My attention has been called, while these sheets have been passing
through the press, to a collection which enables me to subjoin some
notes of analogies between the Folktales of France and those in the
text. It is entitled 'Recueil des Contes des Fées,' Geneva, 1718;
published without author's name, and the stories are much less
artificially treated than in the better known collections of the
Comtesse d'Aulnoy, de Caylus, Perrault, Madame de Villeneuve, &c.
Monteil ('Traité de Matériaux-Manuscrits,' Paris, 1835) mentions a
MS. in his possession, of the year 1618, entitled 'Contes des Fées,'
from which Perrault, the least artificial of the French collectors,
seems to have drawn his tales. Mayer ('Discours sur l'Origine des
Contes des Fées,' Geneva and Paris, 1786) ascribes to him the revival
of the knowledge of the existence of popular fairy tales and mediæval
romances, and many of our own Nursery Rimes (notably 'Puss in Boots')
are simply translated from his versions.
'Prince Rainbow' ('Le Prince Arc-en-Ciel'), the fifth story in the
'Recueil,' contains similar incidents with those in 'Filagranata,'
in combination with the introduction of the opening of a nut in
place of one of the oranges in my next story. (I have another Roman
story in MS. which hinges on the opening of three nuts in the place
of three oranges.) In the French story the ire of the bad fairy is
excited against the princess who holds the place of Filagranata, by her
receiving the name of 'Fairer-than-Fairies' ('Plus-belle-que-Fée'). The
bad fairy Lagrée, who is so old that she has only one tooth and
one eye, carries her off to an underground palace, where her task
is to tend a fire, instead of feeding pigeons. Here she is courted
by a prince transformed into a rainbow, whom she finds of course
always seated in the sunshine on a fountain. While talking to him,
she lets her fire out. Lagrée sends her to get fresh fire from the
giant Locrinos, devourer of maidens; the giant's wife takes compassion
on her, and gives her the fire, and with it a stone to use in time
of distress. Lagrée, in fury at her success, sends away Prince
Rainbow. Fairer-than-Fairies escapes, and goes in search of him,
taking with her the stone, a branch of myrtle, and her cat and dog;
when she is weary with wandering, the stone provides her a cave to
sleep in, the dog keeping guard. Lagrée pursues her; the dog attacks
her, and throws her down, so that she breaks her only tooth, and the
princess escapes for another stage. Lagrée overtakes her again as she
is sleeping in a bower the branch of myrtle has raised for her. The
cat makes the defence this time, scratching out her only eye, finally
disabling her. After this, Fairer-than-Fairies is entertained in a
white and green palace by a white and green lady, who gives her a
nut, to be used only in direst need. After another year's wanderings,
another white and green lady gives her a pomegranate; at the end of
another year, another gives her a crystal vial. Afterwards she comes to
a silver palace, suspended by silver chains from four trees. She then
breaks the nut; a Swiss appears and admits her, and she finds Prince
Rainbow in an enchanted sleep, answering to the kiss of forgetfulness
in 'Filagranata.' Fairer-than-Fairies breaks open the pomegranate,
all the pips become violins, whose melody makes the prince open his
eyes. She breaks open the crystal flask, and a Seiren appears, who
sings the tale of all the princess has endured. The prince wakes--the
spell is ended. The silver palace turns into a real and inhabited
one. They embrace, and are married.
'Incarnat, Blanc et Noir,' in the same 'Recueil,' is very similar
to the 'Three Love-Oranges.' A prince walking out in the snow sees
a crow. He tries his skill at bringing him down, and the black bird
falls bleeding on the white snow. The sight makes him desire a maiden
who combines these three tints. Suddenly a voice tells him to go to the
'Kingdom of Marvels,' and that there he will find a tree with splendid
apples (they are not expressly said to be golden). He is to take three,
and not to open them till he reaches home. Curiosity overcomes him by
the way; he opens one, and a beautiful maiden appears; before he can
embrace her she disappears. Afterwards, his homeward travels lead him
on the sea; the desire to open one of the apples again overcomes him,
but though he orders the vessel to be closely covered down all over,
the second maiden disappears like the first. He only opens the third
on reaching home, and then there comes to him a maiden exactly such
as he desired, whom he marries. Afterwards he goes to the wars; and
the mother-in-law, who hated her all along, kills her, and throws her
body in the castle moat, and substitutes another woman, a creature
of her own. The prince expresses his surprise, but she assures him
the different appearance is only the effect of a spell. The prince,
however, pines after his own maiden. One day he sees swimming in
the castle moat a fish with red, white, and black scales, which he
spends all his time in gazing at. The false wife pretends she has an
irrepressible desire to eat that particular fish; she is in a delicate
state of health, and he cannot refuse her. After that a tree springs up
suddenly, which once more presents the three colours. The false wife
(inspired by the mother-in-law) demands that it shall be cut down
and burnt. He cannot refuse her. Finally, a palace, built of rubies,
pearls, and jet, suddenly appears by the side of his own. By unheard-of
exertion he gets into it, and there finds in a cabinet his own maiden,
whom he recalls to his side.
Another ('Le Buisson d'Épines fleuries') contains noticeable
analogies with both the group of 'The Pot of Marjoram,' and that
of 'Maria Wood.' The mother of a fairy princess is led to fill the
stepmother's part towards her, by her having so lavishly distributed
the ointment of perpetual youth, which had been entrusted to her
keeping, that none is left for the queen's own use when she desires
to have recourse to it to regain the lost affections of her husband,
an earthly king. The governess comes to the aid of the princess, and
they fly away together with tents and all requisites of the journey
stowed away in pearls for travelling boxes (some analogy, perhaps,
with the 'Candeliera'). Their adventures bring them across Prince
Zelindor, who marries the princess. The vengeance of the fairy mother
pursues them in various shapes, till at last she turns Zelindor into
a Sweet Briar. The princess is attracted towards the plant, and tends
it with the greatest care, without knowing it is her husband. The
enraged fairy queen orders her to pluck a branch, and she is obliged
to obey. The plant flows with blood, and Zelindor declares she is the
cause of his death; at this juncture the husband of the fairy queen,
fetched by the benevolent governess, appears. His return reconciles
the queen to her daughter; and with an elixir she heals Zelindor's
wounds, and restores him to his bride.
Perrault's rimed fable of 'Peau d'Âne' is much nearer 'Maria Wood.' The
dying queen binds the king to marry no one who does not surpass her in
beauty and understanding. Only their daughter comes up to the mark. Her
fairy godmother tells her to ask for the brilliant dresses, and finally
for the skin of a gold-coin-producing donkey. The king sacrifices
even this. The fairy tells her to put on this skin while she stows
her sunbeam dresses, jewels, &c., in a press which she promises shall
follow underground wherever she carries her wand. She is made hen-wife
in a king's farmyard, and puts on her brilliant dresses on holidays in
her private room. The prince sees her through the keyhole, and falls
ill because his parents object to the union. 'Peau d'Âne' makes him
a cake into which she drops one of her rings. The prince is charmed
with the idea of the hand it suggests to him; his malady increases,
and this softens his parents. He says he will marry no one but her
whom the ring fits, and thus of course 'Peau d'Âne' marries him.
The counterpart, in Perrault, to the group to which 'Il Rè Moro'
belongs is a very clever, but somewhat artificially told story, called
'Kadour.' Kadour, an exquisitely beautiful princess of Cashmere,
is utterly deficient, not in riches, like the chicory-seller's
daughter, but in mind. She comes one day to a hole in the ground, and
a monstrous figure comes out of it, and offers her the gift of mind,
on condition of marrying him in a year. Without knowing what mind is,
she has perceived that all her exceeding beauty has been powerless
to attract any of the attention she has seen lavished on others,
and she gives a sort of stupid consent. The monster tells her that
the gift of mind is to be obtained by simply repeating the words,
'O Love, who canst inspire all things; if it needs but to love to
lose my insipidity, behold I am ready!'
'O toi qui peux tout animer,
Amour, si pour n'être plus bête
Il ne faut que savoir aimer,
Je suis prête.'
In proportion as she repeats these words she is filled with
intelligence; but no sooner is she so gifted than everyone appreciates
and surrounds her, and she soon falls in love with Arada, the
handsomest of her adorers. When the monster returns at the end of the
year, and takes her down to his palace through the hole in the earth,
she is in great perplexity what decision to make. She perceives that
either way she must lose Arada, and says that she cannot give any
answer; the monster says he will decide for her, and send her back to
her first estate. Her newly-acquired powers, however, give her such
loathing of this condition, that she finally prefers retaining her
mind even on the terrible condition already propounded. The monster
declares himself King of the Gnomes, master of boundless riches,
and every kind of luxury and pleasure is lavished on her, as on the
chicory-seller, to reconcile her with her situation; but in this case
all in vain. She contrives to let Arada know her unhappy position,
that she may have the benefit of his sympathy. The gnome-king punishes
her by transforming his handsome person into a duplicate of his own,
so that Kadour never knows to which of them she is speaking.
This story is better known under the title of 'Riquet à la Houpe,'
under which name it has been dramatised; in this, however, the
senseless but beautiful princess has the compensatory faculty of
rendering handsome her mind-giving but hideous lover, and therefore
the happy dénouement is easily worked out. It is also the foundation
of 'Beauty and the Beast;' and probably springs from the same idea
as that embodied in the Ardshi Bordshi story I have given as 'Who
invented Woman,' in 'Sagas from the Far East.'
A sort of counterpart to the story of 'Il Rè Moro' is given under
the title of 'Le Prince Sincer,' in Gueulette's 'Fabliaux, ou Soirées
Bretonnes,' but this series seems to be but a réchauffé of Oriental
tales, and not a collection of local traditions, as the name leads one
to expect, notwithstanding that he introduces Druids into them. The
story I have named forms a link also in some of its details with that
in the text called 'I Satiri.' Another of the same series, called 'Le
Prince Engageant,' has some analogy with the 'Tre Merangoli di Amore'
(The Three Love-Oranges), in a prince finding his bride by giving
her a pomegranate while she is transformed as a dragon.
In a note to his translation of the ballad of 'Pérédur ou le Bassin
Magique,' Th. de la Villemarqué [421] gives a Breton version of the
'Three Golden Apples' story. Pérédur is induced to abandon the state
of retirement in which his mother has kept him, after the death of
his father and his five brothers, by seeing Owen ride by, 'seeking
the knight who divided the apples at the Court of Arthur.' Upon this
the annotator remarks that the episode here alluded to has not been
discovered; but, by way of compensation, he supplies the following,
which was told him by a peasant of the diocese of Quimper, who could
not read, and had received it by tradition from his forefathers.
King Arthur was holding a feast at Lannion, in Brittany; five other
kings assisted at it, with their wives and their suite. Just as dinner
is over Merlin appears, and hands three golden apples to the king, and
says they are to be adjudged to the three most beautiful women. There
is a great commotion, and blood is about to flow in the dispute,
when an unknown knight advances into the hall, mounted on a black
charger with so luxuriant a mane that it envelops both him and his
rider. The cause of dispute is referred to him for arbitration. He
takes up the three apples, and compares their colour to the hair of
the five queens, and their perfume to the ladies' breath; but settles
the competition, like 'the Gold-Spitting Prince,' in 'Sagas from the
Far East,' by disappearing with the prize.
He further quotes, from 'Myvyrian,' i. 151, 152, 155, that Merlin
was so fond of apples that he devoted a poem to their celebration,
and declared he had an orchard with 147 apple-trees of the greatest
beauty; their shade was as valued as their fruit, and was confided
to the care, not of a dragon, but of a fair maiden, with floating
hair and teeth like drops of dew.
APPENDIX C. p. 195.
It ought to have been remarked under Note 1, that Abelard's name
is spelt Abailard in old French, which brings it nearer the name in
the legend.
APPENDIX D. p. 196.
Cardinal Valerio, Bishop of Verona (in his 'De Rhetorica Christiana'
cited in Ludovic Lalanne's 'Curiosités des Traditions,' iv. 403-4),
has a very ingenious mode, among others, of accounting for
the amplification of Legends; he says it was the custom in many
monasteries to give the young monks liberty as a sort of exercise and
pastime to write variations of the acts of the saints and martyrs,
and they exerted their fancy in producing imaginary conversations and
incidents of a nature consonant with the original story; that the most
ingenious and well-written of these would sometimes be placed among
other MSS. in the Library, and would mislead readers in later times.
APPENDIX E. p. 208.
Charles Louandre ('Chefs-d'oeuvre des Conteurs Français,' Paris, 1873)
gives an episode out of the 'Voyage d'outremer du Comte de Ponthieu'
(a Roman of the thirteenth century), which has curious analogies both
with this tale of the Pilgrims, with another Roman story I have in MS.,
and with that of 'The Irish Princess' in 'Patrañas.' Adèle de Ponthieu
was married to Thiébault de Domart. They go a pilgrimage to S. James
of Compostella to pray that they may have heirs. Robbers overcome
them by the way, bind Thiébault to a tree, and ill-treat Adèle. As
soon as she escapes from them Thiébault calls to her to cut his bonds
with his sword; she, judging it better that he should die than live
to blush for her, attempts to take his life with the same blow which
severs the cord; he foresees her intention and circumvents it. He
does not divine her motive, but yet makes no allusion to the matter
till they return from their pilgrimage, then he puts it as an A and B
case to her father; the father decides such a woman should die. She
is put into a barrel and cast into the sea; the barrel is picked up
by merchants who sell her to the Sultan, and she becomes the mother
of the mother of Saladin. Meantime her father and husband cannot rest
for love of her, they go to search the world over for her. A shipwreck
makes them the property of the Sultan who makes a present of them to
Adèle. She, recognising them, pretends to be a Saracen soothsayer,
and by revealing her acquaintance with their previous history, like
the injured Queen in 'The Pilgrims,' brings them to an expression of
penitence and of lasting love for her. She then escapes with them
and lives happily with her husband, the Pope prescribing to her a
certain penitential rule of life to purge her involuntary infidelity.
APPENDIX F. p. 392.
The centenarian Guillaume Boucher (1506-1606) gives in his 'Sérées'
a French story (called 'The Fish-bone') of a quack doctor favoured by
luck, to whom he gives the name of Messire Grillo. Charles Louandre
('Chefs-d'oeuvre des conteurs Français,' p. 278) points out that
doctors hardly ever figure in popular literature before the sixteenth
century, though after the Renaissance they became the constant subject
of satire; and that thus Molière did little more than collect the
jokes at their expense which had been floating during the previous
half-century.