Produced by David Deley
FAIRY TALES, THEIR ORIGIN AND MEANING
With Some Account of Dwellers in Fairyland
By John Thackray Bunce
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
The substance of this volume was delivered as a course of Christmas
Holiday Lectures, in 1877, at the Birmingham and Midland Institute, of
which the author was then the senior Vice-president. It was found that
both the subject and the matter interested young people; and it was
therefore thought that, revised and extended, the Lectures might not
prove unacceptable in the form of a Book. The volume does not pretend to
scientific method, or to complete treatment of the subject. Its aim is
a very modest one: to furnish an inducement rather than a formal
introduction to the study of Folk Lore; a study which, when once begun,
the reader will pursue, with unflagging interest, in such works as
the various writings of Mr. Max-Muller; the "Mythology of the Aryan
Nations," by Mr. Cox; Mr. Ralston's "Russian Folk Tales;" Mr. Kelly's
"Curiosities of Indo-European Folk Lore;" the Introduction to
Mr. Campbell's "Popular Tales of the West Highlands," and other
publications, both English and German, bearing upon the same subject. In
the hope that his labour may serve this purpose, the author ventures
to ask for an indulgent rather than a critical reception of this little
volume.
BIRMINGHAM,
September, 1878.
LIST OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. ORIGIN OF FAIRY TALES--THE ARYAN RACE: ITS CHARACTERISTICS,
ITS TRADITIONS, AND ITS MIGRATIONS
CHAPTER II. KINDRED TALES FROM DIVERS LANDS
CHAPTER III. DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: STORIES FROM THE EAST
CHAPTER IV. DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: TEUTONIC, SCANDINAVIAN, ETC.
CHAPTER V. DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: CELTIC, THE WEST HIGHLANDS
CHAPTER VI. CONCLUSION-SOME POPULAR TALES EXPLAINED.
INDEX
CHAPTER I.--ORIGIN OF FAIRY STORIES.
We are going into Fairy Land for a little while, to see what we can find
there to amuse and instruct us this Christmas time. Does anybody know
the way? There are no maps or guidebooks, and the places we meet with
in our workaday world do not seem like the homes of the Fairies. Yet we
have only to put on our Wishing Caps, and we can get into Fairy Land in
a moment. The house-walls fade away, the winter sky brightens, the sun
shines out, the weather grows warm and pleasant; flowers spring up,
great trees cast a friendly shade, streams murmur cheerfully over their
pebbly beds, jewelled fruits are to be had for the trouble of gathering
them; invisible hands set out well-covered dinner-tables, brilliant and
graceful forms flit in and out across our path, and we all at once find
ourselves in the midst of a company of dear old friends whom we have
known and loved ever since we knew anything. There is Fortunatus with
his magic purse, and the square of carpet that carries him anywhere; and
Aladdin with his wonderful lamp; and Sindbad with the diamonds he has
picked up in the Valley of Serpents; and the Invisible Prince, who uses
the fairy cat to get his dinner for him; and the Sleeping Beauty in
the Wood, just awakened by the young Prince, after her long sleep of a
hundred years; and Puss in Boots curling his whiskers after having eaten
up the ogre who foolishly changed himself into a mouse; and Beauty and
the Beast; and the Blue Bird; and Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack the
Giant Killer, and Jack and the Bean Stalk; and the Yellow Dwarf; and
Cinderella and her fairy godmother; and great numbers besides, of whom
we haven't time to say anything now.
And when we come to look about us, we see that there are other dwellers
in Fairy Land; giants and dwarfs, dragons and griffins, ogres with
great white teeth, and wearing seven-leagued boots; and enchanters and
magicians, who can change themselves into any forms they please, and
can turn other people into stone. And there are beasts and birds who can
talk, and fishes that come out on dry land, with golden rings in their
mouths; and good maidens who drop rubies and pearls when they speak, and
bad ones out of whose mouths come all kinds of ugly things. Then there
are evil-minded fairies, who always want to be doing mischief; and there
are good fairies, beautifully dressed, and with shining golden hair and
bright blue eyes and jewelled coronets, and with magic wands in their
hands, who go about watching the bad fairies, and always come just in
time to drive them away, and so prevent them from doing harm--the sort
of Fairies you see once a year at the pantomimes, only more beautiful,
and more handsomely dressed, and more graceful in shape, and not so fat,
and who do not paint their faces, which is a bad thing for any woman to
do, whether fairy or mortal.
Altogether, this Fairy Land that we can make for ourselves in a moment,
is a very pleasant and most delightful place, and one which all of us,
young and old, may well desire to get into, even if we have to come back
from it sooner than we like. It is just the country to suit everybody,
for all of us can find in it whatever pleases him best. If he likes
work, there is plenty of adventure; he can climb up mountains of steel,
or travel over seas of glass, or engage in single combat with a giant,
or dive down into the caves of the little red dwarfs and bring up their
hidden treasures, or mount a horse that goes more swiftly than the wind,
or go off on a long journey to find the water of youth and life, or do
anything else that happens to be very dangerous and troublesome. If
he doesn't like work, it is again just the place to suit idle people,
because it is all Midsummer holidays. I never heard of a school in Fairy
Land, nor of masters with canes or birch rods, nor of impositions and
long lessons to be learned when one gets home in the evening. Then the
weather is so delightful. It is perpetual sunshine, so that you may lie
out in the fields all day without catching cold; and yet it is not too
hot, the sunshine being a sort of twilight, in which you see everything,
quite clearly, but softly, and with beautiful colours, as if you were in
a delightful dream.
And this goes on night and day, or at least what we call night, for
they don't burn gas there, or candles, or anything of that kind; so
that there is no regular going to bed and getting up; you just lie down
anywhere when you want to rest, and when you have rested, you wake up
again, and go on with your travels. There is one capital thing about
Fairy Land. There are no doctors there; not one in the whole country.
Consequently nobody is ill, and there are no pills or powders, or
brimstone and treacle, or senna tea, or being kept at home when you want
to go out, or being obliged to go to bed early and have gruel instead
of cake and sweetmeats. They don't want the doctors, because if you cut
your finger it gets well directly, and even when people are killed, or
are turned into stones, or when anything else unpleasant happens, it can
all be put right in a minute or two. All you have to do when you are in
trouble is to go and look for some wrinkled old woman in a patched old
brown cloak, and be very civil to her, and to do cheerfully and kindly
any service she asks of you, and then she will throw off the dark cloak,
and become a young and beautiful Fairy Queen, and wave her magic wand,
and everything will fall out just as you would like to have it.
As to Time, they take no note of it in Fairy Land. The Princess falls
asleep for a hundred years, and wakes up quite rosy, and young, and
beautiful. Friends and sweethearts are parted for years, and nobody
seems to think they have grown older when they meet, or that life has
become shorter, and so they fall to their youthful talk as if nothing
had happened. Thus the dwellers in Fairy Land have no cares about
chronology. With them there is no past or future; it is all present--so
there are no disagreeable dates to learn, nor tables of kings, and when
they reigned, or who succeeded them, or what battles they fought, or
anything of that kind. Indeed there are no such facts to be learned,
for when kings are wicked in Fairy Land, a powerful magician comes and
twists their heads off, or puts them to death somehow; and when they
are good kings they seem to live for ever, and always to be wearing rich
robes and royal golden crowns, and to be entertaining Fairy Queens, and
receiving handsome brilliant gifts from everybody who knows them.
Now this is Fairy Land, the dear sweet land of Once Upon a Time, where
there is constant light, and summer days, and everlasting flowers, and
pleasant fields and streams, and long dreams without rough waking, and
ease of life, and all things strange and beautiful; where nobody wonders
at anything that may happen; where good fairies are ever on the watch to
help those whom they love; where youth abides, and there is no pain or
death, and all trouble fades away, and whatever seems hard is made easy,
and all things that look wrong come right in the end, and truth and
goodness have their perpetual triumph, and the world is ever young.
And Fairy Land is always the same, and always has been, whether it is
close to us--so close that we may enter it in a moment--or whether it is
far off; in the stories that have come to us from the most ancient
days, and the most distant lands, and in those which kind and clever
story-tellers write for us now. It is the same in the legends of the
mysterious East, as old as the beginning of life; the same in the
glowing South, in the myths of ancient Greece; the same in the frozen
regions of the Scandinavian North, and in the forests of the great
Teuton land, and in the Islands of the West; the same in the tales that
nurses tell to the little ones by the fireside on winter evenings, and
in the songs that mothers sing to hush their babes to sleep; the same in
the delightful folk-lore that Grimm has collected for us, and that dear
Hans Andersen has but just ceased to tell.
All the chief stories that we know so well are to be found in all
times, and in almost all countries. Cinderella, for one, is told in the
language of every country in Europe, and the same legend is found in the
fanciful tales related by the Greek poets; and still further back, it
appears in very ancient Hindu legends. So, again, does Beauty and the
Beast, so does our own familiar tale of Jack the Giant Killer, so also
do a great number of other fairy stories, each being told in different
countries and in different periods, with so much likeness as to show
that all the versions came from the same source, and yet with so much
difference as to show that none of the versions are directly copied from
each other. Indeed, when we compare the myths and legends of one country
with another, and of one period with another, we find out how they have
come to be so much alike, and yet in some things so different. We see
that there must have been one origin for all these stories, that they
must have been invented by one people, that this people must have been
afterwards divided, and that each part or division of it must have
brought into its new home the legends once common to them all, and must
have shaped and altered these according, to the kind of places in which
they came to live: those of the North being sterner and more terrible,
those of the South softer and fuller of light and colour, and adorned
with touches of more delicate fancy. And this, indeed, is really the
case. All the chief stories and legends are alike, because they were
first made by one people; and all the nations in which they are now told
in one form or another tell them because they are all descended from
this one common stock. If you travel amongst them, or talk to them, or
read their history, and learn their languages, the nations of Europe
seem to be altogether unlike each other; they have different speech
and manners, and ways of thinking, and forms of government, and
even different looks--for you can tell them from one another by some
peculiarity of appearance. Yet, in fact, all these nations belong to one
great family--English, and German, and Russian, and French, and Italian,
and Spanish, the nations of the North, and the South, and the West, and
partly of the East of Europe, all came from one stock; and so did the
Romans and Greeks who went before them; and so also did the Medes
and Persians, and the Hindus, and some other peoples who have always
remained in Asia. And to the people from whom all these nations have
sprung learned men have given two names. Sometimes they are called the
Indo-Germanic or Indo-European race, to show how widely they extend; and
sometimes they are called the Aryan race, from a word which is found in
their language, and which comes from the root "ar," to plough, and is
supposed to mean noble, or of a good family.
But how do we know that there were any such people, and that we in
England are descended from them, or that they were the forefathers of
the other nations of Europe, and of the Hindus, and of the old Greeks
and Romans? We know it by a most curious and ingenious process of what
may be called digging out and building up. Some of you may remember that
years ago there was found in New Zealand a strange-looking bone, which
nobody could make anything of, and which seemed to have belonged to some
creature quite lost to the world as we know it. This bone was sent home
to England to a great naturalist, Professor Owen, of the British Museum,
who looked at it, turned it over, thought about it, and then came to the
conclusion that it was a bone which had once formed part of a gigantic
bird. Then; by degrees, he began to see the kind of general form which
such a bird must have presented, and finally, putting one thing to
another, and fitting part to part, he declared it to be a bird of
gigantic size, and of a particular character, which he was able to
describe; and this opinion was confirmed by later discoveries of other
bones and fragments, so that an almost complete skeleton of the Dinornis
may now be seen in this country. Well, our knowledge of the Aryan
people, and of our own descent from them, has been found out in much
the same way. Learned men observed, as a curious thing, that in various
European languages there were words of the same kind, and having the
same root forms; they found also that these forms of roots existed in
the older language of Greece; and then they found that they existed
also in Sanskrit, the oldest language of India--that in which the sacred
books of the Hindus are written. They discovered, further, that these
words and their roots meant always the same things, and this led to
the natural belief that they came from the same source. Then, by closer
inquiry into the _Vedas_, or Hindu sacred books, another discovery was
made, namely, that while the Sanskrit has preserved the words of the
original language in their most primitive or earliest state, the other
languages derived from the same source have kept some forms plainly
coming from the same roots, but which Sanskrit has lost. Thus we are
carried back to a language older than Sanskrit, and of which this is
only one of the forms, and from this we know that there was a people
which used a common tongue; and if different forms of this common tongue
are found in India, in Persia, and throughout Europe, we know that the
races which inhabit these countries must, at sometime, have parted
from the parent stock, and must have carried their language and their
traditions along with them. So, to find out who these people were, we
have to go back to the sacred books of the Hindus and the Persians, and
to pick out whatever facts may be found there, and thus to build up the
memorial of the Aryan race, just as Professor Owen built up the great
New Zealand bird.
It would take too long, and would be much too dry, to show how this
process has been completed step by step, and bit by bit. That belongs to
a study called comparative philology, and to another called comparative
mythology--that is, the studies of words and of myths, or legends--which
some of those who read these pages may pursue with interest in after
years. All that need be done now is to bring together such accounts of
the Aryan people, our forefathers, as may be gathered from the writings
of the learned men who have made this a subject of inquiry, and
especially from the works of German and French writers, and more
particularly from those of Mr. Max Muller, an eminent German, who lives
amongst us in England, who writes in English, and who has done more,
perhaps, than anybody else, to tell us what we know about this matter.
As to when the Aryans lived we know nothing, but that it was thousands
of years ago, long before history began. As to the kind of people
they were we know nothing in a direct way. They have left no traces of
themselves in buildings, or weapons, or enduring records of any kind.
There are no ruins of their temples or tombs, no pottery--which often
helps to throw light upon ancient peoples-no carvings upon rocks or
stones. It is only by the remains of their language that we can
trace them; and we do this through the sacred books of the Hindus and
Persians-the _Vedas_ and the _Zend Avesta_--in which remains of their
language are found, and by means of which, therefore, we get to know
something about their dwelling-place, their manners, their customs,
their religion, and their legends--the source and origin of our Fairy
Tales.
In the _Zend Avesta_--the oldest sacred book of the Persians--or in such
fragments of it as are left, there are sixteen countries spoken of as
having been given by Ormuzd, the Good Deity, for the Aryans to live
in; and these countries are described as a land of delight, which was
turned, by Ahriman, the Evil Deity, into a land of death and cold;
partly, it is said, by a great flood, which is described as being like
Noah's flood recorded in the Book of Genesis. This land, as nearly as we
can make it out, seems to have been the high, central district of Asia,
to the north and west of the great chain of mountains of the Hindu
Koush, which form the frontier barrier of the present country of the
Afghans. It stretched, probably, from the sources of the river Oxus
to the shores of the Caspian Sea; and when the Aryans moved from their
home, it is thought that the easterly portion of the tribes were those
who marched southwards into India and Persia, and that those who
were nearest the Caspian Sea marched westwards into Europe. It is not
supposed that they were all one united people, but rather a number of
tribes, having a common origin--though what was this original stock
is quite beyond any knowledge we have, or even beyond our powers of
conjecture. But, though the Aryan peoples were divided into tribes, and
were spread over a tract of country nearly as large as half Europe, we
may properly describe them generally, for so far as our knowledge goes,
all the tribes had the same character.
They were a pastoral people--that is, their chief work was to look after
their herds of cattle and to till the earth. Of this we find proof in
the words and roots remaining of their language. From the same source,
also, we know that they lived in dwellings built with wood and stone;
that these dwellings were grouped together in villages; that they were
fenced in against enemies, and that enclosures were formed to keep the
cattle from straying, and that roads of some kind were made from one
village to another. These things show that the Aryans had some claim to
the name they took, and that in comparison with their forefathers, or
with the savage or wandering tribes they knew, they had a right to call
themselves respectable, excellent, honourable, masters, heroes--for all
these are given as probable meanings of their name. Their progress was
shown in another way. The rudest and earliest tribes of men used weapons
of flint, roughly shaped into axes and spear-heads, or other cutting
implements, with which they defended themselves in conflict, or killed
the beasts of chase, or dug up the roots on which they lived. The Aryans
were far in advance of this condition. They did not, it is believed,
know the use of iron, but they knew and used gold, silver, and copper;
they made weapons and other implements of bronze; they had ploughs to
till the ground, and axes, and probably saws, for the purpose of cutting
and shaping timber. Of pottery and weaving they knew something: the
western tribes certainly used hemp and flax as materials for weaving,
and when the stuff was woven the women made it into garments by the use
of the needle. Thus we get a certain division of trades or occupations.
There were the tiller of the soil, the herdsman, the smith who forged
the tools and weapons of bronze, the joiner or carpenter who built the
houses, and the weaver who made the clothing required for protection
against a climate which was usually cold. Then there was also the
boat-builder, for the Aryans had boats, though moved only by oars.
There was yet another class, the makers of personal ornaments, for these
people had rings, bracelets, and necklaces made of the precious metals.
Of trade the Aryans knew something; but they had no coined money--all
the trade was done by exchange of one kind of cattle, or grain or goods,
for another. They had regulations as to property, their laws punished
crime with fine, imprisonment, or death, just as ours do. They seem to
have been careful to keep their liberties, the families being formed
into groups, and these into tribes or clans, under the rule of an
elected chief, while it is probable that a Great Chief or King ruled
over several tribes and led them to war, or saw that the laws were put
into force.
Now we begin to see something of these ancient forefathers of ours, and
to understand what kind of people they were. Presently we shall have
to look into their religion, out of which our Fairy Stories were really
made; but first, there are one or two other things to be said about
them. One of these shows that they were far in advance of savage races,
for they could count as high as one hundred, while savages can seldom
get further than the number of their fingers; and they had also advanced
so far as to divide the year into twelve months, which they took from
the changes of the moon. Then their family relations were very close and
tender. "Names were given to the members of families related by marriage
as well as by blood. A welcome greeted the birth of children, as of
those who brought joy to the home; and the love that should be felt
between brother and sister was shown in the names given to them:
_bhratar_ (or brother) being he who sustains or helps; _svasar_ (or
sister) she who pleases or consoles. The daughter of each household was
called _duhitar,_ from _duh_, a root which in Sanskrit means to milk,
by which we know that the girls in those days were the milking-maids.
Father comes from a root, _pa_, which means to protect or support;
mother, _matar_, has the meaning of maker."[1]
Now we may sum up what we know of this ancient people and their ways;
and we find in them much that is to be found in their descendants--the
love of parents and children, the closeness of family ties, the
protection of life and property, the maintenance of law and order, and,
as we shall see presently, a great reverence for _God_. Also, they were
well versed in the arts of life--they built houses, formed villages or
towns, made roads, cultivated the soil, raised great herds of cattle and
other animals; they made boats and land-carriages, worked in metals for
use and ornament, carried on trade with each other, knew how to count,
and were able to divide their time so as to reckon by months and days
as well as by seasons. Besides all this, they had something more and of
still higher value, for the fragments of their ancient poems or hymns
preserved in the Hindu and Persian sacred books show that they thought
much of the spirit of man as well as of his bodily life; that they
looked upon sin as an evil to be punished or forgiven by the Gods, that
they believed in a life after the death of the body, and that they had
a strong feeling for natural beauty and a love of searching into the
wonders of the earth and of the heavens.
The religion of the Aryan races, in its beginning, was a very simple and
a very noble one. They looked up to the heavens and saw the bright sun,
and the light and beauty and glory of the day. They saw the day fade
into night and the clouds draw themselves across the sky, and then they
saw the dawn and the light and life of another day. Seeing these things,
they felt that some Power higher than man ordered and guided them; and
to this great Power they gave the name of _Dyaus_, from a root-word
which means "to shine." And when, out of the forces and forms of Nature,
they afterwards fashioned other Gods, this name of Dyaus became _Dyaus
pitar_, the Heaven-Father, or Lord of All; and in far later times, when
the western Aryans had found their home in Europe, the _Dyaus pitar_
of the central Asian land became the Zeupater of the Greeks, and the
Jupiter of the Romans; and the first part of his name gave us the word
Deity, which we apply to _God_. So, as Professor Max Muller tells us,
the descendants of the ancient Aryans, "when they search for a name for
what is most exalted and yet most dear to every one of us, when they
wish to express both awe and love, the infinite and the finite, they can
do but what their old fathers did when gazing up to the eternal sky, and
feeling the presence of a Being as far as far, and as near as near can
be; they can but combine the self-same words and utter once more the
primeval Aryan prayer, Heaven-Father, in that form which will endure for
ever, 'Our Father, which art in Heaven.'"
The feeling which the Aryans had towards the Heaven-Father is very
finely shown in one of the oldest hymns in the _Rig Veda_, or the Book
of Praise--a hymn written 4,000 years ago, and addressed to Varuna, or
the All-Surrounder, the ancient Hindu name for the chief deity:--
"Let me not, O Varuna, enter into the house of clay.
Have mercy! Almighty, have mercy!
If I go trembling, like a cloud driven by the wind,
Have mercy! Almighty, have mercy!
Through want of strength, thou strong and bright God,
have I gone wrong;
Have mercy! Almighty, have mercy!"
But, besides Dyaus pitar, or Varuna, the Aryans worshipped other gods,
whom they made for themselves out of the elements, and the changes of
night and day, and the succession of the seasons. They worshipped the
sky, the earth, the sun, the dawn, fire, water, and wind. The chief of
these deities were Agni, the fire; Prithivi, the earth; Ushas, the dawn;
Mitra, or Surya, the sun; Indra, the sky; Maruts, the storm-winds; and
Varuna, the All-Surrounder. To these deities sacrifice was offered and
prayer addressed; but they had no priests or temples--these came in
later ages, when men thought they had need of others to stand between
them and _God_. But the ancient Aryans saw the Deity everywhere, and
stood face to face with Him in Nature. He was to them the early morning,
the brightness of midday, the gloom of evening, the darkness of night,
the flash of the lightning, the roll of the thunder, and the rush of the
mighty storm-wind. It seems strange to us that those who could imagine
the one Heaven-Father should degrade Him by making a multitude of Gods;
but this came easily to them, partly out of a desire to account for all
they saw in Nature, and which their fancy clothed in divine forms, and
partly out of reverence for the great All Father, by filling up the
space between Him and themselves with inferior Gods, all helping to make
His greatness the greater and His power the mightier.
We cannot look into this old religion of the Aryans any further, because
our business is to see how their legends are connected with the myths
and stories which are spread by their descendants over a great part of
East and West. Now this came about in the way we are going to describe.
The mind of the Aryan peoples in their ancient home was full of
imagination. They never ceased to wonder at what they heard and saw in
the sky and upon the earth. Their language was highly figurative, and
so the things which struck them with wonder, and which they could not
explain, were described under forms and names which were familiar to
them. Thus the thunder was to them the bellowing of a mighty beast or
the rolling of a great chariot. In the lightning they saw a brilliant
serpent, or a spear shot across the sky, or a great fish darting swiftly
through the sea of cloud. The clouds were heavenly cows, who shed milk
upon the earth and refreshed it; or they were webs woven by heavenly
women, who drew water from the fountains on high and poured it down as
rain. The sun was a radiant wheel, or a golden bird, or an eye, or
a shining egg, or a horse of matchless speed, or a slayer of the
cloud-dragons. Sometimes it was a frog, when it seemed to be sinking
into or squatting upon the water; and out of this fancy, when the
meaning of it was lost, there grew a Sanskrit legend, which is to be
found also in Teutonic and Celtic myths. This story is, that Bheki (the
frog) was a lovely maiden who was found by a king, who asked her to be
his wife. So she married him, but only on condition that he should never
show her a drop of water. One day she grew tired, and asked for water.
The king gave it to her, and she sank out of his sight; in other words,
the sun disappears when it touches the water.
This imagery of the Aryans was applied by them to all they saw in the
sky. Sometimes, as we have said, the clouds were cows; they were also
dragons, which sought to slay the sun; or great ships floating across
the sky, and casting anchor upon earth; or rocks, or mountains, or deep
caverns, in which evil deities hid the golden light. Then, also, they
were shaped by fancy into animals of various kinds-the bear, the wolf,
the dog, the ox; and into giant birds, and into monsters which were both
bird and beast.
The Winds, again, in their fancy, were the companions or the ministers
of Indra, the sky-god. The Maruts, or spirits of the winds, gathered
into their host the souls of the dead--thus giving birth to the
Scandinavian and Teutonic legend of the Wild Horseman, who rides at
midnight through the stormy sky, with his long train of dead behind
him, and his weird hounds before. The Ribhus, or Arbhus, again, were the
sunbeams or the lightning, who forged the armour of the Gods, and made
their thunderbolts, and turned old people young, and restored out of
the hide alone the slaughtered cow on which the Gods had feasted. Out
of these heavenly artificers, the workers of the clouds, there came, in
later times, two of the most striking stories of ancient legend--that
of Thor, the Scandinavian thunder-god, who feasted at night on the goats
which drew his chariot, and in the morning, by a touch of his hammer,
brought them back to life; and that of Orpheus in the beautiful Greek
legend, the master of divine song, who moved the streams, and rocks, and
trees, by the beauty of his music, and brought back his wife Eurydike
from the shades of death. In our Western fairy tales we still have these
Ribhus, or Arbhus, transformed, through various changes of language,
into Albs, and Elfen, and last into our English Elves. It is not needful
to go further into the fanciful way in which the old Aryans slowly made
ever-increasing deities and superhuman beings for themselves out of
all the forms and aspects of Nature; or how their Hindu and Persian and
Greek and Teuton descendants peopled all earth, and air, and sky, and
water, with good and bad spirits and imaginary powers. But, as we shall
see later, all these creatures grew out of one thing only--the Sun,
and his influence upon the earth. Aryan myths were no more than poetic
fancies about light and darkness, cloud and rain, night and day, storm
and wind; and when they moved westward and southward, the Aryan races
brought these legends with them; and they were shaped by degrees into
the innumerable gods and demons of the Hindus, the divs and jinns of the
Persians, the great gods, the minor deities, and nymphs, and fauns, and
satyrs of Greek mythology and poetry; the stormy divinities, the giants,
and trolls of the cold and rugged North; the dwarfs of the German
forests; the elves who dance merrily in the moonlight of an English
summer; and the "good people" who play mischievous tricks upon stray
peasants amongst the Irish hills. Almost all, indeed, that we have of
a legendary kind comes to us from our Aryan forefathers; sometimes
scarcely changed, sometimes so altered that we have to puzzle out the
links between the old and the new; but all these myths and traditions,
and Old-world stories, when we come to know the meaning of them, take us
back to the time when the Aryan races dwelt together in the high
lands of Central Asia, and they all mean the same things--that is, the
relation between the sun and the earth, the succession of night and
day, of winter and summer, of storm and calm, of cloud and tempest, and
golden sunshine and bright blue sky. And this is the source from which
we get our Fairy Stories; for underneath all of them there are the same
fanciful meanings, only changed and altered in the way of putting
them, by the lapse of ages of time, by the circumstances of different
countries, and by the fancy of those who kept the wonderful tales alive
without knowing what they meant.
When the change happened that brought about all this, we do not know. It
was thousands of years ago that the Aryan people began their march out
of their old country in mid-Asia. But from the remains of their language
and the likeness of their legends to those amongst other nations, we do
know that ages and ages ago their country grew too small for them, so
they were obliged to move away from it. They could not go eastward, for
the great mountains shut them in; they could not go northward, for the
great desert was too barren for their flocks and herds. So they turned,
some of them southward into India and Persia, and some of them westward
into Europe--at the time, perhaps, when the land of Europe stretched
from the borders of Asia to our own islands, and when there was no sea
between us and what is now the mainland. How they made their long and
toilsome march we know not. But, as Kingsley writes of such a movement
of an ancient tribe, so we may fancy these old Aryans marching
westward--"the tall, bare-limbed men, with stone axes on their shoulders
and horn bows at their backs, with herds of grey cattle, guarded by huge
lop-eared mastiffs, with shaggy white horses, heavy-horned sheep and
silky goats, moving always westward through the boundless steppes,
whither or why we know not, but that the All-Father had sent them forth.
And behind us [he makes them say] the rosy snow-peaks died into ghastly
grey, lower and lower, as every evening came; and before us the plains
spread infinite, with gleaming salt-lakes, and ever-fresh tribes of
gaudy flowers. Behind us, dark: lines of living beings streamed down
the mountain slopes; around us, dark lines crawled along the
plains--westward, westward ever. Who could stand against us? We met the
wild asses on the steppe, and tamed them, and made them our slaves. We
slew the bison herds, and swam broad rivers on their skins. The Python
snake lay across our path; the wolves and wild dogs snarled at us out
of their coverts; we slew them and went on. The forests rose in black
tangled barriers, we hewed our way through them and went on. Strange
giant tribes met us, and eagle-visaged hordes, fierce and foolish; we
smote them, hip and thigh, and went on, west-ward ever." And so, as they
went on, straight towards the west, or as they turned north and south,
and thus overspread new lands, they brought with them their old ways of
thought and forms of belief, and the stories in which these had
taken form; and on these were built up the Gods and Heroes, and all
wonder-working creatures and things, and the poetical fables and fancies
which have come down to us, and which still linger in our customs and
our Fairy Tales bright and sunny and many coloured in the warm regions
of the south; sterner and wilder and rougher in the north; more homelike
in the middle and western countries; but always alike in their main
features, and always having the same meaning when we come to dig it
out; and these forms and this meaning being the same in the lands of the
Western Aryans as in those still peopled by the Aryans of the East.
It would take a very great book to give many examples of the myths and
stories which are alike in all the Aryan countries; but we may see by
one instance what the likeness is; and it shall be a story which all
will know when they read it.
Once upon a time there was a Hindu Rajah, who had an only daughter, who
was born with a golden necklace. In this necklace was her soul; and
if the necklace were taken off and worn by some one else, the Princess
would die. On one of her birthdays the Rajah gave his daughter a pair
of slippers with ornaments of gold and gems upon them. The Princess went
out upon a mountain to pluck the flowers that grew there, and while she
was stooping to pluck them one of her slippers came off and fell down
into a forest below. A Prince, who was hunting in the forest, picked up
the lost slipper, and was so charmed with it that he desired to make its
owner his wife. So he made his wish known everywhere, but nobody came
to claim the slipper, and the poor Prince grew very sad. At last some
people from the Rajah's country heard of it, and told the Prince where
to find the Rajah's daughter; and he went there, and asked for her as
his wife, and they were married. Sometime after, another wife of the
Prince, being jealous of the Rajah's daughter, stole her necklace, and
put it on her own neck, and then the Rajah's daughter died. But her
body did not decay, nor did her face lose its bloom; and the Prince went
every day to see her, for he loved her very much although she was dead.
Then he found out the secret of the necklace, and got it back again, and
put it on his dead wife's neck, and her soul was born again in her, and
she came back to life, and they lived happy ever after.
This Hindu story of the lost slipper is met with again in a legend of
the ancient Greeks, which tells that while a beautiful woman, named
Rhodope--or the rosy-cheeked--was bathing, an eagle picked up one of her
slippers and flew away with it, and carried it off to Egypt, and dropped
it in the lap of the King of that country, as he sat at Memphis on the
judgment-seat. The slipper was so small and beautiful that the King fell
in love with the wearer of it, and had her sought for, and when she was
found he made her his wife. Another story of the same kind. It is found
in many countries, in various forms, and is that of Cinderella, the poor
neglected maiden, whom her stepmother set to work in the kitchen, while
her sisters went to the grand balls and feasts at the King's palace.
You know how Cinderella's fairy godmother came and dressed her like a
princess, and sent her to the ball; how the King's son fell in love with
her; how she lost one of her slippers, which the Prince picked up;
how he vowed that he would marry the maiden who could fit on the lost
slipper; how all the ladies of the court tried to do it, and failed,
Cinderella's sisters amongst them; and how Cinderella herself put on the
slipper, produced the fellow to it, was married to the King's son, and
lived happily with him.
Now the story of Cinderella helps us to find out the meaning of our
Fairy Tales; and takes us back straight to the far-off land where fairy
legends began, and to the people who made them. Cinderella, and Rhodope,
and the Hindu Rajah's daughter, and the like, are but different forms
of the same ancient myth. It is the story of the Sun and the Dawn.
Cinderella, grey and dark, and dull, is all neglected when she is away
from the Sun, obscured by the envious Clouds her sisters, and by her
stepmother the Night. So she is Aurora, the Dawn, and the fairy Prince
is the Morning Sun, ever pursuing her, to claim her for his bride. This
is the legend as we find it in the ancient Hindu sacred books; and this
explains at once the source and the meaning of the Fairy Tale.
Nor is it in the story of Cinderella alone that we trace the ancient
Hindu legends. There is scarcely a tale of Greek or Roman mythology, no
legend of Teutonic or Celtic or Scandinavian growth, no great romance of
what we call the middle ages, no fairy story taken down from the lips of
ancient folk, and dressed for us in modern shape and tongue, that we
do not find, in some form or another, in these Eastern poems. The Greek
gods are there--Zeus, the Heaven-Father, and his wife Hera, "and Phoebus
Apollo the Sun-god, and Pallas Athene, who taught men wisdom and useful
arts, and Aphrodite the Queen of Beauty, and Poseidon the Ruler of the
Sea, and Hephaistos the King of the Fire, who taught men to work in
metals."[2] There, too, are legends which resemble those of Orpheus and
Eurydike, of Eros and Psyche, of Jason and the Golden Fleece, of the
labours of Herakles, of Sigurd and Brynhilt, of Arthur and the Knights
of the Round Table. There, too, in forms which can be traced with ease,
we have the stories of Fairyland--the germs of the Thousand and One
Tales of the Arabian Nights, the narratives of giants, and dwarfs, and
enchanters; of men and maidens transformed by magic arts into beasts
and birds; of riches hidden in the caves and bowels of the earth, and
guarded by trolls and gnomes; of blessed lands where all is bright and
sunny, and where there is neither work nor care. Whatever, indeed, is
strange or fanciful, or takes us straight from our grey, hard-working
world into the sweet and peaceful country of Once Upon a Time, is to
be found in these ancient Hindu books, and is repeated, from the source
whence they were drawn, in many countries of the East and West; for the
people whose traditions the Vedas record were the forefathers of those
who now dwell in India, in Persia, in the border-lands, and in most
parts of Europe. Yes; strange as it may seem, all of us, who differ so
much in language, in looks in customs and ways of thought, in all that
marks out one nation from another--all of us have a common origin and a
common kindred. Greek and Roman, and Teuton and Kelt and Slav, ancient
and modern, all came from the same stock. English and French, Spanish
and Germans, Italians and Russians, all unlike in outward show, are
linked together in race; and not only with each other, but also claim
kindred with the people who now fill the fiery plains of India, and
dwell on the banks of her mighty rivers, and on the slopes of her great
mountain-chains, and who still recite the sacred books, and sing the
ancient hymns from which the mythology of the West is in great part
derived, whence our folk-lore comes, and which give life and colour and
meaning to our legends of romance and our Tales of Fairyland.
By taking a number of stories containing the same idea, but related in
different ages and in countries far away from each other, we shall see
how this likeness of popular tradition runs through all of them, and
shows their common origin. So we will go to the next chapter, and tell a
few kindred tales from East and West, and South and North.