Chapter 22
In an unpublished story told by Dunkní, the incidents of the children being in the fruit, and the fruit not letting itself be gathered by any but the rightful owner of its contents (as is the case also with the Bél-Princess), again occur. In this story there is a prince called Aisab, who, as he wished very much to have children, married. At the same time he took an oath that if his child, when he had one, cried, he would kill it, and then if his wife cried he would kill her too. His first wife gave him a child who died; she cried and was killed by her husband. The same thing happened to the second wife. He then married a third wife, called Gulíanár. She had a little son, Dímá-ahmad, and two or three years later another son, called Karámat. The first boy died, but Gulíanár did not cry--she only grieved for him in her heart. Karámat was unhappy from seeing other children playing with their brothers and sisters, and asked his mother "why he had no brother or sister to play with?" She said, "Once you had a little brother and he died." Then Karámat began to cry, and his father killed him immediately with his sword because of his oath, though he loved Karámat dearly. The "mother was still sadder than before, but she never wept." Then God took pity on her and sent down into Prince Aisab's garden a big bél-tree, and on this bél-tree was a fruit. Every one tried to gather this fruit, even Prince Aisab tried, but each time their hands approached it the fruit rose into the air and returned again when the hands were withdrawn. Then Gulíanár stretched out her hand "and the fruit fell into it." She took it into the house and tried to break it open with a stone, and a voice called out, "Mother, mother, not so hard; you hurt us." She was very much frightened, thinking a Rakshas or a demon was in the fruit. Prince Aisab was equally alarmed, but his wazír, Mamatsa, broke the fruit open gently in obedience to the little voice that called out, "Don't knock so hard, Mamatsa; you hurt us;" and out of it stepped the two little children Dímá-ahmad and Karámat. Dímá-ahmad was very beautiful. On his head was the sun, on his face the moon, and on his hands stars, and he had long golden hair. He married a princess, Atása, who also had the sun on her head, the moon on her face, stars on her hands, and "her hair was of pure gold and reached down to the ground." The idea that none but the rightful owner can catch the child is found too in Grey's _Polynesian Mythology_ at pp. 116, 117, in the story of Whakatau, who was fashioned in the sea from his mother Apakura's apron by the god Rongota-kawiu. This child lived at the bottom of the sea; but one day he came on shore after his kite, and all who saw him tried in vain to catch him. Then said Whakatau, "You had better go and bring Apakura here; she is the only person who can catch me and hold me fast." His mother then comes and catches him.
5. Sunkásí's bones are sent to her mother. In the _Sicilianische Maerchen_ collected by Laura Gonzenbach, it is a common practice for husbands to punish their second wives' treachery with death, and then to send their remains to their mothers, who feast on them, thinking they are eating tunny-fish, and die of grief on learning what they have really swallowed.
6. With Gulíanár's change into a bird compare Laura Gonzenbach's 13th _Sicilianische Maerchen_, vol. I. p. 82, where the real bride is transformed into a dove by a black-headed pin being driven into her head, and regains her human form when the pin is pulled out. Schott has a similar incident in his _Wallachische Maerchen_, p. 251. So has Gubernatis (_Zoological Mythology_, vol. II. p. 242) in a story from near Leghorn, where the woman is changed into a swallow (in all these stories it is the husband who pulls out the pin); and he says similar stories with a transformation into a dove are told in Piedmont, in other parts of Tuscany, in Calabria, and are to be found in the _Tutiname_. Ralston's Princess Mariya (_Russian Folk Tales_, p. 183), and Thorpe's second story of "The Princess that came out of the water" (_Yule Tide Stories_, p. 41), may also be compared.
7. The golden bird in the Siebenburg story drops pearls from its beak whenever it sings ("Der goldne Vogel," Haltrich's _Siebenbuergische Maerchen_, pp. 31, 35). The princess, its mistress, wears (p. 39) a golden mantle "adorned with _carbuncles_ and pearls from the golden bird."
III.--THE CAT AND THE DOG.
1. The Tiger promises not to eat the man who helps him and then tries to break his promise. Compare "The Brahman, the Tiger, and the six Judges," _Old Deccan Days_, p. 159; and "Ananzi and the Lion" in Dasent's _Ananzi Stories_, p. 490.
2. In a Slavonic story mentioned by Gubernatis (_Zoological Mythology_, vol. II. p. 111), a bear is about to kill a peasant in revenge. A fox appears, "shakes its tail and says to the peasant, 'Man, thou hast ingenuity in thy head and a stick in thy hand.' The peasant immediately understands the stratagem," and persuades the bear to get into a sack he has with him that he may carry the bear three times round the field instead of doing penance, after which the bear is to do what he likes with him. The bear gets into the sack, the man "binds it strongly" together, and then beats the bear to death with his stick. Gubernatis at p. 132 of the same volume tells a similar story from Russia in which a wolf plays the part of the bear and of our tiger.
IV.--THE CAT THAT COULD NOT BE KILLED.
1. In an unpublished story told us by Gangiyá, a hill-man from near Simla, a cat saves herself from being eaten by a jackal very much in the same way that this cat saved herself from the leopard. The jackal (in Gangiyá's story) ate anything it came across, whether it were dead or alive. One day he met a tiger and said to him, "I will eat you. I will not let you go." "Very good," said the tiger, "eat me." So the jackal ate him up. He went a little further and met a leopard; he said to the leopard, "I will eat you." "Very good," said the leopard. So he ate the leopard. He went a little further and met a tiny mouse. "Mouse," he said, "I have eaten a tiger and a leopard, and now I will eat you." "Very good," said the mouse. He ate the mouse. He went a little further and met a cat. "I will eat you," said the jackal. The cat answered, "What will it profit you to eat me, who am so small? A little further on you will see a dead buffalo: eat that." So the jackal left the cat and went to eat the buffalo. He walked on and on, but could find no buffalo; and the cat, meanwhile ran away. The jackal was very angry, and set off to seek the cat, but could not find her. He was furious.
VI.--THE RAT AND THE FROG.
Compare the Bohemian "Long-desired child," Naake's _Slavonic Fairy Tales_, p. 226. This child is carved out of a tree-root by a woodman, who brings him home to his wife. They delight in having a child at last. The child eats all the food in the house; his father and mother; a girl with a wheelbarrow full of clover; a peasant, his hay-laden cart, and his cart-horses; a man and his pigs; a shepherd, his flock and dog; lastly, cabbages belonging to an old woman who cuts him in two with her mattock just as he tries to eat her. Out of him jump unhurt every thing and every one he has swallowed. In a story from the south of Siberia (Gubernatis' _Zoological Mythology_, vol. I. p. 140) the hero vanquishes a demon, who tells him that in his stomach he will find a silver casket. He cuts the monster open and out of him come "innumerable animals, men, treasures, and other objects. Some of the men say, 'What noble youth has delivered us from the black night?'" In two of the caskets the hero finds the eyes of an old woman who has befriended him, and money, "and from the last casket came forth more men, animals, and valuables of every kind." In a Russian story quoted by Gubernatis (_Zoological Mythology_, vol. I. pp. 406, 407) the wolf eats the kids all but one. The mother goat persuades him to jump over a fire. The fire splits his belly open, out tumble all the little kids, lively as ever. There is a very similar story with fox, goat, and kid for actors in Campbell's _Popular Tales of the West Highlands_, vol. III. p. 93; and Grimm has one also, "Der Wolf und die sieben jungen Geislein," in his _Kinder und Hausmaerchen_, vol. I. p. 29. In the notes to this story, vol. III. p. 15, Grimm says, "In Pomerania this is told of a child who when his mother had gone out was swallowed by the child-spectre, resembling the varlet Ruprecht. But the stones which he swallows with the child make the spectre so heavy that he falls to the earth, and the child unhurt springs out of him." See, too, the demons at p. 99 of these stories, who swallow the Princess Champákálí's suitors.
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Tylor in his _Primitive Culture_, vol. I. p. 341, classes Little Red Riding Hood among these Day and Night myths. It is, he says, "mutilated in the English Nursery version, but known more perfectly by old wives in Germany, who can tell that the lovely little maid in her shining red satin cloak was swallowed with her grandmother by the wolf, but they both came out safe and sound when the hunter cut open the sleeping beast." He also quotes among these myths (_ib._ p. 338) a story of the Ojibwas in which the hero is swallowed by a great fish and cut out again by his sister; and another belonging to the Basutos in which all mankind save the hero and his mother were devoured by a monster. The hero "attacked the creature and was swallowed whole, but cutting his way out he set free all the inhabitants of the world." At the same page is the story of the Zulu Princess Untombinde who was carried off by a dreadful beast. "The king gathered his army and attacked it, but it swallowed up men, and dogs, and cattle, all but one warrior; he slew the monster, and there came out cattle, and horses, and men, and last of all the princess herself." Mr. Tylor quotes, too (_ib._ p. 336), in connexion with this class of myths, the story of the death of the New Zealand sun-hero, Maui, which he tells more fully than does Sir George Grey in his _Polynesian Mythology_; and he goes on at pp. 338, 339, 340, to connect these myths with those of Perseus and Andromeda; Heracles and Hesione; the story of Jonah and his fish; the Greenland angakok swallowed by bear and walrus and thrown up again; and the legend of Hades.
Besides the angakok mentioned by Mr. Tylor, Dr. Rink, in his _Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo_, has two other stories of escapes from the stomach of a dead animal when it is cut open. In the first, at p. 260, the boy is devoured by a gull; his sister kills the bird, takes her brother's bones from its pouch and carries them home: on the way the boy comes to life again. The other tale, p. 438, tells how Nakasungnak jumped out of the hole his friends had made in the dead "ice-covered" bear's side; but his hair as well as the skin of his face had come off, and he shivered from cold and ague. And in Ralston's _Songs of the Russian People_, p. 177, is a story of a snake who steals "the luminaries of the night. A hero cuts off his head, and out of the slain monster issue the Bright Moon and the Morning Star."
VII.--FOOLISH SACHÚLÍ.
1. Foolish Sachúlí lives in many lands. In his Russian dress he figures in "The Fool and the Birch-tree," Ralston's _Russian Folk Tales_, p. 52. In the Sicilian "Giufá" we find him again (Gonzenbach's _Sicilianische Maerchen_, vol. I. p. 249). In England he appears in an out-of-the-way village in the south (see _Pall Mall Budget_, July 12, 1878, p. 11, _Wild Life in a Southern Country_, No. XIV.) with, to use his mother's words, "no more sense than God had given him." She wishing to have his testimony discredited when he bears witness against her, as she knows he will, goes upstairs and rains raisins on him from the window. So when asked to specify the time he speaks of, he says, "When it rained raisins," and is of course disbelieved.
Note by Mr. J. F. Campbell: "This story of a stupid boy has a parallel in a Gaelic tale in my collection, where the boy dated an event which was true by a fall of pancakes or something of the kind which was not true, and was not believed though he told the truth." [At p. 385, vol. II. of the _Tales of the West Highlands_ a "half booby" is inveigled by his mother into dating his theft of some planks by a "shower of milk-porridge."]
2. The magic gifts given by the fairies are a common incident in fairy tales: so is the adventure with the jar of ghee.
VIII.--BARBER HÍM AND THE TIGERS.
1. Forbes in his Hindústání Dictionary says _Kans_ or _Kansa_ was the name of a wicked tyrant whom Krish[n.]a was born to destroy, and that the word now means a wicked tyrant. But Rájá Káns is an historical character. All that is known of him is told by the late Professor Blochmann in the Bengal Asiatic Society's Journal for 1873, Pt. I. p. 264.
2. In the note (p. 380) to the XIXth Tale in the _Sagas from the Far East_, is a story in which Barber Hím's part is played by a he-goat, and that of his tigers by a lion. See, too, "How the three clever men outwitted the demons" in _Old Deccan Days_, pp. 273-278. In a Santálí tale, "Kanran and Guja," sent by the Rev. F. T. Cole to the _Indian Antiquary_, vol. IV. September 1875, p. 257, two brothers, Kanran and Guja, climb into a tál tree. Here they are discovered by a tiger whom they have deprived of his tail, and who has brought a number of his friends to help him revenge himself on the brothers. The tailless tiger proposes they shall all stand one the top of the other, to reach the men in the tree. His friends agree provided he takes his stand at the bottom, and they climb as proposed till they almost reach the brothers. Then Kanran calls out to Guja, "Give me your axe. I will kill the tailless tiger." The tigers in terror all tumble to the ground, crushing their tailless friend in their fall, and flee to their homes. In "The Leopard and the Ram" (Bleek's _Hottentot Fables and Tales_, p. 24) the ram and the leopard play the parts of the barber and his tigers. See, too, "The Lion and the Bushman," p. 59 of the same collection.
Note by Mr. J. F. Campbell: "Compare the Irish story of two hunchbacks in Keightley. A version is in Mitford's Japanese book; and far better versions are common in Japan."
IX.--THE BULBUL AND THE COTTON-TREE.
1. Cotton-tree, in Hindústání _Semal_.
2. Koel, Indian cuckoo.
X.--THE MONKEY PRINCE.
1. Bandarsá means like a monkey; Dunkní in telling this husk-story just as often called the monkey-skin a husk (_chhilka_) as she called it a skin (_chamrá_).
2. Princess Jahúran throws mattresses to her drowning husband. In a Manípúrí tale published by Mr. G. H. Damant in the _Indian Antiquary_, vol. IV. September 1875, p. 260, Basanta's wife throws him a pillow that he may save himself when the envious merchant, on board whose boat they are, pitches the prince into the river that he may secure the princess for himself.
XI.--BRAVE HÍRÁLÁLBÁSÁ.
1. With this story all through compare "The Demon is at last conquered by the King's Son," p. 173 of this collection.
2. Rakshas means protector, and is, probably, an euphemistic term. The chapter on Mystic Animals in Swedish traditions (Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_, vol. II. p. 83) gives a list of certain creatures that are not to be mentioned by their own but by euphemistic names for fear of incurring their wrath. This belief, Thorpe in the same chapter, p. 84, says, extends to certain inanimate things: water used for brewing, for instance, must not be called _vatn_ (water) or the beer will not be so good; and fire occasionally is to be spoken of as _hetta_ (heat). The girl in an Esthonian tale quoted by Gubernatis at p. 151 of the 1st vol. of his _Zoological Mythology_ addresses a crow whose help she needs as "Bird of light." Fiske says (_Myths and Mythmakers_, p. 223), "A Dayak will not allude by name to the small-pox, but will call it 'The chief' or 'Jungle leaves;' the Laplander speaks of the bear as 'the old man with the fur coat;' in Annam the tiger is called 'Grandfather,' or 'Lord.' The Finnish hunters called the bear 'the Apple of the Forest, the beautiful Honey-claw, the Pride of the thicket'" ("The Mythology of Finnland," _Fraser's Magazine_, May 1857). The Furies, as every one knows, were called the Eumenides, or the gracious ones.
The Rakshases are a kind of huge demons who delight in devouring men and beasts. They can take any shape they please. The female Rakshas often assumes that of a beautiful woman. Compare the demon Mara as described by Fiske at p. 93 of his book above quoted.
The Rakshases do not travel in the way mortals do. See a Dinájpur story told by Mr. G. H. Damant in the _Indian Antiquary_ (February 1875, vol. IV. p. 54), where the hero, who has married both the Rakshas-king's daughter and his niece, asks his father-in-law's leave to return home with his Rakshas-wives. The King consents (p. 58), but says, "We Rakshases do not travel in pálkís (palanquins), but in the air." Accordingly the prince, his two Rakshas wives and his mortal wife, all travel towards his father's country through the air "along the sky." One kind of jinn travel in the same way (Lane's _Arabian Nights_, vol. I., "Notes to Introduction," p. 29). So do the drakes and kobolds in Northern Germany. The drake is as big as a cauldron, "a person may sit in him," and travel with him to any spot he pleases. Both drakes and kobolds look like fiery stripes. The kobolds appear sometimes as a blue, sometimes as a red, stripe passing through the air (Thorpe's _Northern Mythology_, vol. III. pp. 155, 156).
3. Dunkní says, "All Rakshases keep their souls in birds." Those that do so resemble in this respect some of the Indian demons, and the giants, trolls, and such like noxious actors in the Norse, Scotch, and other popular tales.
Tylor (_Primitive Culture_, vol. II. pp. 152, 153) mentions the Tatar story of the giant who could not be killed till the twelve-headed snake in which he kept his soul was destroyed. This tale, he says, "illustrates the idea of soul-embodiment," and "very likely" indicates the sense of the myths where giants, &c., keep their souls out of their own bodies. The civilized notion of soul-embodiment, he adds (quoting from "Grose's bantering description of the art of laying ghosts in the last century,") is that of conjuring ghosts into different objects: "one of the many good instances of articles of savage belief serving as jests among civilized men." Possibly these giants, trolls, rakshases, demons, once belonged to that class of spirits who could, in popular belief, enter at pleasure into stocks and stones and other objects of idolatrous veneration.
But all Rakshases do not keep their souls in birds. Some have their souls in bees (see a Dinájpur tale published by Mr. G. H. Damant in the _Indian Antiquary_ for April 6, 1872, p. 115): and in another Dinájpur story printed by Mr. Damant in the _Indian Antiquary_ for June 7, 1872, p. 120, a whole tribe of Rakshases dwelling in Ceylon kept theirs in one and the same lemon.
4. In the first quoted of these stories collected by Mr. Damant, that where the Rakshases keep their life in bees, the hero is a prince who starts in search of the wonderful tree mentioned in paragraph 8 of the note to Phúlmati Rání (p. 244). In his wanderings he finds himself in the Rakshas country. There he meets with the woman who when cut up turns into the tree he seeks. When he first sees her she lies dead on a bed with a golden wand on one side of her, and a silver wand on the other. He accidentally touches her with the golden wand and she wakes. She tells him the Rakshases, every morning when they go out in search of food, make her dead by touching her with the silver wand, and wake her with the golden wand when they return at night. Mr. Damant has another story in the _Indian Antiquary_ (July 5, 1872, vol. I. p. 219), from Dinájpur, in which there is a prince Dalim who dies and is laid in a tomb above ground, not buried. Daily the Apsarases, the dancing-girls in the court of Indra, wake him from death by touching his face with a golden wand, and make him dead again by touching him with a silver wand. These wands they always leave lying beside him. His wife comes one day to mourn over him and accidentally discovers the secret of bringing him to life. He is, finally, restored to her by the Apsarases.
5. According to Gubernatis, "three and seven are sacred numbers in Aryan faith" (_Zoological Mythology_, vol. I. p. 6).
6. Hírálálbásá addresses the Rakshas as "uncle." The two brothers Kanran and Guja (in a Santálí fairy tale bearing their name printed by the Rev. F. T. Cole in the _Indian Antiquary_, September 1875, vol. IV. p. 257), address a tiger by the same propitiatory title. The tiger in return addresses them as nephews, and gives them the fire they want.
"Uncle" and "aunt" are used in a propitiatory sense over a great part of the world. Hunt at p. 6 of his introduction to the _Romances and Drolls of the West of England_ says, "Uncle is a term of respect, which was very commonly applied to aged men by their juniors in Cornwall. Aunt ... was used in the same manner when addressing aged women." "Mon oncle" and "ma tante" are sometimes used in the same way in France. Fiske in his _Myths and Mythmakers_, pp. 166, 167, tells how the Zulu solar hero Uthlakanyana outwits a cannibal: in this story the hero addresses the cannibal as "uncle," and the cannibal in return calls him "child of my sister." Fiske, quoting from Dr. Callaway, at p. 166, says, "It is perfectly clear that the cannibals of the Zulu legends are not common men; they are magnified into giants and magicians; they are remarkably swift and enduring; fierce and terrible warriors." In the Hottentot story of the "Lion who took a woman's shape," the lion and the woman address each other as "my aunt," and "my uncle" (Bleek's _Hottentot Fables and Tales_, pp. 51, 52). In Siberia the Yakuts worship the bear under the name of their "beloved uncle" (Tylor's _Primitive Culture_, vol. II. p. 231); and when the Russian peasant calls on the dreaded Lyeshy to appear he cries, "Uncle Lyeshy" (Ralston's _Songs of the Russian people_, p. 159).
"Grannie" is the word used by Dunkní herself.
7. The Rakshas queen is tricked to her death in the same way as the wicked step-mother in the "Pomegranate King," p. 12 of this collection.
XII.--THE MAN WHO WENT TO SEEK HIS FATE.
1. Compare a Servian story, "Das Schicksal" (Karadschitsch, _Volksmaerchen der Serben_, p. 106), in which a man sets out to seek his fate, and on the road is commissioned by a rich householder to ask the fate why, though he gives abundance of food to his servants, he can never satisfy their hunger, and why his aged, miserable father and mother do not die: by another man, to ask why his cattle diminish instead of thriving: and, thirdly, by a river whose waters bear him safely across it, to ask why no living thing lives in it. His fate answers all these questions, and instructs him how to thrive himself. In Fräulein Gonzenbach's _Sicilian Fairy Tales_, "Die Geschichte von Caterina und ihrem Schicksal," vol. I. p. 130, Caterina is persecuted by her fate, who wears the form of a lovely woman. At last she begs her mistress's fate, to whom she daily carries a propitiatory offering, to intercede for her with her own fate. She is told in answer that her own fate is wrapped in seven veils and so cannot hear her prayer. Finally her mistress's fate leads her to her own. In the same collection, in "Feledico und Epomata" (vol. I. p. 350), Feledico's fate plays a personal part.