between what is and what is not external to itself, the explanation given
of matters still dividing philosophers into opposite camps has been hardly
indicated. The uniformity of this confusion among the lower intelligence
in every zone and age might surprise us, and we should be in bondage to
the theory which explains it by assumption of primal intuitions of the
race, were we not rejoicing in the freedom of the truth of the doctrine of
the descent, or ascent, of man from an ape-like ancestry, and the
resulting slow development of his psychical faculties, involving his
accounting for motion in things around by the like personal life and will
of which he is conscious in himself, and for his regarding the world of
great and small alike as the home and haunt of spirits.
For the assumption underlying the savage explanation of such things as
dreams and diseases involves a larger assumption--namely, that the spirit
which acts thus arbitrarily, playing this game of hide-and-seek, now, as
it were, caught up into Paradise, and now dodging its owner and worrying
its enemy on earth--is, to quote Mr. Spencer’s appropriate term, a man’s
_other self_. It is, at least, what the scientists call a working
hypothesis; it is the only possible explanation which the uncultivated
mind can give of what it has not the power to see is a subjective
phenomenon. Odd and out-of-the-way events have happened to the dreamer; he
has been to strange places and seen strange doings, but waking up, he
knows that he is in the same wigwam where he laid down to sleep, and can
be convinced by his squaw that he has not moved therefrom all night.
Therefore it is the other self, this phantom-soul, which has been away for
a time, seeing and taking part in things both new and old. We civilised
folk, as Dr. Wendell Holmes remarks, not rarely find our personality
doubled in our dreams, and do battle with ourselves, unconscious that we
are our own antagonists. Dr. Johnson dreamed that he had a contest with an
opponent and got the worst of it; of course, he found the argument for
both! Tartini heard the devil play a wonderful sonata, and lay entranced
by the arch-fiend’s execution. On waking he seized his violin, and
although he could not reproduce the actual succession of notes, he
recovered sufficient impressions to compose his celebrated “Devil’s
Sonata.” Obviously the devil was no other than Tartini.
Thus the philosopher, to whom dreaming merely indicates a certain amount
of uncontrolled mental activity, may satisfy himself; not thus can the
savage, who cannot even think that he thinks, and to whom the phenomena of
shadows, reflection, and echoes bring confirming evidence of the existence
of his mysterious double. What else than a veritable entity can his shadow
be to him? Its intangibility feeds his awe and wonder, and increases his
bewilderment; its actions, ever corresponding with his own, make it, even
more than its outline, a part of himself, the loss of which may be
serious. Only when the light is withdrawn or intercepted does the shadow
cease to accompany, precede, or follow him, and to lengthen, shorten, or
distort itself; whilst not he alone, but all things above and around, have
this phantom attendant. The Choctaws believed that each man has an outside
shadow, _shilombish_, and an inside shadow, _shilup_, both of which
survive his decease. Among the Fijians a man’s shadow is called the dark
spirit, which goes to the unseen world, while the other spirit, which is
his likeness reflected in water or a mirror, stays near the place where he
dies. The Basutos are careful, when walking by a river, not to let their
shadow fall on the water, lest a crocodile seize it, and harm the owner.
Among the Algonquin Indians sickness is accounted for by the patient’s
shadow being unsettled or detached from the body; the Zulus say that a
corpse cannot cast a shadow, and in the barbaric belief that its loss is
baleful, we have the germ of the mediæval legends of shadowless men and of
tales of which Chamisso’s story of Peter Schlemihl is a type. The New
England tribes called the soul _chemung_, the shadow, and in the Quiche
and Eskimo languages, as also in the several dialects of Costa Rica, the
same word expresses both ideas; while civilised speech indicates community
of thought in the _skia_ of the Greeks, the _manes_ or _umbra_ of the
Romans, and the _shade_ of our own tongue. Still more complete in the
mimicry is the reflection of the body in water or mirror, the image
repeating every gesture and adopting every colour, whilst in the echoes
which forest and hillside fling back, the savage hears confirmation of his
belief in the other self, as well as in the nearness of the spirits of the
dead. The Sonora Indians say that departed souls dwell among the caves and
nooks of the cliffs, and that the echoes are their voices, and in South
Pacific myth echo is the first and parent fairy, to whom at Marquesas
divine honours are still paid as the giver of food, and as she who “speaks
to the worshippers out of the rocks.” In Greek myth she is punished by
Juno for diverting her attention whilst Jupiter flirts with the nymphs,
and at last, pining in grief at her unrequited love for Narcissus, there
remains nothing but her voice.
But what, in primitive conception, is the more specific nature of the
other self, and how does it make the passage from within to without, and
_vice versâ_? Very early in man’s history he must have wondered at the
difference between a waking and a sleeping person, a living and a dead
one, and sought wherein this consisted. There lay the body in the repose,
more or less broken, of sleep, or in the undisturbed repose of the
unawakening sleep; in the latter case, with nothing tangible or visible
gone, but that which was once “quick” and warm, which had spoken, moved,
smiled, or frowned but a little while before, and which still came in
dream or vision, was now cold and still.
It should here be remarked, in passing, that many savage races do not
believe in death as a natural event, but regard it as differing from sleep
only in the length of time that the spirit is absent from the body. No
matter what any one’s age may be, if his death is not caused by wounds, it
is attributed to magic, and the search for the sorcerer becomes a family
duty, like the vendetta for other injuries. The widespread myths which
account for death have as their underlying idea the infraction of some law
or custom, for which the offender pays the extreme penalty. And that
personification of it which pervades barbaric thought, whilst undergoing
many changes of form, yet retains its hold in popular conception as well
as in poetry. Pictured as the messenger of Deity, as the awful angel who
sought the rebellious and impious, or who, in mission of tenderness, bore
the soul to its home in the bosom of the Eternal, it was transformed and
degraded by the grotesque fancy of a later time into a grim and dancing
skeleton whetting his sickle for ingathering of the young and fair to
their doom, or into the grinning skull and crossbones of Christian
headstones. So when the maiden Proserpine is plucking the spring flowers,
“crocuses and roses and fair violets,” in the Elysian fields, Hades,
regent of hell, regardless of her cries, carries her off to his invisible
realm.
But to resume. Whilst shadows, reflections, and echoes, one and all,
seemed to satisfy the uncivilised mind as to the existence of the other
self, they gave no key to its nature, to what it is like. Obviously the
difference between death and life lay in some unsubstantial or
semi-substantial thing. Perhaps, thought some races, it lies in the blood,
with the unchecked outflow of which death ensues, and the idea of this
connection has not been confined to barbaric peoples. Perhaps, thought
other races, it lies in the heart, which, say the Basutos, has gone out of
any one dead, but has returned when the sick have recovered. Among the
Greeks some philosophers held that it was fire, which was extinct when the
fuel of life was burnt out, or water, which would evaporate away. But, as
language shows, it is with the _breath_ that the other self of the savage
and the vital principle of the philosopher has been most widely
identified. For it is the cessation of breathing which would in the
long-run be noted as the unfailing accompaniment of death; and the
condensing vapour, as it was exhaled, would confirm the existing theories
of a shadowy and gaseous-like soul. In this, as the illustrations to be
adduced from various languages will evidence, the continuity of idea which
travels along the whole line of barbaric and learned speculation is
unbroken.
§ VIII.
BARBARIC PHILOSOPHY IN “PUNCHKIN” AND ALLIED STORIES.
As bearing upon the barbaric belief in the soul leaving the body at
pleasure, there is a remarkable group of stories, the central idea of
which is the dwelling apart of the soul or heart, as the seat of life, in
some secret place, in an egg, or a necklace, or a flower, the good or evil
fortunes of the soul involving those of the body. To this group the name
of “Punchkin,” the title of one of the older specimens, may conveniently
be given. In Miss Frere’s _Old Deccan Days_ it takes the following form.
A Rajah has seven daughters, and his wife dying when they were quite
children, he marries the widow of his prime minister. Her cruelty to his
children made them run off to a jungle, where seven neighbouring princes,
who were out hunting, found them, and each took one of them to wife. After
a time they again went hunting, and did not come back. So when the son of
the youngest princess, who had also been enchanted away, grew up, he set
out in search of his mother and father and uncles, and at last discovered
that the seven princes had been turned into stone by the magician
Punchkin, who had shut up the princess in a tower because she would not
marry him. Recognising her son, she plotted with him to feign agreement to
marry Punchkin if he would tell her where the secret of his life was
hidden. Overjoyed at her yielding to his wish, the magician told her that
it was true that he was not as others.
“Far, far away, hundreds of thousands of miles from this, there lies a
desolate country covered with thick jungle. In the midst of the jungle
grows a circle of palm-trees, and in the centre of the circle stand
six chattees full of water, piled one above another; below the sixth
chattee is a small cage which contains a little green parrot; on the
life of the parrot depends my life, and if the parrot is killed I must
die. But,” he added, “this was not possible, because thousands of
genii surround the palm-trees, and kill all who approach the place.”
The princess told her son this, and he set forth on his journey. On the
way he rescued some young eagles from a serpent, and the grateful birds
carried him until they reached the jungle, where, the genii being overcome
with sleep by the heat, the eaglets swooped down. “Down jumped the prince;
in an instant he had overthrown the chattees full of water and seized the
parrot, which he rolled up in his cloak,” then mounted again into the air
and was carried back to Punchkin’s palace. Punchkin was dismayed to see
the parrot in the prince’s hands, and asked him to name any price he
willed for it, whereupon the prince demanded the restoration of his father
and his uncles to life. This was done; then he insisted on Punchkin doing
the like to “all whom he had thus imprisoned,” when, at the waving of the
magician’s wand, the whole garden became suddenly alive.
“Give me my parrot!” cried Punchkin. Then the boy took hold of the
parrot, and tore off one of his wings; and as he did so the magician’s
right arm fell off. He then pulled off the parrot’s second wing, and
Punchkin’s left arm fell off; then he pulled off the bird’s legs, and down
fell the magician’s right leg and left leg. Nothing remained of him save
the limbless body and the head; but still he rolled his eyes, and cried,
“Give me my parrot!” “Take your parrot, then,” cried the boy, and with
that he wrung the bird’s neck, and threw it at the magician, and as he did
so, Punchkin’s head twisted round, and, with a fearful groan, he died. Of
course, all the rest “lived very happily ever afterwards,” as they do in
the plays and the novels.
In the stories of _Chundum Rajah_, and of _Sodewa Bai_, the Hindu
Cinderella, the heroine’s soul is contained in a string of golden beads.
When the Ranee, jealous of her husband’s love for Sodewa Bai, asked her
why she always wore the same beads, she replies: “I was born with them
round my neck, and the wise men told my father and mother that they
contained my soul, and that if any one else wore them I should die.”
Whereupon the Ranee instructed her servant to steal the beads from the
princess when she slept; then she died, but her body did not decay, and in
the end she was restored to life by the recovery of her necklace. In the
Bengali tale, _Life’s Secret_, a Rajah’s favourite wife gives birth
miraculously to a boy, whose soul is bound up in a necklace in the stomach
of a boal-fish. In both instances the ornaments are stolen, and while
they are worn by the thieves, prince and princess alike are lifeless,
whilst with the recovery of the beads life returned to each. A not unlike
idea occurs in the story, _Truth’s Triumph_. The children of a village
beauty, whom the Rajah had married, are changed into mango trees, to save
them from the fury of the jealous Ranee, until the time of danger was
past.
In Miss Stokes’ collection of _Indian Fairy Tales_, we have variants
corresponding more closely to _Punchkin_. In _Brave Hirálálbásá_, a
Rakshas (the common name for demon) is induced to reveal the secret of his
life. He says, “Sixteen miles from here is a tree, round it are tigers and
bears and other animals, on the top of it is a large flat snake, on the
head of which is a bird in a cage, and my soul is in that bird.” By
enchantment Hirálálbásá reached the tree and secured the cage. He pulled
the bird’s limbs off, and the Rakshas’ arms and legs fell off; then he
wrung its neck, and the Rakshas fell dead. And in the tale of _The Demon
and the King’s Son_, from the same collection, the prince falls in love
with the monster’s daughter, who is dead during the day and alive in the
night. The prince asks what she would do, if whilst she is dead, her
father were to be killed? She tells him it is impossible for any one to
kill her father, for his life is in a _mainá_ (starling), which is in a
nest in a tree on the other side of the sea, and if, she adds, any one in
killing the bird spilt the blood on the ground, a hundred demons would be
born from it. The prince reached the other side, and taking the _mainá_,
proceeded to kill it, but first wrapt it in his handkerchief, that no
blood might be spilt. The demon, who was far away, knew that the bird was
caught, and he set out at once to avert his doom. The story ends, like the
preceding one, with the dismemberment of the bird, and the consequent
death of the demon.
The nearest approach to tales similar to these in the _Buddhist
Birth-stories_, is in one or two isolated cases, when the Karma of a human
being is spoken of as immediately transferred to an animal.
In _Tales from the Norse_ the one in most striking correspondence with the
Punchkin group is that of _The giant who had no heart in his body_. The
monster turns six princes and their wives into stone, whereupon the
seventh and only surviving son, Boots, sets out to avenge their fate. On
his journey he saves the lives of a raven, a salmon, and a wolf, and the
wolf, having eaten his horse, compensates Boots by carrying him to the
giant’s castle, where the lovely princess who is to be his bride is
confined. She promises to find out where the giant keeps his heart, and by
blandishments and divers arts known to the fair sex both before and since
the time of Delilah, she worms out the secret. He tells her that “far, far
away in a lake lies an island; on that island stands a church; in that
church is a well; in that well swims a duck; in that duck is an egg; and
in that egg lies my heart, you darling!” Boots, taking fond farewell of
the princess, rides on the wolf’s back to the island. Then the raven he
had befriended flies to the steeple and fetches the key of the church; the
salmon, in like return for kindness, brings him the egg from the well
where the duck had dropped it.
Then the wolf told him to squeeze the egg, and as soon as ever he did
so, the giant screamed out. “Squeeze it again,” said the wolf; and
when the prince did so, the giant screamed still more piteously, and
begged and prayed so prettily to be spared, saying he would do all
that the prince wished if he would only not squeeze his heart in two.
“Tell him if he will restore to life again your six brothers and their
brides, you will spare his life,” said the wolf. Yes, the giant was
ready to do that, and he turned the six brothers into kings’ sons
again, and their brides into kings’ daughters. “Now squeeze the egg in
two,” said the wolf. With questionable morality, doing evil that good
might come, Boots squeezed the egg to pieces, and the giant burst at
once.
Asbjörnsen’s _New Series_ gives a variant in which a Troll who has seized
a princess tells her that he and all his companions will burst, as did the
heartless giant, when there passes above them “the grain of sand that lies
under the ninth tongue in the ninth head” of a certain dragon. The grain
of sand is found and passed over them, when the Troll and all his brood
are destroyed. In the Gaelic stories, for which we are indebted to the
skill of an early worker in this field, the late Mr. J. F. Campbell, that
of the _Young King of Easaidh Ruadh_ locates the secret thus: “There is a
great flagstone underneath the threshold. There is a wether under the
flagstone. There is a duck in the wether’s belly, and an egg in the duck,
in the egg is my soul.” In the _Sea-Maiden_ there is a “great beast with
three heads, which cannot be killed until an egg is broken which is in the
mouth of a trout, which springs out of a crow, which flies out of a hind,
which lives on an island in the middle of the loch.”
In his valuable collection of _Russian Folk-Tales_, which is enriched by
comparative notes, Mr. Ralston supplies some interesting variants of
Punchkin. Koshchei, called “the immortal or deathless,” is merely one of
the many incarnations of the dark spirit which takes so many monstrous
shapes in folk-tales. Sometimes his death, that is, the object with which
his life is indissolubly connected, does exist within his body. In one
story he carries off a queen, for whom her three sons, one after another,
go in search. Prince Ivan, the youngest, at last discovers where his
mother dwells, and she at the approach of Koshchei hides her son away. The
monster sniffs the blood of a Russian, and inquires if her son has not
been with her. She assures him it is only the Russian air in his nostrils.
Then after talking to him affectionately on one thing and another, she
asks where his death is, and he tells her that, “under an oak is a casket,
in the casket is a hare, in the hare is a duck, in the duck an egg, in the
egg is my death.” Prince Ivan found the egg, and reached his mother’s
house with it. Presently Koshchei flew in and said, “Phoo, phoo; no
Russian bone can the ear hear or the eye see, but there’s a smell of
Russia here.” Then Prince Ivan came out from his hiding place, and,
holding up the egg, said, “There is your death, oh Koshchei!” then he
smashed it, and Koshchei fell dead. In another story Koshchei is killed by
a blow on the forehead from the mysterious egg. Mr. Ralston also quotes a
Transylvanian Saxon story concerning a witch’s life, which is a light
burning in an egg inside a duck that swims on a pond inside a mountain,
and she dies when the light is put out. In the Bohemian story of the
_Sun-horse_ a warlock’s strength lies in an egg in a duck, which is within
a stag under a tree. A seer finds the egg and sucks it. Then the warlock
becomes as weak as a child, “for all his strength had passed into the
seer.”
In Servian folk-tale the strength of a baleful being who had stolen a
princess lies in a bird which is inside the heart of a fox, and when the
bird was taken out of the heart and set on fire, that moment the
wife-stealer falls down dead, and the prince regains his bride. From the
same source we have the tale of the _Golden-haired Twins_, with an
incident akin to that in Punchkin. When the king’s stepmother buries the
twins whom she had stolen, there spring from the spot where they lie trees
with golden leaves and blossoms. The king’s admiration of them aroused her
jealousy, and she had them cut down, but eventually his golden-haired
princes are restored to him.
Thus far the illustrations have been drawn solely from the folk-tales of
the widespread Indo-European races, but they are not confined to these.
From non-Aryan sources we have the Tatar story of the demon-giant who
kept his soul in a twelve-headed snake carried in a bag on his horse’s
back. The hero finds out the secret, kills the snake, and the giant dies.
In one of the Samoyed tales a man had no heart in his body, and could
recover it only on restoring to life a woman whom he had killed. Then the
man said to his wife, “Go to the place where the dead lies; there you will
find a purse, in that purse is her soul; shake the purse over her bones,
and she will come to life.” The wife did as she was ordered, and the woman
revived, whereupon her son dashed the heart to the ground, and the man
died.[75]
More elaborate than these are the tales from _The Thousand and One
Nights_. In _Seyf-el-Mulook_ the jinnee’s soul is enclosed in the crop of
a sparrow, and the sparrow is imprisoned in a small box, and this is in
seven other boxes which are put into seven chests; these are enclosed in a
coffer of marble that is sunk in the ocean surrounding the world. By the
aid of Suleyman’s seal-ring Seyf-el-Mulook raises the coffer, and
extricating the sparrow, strangles it, whereupon the jinnee’s body is
converted into a heap of black ashes. In some tales not included by
Galland or Lane, which Mr. Kirby has translated and edited under the title
of the _New Arabian Nights_, we have a variant of the above under the
title of _Joadar of Cairo and Mahmood of Tunis_. Joadar is bent on
releasing his enchanted betrothed, which he does by also strangling a
sparrow, the ogre being simultaneously dissolved into a heap of ashes.
The most venerable illustration of the leading idea in the Punchkin group
is however found, though in more subtle form, in the Egyptian tale of the
_Two Brothers_. This is of great value on account of its high antiquity,
and, moreover, specially interesting as recording an incident similar to
that narrated in the life of Joseph. It is contained in the D’Orbiney
papyrus preserved in the Bibliothèque Impériale, the date being about the
fourteenth or fifteenth century B.C.
There were two brothers, Anepou and Satou, joined as one in love and
labour. One day Satou was sent to fetch seed-corn from Anepou’s house,
where he found his brother’s wife adorning her hair. She urged him to stay
with her, but he refused, promising, however, to keep her wickedness
secret. When Anepou returned at even, she, being afraid, “made herself to
seem as a woman that had suffered violence,” and told him exactly the
reverse of what had happened. Anepou’s wrath was kindled against Satou,
and he went out to slay him; but Satou called on Phra to save him, and the
god placed a river between the brothers, so that when day dawned Anepou
might hear the truth. At sunrise Satou tells his story, and, mutilating
himself, he says that he will leave Anepou and go to the valley of the
cedar, in the cones of which he will deposit his heart, “so that if the
tree be cut his heart will fall to the earth, and he must die.”