Europa's Fairy Book Part 25

_Parallels._--Miss c.o.x's volume contains all the parallels of the Cinder-Maid formulae, to which reference has been made above, and she has supplemented these by a few additional ones in _Folk-Lore_ for 1907, pages xviii; 191-6. In addition, she gives, in her notes, parallels to the different incidents:

Note 4. (Help by dead parent.) Note 6. (Pursuit checked by mist.) Note 7. (Magic tree on buried mother's grave.) Note 8. (Subst.i.tuted bride.) Note 26. (Sitting on ashes.) Note 32. (Birds' language.) Note 38.

(Tree or rock treasures.) Note 48. (Lost shoe.) Note 50. (Iron shoes,) and further notes on, Helpful, animals, p. 526. Fairy G.o.d-mother, p.

527 and Talking birds, p. 527-9.

Of these the most important for our present purposes is the 48th note dealing with the Lost Shoe, which we have suggested is the central incident in the "original." In Strabo xvii. and in aelian xiii.--33, the myth of Rhodope informs us that, while she was bathing, an eagle s.n.a.t.c.hed one of her sandals and dropped it in the lap of Psammetichus who, struck by its neatness, had all Egypt search for its owner, whom he then took to wife. In other Egyptian and in Indian stories a severed lock of hair of the heroine leads to the same result. Jacob Grimm drew attention to the old German custom of using a shoe at betrothals, which was placed on the bride's foot as a sign of her being subjected to the groom's authority. King Rother had two shoes forged, a silver and a golden one, which he fitted on the feet of his bride, placed on his knee for that purpose. (See _Deutsche Rechts-Alterthumer_, Gottingen, 1828, p. 155.) It is, of course, possible that some reminiscence of the Rhodope myth had spread among the folk to which the original teller of Cinder-Maid belonged, and if the shoe betrothal was confined to German custom this would seem to give a clue to the original home of the Cinder-Maid.

_Remarks._--The hazardous character of the reconstruction process involved in the restoration of the original Cinder-Maid formula cannot, of course, be exaggerated. It is even more precarious than the similar procedure gone through by scholars to restore the original reading of MSS. or by the Higher Critics in recovering the J.

narrative of Joseph or the E. narrative of Lot. But I think I have shown that the incidents selected by me are those which are necessitated by the artistic logic of the Shoe Marriage Test which forms the decisive incident in the Cinder-Maid formula. Where the majority of the incidents contained in the reconstruction occurred in the same order in far distant countries it is practically impossible to imagine that the resemblance is due to chance. Nor is it pertinent to point out that the separate incidents occur equally widespread in connection with other formulae, since it must not be forgotten that no folk teller ever indulges in a single incident; he tells a tale of many incidents. At the same time it is obvious that a series of incidents may be transferred appropriately (or inappropriately) from one tale to another; and this has occurred with the Cinderella tales, as is shown abundantly in Miss c.o.x's notes. It is thus quite easy for a folk teller, who is familiar with other stories, to introduce an a.n.a.logous set of incidents in the Cinder-Maid formula, just as Rob Roy's son can introduce variations of an air when playing the bagpipes; but the air remains the same throughout.

If the formula I have reconstructed for the Cinder-Maid compares at all with the original, one ought to be able to take any variant and see where the teller of it has diverged from the original, inserted new incidents or adopted new ones to local conditions. When one reads over Miss c.o.x's variants one can often discern such additions or variations introduced by the fancy of the teller. It is even possible that in Cinderella itself the original folk artist who conceived it made use of the Catskin formula to embellish the details of the three meetings of the lovers; even in my own telling I fear there may be traces of the same process. There is still doubt whether the bird in the hazel tree was meant to represent the soul of the mother in whom, we may even say, there is a double identification involved, as in the Golden Bough. The tree rising from the mother's grave is obviously connected spiritually with her; the relation of the bird in the tree to the Cinder-Maid also implies a similar relation to the mother. In my telling of the tale I have purposely avoided emphasizing this, which might lead to inconvenient questionings from the little ones. In the scheme of the story the guardian influence of the mother-soul is prominent throughout but need not be too much emphasized for modern children.

II. ALL CHANGE

This nonsense story is found widely spread, especially in Romance tongues, French, Italian, Provencal, and Portuguese; but it is also found in Ireland (see _Celtic Fairy Tales_), Hanover, Transylvania, Esthonia, and Russia; so that it has claims to be included in the fairy book of all Europe. Cosquin, ii., 209-14, gives a number of Oriental stories, Annamite, Kalmuk, Kaffir, which contain the incident of the girl in the bag, and Indian and Kabyle stories, which go through the same exchanges as our story. In the latter case it is an animal story in which the jackal has a thorn picked out of his paws by an old woman, and gets an egg out of her in exchange for the thorn which he has "lost." In this form the jackal helps considerably in the disappearance of the successive exchanges. It is difficult to say whether the European or the Indian form was the earlier. The animal _dramatis personae_ seem less incongruous and turn the scale in favour of India.

III. KING OF THE FISHES

This is practically the Perseus legend of antiquity, which has been made the subject of an elaborate study by Mr. E. Sidney Hartland, _The Legend of Perseus_, 3 vols., London, 1894-6. Mr. Hartland distinguishes four chains of incidents in the story:

1. The Supernatural Birth.

2. The Life Token.

3. The Rescue of Andromeda.

4. The Medusa Witch.

Not all the variants, which are very numerous, running from Ireland to Cambodia, include all these four incidents. The Greek Perseus legend, for instance, has not the Life Token. Cosquin, i., 67, knows of only eighteen which have the full contingent, one in Brittany, two in Greece, one in Sicily, four in Italy, one each--Basque, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Danish, and Swedish; two German; one Lithuanian; and a Russian variant. There must be many more in Bolte's notes to Grimm, 60. These are sufficient to prove that the whole concatenation of incident is European, though it is difficult to understand how the Medusa incident got tacked on to the preceding three, with which it is very loosely combined, the only point of connection being with the Life Token. Strangely enough, in the ancient form of the folk-tale, the Gorgon is an almost essential part of the story, though the Life Token has disappeared, and the Supernatural Birth only applies to the hero and not to his animal companions. In the modern European folk-tales these animal friends are rather supernumeraries and are occasionally replaced by the formula of the Grateful Animals, to whom the hero does some service during his wanderings, in reward for which they rescue him from some extremity. In some ancient variants of the Perseus legend there are traces of the Subst.i.tuted Champion in the form of Pentheus, a former suitor of Andromeda, who had failed to meet the dragon.

It would be impossible here to consider the folk-lore a.n.a.logies of the four chief incidents of the tale which have occupied Mr. Hartland for three fairly large volumes to develop, out of which have grown two more (_Primitive Paternity_, London, 1910). It is only necessary here to refer to a few points in their relation to the tale itself. The Supernatural Birth, which is also treated by M. Saintyves (?) is found attributed to heroes among all nations; it is only of significance in the story here in its bearing upon the Life Token of the hero, which is connected with it. With regard to the Life Token, Major Temple has a full a.n.a.lysis in the notes to _Wide Awake Stories_, 1884, pp. 404-5, under the t.i.tle of the "Life Index," and is closely connected with the idea of the External Soul, which Sir James G. Frazer has studied in his _Balder_, London, 1913, pp. 95-152. The Fight with the Dragon is celebrated outside folk-tales in the lives of the saints (whence St. George, the t.i.tular saint of England, gets his emblem) in the saga of Siegfried, and in the poetry of Schiller, where it is made the subject of a moral apologue. The Medusa-witch, who transforms into stone, or destroys life in other ways, is quite a familiar figure in folk tales, but is usually thwarted, as here, by some means of cure.

The chief interest, however, of the "King of the Fishes," from a folk-tale point of view, is the remarkable similarity of the later folk-tales with the Greek legend, from which they are separated by so many centuries. The absence of the Life Token in the Greek version and the comparative insignificance of Medusa in the modern tales are sufficient evidence that these latter are not directly derived from the former. Yet even Mr. Hartland, who is a strong adherent of the anthropological treatment of folk-tales, fully agrees that this particular tale must have, at one time, been composed in artistic unity, if not containing all the four chains of incidents at least containing two of them (_Legend of Perseus_, iii., 151). It should be added that Ra.s.smann and the Grimms connect the folk-tales with the Siegfried saga (Bolte, i., 547, 555).

IV. SCISSORS

This familiar story is found as early as Pauli, "Schimpf und Ernst,"

No. 595. It is frequent in Italy, especially in Pitre's Selections.

Koehler has references to the other European versions in Blade, p.

155. Crane, _Italian Popular Tales_, No. xcvi, has rendered one of Pitre's versions.

V. BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

This rather artificial tale has never-the-less spread through all Europe. One finds it in Italy almost in the same form as in the original French by the Princesse de Beaumont, from whom it has got into the ordinary fairy books of England, France and Germany. See Crane II., "Zelinda and the Monster," pp. 7-11, with note 6, p. 324, which contain a reference to Miss Stokes's _Indian Fairy Tales_, p.

292. The Grimm story No. 108, "Hans the Hedgehog," is more primitive in character, and we get there the story how the Beast obtained his terrible form. I have, however, rejected this form of it as it is not so widespread as "Beauty and the Beast," which is one of the few stories that we can trace, spreading through Europe practically within our own time. The artificiality of the leading motive is sufficient proof of the late origin of the tale. But, after all, tradition does not distinguish between primitive or later strata. Ralston dealt with the whole formula from the sun-moon point of view in _Nineteenth Century_, Dec., 1878.

VI. REYNARD AND BRUIN

The main incidents of "Reynard the Fox" occur in folk-tales throughout Europe, and it has often been discussed whether the folk-tales were the foundation of the beast epic or vice versa. Since, however, it has been proven that many other incidents besides those used in the beast satire are found among the folk, it is generally allowed nowadays that, apart from a few aesopic fables included in the satire, the main incidents were derived from the folk. On this subject see my introduction to "Reynard the Fox" in the Cranford Series.

I have selected a number of the most characteristic of these folk-tales relating to the former friends.h.i.+p and later enmity of the Fox and the Bear, basing my compilation on the admirable monographs of Prof. K. Krohn of Helsingfors, "Mann und Fuchs," 1891, "Baer (Wolf) und Fuchs; eine nordische Tiermarchenkette," in _Journal de la Societe Finno-Ougrienne_, vi., Helsingissa, 1889, and "Die geografische Verbreitung einer nordischen in Finnland," in _Fennia_, iv., 4. The latter monograph is accompanied by an interesting map of Finland, showing the distribution of the Scandinavian form of these stories, in which the Bear is the opponent of the Fox, and the Slavonic form in which the Wolf takes that position. As there is obviously a mythological tendency at the root of the stories, intending to account for the shortness of the Bear's tail and the white tip of the Fox's, it is clear that the Scandinavian form is the more original.

I have tried to collect together in a logical narrative:

(a) Fox and Bear in partners.h.i.+p--(Top-off, Half-gone, All-gone).

(b) Fox in fish cart.

(c) Iced Bear's tail.

(d) Fox and cream jug.

(e) Fox on Bear's back.

(f) Fox in briar bush.

(g) Man promises Fox two geese for freeing him from Bear.

(h) Gives him two dogs.

(k) Fox and limbs; sacrifices tail.

In his article in _Fennia_, Prof. Krohn refers to no less than 708 variants of these different episodes, of which, however, 362 are from the enormous Finnish collections of folk lore in possession of the Finnish Literary Society at Helsingfors. The others include the majority of European folk-tale collections with a goodly sprinkling of Asiatic, African and American ones, the last, however, being confined to "Uncle Remus," in which four out of the ten incidents occur in isolated adventures of Brer Rabbit.

Many of the incidents occur separately in early literature; (g) (h) (k) for example, which form one sequence, are found not alone in Renard but also in Alfonsi, 1115, and Waldis. (c) The iced bear's tail occurs in the Latin _Ysengrimus_, of the twelfth century, in the _Renart_ of the thirteenth, and, strangely enough, in the Hebrew _Fox Fables_ of Berachyah ha-Nakadan, whom I have identified with an Oxford Jew late in the twelfth century. See my edition of Caxton, _Fables of Europe_, i., p. 176. The fact that ice is referred to in the last case would seem to preclude an Indian origin for this part of the collection.

It is not quite certain however that all the above incidents were necessarily connected together originally. The fish cart (b), and the iced bear's tail (c), are so closely allied that they probably formed a unity in the original conception, though they are often found separately nowadays among the folk. Bear and Fox in partners.h.i.+p (a), is found elsewhere told of other animals, notably of the firm of Cat and Mouse in Grimm No. 2. It is difficult to determine at present whether stories relating to other animals, or even to a.s.sociations of men, have been applied by peasant narrators to the general opposition of the sly _versus_ the strong animal, which they have dramatized in the beast satire of Reynard and Bruin.

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 ma.n.u.script 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 pa.s.sed 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--Subst.i.tuted 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 cla.s.sical scholars restore readings from families of MSS. He uses Grimm, x.x.xiii.; 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.