.[101] No philological
reason is offered. Mr. Brown writes: 'The moon, as the night-light,
linked with Idyia-Daeira, is itself knowing, and so appears as Medeia
("the Wise").'
We must suppose, it seems, that either the soft spring rains and the
moon, or the dawn and the sun, or the lightning and the thunder-cloud,
in one arrangement or another, irresistibly suggested, to early Aryan
minds, the picture of a wooer, arriving in a hostile home, winning a
maiden's love, achieving adventures by her aid, fleeing with her from
her angry father and delaying his pursuit by various devices. Why the
spring, the moon, the lightning, the dawn--any of them or all of
them--should have suggested such a tale, let Scholars determine when
they have reconciled their own differences. It is more to our purpose
to follow the myth among Samoans, Algonquins, and Finns. None of these
races speak an Aryan language, and none can have been beguiled into
telling the same sort of tale by a disease of Aryan speech.
Samoa, where we find our story, is the name of a group of volcanic
islands in Central Polynesia. They are about 3000 miles from Sydney,
were first observed by Europeans in 1722, and are as far removed as
most spots from direct Aryan influences. Our position is, however,
that in the shiftings and migrations of peoples, the Jason tale has
somehow been swept, like a piece of drift-wood, on to the coasts of
Samoa. In the islands, the tale has an epical form, and is chanted in
a poem of twenty-six stanzas. There is something Greek, in the free
and happy life of the Samoans--something Greek, too, in this myth of
theirs. There was once a youth, Siati, famous for his singing, a young
Thamyris of Samoa. But as, according to Homer, 'the Muses met Thamyris
the Thracian, and made an end of his singing, for he boasted and said
that he would vanquish even the Muses if he sang against them,' so did
the Samoan god of song envy Siati. The god and the mortal sang a
match: the daughter of the god was to be the mortal's prize if he
proved victorious. Siati won, and he set off, riding on a shark, as
Arion rode the dolphin, to seek the home of the defeated deity. At
length he reached the shores divine, and thither strayed Puapae,
daughter of the god, looking for her comb which she had lost. 'Siati,'
said she, 'how camest thou hither?' 'I am come to seek the song-god,
and to wed his daughter.' 'My father,' said the maiden, 'is more a god
than a man; eat nothing he hands you, never sit on a high seat, lest
death follow.' So they were united in marriage. But the god, like
AEetes, was wroth, and began to set Siati upon perilous tasks: 'Build
me a house, and let it be finished this very day, else death and the
oven await thee.'[102]
Siati wept, but the god's daughter had the house built by the evening.
The other adventures were to fight a fierce dog, and to find a ring
lost at sea. Just as the Scotch giant's daughter cut off her fingers
to help her lover, so the Samoan god's daughter bade Siati cut her
body into pieces and cast her into the sea. There she became a fish,
and recovered the ring. They set off to the god's house, but met him
pursuing them, with the help of his other daughter. 'Puapae and Siati
threw down the comb; and it became a bush of thorns in the way to
intercept the god and Puanli,' the other daughter. Next they threw
down a bottle of earth, which became a mountain; 'and then followed
their bottle of water, and that became a sea, and drowned the god and
Puanli.'[103]
This old Samoan song contains nearly the closest savage parallel to
the various household tales which find their heroic and artistic shape
in the Jason saga. Still more surprising in its resemblances is the
Malagasy version of the narrative. In the Malagasy story, the
conclusion is almost identical with the winding up of the Scotch fairy
tale. The girl hides in a tree; her face, seen reflected in a well, is
mistaken by women for their own faces, and the recognition follows in
due course.[104]
Like most Red Indian versions of popular tales, the Algonquin form of
the Jason saga is strongly marked with the peculiarities of the race.
The story is recognisable, and that is all.
The opening, as usual, differs from other openings. Two children are
deserted in the wilderness, and grow up to manhood. One of them loses
an arrow in the water; the elder brother, Panigwun, wades after it. A
magical canoe flies past: an old magician, who is alone in the canoe,
seizes Panigwun and carries him off. The canoe fleets along, like the
barques of the Phaeacians, at the will of the magician, and reaches the
isle where, like the Samoan god of song, he dwells with his two
daughters. 'Here, my daughter,' said he, 'is a young man for your
husband.' But the daughter knew that the proposed husband was but
another victim of the old man's magic arts. By the daughter's advice,
Panigwun escaped in the magic barque, consoled his brother, and
returned to the island. Next day the magician, Mishosha, set the young
man to hard tasks and perilous adventures. He was to gather gulls'
eggs; but the gulls attacked him in dense crowds. By an incantation he
subdued the birds, and made them carry him home to the island. Next
day he was sent to gather pebbles, that he might be attacked and eaten
by the king of the fishes. Once more the young man, like the Finnish
Ilmarinen in Pohjola, subdued the mighty fish, and went back
triumphant. The third adventure, as in 'Nicht Nought Nothing,' was to
climb a tree of extraordinary height in search of a bird's nest. Here,
again, the youth succeeded, and finally conspired with the daughters
to slay the old magician. Lastly the boy turned the magician into a
sycamore tree, and won his daughter. The other daughter was given to
the brother who had no share in the perils.[105] Here we miss the
incident of the flight;[106] and the magician's daughter, though in
love with the hero, does not aid him to perform the feats. Perhaps an
Algonquin brave would scorn the assistance of a girl. In the
'Kalevala,' the old hero, Waeinaemoeinen, and his friend Ilmarinen, set
off to the mysterious and hostile land of Pohjola to win a bride. The
maiden of Pohjola loses her heart to Ilmarinen, and, by her aid, he
bridles the wolf and bear, ploughs a field of adders with a plough of
gold, and conquers the gigantic pike that swims in the Styx of Finnish
mythology. After this point the story is interrupted by a long sequel
of popular bridal songs, and, in the wandering course of the rather
aimless epic, the flight and its incidents have been forgotten, or are
neglected. These incidents recur, however, in the thread of somewhat
different plots. We have seen that they are found in Japan, among the
Eskimo, among the Bushmen, the Samoyeds, and the Zulus, as well as in
Hungarian, Magyar, Celtic, and other European household tales.
The conclusion appears to be that the central part of the Jason myth
is incapable of being explained, either as a nature-myth, or as a myth
founded on a disease of language. So many languages could not take the
same malady in the same way; nor can we imagine any series of natural
phenomena that would inevitably suggest this tale to so many diverse
races. We must suppose, therefore, either that all wits jumped and
invented the same romantic series of situations by accident, or that
all men spread from one centre, where the story was known, or that the
story, once invented, has drifted all round the world. If the last
theory be approved of, the tale will be like the Indian Ocean shell
found lately in the Polish bone-cave,[107] or like the Egyptian beads
discovered in the soil of Dahomey. The story will have been carried
hither and thither, in the remotest times, to the remotest shores, by
traders, by slaves, by captives in war, or by women torn from their
own tribe and forcibly settled as wives among alien peoples.
Stories of this kind are everywhere the natural property of mothers
and grandmothers. When we remember how widely diffused is the law of
exogamy, which forbids marriage between a man and woman of the same
stock, we are impressed by the number of alien elements which must
have been introduced with alien wives. Where husband and wife, as
often happened, spoke different languages, the woman would inevitably
bring the hearthside tales of her childhood among a people of strange
speech. By all these agencies, working through dateless time, we may
account for the diffusion, if we cannot explain the origin, of tales
like the central arrangement of incidents in the career of Jason.
FOOTNOTES:
[91] _Primitive Culture_, i. 357: 'The savage sees individual stars as
animate beings, or combines star-groups into living celestial
creatures, or limbs of them, or objects connected with them.'
[92] This formula occurs among Bushmen and Eskimo (Bleek and Rink).
[93] The events of the flight are recorded correctly in the Gaelic
variant 'The Battle of the Birds.' (Campbell, _Tales of the West
Highlands_, vol. i. p. 25.)
[94] Ralston, _Russian Folk Tales_, 132; Koehler, _Orient und
Occident_, ii. 107, 114.
[95] _Ko ti ki_, p. 36.
[96] _Callaway_, pp. 51, 53, 64, 145, 228.
[97] See also 'Petrosinella' in the _Pentamerone_, and 'The
Master-maid' in Dasent's _Tales from the Norse_.
[98] _Folklore Journal_, August, 1883.
[99] _Poetae Minores Gr._, ii.
[100] _Gr. My._, ii. 318.
[101] _Sonne, Mond und Sterne_, pp. 213, 229.
[102] This proves that the tale belongs to the pre-Christian cannibal
age.
[103] Turner's _Samoa_, p. 102. In this tale only the names of the
daughters are translated; they mean 'white fish' and 'dark fish.'
[104] _Folklore Journal_, August, 1883.
[105] Schoolcraft, _Algic Researches_, ii. 94-104.
[106] The Red Indian version of the flight is given in 'The Red Horse
of the Dacotahs,' _Century Magazine_, 1884.
[107] _Nature_, March 14, 1884.
_APOLLO AND THE MOUSE._
Why is Apollo, especially the Apollo of the Troad, he who showered the
darts of pestilence among the Greeks, so constantly associated with a
mouse? The very name, Smintheus, by which his favourite priest calls
on him in the _Iliad_ (i. 39), might be rendered 'Mouse Apollo,' or
'Apollo, Lord of Mice.' As we shall see later, mice lived beneath the
altar, and were fed in the holy of holies of the god, and an image of
a mouse was placed beside or upon his sacred tripod. The ancients were
puzzled by these things, and, as will be shown, accounted for them by
'mouse-stories,' ~Sminthiakoi logoi~, so styled by Eustathius, the
mediaeval interpreter of Homer. Following our usual method, let us ask
whether similar phenomena occur elsewhere, in countries where they are
intelligible. Did insignificant animals elsewhere receive worship:
were their effigies elsewhere placed in the temples of a purer creed?
We find answers in the history of Peruvian religion.
After the Spanish conquest of Peru, one of the European adventurers,
Don Garcilasso de la Vega, married an Inca princess. Their son, also
named Garcilasso, was born about 1540. His famous book, _Commentarias
Reales_, contains the most authentic account of the old Peruvian
beliefs. Garcilasso was learned in all the learning of the Europeans,
and, as an Inca on the mother's side, had claims on the loyalty of the
defeated race. He set himself diligently to collect both their
priestly and popular traditions, and his account of them is the more
trustworthy as it coincides with what we know to have been true in
lands with which Garcilasso had little acquaintance.
* * * * *