Aino Folk-Tales Part 1

Aino Folk-Tales.

by Basil Hall Chamberlain.

INTRODUCTION.

Twelve hundred years ago a Chinese historian stated that "on the eastern frontier of the land of j.a.pan there is a barrier of great mountains, beyond which is the land of the Hairy Men." These were the Aino, so named from the word in their own language signifying "man." Over most of the country of these rude and helpless indigenes the j.a.panese have long since spread, only a dwindling remnant of them still inhabiting the island of Yezo. Since the early days when a couple of them were sent as curiosities to the Emperor of China their uncouth looks and habits have made them objects of interest to more civilised nations. Many European writers have described them, but hardly any with such opportunities as Mr. Basil Hall Chamberlain, Professor of Philology at the Tokyo University, who has taken down from the Ainos the present collection of their tales, and prefaced it with an account of their ways and state of mind. It would hardly be for me to offer information on a subject so excellently handled, but the request of the Editor of the _Folk-Lore Journal_ that I would write an Introduction enables me to draw attention to the views put forward by Professor Chamberlain in another publication,[A] which, being printed in j.a.pan, may be overlooked by many English folk-lore students, even of those interested in the curious Aino problem.

As is well known, the hairiness of the Ainos marks them sharply off from the smooth-faced j.a.panese. No one can look at photographs of Ainos without admitting that the often-repeated comparison of them to bearded Russian peasants is much to the purpose. The likeness is much strengthened by the bold quasi-European features of the Ainos contrasting extremely with the j.a.panese type of face. Of course all this has suggested a theory of the Ainos belonging to the Aryan race; and, although the idea comes to nothing when examined strictly, its existence is an acknowledgment of the special Aino race-type. Mention must also be made of an anatomical peculiarity of the Aino skeleton, consisting of a remarkable flattening of the arm-and leg-bones. On the whole it is evident that the Ainos are an ancient race in this part of Asia, and so far isolated that anthropology has not yet the means of settling their physical connection with other Asiatic tribes. Professor Chamberlain's careful examination of the Aino language leads him to a similar result. It is made not only from his own knowledge, but with the advantage of working with the Rev. John Batchelor, who has lived as a missionary among the Ainos for years, and written the Grammar printed as a part of these Aino Studies. In structure the resemblances which the Aino presents to j.a.panese are outweighed by the differences; and, though it may ultimately prove to fall into a north-east Asiatic group of languages, this is so far from being made out that it is safest for the present to treat both race and language as isolated. Inasmuch as the little civilisation now possessed by the Ainos has in great measure been learnt from the j.a.panese, it is natural that their modern language should have picked up numbers of j.a.panese words, from the name of kamui which they give to their G.o.ds, down to the rice-beer or sake in which they seek continual drunkenness, now their main source of enjoyment. One purpose which their language serves is to prove how widely they once spread over the country now j.a.pan, where place-names alone remain to indicate a former Aino population. Some of these are unmistakeably Aino, as Yamas.h.i.+ro, which must have meant "land of chestnut trees," and s.h.i.+kyu, "place of rushes." Others, if interpreted as j.a.panese, have a far-fetched sense, as, for instance, the villages of Mennai and Tonami, which, if treated as j.a.panese, would signify "inside permission" and "hares in a row"; whereas, if taken to be originally Aino they may bear the reasonable sense of "bad stream" and "stream from the lake." The inference from records and local names, worked out with great care by Professor Chamberlain, is "that the Ainos were truly the predecessors of the j.a.panese all over the Archipelago. The dawn of history shows them to us living far to the south and west of their present haunts; and ever since then, century by century, we see them retreating eastwards and northwards, as steadily as the American Indian has retreated westwards under the pressure of the colonists from Europe."

As with their language, so with their folk-lore, which largely shows itself adopted from the j.a.panese. In the present collection the stories of the Salmon-king (x.x.xiv.), the Island of Women (x.x.xiii.), and others, are based on episodes of j.a.panese tales, sometimes belonging to world-wide cycles of myth, as in the theme of the mortal who eats the deadly food of Hades (x.x.xv.), which has its typical example in the story of Persephone. On reading the short but curious tale (xvi.), How it was settled who should rule the World, one sees at once that the cunning Fox-G.o.d has come in from the well-known fox mythology of j.a.pan; and as to the very clever mythic episode of looking for the sunrise in the west, I find, on inquiry of a j.a.panese gentleman living in Oxford, Mr.

Tsneta Mori, that this belongs to the tale of the Wager of the Phnix, known to all j.a.panese children, and in which the Phnix is plainly derived from China. On the other hand, there is much genuine Aino matter in the present collection. For instance, we learn from Professor Chamberlain's above-mentioned treatise why it is that Panaumbe ("on the lower course of the river") does the clever things, while Penaumbe ("on the upper course of the river") is the stupid imitator who comes to grief. It is simply the expression of the dislike and contempt of the coast Ainos, who tell the stories, for the hill Ainos further up the rivers. It is needless to mention here the many touches of Aino ideas, morals, and customs, which their stories disclose, for it is in noticing these that much of the interest consists which the reader will feel in perusing them. Their most important characteristic indeed is insisted on by Professor Chamberlain, in remarks of which the value must not be overlooked. Of all the difficulties felt by the student of folk-lore the greatest is that of judging how far those who tell and listen really believe their childish wonder-tales of talking beasts and the like, or how far they make and take them as conscious fun. We ourselves are at the latter sceptical end, and many peoples we can examine are in a halfway state, not altogether disbelieving that big stones may once have been giants, or that it is a proper incident in a hero's career to be swallowed by a monster and get out again, but at the same time admitting that after all these may be only old wives' tales.

Even savage tribes under contact with civilised men are mostly in this intermediate state, and thus Professor Chamberlain's statement as to the place of folk-lore in the Aino mind, made, as it has been, under his personal scrutiny, is a doc.u.ment of real consequence. He satisfied himself that his Ainos were not making believe, like Europeans with nursery tales, but that the explanatory myths of natural phenomena are to them theorems of physical science, and the wonder-tales are told under the impression that they really happened. Those who maintain the serious value of folk-lore, as embodying early but quite real stages of philosophy among mankind, will be grateful for this collection, in spite of its repulsive features, as furnis.h.i.+ng the clearest evidence that the basis of their argument is not only theoretical but actual.

Edward B. Tylor.

[A] _The Language, Mythology, and Geographical Nomenclature of j.a.pan, viewed in the light of Aino Studies._ By Basil Hall Chamberlain.

Including an _Ainu Grammar_ by John Batchelor. (Memoirs of the Literature College, Imperial University of j.a.pan, No. 1.) Tokyo: 1887.

AINO FOLK-LORE.

By Basil Hall Chamberlain.

_Prefatory Remarks._

I visited the island of Yezo for the third time in the summer of 1886, in order to study the Aino language, with a view to elucidate by its means the obscure problem of the geographical nomenclature of j.a.pan.

But, as is apt to happen on such occasions, the chief object of my visit soon ceased to be the only object. He who would learn a language must try to lisp in it, and more especially must he try to induce the natives to chatter in it in his presence. Now in Yezo, subjects of discourse are few. The Ainos stand too low in the scale of humanity to have any notion of the civilised art of "making conversation." When, therefore, the fis.h.i.+ng and the weather are exhausted, the European sojourner in one of their dreary, filthy seaside hamlets will find himself,--at least I found myself,--sadly at a loss for any further means of setting his native companions' tongues in motion. It is then that fairy-tales come to the rescue. The Ainos would not suggest the idea themselves. To suggest ideas is not their habit. But they are delighted to follow it when suggested. Simply to repeat something which they have known by heart ever since the days of their childhood is not such an effort to their easily-tired brains as is the keeping up of a conversation with one who speaks their language imperfectly. Their tongues are at once loosened.

In my own case, I found myself, after a short time, listening to the stories for their own sake,--not merely as linguistic exercises; and I ventured to include a few of them in the "Memoir on the Ainos" which was published a few months ago by the Imperial University of j.a.pan. Some remarks in a review of this "Memoir," contained in _Nature_ of the 12th May, 1887, have encouraged me to believe that anthropologists and comparative mythologists may be interested in having laid before them something more than mere samples of the mental products of a people which is interesting for three reasons,--interesting because its domain once extended over the entire j.a.panese archipelago, interesting because absolutely nothing certain is known as to its origin and affinities, interesting because it is, so to speak, almost at its last gasp. I have, therefore, now collected and cla.s.sified all the tales that were communicated to me by Ainos, in Aino, during my last stay in the island, and more latterly in Tokyo, when, by the kind a.s.sistance of the President of the University, Mr. H. Watanabe, an exceptionally intelligent Aino was procured from the North, and spent a month in my house. These tales form the paper which I now have the honour to offer for the acceptance of your learned Society.

It would, no doubt, be possible to treat the subject of Aino folk-lore in great detail. The gloss might easily be made longer than the text.

Each story might be a.n.a.lysed according to the method proposed by the Folk-Lore Society; a "survey of incidents" might be appended to each, as in Messrs. Steel and Temple's charming "Wide-Awake Stories," from the Punjab and Cashmere. More interesting to the anthropologist than such mechanical dissection of each tale considered as an independent ent.i.ty would be the attempt to unravel the affinities of these Aino tales. How many of them, what parts of them, are original? How many of them are borrowed, and whence?

To carry out such an investigation with that completeness which would alone give it serious value, would necessitate a greater expenditure of time than my duties will allow of, perhaps also a fund of multifarious knowledge which I do not possess. I would, therefore, merely suggest in pa.s.sing that the probabilities of the case are in favour of the Ainos having borrowed from their only clever neighbours, the j.a.panese. (The advent of the Russians is so recent that they need hardly be counted in this connection.) The reasons for attributing to the j.a.panese, rather than to the Ainos, the prior possession (which, by the way, by no means implies the invention) of the tales common to both races, are partly general, partly special. Thus it is _a priori_ likely that the stupid and barbarous will be taught by the clever and educated, not the clever and educated by the stupid and barbarous. On the other hand, as I have elsewhere demonstrated, a comparative study of the languages of the two peoples shows clearly that this _a priori_ view is fully borne out so far as far as the linguistic domain is concerned. The same remark applies to social customs. Even in religion, the most conservative of all inst.i.tutions, especially among barbarians, the Ainos have suffered j.a.panese influence to intrude itself. It is j.a.panese rice-beer, under its j.a.panese name of _sake_, which they offer in libations to their G.o.ds. Their very word for "prayer" seems to be archaic j.a.panese. A mediaeval j.a.panese hero, Yos.h.i.+tsune, is generally allowed to be held in religious reverence by them. The idea of earthquakes being caused by the wriggling of a gigantic fish under the earth is shared by the Ainos with the j.a.panese and with several other races.

At the same time, the general tenour and tendency of the tales and traditions of the Ainos wear a widely different aspect from that which characterises the folk-lore of j.a.pan. The Ainos, in their humble way, are addicted to moralising and to speculating on the origin of things. A perusal of the following tales will show that a surprisingly large number of them are attempts to explain some natural phenomenon, or to exemplify some simple precept. In fact they are science,--physical science and moral science,--at a very early stage. The explanations given in these tales completely satisfy the adult Aino mind of the present day. The Aino fairy-tales are not, as ours are, survivals from an earlier stage of thought. They spring out of the present state of thought. Even if not invented of recent years they fit in with the present Aino view of things,--so much so, that an Aino who recounts one of his stories does so under the impression that he is narrating an actual event. He does not "make believe" like the European nurse, even like the European child, who has always, in some nook or corner of his mind, a presentiment of the scepticism of his later years.

So far as I can judge, that "disease of language" which we call metaphor, and which is held by some great authorities to have been the chief factor in the fabrication of Aryan myth, has no place in Aino fairy-land; neither have the phenomena of the weather attracted more attention than other things. But I speak subject to correction. Perhaps it is not wise to invite controversy on such a point unless one is well armed for the fight.

Failing an elaborate a.n.a.lysis of the Aino fairy-tales, and a discussion of their origin and affinities, what I venture to offer for your Society's acceptance is the simple text of the tales themselves, rendered into English. Nine of them have already been printed in the Aino "Memoir" already referred to. One has been printed (but not quite in its genuine form, which decency was supposed to forbid) at the end of Mr. Batchelor's grammar included in the same "Memoir." All the others are now given to the world for the first time, never having yet appeared in any language, not even in j.a.panese.

I would draw special attention to the character of the translation, as being an absolutely literal one in the case of all those stories which I originally wrote down in Aino from the dictation of native informants.

As time pressed, however, I sometimes had the story told me more rapidly, and wrote it down afterwards in English only, but never more than a few hours afterwards. In such cases, though every detail is preserved, the rendering is of course not actually literal. This, and the fact that there were several informants, will account for the difference of style between the various stories. I have appended to each story either the words "translated literally," or the words "written down from memory," together with the date and the name of the informant, in order that those who use the collection may know exactly what it is that they are handling. In all such matters, absolute accuracy, absolute literalness, wherever attainable, is surely the one thing necessary. Not all the charm of diction, not all the ingenious theories in the world, can for a moment be set in the balance against rigid exactness, even if some of the concomitants of rigid exactness are such as to spoil the subject for popular treatment. The truth, the stark naked truth, the truth without so much as a loin-cloth on, should surely be the investigator's sole aim when, having discovered a new set of facts, he undertakes to present them to the consideration of the scientific world.

Of course Aino tales, like other tales, may also be treated from a literary point of view. Some of the tales of the present collection, prettily ill.u.s.trated with pictures by j.a.panese artists, and altered, expurgated, and arranged _virginibus puerisque_, are at the present moment being prepared by Messrs. Ticknor & Co., of Boston, who thought with me that such a venture might please our little ones both in England and in the United States. But such things have no scientific value. They are not meant to have any. They are mere juvenile literature, whose English dressing-up has as little relation to the barbarous original as the Paris fas.h.i.+ons have to the anatomy of the human frame.

The present paper, on the contrary, is intended for the sole perusal of the anthropologist and ethnologist, who would be deprived of one of the best means of judging of the state of the Aino mind if the hideous indecencies of the original were omitted, or its occasional inept.i.tude furbished up. Aino mothers, lulling their babies to sleep, as they rock them in the cradle hung over the kitchen fire, use words, touch on subjects which we never mention; and that precisely is a noteworthy characteristic. The innocent savage is not found in Aino-land, if indeed he is to be found anywhere. The Aino's imagination is as prurient as that of any Zola, and far more outspoken. Pray, therefore, put the blame on him, if much of the language of the present collection is such as it is not usual to see in print. Aino stories and Aino conversation are the intellectual counterpart of the dirt, the lice, and the skin-diseases which cover Aino bodies.

For the four-fold cla.s.sification of the stories, no importance is claimed. It was necessary to arrange them somehow; and the division into "Tales Accounting for the Origin of Phenomena," "Moral Tales," "Tales of the Panaumbe and Penaumbe Cycle," and "Miscellaneous Tales," suggested itself as a convenient working arrangement. The "Sc.r.a.ps of Folk-Lore,"

which have been added at the end, may perhaps be considered out of place in a collection of tales. But I thought it better to err on the side of inclusion than on that of exclusion. For it may be presumed that the object of any such investigation is rather to gain as minute an acquaintance as possible with the mental products of the people studied, than scrupulously to conform to any system.

There must be a large number of Aino fairy-tales besides those here given, as the chief tellers of stories, in Aino-land as in Europe, are the women, and I had mine from men only, the Aino women being much too shy of male foreigners for it to be possible to have much conversation with them. Even of the tales I myself heard, several were lost through the destruction of certain papers,--among others at least three of the Panaumbe and Penaumbe Cycle, which I do not trust myself to reconstruct from memory at this distance of time. Many precious hours were likewise wasted, and much material rendered useless, by the national vice of drunkenness. A whole month at Hakodate was spoilt in this way, and nothing obtained from an Aino named Tomtare, who had been procured for me by the kindness of H. E. the Governor of Hakodate. One can have intercourse with men who smell badly, and who suffer, as almost all Ainos do, from lice and from a variety of disgusting skin-diseases. It is a mere question of endurance and of disinfectants. But it is impossible to obtain information from a drunkard. A third reason for the comparatively small number of tales which it is possible to collect during a limited period of intercourse is the frequency of repet.i.tions.

No doubt such repet.i.tions have a confirmatory value, especially when the repet.i.tion is of the nature of a variant. Still, one would willingly spare them for the sake of new tales.

The Aino names appended to the stories are those of the men by whom they were told to me, viz. Penri, the aged chief of Piratori; Ishanashte of Shumunkot; Kannariki of Poropet (j.a.p. Horobetsu); and Kuteashguru of Sapporo. Tomtare of Yurap does not appear for the reason mentioned above, which spoilt all his usefulness. The only mythological names which appear are Okikurumi, whom the Ainos regard as having been their civilizer in very ancient times, his sister-wife Turesh, or Tures.h.i.+[hi]

and his henchman Samayunguru. The "divine symbols," of which such constant mention is made in the tales, are the inao or whittled sticks frequently described in books of travels.

Basil Hall Chamberlain.

Miyanos.h.i.+ta, j.a.pan, 20th July, 1887.

I.--TALES ACCOUNTING FOR THE ORIGIN OF PHENOMENA.

i.--_The Rat and the Owl._[B]

An owl had put by for next day the remains of something dainty which he had to eat. But a rat stole it, whereupon the owl was very angry, and went off to the rat's house, and threatened to kill him. But the rat apologised, saying: "I will give you this gimlet and tell you how you can obtain from it pleasure far greater than the pleasure of eating the food which I was so rude as to eat up. Look here! you must stick the gimlet with the sharp point upwards in the ground at the foot of this tree; then go to the top of the tree yourself, and slide down the trunk."

Then the rat went away, and the owl did as the rat had instructed him.

But, sliding down on to the sharp gimlet, his a.n.u.s was transfixed, and he suffered great pain, and, in his grief and rage, went off to kill the rat. But again the rat met him with apologies, and, as a peace-offering, gave him a cap for his head.

These events account for the thick cap of erect feathers which the owl wears to this day, and also for the enmity between the owl and the rat.--(Written down from memory. Told by Ishanashte, 25th November, 1886.)

[B] The Aino name here used (_ahunrashambe_) denotes a horned species.

ii.--_The Loves of the Thunder-G.o.ds._

Two young thunder-G.o.ds, sons of the chief thunder-G.o.d, fell violently in love with the same Aino woman. Said one of them to the other, in a joking way: "I will become a flea, so as to be able to hop into her bosom." Said the other: "I will become a louse, so as to be able to stay always in her bosom."

"Are those your wishes?" cried their father, the chief thunder-G.o.d. "You shall be taken at your word"; and forthwith the one of them who had said he would become a flea was turned into a flea, while he who said he would become a louse was turned into a louse. Hence all the fleas and lice that exist at the present day.

This accounts for the fact that, whenever there is a thunder-storm, fleas jump out of all sorts of places where there were none to be seen before.--(Written down from memory. Told by Ishanashte, 27th November, 1886.)

iii.--_Why Dogs cannot speak._

Formerly dogs could speak. Now they cannot. The reason is that a dog, belonging to a certain man a long time ago, inveigled his master into the forest under the pretext of showing him game, and there caused him to be devoured by a bear. Then the dog went home to his master's widow, and lied to her, saying: "My master has been killed by a bear. But when he was dying he commanded me to tell you to marry me in his stead." The widow knew that the dog was lying. But he kept on urging her to marry him. So at last, in her grief and rage, she threw a handful of dust into his open mouth. This made him unable to speak any more, and therefore no dogs can speak even to this very day.--(Written down from memory. Told by Ishanashte, 29th November, 1886.)

iv.--_Why the c.o.c.k cannot fly._