Chapter 12

For a discussion of the whole subject, see A. Gerber, _Great Russian Animal Tales_, Baltimore, 1891, who discusses the incidents included in the above compilation in his notes on v. (a), i. (b), ii. (c), iii. (d), iv. (e), iva. (f), ix. (g), x. (h), xi. (k). It will be found that few of the other incidents contained in Gerber can be traced throughout Europe except when they are evidently derived from AEsop.

VII. DANCING WATER

This story has the peculiarity, that it occurs in the Arabian Nights as well as in so many European folk-tales. Hahn includes it under his formula No. 4, Genoveva (add Gonz. 5, Dozon 2, Denton 238, Day xix.), H. Coote, in _Folk-Lore Record_, vol. iii., part 2, in a paper on "Folk-Lore, the Source of some of M. Galland's Tales," contends that the "Tale of the Two Sisters who Envied their Cadette," as well as Ali Baba, Aladdin, and Ahmed and Paribanou, were derived from Arabic folk-lore rather than from any Arabic manuscript version. We know now that this is not true of Aladdin; and Zotenberg has traced all these extra tales of Galland to the oral recitation of his Christian dragoman Hanna. Coote finds the two envious sisters to be an enormous favorite in Italy and Sicily, being found in Pitre, Berti, Imbriani, Nerucci, and Comparetti. The story of the girl is sometimes told separately as a _fiaba_. Coote remarks that Leon Bruno is Greek (see Hahn, p. 131 and F. L. R., i., 209), and is derived from the _Arabian Nights_ in the story of the princess of the islands of Wakwak; it also occurs in Straparola and Madame D'Aulnoy; Brueyre has something similar in Brittany, p. 93; Kohler in _Melusine_, pp. 213, 214, compares the Breton tale, given there, with the _Arabian Nights_.

The boy with the moon or the sun on his forehead is a frequent character in Indian folk-tales (see Temple, _Wide Awake Stories_). The possibility of Galland's version having passed into the East from Europe does not seem to have been considered till I suggested it in my Introduction to the _Arabian Nights_. There is little doubt that Open Sesame is European, and similarly this story occurs in Straparola early enough to prevent any possibility of doubt on the subject. The sequel of incidents appears to be as follows:

Overheard Boasting--Three Marriages--Substituted Children--Quest Tasks--Life Token--Speech Taboo--Brother's Failure--Sister's Success--Guilt Revelation--Punishment of Envious Sisters. Some of these incidents, like the Life Token, occur in other collocations but are sufficiently appropriate here; Imbriani has three versions, vi., vii., viii., with notes.

I have mostly followed Crane, pp. 17-25 (see also his notes, pp. 325-6).

VIII. LANGUAGE OF ANIMALS

_Source._--Sir J. G. Frazer, in _Archaeological Review_, i., 81-91, 161-81, who made an attempt, the first of its kind, to restore the original archetype of the story of "The Boy Who Became Pope," on the same principle as classical scholars restore readings from families of MSS. He uses Grimm, xxxiii.; Crane, xliii.; Sebillot, 2d series xxv.; and Fleury, 123 _seq._ I have, on the whole, followed his reconstruction, but have introduced, from the version in the "Seven Wise Masters," the motive for the father's anger when learning that he would have, some day, to offer his son water to wash in; Sir James, in a private communication, concurs in the insertion. The folk versions are, in this instance, peculiarly poor, and I have therefore had largely to rewrite, preserving, however, the common incidents.

_Formula._--The following formula gives the common elements of the four parallels used by Sir James Frazer, with my insertion of the bird prophecy (father-water, mother-towel):

Simple Boy--Sent to School--Learns Language of Dogs, Frogs and Birds--Bird Prophecy (Father-Water, Mother-Towel)--Hero Exposed--Intended Murderer Brings Back Deer's Heart--Three adventures on Road--Dogs Warn Burglary--Frog Restores Host to Sick Girl--Bird Prophesies Papacy (one of three companions)--Pope Election--Heavenly Sign (dove and bell)--Bird Prophecy Fulfilled--Father Repentance.

_Parallels._--Besides the four sources used by Sir James Frazer, he gives two variants of the Breton from _Melusine_, i., cols. 300, 374, and the "Seven Wise Masters" version, with six variants: Russian, Masurian, two Basques, and a Turkish one. In the Russian version the father-water, mother-towel prophecy occurs, which could not have arisen independently. In the Masurian version the prophecy is more primitive ("Your mother will wash your feet, and your father will drink the water"). In the remaining versions the prophecy is more vague, that the parents shall be the son's servants. In the _Pentamerone_ there is a story in which a father has five simple sons whom he sends into the world to learn experience. The younger returns with a knowledge of the language of birds. But the rest of the story is not of our type.

_Remarks._--In his second paper (_Arch. Rev._ i., 161 _seq._) Sir James Frazer has many interesting remarks upon the folk conception of the means of acquiring a knowledge of the language of animals. This is generally done by a gift of magic rings, or by eating magic plants (mainly fern) or eating serpents (generally white). Sir James Frazer connects the rings with serpents by suggesting that serpents are supposed to have stones in their head which confer magic powers (_As You Like It_, iv., 2.) He further connects the notion of eating serpents with acquiring the language of birds by referring to the views of Democritus that serpents are generated from the mixed blood of diverse birds and are therefore in a strict sense blood relations of them; this idea, he suggests, may have arisen from the fact that serpents eat birds' eggs. It would be an easy transition in folk-thought to consider that serpents would understand the language of the birds they ate and that persons eating serpents would understand the language of both. So Sigurd understands the language of birds, after eating the blood of Fafnir the Worm. But all this throws little light upon the story itself.

Bolte gives, i., 323-4, many folk-tales in which the hero becomes not a pope but a king and compares the story of Joseph in the Bible as possibly a source of the Prophetic Dream of the father and mother waiting upon the son. The transference to the pope may have been influenced by the tradition given by Vincent of Beauvais (_Spec. Hist._, xxiv., 98) that Sylvester II. learned at Seville the language of birds. There was also the tradition that at the election of Innocent III., 1198, three doves flew about the cathedral, one of which, a white one, at last settled down upon his shoulder. Raumer, _Gesch. d. Hohenstaufen_, ii., 595.

IX. THE THREE SOLDIERS

This tale is widely spread through Europe, being found from Ireland to Greece, from Esthonia to Catalonia. It is generally told of three soldiers, or often brothers, but more frequently casual comrades. In Kohler's notes on Imbriani, p. 356-7, he points out that there are three different forms, in the first of which the fairy's gifts are recovered by means of a defect produced, which only one of the soldiers can cure. In the second form the latter part is wanting, and in the third the two gifts are restored by means of the third, which is generally in the form of a stick. See _English Fairy Tales_, No. 32. In my reconstruction I have followed the first form. Cosquin, XI., has a fairly good variant of this, with comparative notes. Crane, XXXI., gives, from Gonzenbach, the story of the shepherd boy who makes the princess laugh, which is allied to our formula, mainly by its second part. And it is curious to find the three soldiers reproduced in Campbell's Gaelic, No. 10. In this version the magic gifts are wheedled out of the soldiers by the princess, but they get them back and go back to their "girls."

In the Chinese version of the Buddhist Tripitaka, a monk presents a man who has befriended him with a copper jug, which gives him all he wishes. The king gets this from the monk, but has to return it when he gets another jar which is full of sticks and stones. Aarne in _Fennia_, xxvii., 1-96, 1909, after a careful study of the numerous variants of the East and West, declares that the original contained three gifts and arose in southern Europe. From the three gifts came three persons and afterwards the form in which only two gifts occur. Against this is the earliest of the Tripitaka versions, 516 A.D., which has only two magic gifts. Albertus Magnus was credited with a bag out of which used to spring lads with cudgels to assail his enemies.

X. DOZEN AT ONE BLOW

This story is familiar to English-speaking children as Jack the Giant Killer, but it is equally widespread abroad as told of a little tailor or cobbler. In the former case there is almost invariably the introduction of the ingenious incident, "Seven at a Blow," the number varying from three to twenty-seven. I have adopted a fair average. The latter part of the story is found very early in M. Montanus, _Wegfuehrer_, Strassburg, 1557, though most of the incidents occur in folk tales scattered throughout the European area. Bolte even suggests that the source of the whole formula is to be found in Montanus and gives references to early chapbook visions in German, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and English (i., 154-6). But the very numerous versions in East Europe must in that case have been derived from oral tradition from these. Something similar has even spread to Greenland, where the story of the Giant and the boy is told by Rae, _Great White Peninsula_. (See Grimm, tr. Hunt, i., 364.) The Dutch version is told of Kobis the Dauntless. Cosquin, who has two versions (8 and 25), has more difficulty than usual in finding the full plot in Oriental sources, though various incidents have obviously trickled through to the East, as for example the hero Nasnai Bahadur in the Caucasus, who overcomes his three narts, or giants, very much in the same manner as our tailor.

XI. EARL OF CATTENBOROUGH

This Puss-in-Boots formula has become universally European from Perrault's version, to whom we owe the boots that occur in no other version, so that I have been reluctantly obliged to take them off. But apart from this the story in its entirety existed earlier in Straparola, xi., 1, and in the _Pentamerone_, and is found widely spread through Italy (Pitre, 88; Imbriani, 10; Gonzenbach, 65, etc.), as well as in Hungary (Jones and Kropf, No. 1), Germany (Grimm, 33a), and even in Finland (see Jones and Kropf, p. 305). In some of these cases the cat is a vixen (or female fox), and the incident of the false bathing and the marriage occurs before reaching the ogre's castle, as is indeed more natural. I have, therefore, so far amended Perrault. In most of the folk versions the miller's son betrays ingratitude towards his animal protector, who sometimes reduces him to his original state. This final incident, unknown to Perrault, shows the independence of these versions from that contained in his Mother Goose Stories. In Sweden the hero, if one may speak Hibernically, is a girl, who turns up her nose at everything in the palace as not being so good as in her castle of Cattenburg (Thorpe quoted by Lang, _Perrault_, p. lxxi.). In India it is found in Day, _Folk Tales of Bengal_, under the title of "The Matchmaking Jackal," which has numerous Indian touches; thus the jackal remembers the grandeur of the weaver's forefathers and rolls himself in betel leaves. Sultan Darai, in the Swahili version (Steere), has the stripping incident and the no-talking trick, as well as the ingratitude at end. Lang argues elaborately that it is impossible to determine the original home of Puss-in-Boots, though he seems to own that it had one. His criterion is the absence or presence of a moral in the story, in this case the incident showing the ingratitude of the Marquis. This occurs, as we have seen, as far south as Madagascar, and as far east as India, but, after all, does not seem to be the essence of the story, though in one of the versions the cat does his tricks for the miller because he had previously saved him from the hunters. The late Mr. Ralston has an interesting article on Puss-in-Boots in the _Nineteenth Century_, August, 1883, though in his days there was a tendency to explain all fairy tales as variants of the Sun and Moon myths.

It is right that I should add that the servant's evening salute has nothing to do with the story but is a tradition in my own family, where my grandfather's servant used to utter this rhyme in a sort of chant when bidding the family good-night.

XII. THE SWAN MAIDENS

The Swan Maidens occur very widely spread and have been studied with great diligence by Mr. E. S. Hartland in two chapters (x., xi.) of his _Science of Fairy Tales_ (pp. 255-347). In consonance with his general principle of interpretation, Mr. Hartland is mainly concerned with the traces of primitive thought and custom to be seen in the Swan Maidens. Originally these were, according to him, probably regarded as actual swans, the feathery robe being a later symbolic euphemism, though I would incidentally remark that the whole of the story _as a story_ depends upon the seizure of a separate dress involving the capture of the swan bride. Mr. Hartland is inclined to believe partly with F. Liebrecht in _Zur Volkskunde_, pp. 54-65, that these mysterious visitors from another world are really the souls of deceased persons (probably regarded as totemistic ancestresses). In some forms of the story, enumerated by Mr. Hartland, the captured wife returns to her original home, not when she recovers her robe of feathers but when the husband breaks some tabu (strikes her, chides her, refers to her sisters, sees her nude, etc.).

From the standpoint of "storyology" from which we are mainly considering the stories here purely as stories, the Swan Maidens formula is especially interesting as showing the ease with which a simple theme can be elaborated and contaminated by analogous ones. The essence of the story is the capture of a bride by a young man who seizes her garment and thus gets her _in manu_, as the Roman lawyers say. She bears him children, but, on recovering her garment, flies away and is no more heard of. Sometimes she superfluously imposes a tabu upon her husband, which he breaks and she disappears (Melusine variant; compare Lohengrin). This is the effective and affecting incident of which Matthew Arnold makes such good use in his _Merman_. It could obviously be used, as Mr. Hartland points out, in a quasi-mythological manner to account for supernatural ancestry, as in the cases of the physicians of Myddvai in Wales, or of the Counts of Lusignan. But on this simple basis folk tellers have developed elaborations derived from other formulae. In several cases, notably in the _Arabian Nights_ (Jamshah and Hasan of Bassora), the capture of the swan maiden is preceded by the Forbidden Chamber formula. Then when the bride flies away there is the Bride-Quest, which is often helped by Thankful Animals and aided by the Magical Weapons. When the hero reaches the home of the bride he has often to undergo a Recognition-Test, or even is made to undertake Acquisition Tasks derived from the Jason formula; and even when he obtains his wishes in many versions of the story there is the Pursuit with Obstacles also familiar from the same formula.

Cosquin, ii., 16, has, with his usual analytical grasp, seen the separable character of these various series of incidents. He, however, attempts to show that all of them, including the germ of the Swan Maidens, are to be found in the East, and is successful in affiliating the Greek of Hahn, No. 15, with the two stories of the _Arabian Nights_ mentioned above, as well as the Siberian version given by Radloff, iv., 321, the hero of which has even derived his name from the Jamshah of the _Thousand and One Nights_.

In my own version I have utilized a few of these incidents but reserve most of them for their proper story environment. I have introduced, from the Campbell version, the phrase "seven Bens, and seven Glens, and seven Mountain Moors," which so attracted Stevenson's Catriona, in order to point out as a remarkable coincidence that Hasan of Bassora, in the _Arabian Nights_, flies over "seven Waddys, seven Seas, and seven Mountains." It is difficult to understand that such a remarkable phrase should recur accidentally in Bagdad and in the West Highlands. Without some actual intermediation, oral or literary, the hypothesis of universal human tendency can scarcely explain such a coincidence.

XIII. ANDROCLES AND THE LION

This well-known story occurs first in the fables of Phaedrus, though not in the extant form, only being preserved in the mediaeval prose version known as _Romulus_. It is also referred to in Appian, Aulus Gellius, and Seneca (see the references in my _History of AEsop_, p. 243, Ro. III., i.). It is told in Caxton's _Esope_, p. 62, from whom I have borrowed a few touches. He calls his hero Androclus, whereas Painter, in his _Palace of Pleasure_, ed. Jacobs, i., 89-90, calls the slave Androdus. We moderns, including Mr. Bernard Shaw, get our "Androcles" from Day's _Sanford and Merton_. It also occurs in _Gesta Romanorum_, 104, edit., Oesterley, who gives a long list of parallels in almost all the countries of Europe.

Benfey, in the introduction to his edition of _Pantschatantra_, i., 112, contends that the story is of Oriental origin, showing Buddhistic traits in the kindly relations between the slave and the lion; but the parallels he gives are by no means convincing, though the general evidence for Oriental provenance of many of Phaedrus' fables gives a certain plausibility to this derivation. From our present standpoint this is of less importance since Androcles, though it has spread through Europe and is current among the folk, is clearly of literary origin and is one of the few examples where we can trace such literary spread.

XIV. DAY DREAMING

I have given the story of the barber's fifth brother from the _Arabian Nights_ as another example of the rare instances of tales that have become current among the folk, but which can be definitely traced to literary sources, though possibly, in the far-off past, it was a folk tale arising in the East. The various stages by which the story came into Europe have been traced by Benfey in the introduction to his edition of _Pantschatantra_, Sec. 209, and after him by Max Mueller in his essay "On the Migration of Fables" (_Chips from a German Workshop_, iv., 145-209; it was thus a chip from another German's workshop). It came to Europe before the _Arabian Nights_ and became popular in La Fontaine's fable of Perrette who counted her chickens before they were hatched, as the popular phrase puts it. In such a case one can only give a reproduction of the literary _source_, and it is a problem which of the various forms which appear in the folk books should be chosen. I have selected that from the _Thousand and One Nights_ because I have given elsewhere the story of Perrette (Jacobs, _AEsop's Fables_, No. 45), and did not care to repeat it in this place. I have made my version a sort of composite from those of Mr. Payne and Sir Richard Burton, and have made the few changes necessary to fit the tale to youthful minds. It is from the quasi-literary spread of stories like this that the claim for an Oriental origin of all folk tales has received its chief strength, and it was necessary, therefore, to include one or two of them in _Europa's Fairy Book_ (Androcles is another). But the mode of transmission is quite different and definitely traceable and, for the most part, the tales remain entirely unchanged; whereas, in the true folk tale, the popular story-tellers exercised their choice, modifying incidents and giving local colour.

XV. KEEP COOL

There is no doubt about the European character of this tale, which is found in Brittany, Picardy, Lorraine, among the Basques, in Spain, Corsica, Italy, Tyrol, Germany (though not in Grimm), among Lithuanians, Moravians, Roumanians, Greeks, Irish, Scotch, Danes, Norwegians (Cosquin, ii., 50). The central idea of the Rage-Wager is retained throughout, and in many places the punishment is the same--the loss of a strip of skin. In all but three instances the story is told of three brothers, which practically proves its identity. I have given the Irish version in _More Celtic Fairy Tales_.

The "sells" however change considerably, though in most of them the final denoument comes with the death or wounding of the wife. The pigs' tails incident is also very common and is indeed found in another set of tales, more of the Master Thief type. Campbell's No. 45 had an entirely different set, some of them very amusing. Mac-A-Rusgaich has all three meals at once and lies down. He holds the plough and does nothing else; he sees after the mountain; literally casts ox-eyes at the master, and makes a sheep foot-path out of sheep's feet. I have taken from Campbell the direction to wash horses and stable within and without, though it does not occur elsewhere. Yet Mac-A-Rusgaich has a bout with a giant, in which he slits an artificial stomach, like Jack the Giant Killer; and this incident occurs in four other of the European tales, again showing identity. "Keep cool" is thus an interesting example of identity of framework, with variation of incident.

XVI. THE MASTER THIEF

The sneaking regard of the folk-mind for the clever rogue who can outwit the guardians of order (the ever-present enemy of the folk) was shown in early days by the myth of Rhampsinitus in Herodotus, ii., 121, which is found to this day among the Italians (see Crane, No. 44, and S. Prato, _La Leggenda del Tesoro di Rampsinite_, Como, 1882). But the more usual European form is that I have chosen for the text, the formula of which might be summed up as follows:

Apprenticeship in thievery--Purse or life--Hanging "sell"--Master Thief--Three Tests--Horse from Stable--Sheet off bed--Priest in bag--Horse from under (Thumb-Bung).

Almost the whole of this is found as early as Straparola i., 2, where Cassandrino is ordered by the provost of Perugia to steal his bed and his horse and to bring to him in a sack the rector of the village.

The purse incident occurs in Brittany, Piedmont, Tuscany, and Tyrol; in Iceland (Arnason, p. 609) occurs the man twice hanged which also occurs in Norway, Ireland, Saxony, Tuscany, and in Germany (Kuhn and Schwartz, 362); in Servia (Vuk, 46) the Master Thief steals sheep by throwing two shoes successively in the road, which also occurs in Bengal (Day, xi.); the theft of the horse occurs in Brittany, Norway, Ireland, Tuscany, Scotland (Campbell, 40), Flanders, in Basque and Catalan, Russia and Servia. The third test of kidnapping the priest occurs in Brittany, Flanders, Norway, Basque, Catalan, Scotland, Ireland, Lithuania, Tuscany. In Iceland the persons carried away are a king and a queen.

The three tests of the Master Thief, the stealing of bed, horse, and priest, occur as early as Straparola, i., 2, who also has a somewhat similar story of the "Scholar in Magic," viii., 5, which contains the zigzag transformation of the _Arabian Nights_. Both forms occur in Grimm, 68, 192. While the three tests are fairly uniform throughout Europe, the introduction by which the lad becomes a thief and proves himself a Master Thief varies considerably; and I have had to make a selection rather than a collation.

In some forms the farmer has three sons, of whom the youngest adopts thievery as a profession, which indeed it was in the Middle Ages (as we know from the Cul-le-jatte of _The Cloister and the Hearth_). In Hahn, 3, the Master Thief has to bring a "Drakos" instead of a priest. Curiously enough, in Gonzenbach, 83, the Master Thief has to bring back a "dragu."