A modern novelist has boasted that her books are read 'from Tobolsk to
Tangiers.' This is a wide circulation, but the widest circulation in the
world has probably been achieved by a story whose author, unlike Ouida,
will never be known to fame. The tale which we are about to examine is,
perhaps, of all myths the most widely diffused, yet there is no ready way
of accounting for its extraordinary popularity. Any true 'nature-myth,'
any myth which accounts for the processes of nature or the aspects of
natural phenomena, may conceivably have been invented separately,
wherever men in an early state of thought observed the same facts, and
attempted to explain them by telling a story. Thus we have seen that the
earlier part of the Myth of Cronus is a nature-myth, setting forth the
cause of the separation of Heaven and Earth. Star-myths again, are
everywhere similar, because men who believed all nature to be animated
and personal, accounted for the grouping of constellations in accordance
with these crude beliefs. {87} Once more, if a story like that of 'Cupid
and Psyche' be found among the most diverse races, the distribution
becomes intelligible if the myth was invented to illustrate or enforce a
widely prevalent custom. But in the following story no such explanation
is even provisionally acceptable.
The gist of the tale (which has many different 'openings,' and
conclusions in different places) may be stated thus: A young man is
brought to the home of a hostile animal, a giant, cannibal, wizard, or a
malevolent king. He is put by his unfriendly host to various severe
trials, in which it is hoped that he will perish. In each trial he is
assisted by the daughter of his host. After achieving the adventures, he
elopes with the girl, and is pursued by her father. The runaway pair
throw various common objects behind them, which are changed into magical
obstacles and check the pursuit of the father. The myth has various
endings, usually happy, in various places. Another form of the narrative
is known, in which the visitors to the home of the hostile being are, not
wooers of his daughter, but brothers of his wife. {88} The incidents of
the flight, in this variant, are still of the same character. Finally,
when the flight is that of a brother from his sister's malevolent ghost,
in Hades (Japan), or of two sisters from a cannibal mother or step-mother
(Zulu and Samoyed), the events of the flight and the magical aids to
escape remain little altered. We shall afterwards see that attempts have
been made to interpret one of these narratives as a nature-myth; but the
attempts seem unsuccessful. We are therefore at a loss to account for
the wide diffusion of this tale, unless it has been transmitted slowly
from people to people, in the immense unknown prehistoric past of the
human race.
* * * * *
Before comparing the various forms of the myth in its first shape--that
which tells of the mortal lover and the giant's or wizard's daughter--let
us give the Scottish version of the story. This version was written down
for me, many years ago, by an aged lady in Morayshire. I published it in
the 'Revue Celtique'; but it is probably new to story-comparers, in its
broad Scotch variant.