Popular Tales Part 6

[Footnote 57: _Schol. ad. Theog._ 885.]

[Footnote 58: Thorpe's _Palace with Pillars of Gold_.]

[Footnote 59: Dasent's _Lord Peter_.]

[Footnote 60: _Piacevoli Notti_, xi. 1, Venice, 1562. Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, p. 348.]

[Footnote 61: Pitre, No. 188; Crane, p. 127. Gonzenbach, 65, _Conte Piro_. In Gonzenbach, the man does not kill the fox, which pretends to be dead, and is bilked of its promised reward, a grand funeral.]

[Footnote 62: Lou Compaire Gatet, 'Father Cat,' _Revue des Langues Romanes_, iii. 396. See Deulin, _Contes de Ma Mere L'Oye_, p. 205.]

[Footnote 63: _Boukoutchi Khan_, translated into German by Schiefner.

_Memoires de l'Academie de St. Petersbourg_, 1873. With Dr. Kohler's Notes.]

[Footnote 64: Gubernatis. _Zoological Mythology_, ii. 136. Quoting Afana.s.sieff, iv. 11. Compare a similar snake in Swahili.]

[Footnote 65: _Pantschatantra_, i. 222.]

[Footnote 66: The work of M. Cosquin's referred to throughout is his valuable _Contes de Lorraine_, Paris, 1886. A crowd of _Puss in Boots_ stories are referred to by Dr. Kohler in Gonzenbach's _Sicilianische Marchen_, ii. 243 (Leipzig, 1870). They are Finnish, Bulgarian, Russian, and South Siberian. The Swahili and Hindu versions appear to have been unknown, in 1870, to Dr. Kohler. In 1883, Mr. Ralston, who takes the Buddhist side, did not know the Indian version (_Nineteenth Century_, Jan. 1883).]

LES FeES.

_Toads and Diamonds._

The origin of this little story is so manifestly moral, that there is little need to discuss it. A good younger sister behaves kindly to a poor old woman, who, being a fairy, turns all her words into flowers and diamonds. The wicked elder sister treats the fairy with despite: _her_ words become toads and serpents, and the younger marries a king's son.

The preference shown to the youngest child is discussed in the note on Cinderella. M. Deulin asks whether _Toads and Pearls_ is connected with the legend of Latona (Leto) and the peasants whom she changed into frogs, for refusing to allow her to drink[67]. Latona really wished to bathe her children, and the two narratives have probably no connection, though rudeness is punished in both. Nor is there a closer connection with the tales in which tears (like the tears of Wainamoinen in the _Kalewala_) change into pearls. It is an obvious criticism that the elder girl should have met the fairy first; she was not likely to behave so rudely when she knew that politeness would be rewarded. The natural order of events occurs in Grimm's _Golden Goose_ (64), where the eldest and the second son refuse to let the old man taste their cake and wine.

Here, as in a tale brought by M. Deulin from French Flanders, the polite youngest son, by virtue of a Golden Goose, makes a very serious princess laugh, and wins her for his wife. Turning on a similar moral conception Grimm's _Mother Holle_ (24) is infinitely better than _Les Fees_. The younger daughter drops her shuttle down a well; she is sent after it, and reaches a land where apples speak and say, 'Shake us, we are all ripe.' She does all she is asked to do, and makes Mother Holle's feather-bed so well that the feathers (snow-flakes) fly about the world.

She goes home covered with golden wages, and her elder sister follows her, but not her example. She insults the apples, is lazy at Mother Holle's, and is sent home covered with pitch. Grimm gives many variants.

Mlle. L'Heritier amplifies the tale in her _Bigarrures_ (1696). The story begins to be more exciting, when it is combined, as commonly happens, with that of the subst.i.tuted bride. It is odd enough that the Kaffirs have the incident of the good and bad girl, the bad girl laughs at the trees, as in Grimm's she mocks the apples (Theal, _Kaffir Folklore_, p. 49). This tale (in which there is no miracle of uttering toads or pearls) diverges into that of the _Snake Husband_, a rude _Beauty and the Beast_. The Zulus again have the story of the subst.i.tuted bride ('Ukcombekcantsini,' Callaway's _Nursery Tales of the Zulus_, Natal, 1868). The idea recurs in Theal's Kaffir Collection (p.

136); in both cases the subst.i.tuted bride is a beast. In Scotland the story of the _Black Bull o' Norroway_ contains the incident of the subst.i.tuted bride. The Kaffirs, in _The Wonderful Horns_, have a large part of that story, but without the subst.i.tuted bride, who, in Europe, occasionally attaches herself as a sequel to _Toads and Diamonds_. This is ill.u.s.trated especially in Grimm's _Three Dwarfs in the Wood_ (13), where the good girl's speech is made literally golden. The bad girl, who speaks toads, marries the king's son who loves the good girl. Fragments of verse, in which the good girl tries to warn her husband, resemble those in the _Black Bull o' Norroway_. The tale is complicated by the metamorphosis of the true bride (no great change her lover would say) into 'a little duck.' She regains her shape when a sword is swung over her. The bad girl is tortured like Regulus. This is _Bushy-bride_ in Dasent's _Tales from the Norse_.

There seems to be no reason why the adventure of the good and bad sisters should merge in the formula of the subst.i.tuted bride, more than in the adventure of the princess accused of bearing b.e.s.t.i.a.l children, or in any other. Probably Perrault felt this, and, having made his moral point, was content to do without the sequel.

_Les Fees_ is interesting then, first, as an example of a moral idea ill.u.s.trated in tales even in South Africa, and, secondly (in its longer and more usual form), as an example of the manner in which any story may glide into any other. All the incidents of popular tales, like the bits of gla.s.s in a kaleidoscope, may be shaken into a practically limitless number of combinations.

[Footnote 67: Antoninus Liberalis, x.x.xv.]

CENDRILLON.

_Cinderella._

The story of Cinderella (_Cendrillon_, _Cucendron_, _Cendreusette_, _Sainte Rosette_) is one of the most curious in the history of _Marchen_. Here we can distinctly see how the taste and judgment of Perrault altered an old and barbarous detail, and there, perhaps, we find the remains of a very ancient custom.

There are two points in _Cinderella_, and her cousin _Peau d'Ane_, particularly worth notice. First, there is the process by which the agency of a _Fairy G.o.dmother_ has been subst.i.tuted for that of a _friendly beast_, usually a connection by blood-kindred of the hero or heroine. Secondly, there is the favouritism shown, in many versions, to the _youngest child_, and the custom which allots to this child a place by the hearth or in the cinders (_Cucendron_).

Taking the first incident, the appearance in Perrault of a Fairy G.o.dmother in place of a _friendly beast_, we may remark that this kind of change is always characteristic of the promotion of a story. Just as Indian 'aboriginal' tribes cas.h.i.+er their beast-ancestors ('Totems') in favour of a human ancestor of a similar name, when they rise in civilisation, so the _roles_ which are filled by beasts in savage _Marchen_ come to be a.s.signed to men and women in the _contes_ of more cultivated people[68]. In Cinderella, however, the friendly beast holds its own more or less in nearly all European versions, except in those actually derived from Perrault. In every shape of the story known to us, the beast is a _domesticated animal_. Thus it will not be surprising if no native version is found in America, where animals, except dogs, were scarcely domesticated at all before the arrival of Europeans.

In examining the incident of the friendly and protecting beast, it may be well to begin with a remote and barbarous version, that of the Kaffirs. Here, as in other cases, we may find one situation in a familiar story divorced from those which, as a general rule, are in its company. Theorists may argue either that the Kaffirs borrowed from Europeans one or two incidents out of a popular form of _Cinderella_, or that they happen to make use of an opinion common to most early peoples, the belief, namely, in the superhuman powers of friendly beast-protectors. As to borrowing, Europeans and Kaffirs have been in contact, though not very closely, for two hundred years. No one, however, would explain the Kaffir custom of daubing the body with white clay, in the initiatory rites, as derived from the similar practice of the ancient Greeks[69]. Among the neighbouring Zulus, Dr. Callaway found that _Marchen_ were the special property of the most conservative cla.s.s,--the old women. 'It is not common to meet with a man who is willing to speak of them in any other way than as something which he has some dim recollection of having heard his grandmother relate[70].'

Whether the traditional lore of savage grandmothers is likely to have been borrowed from Dutch or English settlers is a question that may be left to the reader.

The tale in which the friendly beast of European folklore occurs among the Kaffirs is _The Wonderful Horns_[71]. As among the Santals (an 'aboriginal' hilltribe of India) we have a hero, not a heroine. 'There was once a boy whose mother that bore him was dead, and who was ill-treated by his other mothers,' the Kaffirs being polygamous. He rode off on an ox given him by his father. The ox fought a bull and won. Food was supplied out of his right horn, and the 'leavings' (as in the _Black Bull o'Norroway_) were put into the left horn. In another fight the ox was killed, but his horns continued to be a magical source of supplies.

A new mantle and handsome ornaments came out of them, and by virtue of this fairy splendour he won and wedded a very beautiful girl.

Here, it may be said, there is nothing of _Cendrillon_, except that rich garments, miraculously furnished, help to make a marriage; and that the person thus aided was the victim of a stepmother. No doubt this is not much, but we might sum up _Cendrillon_ thus. The victim of a stepmother makes a great marriage by dint of goodly garments supernaturally provided.

In _Cendrillon_ the _recognition_ (anagnorisis) makes a great part of the interest. There is no anagnorisis in the Kaffir legend, which is very short, being either truncated or undeveloped.

Let us now turn to the Santals, a remote and shy non-Aryan hill-tribe of India. Here we find the anagnorisis, but in a form not only disappointing but almost cynical[72].

In the Santal story we have the cruel Stepmother, the hero,--not a heroine, but a boy,--the protecting and friendly Cow, the attempt to kill the Cow, the Flight, the great good-fortune of the hero, the Princess who falls in love with a lock of his hair, which is to play the part of Cinderella's gla.s.s slipper in the anagnorisis, and, finally, a cynically devised accident, by which the beauty of the hair is destroyed, and the hero's chance of pleasing the princess perishes. It will be noticed that the use of a lock of hair floating down a river, to be fallen in love with and help the _denouement_, is found, first, in the Egyptian _conte_ of the _Two Brothers_, written down in the reign of Ramses II., fourteen hundred years before our era.

In that story, too, the hero has a friendly cow, which warns him when he is in danger of being murdered. But the Egyptian story has no other connection with _Cendrillon_[73]. The device of a floating lock of hair is not uncommon in Bengali _Marchen_.

From the Santals let us turn to another race, not so remote, but still non-Aryan, the Finns[74]. That the Santals borrow _Marchen_ from their Hinduised aboriginal neighbours is not certain, but is perfectly possible and even probable. Though some theorists have denied that races borrow nursery tales from each other, it is certain that Lonnrot, writing to Schiefner in 1855, mentions a Finnish fisher who, meeting Russian and Swedish fishers, 'swopped stories' with them when stormy weather made it impossible to put to sea[75]. No doubt similar borrowings have always been going on when the peasantry on the frontiers met their neighbours, and where Kaffirs have taken Hottentot wives, or Sidonians have carried off Greek children as captives, in fact, all through the national and tribal meetings of the world[76].

_The Wonderful Birch_ (Emmy Schreck, ix.) is a form of _Cinderella_ from Russian Carelia. The story has a singularly dramatic and original opening. A man and his wife had but one daughter, and one Sheep. The Sheep wandered away, the woman sought him in the woods, and she met a witchwife. The witchwife turned the woman into the semblance of the Sheep, and herself took the semblance of the woman. She went to the woman's house, where the husband thought he was welcoming his own wife and the sheep that was lost. The new and strange stepmother demanded the death of the Sheep, which was the real mother of the heroine. Warned by the Sheep, a black sheep, the daughter did not taste of her flesh, but gathered and buried the bones and fragments. Thence grew a beautiful birch tree. The man and the witchwife went to court, the witchwife leaving the girl to accomplish impossible tasks. The voice of the dead mother from the grave below the birch bade the girl break a twig from the tree, and therewith accomplish the tasks. Then out of the earth came beautiful raiment (as in _Peau d'Ane_), and the girl dressed, and went to court. The Prince falls in love with her, and detects her by means of her ring, which takes the part of the slipper. Then comes in the frequent formula of a false bride subst.i.tuted by the witchwife, a number of trials, and the punishment of the witch.

Here, then, the friendly beast is but the Mother surviving in two shapes, first as a sheep, then as a tree, exactly the idea of the ancient Egyptian story of the _Two Brothers_, where Bitiou first becomes a bull, and then a persea tree[77]. In Finnish the Cinderella plot is fully developed. A similar tale, still with the beast in place of the Fairy G.o.dmother, is quoted by Mr. Ralston from the Servian (_Vuk Karajich_, No. 32). Three maidens were spinning near a cleft in the ground, when an old man warned them not to let their spindles fall into the cleft, or their mother would be changed into a cow. Mara's spindle fell in, and the mother instantly shared the fate of Io. Mara tended the cow that had been her mother lovingly, but the father married again, and the new wife drove Mara to dwell among the cinders (_pepel_), hence she was called _Pepelluga_, cinderwench[78]. The cruel Servian stepmother had the cow slain, but not before it had warned Mara to eat none of the kindred flesh[79], and to bury the bones in the ashes of the hearth.

From these bones sprang two white doves, which supplied Mara with splendid raiment, and, finally, won for her the hand of the prince, after the usual incidents of the lost slipper, the attempt to subst.i.tute the stepmother's ugly daughter, and the warning of the fowls, 'Ki erike, the right maiden is under the trough.'

In a modern Greek variant (Hahn, ii.), the Mother (not in vaccine form) is eaten by her daughters, except the youngest, who refuses the hideous meal. The dead woman magically aids the youngest from her tomb, and the rest follows as usual, the slipper playing its accustomed part.

In Gaelic a persecuted stepdaughter is aided by a Ram. The Ram is killed, his bones are buried by his _protegee_, he comes to life again, but is lame, for his bones were not all collected, and he plays the part of Fairy G.o.dmother[80].

Turning from the Gaelic to the Lowland Scotch, we find _Ras.h.i.+n Coatie_ as a name under which either _Peau d'Ane_ or _Cendrillon_ may be narrated. We discovered Cendrillon as _Ras.h.i.+n Coatie_, in Morays.h.i.+re[81]. Here a Queen does not become a _cow_, indeed, but dies, and leaves to her daughter a _Red Calf_, which aids her, till it is slain by a cruel stepmother.

The dead calfy said

_Tak me up, bane by bane And pit me aneth yon grey stane,_

and whatever you want, come and seek it frae me, and I will give you it.

The usual adventures of Cinderella ensue, the birds denouncing the False Bride, whose foot is pinched to make it fit the 'beautiful satin slipper' of the heroine.

In most of these versions the heroine is aided by a beast, and even when that beast is dead, it continues helpful, in one case actually coming to life again, like the ox in the South African _Marchen_[82].

In all these thoroughly popular and traditional tales, the supernatural machinery varies much from that of Perrault, who found _Peau d'Ane_ 'difficile a croire.' But, in all the wilder tales, the machinery is exactly what we note in the myths and actual beliefs of the lower races.

_They_ do not shrink from the conception of a mother who becomes a cow (like Io), nor of a cow (as in the case of Heitsi Eibib among the Hottentots), who becomes the mother of human progeny. It is not unlikely that the Scotch mother, in _Ras.h.i.+n Coatie_, who bequeathes to her daughter a wonder-working calf (a cow in Sicily, Pitre, 41), is a modification of an idea like that of the cannibal Servian variant[83].

Then the _Mouton_ of Madame d'Aulnoy seems like a courtly survival of the Celtic _Sharp Grey Sheep_ mixed with the _donnee_ of _Beauty and the Beast_[84]. The notion of helpful animals makes all the 'Manitou'

element in Red Indian religion, and is common in Australia. The helpful calf, or sheep, bequeathed by the dying mother, reminds one of the equally helpful, but golden Ram, which aids Phrixus and h.e.l.le against their stepmother, after the death or deposition of their mother Nephele.

This Ram also could speak,--

alla kai auden andromeen proeeke kakon teras[85].

This recalls not only the Celtic _Sharp Grey Sheep_, but also Madame d'Aulnoy and her princess, 'je vous avoue que je ne suis pas accoutumee a vivre avec les moutons qui parlent.'