Next to the Saga of King Olaf, without doubt the most beautiful and
successful of the _Tales of a Wayside Inn_, is that of King Robert of
Sicily. The legend is of a remote antiquity, has passed through various
modifications and recastings, and, after having lain by in forgotten
tomes, has been vivified once more by the poetic breath of Longfellow, and
popularised again. It is singular to trace the history of certain
favourite tales; they seem to be endowed with an inherent vitality, which
cannot be stamped out. Born far back in the early history of man, they
have asserted at once a sway over the imagination and feelings; have been
translated from their original birth-soil to foreign climes, and have
undergone changes and adaptations to suit the habits and requirements of
the new people amongst whom they have taken root. Political disturbances
cannot obliterate them; war sweeps over the land they have adopted, famine
devastates it, pestilence decimates its inhabitants, and for a while the
ancient tales hide their heads, only to crop up again green and fresh
when the springtide of prosperity returns.
Sometimes a venerable myth disappears for an exceptionally long period,
and its vitality is, we suppose, extinguished. But though ages roll by, if
it have in it the real essential power of development and assimilation, it
is only waiting for its time to start a fresh career, full of concentrated
vigour. Like the ear of wheat in the hand of the mummy, it has lain by,
wrapped in cere-cloths, without giving token of germ, till the moment of
its liberation has arrived, when, falling on good ground, it brings forth
a hundredfold.
Such was the history of Fouque’s exquisite romance, _Undine_. It was a
very ancient tale, but it had been forgotten. The German poet found it in
the dead hand of the whimsical pedant, Theophrastus Paracelsus, swathed in
barbarous Latin. He writes:--“I ceased not to study an old edition of my
speechmonger, which fell to me at an auction, and that carefully. Even his
receipts I read through in order, just as they had been showered into the
text, still continuing in the firm expectation that from every line
something wonderfully magical might float up to me, and strike the
understanding. Single sparks, here and there darting up, confirmed my
hopes, and drew me deeper into the mines beneath ... then, at last, as a
pearl of soft radiance, there sparkled towards me, from out its
rough-edged shell--_Undine_.” And he tells us how that his story has been
translated into French, Italian, English, Russian, and Polish. The mummy
wheat was soon multiplied.
The legend of King Robert of Sicily, which the American poet has rescued
from oblivion, is one of those few which can be traced with rare precision
through its various changes, and tracked to the country where it
originated. It is instructive to note how in one form, it did service in
the cause of one religion, and how, in another form, it pointed a striking
moral in behalf of an entirely different creed.
Two methods of procedure lie open to us in the examination of this story,
analysis and synthesis. We might trace the legend back from the form in
which it is known to the modern public, by sure stages, to the ultimate
atoms out of which it is developed, or we might take the original germ,
and follow it in its expanding and varying forms, till it has assumed its
present shape in the pages of the _Tales of a Wayside Inn_.
We shall adopt the latter method, as the most suitable in this peculiar
instance.
In the _Pantschatantra_, a Sanscrit collection of popular tales, the date
of the compilation of which is uncertain, but that of the tales is
unquestionably earlier than the Christian era, is the following story:
“In the town of Liavati, lived a king, called Mukunda. One day he saw a
hunchback performing such comical actions that he invited him to become
an inmate of his palace, and, as his court fool, to divert him in his
hours of idleness and depression. The king was so taken up with this droll
rascal, that his prime minister was seriously displeased, and he said, in
reproof, to his master--
‘Far flies rumour with three pairs of ears.’