Chapter 3

[40]Maspero,Contes Egyptiens, p. 33.

[41]Contes de Ma Mère L'Oye, p. 157.

Le Petit Chaperon Rouge.[42]

Little Red Riding Hood.

Perrault has not concealed the moral which he thought obvious in this brief narrative. There are wolves—

'Qui suivent les jeunes DemoisellesJusques dans les maisons, jusques dans les Ruelles!'

Racine, in an early letter, admits that he himself has been one of these wolves.

'Il faut être régulier avec les Réguliers, comme j'ai été loup avec vous, et avec les autres loups, vos compères.[43]'

But the nurses from whom Perrault or his little boy heardLe petit Chaperon Rougehad probably no such moral ideas as these. Theymayhave hinted at the undesirable practice of loitering when one is sent on an errand, but the punishment is out of all proportion to the offence. As it stands, the tale is merely meant to waken a child's terror and pity, and probably the narrator ends it by making a pounce, in the character of Wolf,c'est pour te manger, at the little listener. This was the correct 'business' in our old Scotch nurseries, when we were toldThe Cattie sits in the Kiln-Ring Spinning.

'By cam' a cattie and ate it a' up my loesome,Loesome Lady!And sae will I you—worrie, worrie, gnash, gnash,Said she, said she!'

'The old nurse's imitation of thegnash,gnash, which she played off upon the youngest urchin lying in her lap, was electric' (Chambers,Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1842, p. 54).

IfLittle Red Riding Hoodended, in all variants, where it ends in Perrault, we might dismiss it, with the remark that themachineryof the story is derived from 'the times when beasts spoke,' or were believed to be capable of speaking. But it is well known that in the German form,Little Red Cap(Grimm 26), the tale by no means ends with the triumph of the wolf. Little Red Cap and her grandmother are resuscitated, 'the wolf it was that died.' This may either have been the original end, omitted by Perrault because it was too wildly impossible for the nurseries of the time of Louis XIV, or children may have insisted on having the story 'turn out well.' In either case the GermanMärchenpreserves one of the most widely spread mythical incidents in the world,—the reappearance of living people out of the monster that has devoured them.

In literature, this incident first meets us in the myth of Cronus (Hesiod,Theog.497; Pausanias, x. 24), where Cronus disgorges his swallowed children alive, after gulping up the stone in swaddling bands which he had taken for Zeus, his youngest infant. He had previously dined on a young foal that he was assured his wife had just borne, when, in reality, the child was Poseidon. In this adventure Cronus united the mistake of the ogress mother-in-law, inLa Belle au Bois Dormant, who ate the kid in place of the Sleeping Beauty's boy, the adventure of the king who hears his wife has borne a beast-child, and the adventure of the Wolf who disgorges his prey alive. The local fancy of Arne in Arcadia had combined all these ideas ofMärcheninto one divine myth (Pausan. viii. 8, 2). It would be superfluous to enumerate here all the savage and civilised stories of beings first swallowed and then disgorged alive. A fabulous monster Kwai Hemm is the swallower in Bushman story. The Iqong qongqo takes therôleamong the Kaffirs. There are some five examples in Callaway'sZulu Nursery Tales.Nightis the swallower in Melanesia (Codrington,Journal Anthrop. Inst.Feb. 1881), while the Sun swallows the stars in a Piute myth. It is quite possible that a savage theory of Night swallowing and restoring Light, or of the Sun swallowing the stars, is the origin of the conception[44]. The Australians tell it in a shape not unlike Grimm's. The Eagle met the Moon and offered him some Kangaroo meat. The Moon ate up the Kangaroo, and then swallowed the Eagle. The wives of the Eagle met the Moon, who asked them the way to a spring. As he stooped to drink, they cut him open with a stone tomahawk, and extracted the Eagle, who came alive again[45]. In Germany it was with a pair of scissors that the Wolf was cut up, and he was then stuffed with stones (as in Grimm 5,The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids). The stones kill him inLittle Red Cap; in the German tale, their weight drags him into the well, where he, like the Australian Moon, wants to drink after his banquet. In Pomerania a ghost takes the Wolf'srôle, the stones are felt to be rather 'heavy' by the ghost, and the child escapes[46].

The whole story has been compared by M. Husson to the adventure of Vartika, whom the Asvins rescue from the throat of a wolf. Little Red Riding Hood thus becomes the Dawn. Vartika is a bird, the Quail, 'i.e. the returning bird. But as a being delivered by the Asvins, the representatives of Day and Night, Vartika can only be the returning Dawn, delivered from the mouth of the wolf, i. e. the dark night[47].'

It is hard to see why the Night, as one of the Asvins, should deliver the Dawn from the Night, as the Wolf. On the identification of the Asvins with this or that aspect of Light and Darkness, Muir may be consulted. 'This allegorical interpretation seems unlikely to be correct, as it is difficult to suppose that the phenomena in question should have been alluded to under such a variety of names and circumstances.' (Sanskrit Texts, v. 248. Prof. Goldstücker thinks the Asvins are themselves the crepuscular mingling of light and dark, which, in the other theory, is the struggle of quail and wolf,op. cit.v. 257. M. Bergaigne supposes that the Asvins are deities of dawn,La Religion Védique, ii. 431.)

These considerations lead us far enough from Perrault into 'worlds not realised.' Vartika (who, in these theories, answers toLe Petit Chaperon Rouge) has been compared by Mr. Max Müller, not only to the returning Dawn, but to the returning year,Vertumnus. He notes that the Greek word for quail isortyx, that Apollo and Artemis were born in Ortygia, an old name of Delos, and that 'here is a real traditional chain.' But 'it would be a bold assertion to say that the story ofRed Riding Hoodwas really a metamorphosis of an ancient story of the rosy-fingered Eos, or the Vedic Eos with her red horses, and that the two ends, Ushas and Rothkäppchen, are really held together by an unbroken traditional chain.'

We shall leave the courage of this opinion to M. Husson, merely observing that, as a matter of fact, Dawn isnotswallowed by Night. Sunset (which is red) is so swallowed, but then sunset is not 'a young maiden carrying messages,' like Red Riding Hood and Ushas. To be sure, the convenient Wolf is regarded by mythologists as 'a representative of the sun or of the night,' at will. He 'doubles the part,' and 'is the useful Wolf,' as the veteran Blenkinsopp, inPendennis, was called 'The useful Blenkinsopp.'

[42]Contes de Charles Perrault, Paris,s. a.p. lxiv. Perrault's love of refining is not idle inLe Chaperon Rouge. In thepopularversions, in Brittany and the Nièvre, the wolf puts the grandmother in the pot, and her blood in bottles, and makes the unconscious child eat and drink her ancestress! The cock or the robin redbreast warns her in vain, and she is swallowed. (Mélusine, May 5, 1887.)

[43]A. M. de la Fontaine, à Usez, le ii. Nov. 1661.

[44]Tylor,Prim. Cult.i. 338.

[45]Brough Smyth,Natives of Victoria, i. p. 432.

[46]Grimm, Note on 5.

[47]Max Müller'sSelected Essays, i. 565.

La Barbe Bleue.

Blue Beard.

The story of Blue Beard, as told by Perrault, is, of all his collection, the most apt to move pity and terror. It has also least of the supernatural. Here are no talking beasts, no fairies, nor ogres. Only the enchanted key isfée, orwakanas the Algonkins say, that is, possesses magical properties. In all else the story is a drama of daily and even of contemporary life, for Blue Beard has the gilded coaches and embroidered furniture of the seventeenth century, and his wife's brothers hold commissions in the dragoons and musketeers. The story relies for its interest on the curiosity of the wife (the moral motive), on the vision of the slain women, and on the suspense of waiting while Sister Anne watches from the tower. These simple materials, admirably handled, make up the terrible story ofBlue Beard.

Attempts have been made to find forBlue Beardan historical foundation. M. Collin de Plancy mentions a theory that the hero was a seigneur of the house of Beaumanoir (Œuvres Choisies de Ch. Perrault, p. 40, Paris, 1826). Others have fancied that Blue Beard was a popular version of the deeds of Gilles de Retz, the too celebrated monster of mediæval history, or of a more or less mythical Breton prince of the sixth century, Cormorus or Comorre, who married Sainte Trophime or Triphime, and killed her, as he had killed his other wives, when she was about to become a mother. She was restored to life by St. Gildas[48]. If there is a trace of theBlue Beardstory in the legend of the Saint, it does not follow that the legend is the source of the story. TheMärchenofPeau d'Anehas been absorbed into the legend of Sainte Dipne or Dympne, and the names of saints, like the names of gods and heroes in older faiths, had the power of attractingMärcheninto their cycle.

Blue Beardis essentially popular and traditional. The elements are found in countries where Gilles de Retz and Comorre and Sainte Triphime were never known. The leading idea, of curiosity punished, of the box or door which may not be opened, and of the prohibition infringed with evil results, is of world-wide distribution. In many countries this notion inspires the myths of the origin of Death[49]. In GermanMärchenthere are several parallels, more or less close, toBlue Beard(Grimm 3, 40, 46). InOur Lady's Child(3) the Virgin entrusts a little girl with keys of thirteen doors, of which she may only open twelve. Behind each door she found an apostle, behind the thirteenth the Trinity, in a glory of flame, like Zeus when he consumed Semele. The girl's finger became golden with the light, as Blue Beard's key was dyed with the blood. The child was banished from heaven, and her later adventures are on the lines of the falsely accused wife, like those of theBelle au Bois Dormant, with the Virgin for mother-in-law and with a repentance for a moral conclusion. In theRobber Bridegroomthere is a girl betrothed to a woman-slayer; she detects and denounces him, pretending, as in the old English tale, she is describing a dream. 'Like the old tale, my Lord, it is not so, nor 'twas not so; but indeed God forbid that it should be so[50].' Except for the 'larder' of the Robber, and of Mr. Fox in the English variant, these stories do not closely resembleBlue Beard. In Grimm'sFitcher's Bird(46) the resemblance is closer. A man, apparently a beggar, carries off the eldest of three sisters to a magnificent house, and leaves her with the keys, an egg, and the prohibition to open a certain door. She opens it, finds a block, an axe, a basin of blood, and the egg falling into the blood refuses to be cleansed. The man slays her, her second sister shares her fate, the third leaves the egg behind when she visits the secret room, and miraculously restores her sisters to life by reuniting their limbs. The same idea occurs in the Kaffir tale of the Ox (Callaway,Nursery Tales of the Zulus, p. 230). The rest of the story, with the escape from the monster, has no connection withBlue Beard, except that the wretch is put to death. Indeed, it would have been highly inconvenient for Blue Beard's surviving bride if the dead ladies had been resuscitated. Her legal position would have been ambiguous, and she could not have inherited the gold coaches and embroidered furniture. Grimm originally published another German form ofBlue Beard(62 in first edition), but withdrew it, being of opinion that it might have been derived from Perrault. The story of the Third Calender in theArabian Nights(Night 66) has nothing in common with Blue Beard but the prohibition to open a door.

In Italy[51]the Devil is the wooer, the closed door opens on hell: the rest, the adventures of three sisters, resembles Grimm'sFitcher's Bird, with a touch of humour. The Devil, seeing the resuscitated girls, is daunted by the idea of facing three wives, and decamps. He had no scruple, it will be seen, about marrying his deceased wife's sister. The Russian like the Oriental stories generally make a man indulge the fatal curiosity, and open the forbidden door. Mr. Ralston quotes from Löwe'sEsthnische Märchen(No. 20) a tale almost too closely like Perrault's. There is a sister, and the goose boy takes therôleof rescuer. M. de Gubernatis thinks that the key 'is perhaps the Moon!' (Zoological Mythology, 1. 168). In the Gaelic version the heroine is cleansed of blood by a grateful Cat, whose services her sisters had neglected (Campbell,Tales of West Highlands, No. 41). In theKatha Sarit Sagara(iii. p. 223) a hero, Saktideva, is forbidden to approach a certain palace terrace. He breaks the taboo, and finds three dead maidens in three pavilions. A horse then kicks him into a lake, and, whereas he had been in the Golden City, hard to win, he finds himself at home in Vardhamana. The affair is but an incident in the medley of incidents, some resembling passages in the Odyssey, which make up the story (compare Ralston's note,Russian Fairy Tales, p. 99).

From these brief analyses it will be plain that, in point of art, Perrault's tale has a great advantage over its popular rivals. It is at once more sober and more terrible, and (especially when compared with the confusion of incidents in theKatha Sarit Sagara) possesses an epical unity of idea and action.

In spite of this artistic character, Perrault's tale is clearly of popular origin, as the existence of variants in thefolkloreof other countries demonstrates. But the details are so fluctuating, that we need not hope to find in them memories of ancient myth, nor is it safe to follow M. André Lefèvre, when he thinks that, in the two avenging brothers, he recognises the Vedic Asvins.

[48]The passages in the legend of Sainte Triphime are quoted by M. Deulin,Contes de Ma Mère l'Oye, p. 178. See alsoAnnuaire Hist. et Arch. de Bretagne, Année 1862. The Saint has a warning vision of the dead wives, but not in consequence of opening a forbidden door.

[49]A partial collection of these will be found inLa Mythologie, Lang. Paris 1886. Australians, Ningphos, Greeks (Pandora's box), the Montaguais of Labrador (Relations de la Nouvelle France, 1634), the Odahwah Indians (Hind'sExplorations in Labrador, i. 61, note 2), are examples of races which believe death to have come into the world as the punishment of an infringed prohibition of this sort. The deathly swoon of Psyche, inThe Golden Assof Apuleius, when she has opened the pyx of Proserpine, is another instance.

[50]Compare Mrs. Hunt's note to Grimm, i. 389.

[51]Crane, p. 78.

Le Maistre Chat, ou le Chat Botté.

Puss in Boots.

Everybody knows Puss in Boots. He is, as Nodier says, the Figaro of the nursery, as Hop o' My Thumb is the Ulysses, and Blue Beard the Othello; and thus he is of interest to all children, and to all men who remember their childhood. Ulysses himself did not travel farther than the story of the patron of the Marquis de Carabas has wandered, and few things can be more curious than to follow the Master-Cat in his migrations. For many reasons the history ofPuss in Boots, though it has been rather neglected, throws a good deal of light on that very dark question, the diffusion of popular tales. As soon as we read it in Perrault, we find that Monsieur Perrault was at a loss for a moral to his narrative. In fact, as he tells it, there isnomoral to the Master-Cat. Puss is a perfectly unscrupulous adventurer who, for no reason but the fun of the thing, dubs the miller's son marquis, makes a royal marriage for him, by a series of amusing frauds, and finally enriches him with the spoils of a murdered ogre. In the absence of any moral Perrault has to invent one—which does not apply.

'Aux jeunes gens pour l'ordinaire,L'industrie et le savoir-faireValent mieux que des biens acquis.'

Now the 'young person,' the cat's master, had shown no 'industry' whatever, except in so far as he was achevalier d'industrie, thanks to his cat. These obvious truths pained Mr. George Cruikshank when he tried to illustratePuss in Boots, and found that the romance was quite unfit for the young. 'When I came to look carefully at that story, I feltcompelledto rewrite it, and alter the character of it to a certain extent, for, as it stood, the tale was a succession of successful falsehoods—acleverlesson in lying, a system ofimposturerewarded by the greatest worldly advantages. Ausefullesson, truly, to be impressed upon the minds of children.' So Mr. Cruikshank made the tale didactic, showing how the Marquis de Carabas was the real heir, 'kep' out of his own' by the landgrabbing ogre, and how puss was a gamekeeper metamorphosed into a cat as a punishment for his repining disposition. This performance of Mr. Cruikshank was denounced by Mr. Dickens inHousehold Wordsas a 'fraud on the fairies,' and 'the intrusion of a whole hog of unwieldy dimensions into the fairy flower-garden[52].'

The Master-Cat probably never made any child a rogue, but no doubt his conduct was flagrantly immoral. And this brings us to one of the problems of the science of nursery tales. When we find a story told by some peopleswitha moral, and by other peopleswithouta moral, are we to suppose that the tale was originally narrated for the moral's sake, and that the forms in which there isnomoral are degenerate and altered versions? For example, the Zulus, the Germans, the French, and the Hindoos have all a nursery tale in which someone, by a series of lucky accidents and exchanges, goes on making good bargains, and rising from poverty to wealth. In French Flanders this is the tale ofJean Gogué; in Grimm it isThe Golden Goose; in Zulu it is part of the adventures of the Hermes of Zulu myth, Uhlakanyana. In two of these the hero possesses some trifling article which is injured, and people give him something better in exchange, till, like Jean Gogué, for example, he marries the king's daughter[53]. Now these tales have no moral. The hero is thought neither better nor worse of because of his series of exchanges. But in modern Hindostan the storyhasa moral. The rat, whose series of exchanges at last win him a king's daughter, is held up to contempt as a warning to bargain-hunters. He is not happy with his bride, but escapes, leaving his tail, half his hair, and a large piece of his skin behind him, howling with pain, and vowing that 'never, never, never again would he make a bargain[54].' Here then is a tale told with a moral, andforthe moral in India, but with no moral in Zululand and France. Are we to suppose that India was the original source of the narrative, that it was a parable invented for the moral's sake, and that it spread, losing its moral (as the rat lost his tail), to Europe and South Africa? Or are we to suppose that originally the narrative was a mereSchwank, or popular piece of humour, and that the mild, reflective Hindoo moralised it into a parable or fable? The question may be argued either way; but the school of Benfey and M. Cosquin, holding that almost all our stories were invented in India, should prefer the former alternative.

NowPuss in Bootshas this peculiarity, that out of France, or rather out of the region influenced by Perrault's version of the history, a moral usually does inform the legend of the Master-Cat, or master-fox, or master-gazelle, or master-jackal, or master-dog, for each of these animals is the hero in different countries. Possibly, then, the story had originally what it sadly lacks in its best-known shape, a moral; and possiblyPuss in Bootswas in its primitive shape (likeToads and Diamonds) a novel with a purpose. But where was the novel first invented?

We are not likely to discover for certain the cradle of the race of the Master-Cat—the 'cat's cradle' ofPuss in Boots. But the record of his achievements is so well worth studying, because the possible area from which it may have arisen is comparatively limited.

There are many stories known all the world over, such as the major part of the adventures ofHop o' My Thumb, which might have been invented anywhere, and might have been invented by men in a low state of savagery. The central idea inHop o' My Thumb, for example, is the conception of a hero who falls into the hands of cannibals, and by a trick makes the cannibal slay, and sometimes eat, his own kinsfolk, mother, or wife, or child, while the hero escapes. This legend is well known in South Africa, in South Siberia, and in Aberdeenshire; and in Greece it made part of the Minyan legend of Athamas and Ino, murder being substituted for cannibalism. Namaquas, in Southern Africa; Eskimo, in Northern America, and Athenians (as Aeschylus shows in theEumenides, 244), are as familiar as Maoris, or any of us, with the ogre's favourite remark, 'I smell the smell of a mortal man.'

Now it is obvious that these ideas—the trick played by the hero on the cannibal, and the turning of the tables—might occur to the human mind wherever cannibalism was a customary peril: that is, among any low savages. It does not matter whether the cannibal is called arakshásain India, or anogrein France, or aweendigoin Labrador, the notion is the same, and the trick played by the hero is simple and obvious[55]. ThereforeHop o' My Thumbmay have been invented anywhere, by any people on a low level of civilisation. ButPuss in Bootscannot have been invented by savages of a very backward race or in a really 'primitive' age. The very essence ofPuss in Bootsis the sudden rise of a man, by aid of a cunning animal, from the depths of poverty to the summit of wealth and rank. Undeniably this rise could only occur where there were great differences of social status, where rank was a recognised institution, and where property had been amassed in considerable quantities by some, while others went bare as lackalls.

These things have been of the very essence of civilisation (the more's the pity), thereforePuss in Bootsmust have been invented by a more or less civilised mind; it could not have been invented by a man in the condition of the Fuegians or the Digger Indians. Nay, when we consider the stress always and everywhere laid in the story on snobbish pride and on magnificence of attire and equipment, and on retinue, we may conclude thatPuss in Bootscould hardly have been imagined by men in the middle barbarism; in the state, for example, of Iroquois, or Zulus, or Maoris. Nor are we aware thatPuss in Boots, in any shape, is found among any of these peoples. Thus the area in which the origin ofPuss in Bootshas to be looked for is comparatively narrow.

Puss in Boots, again, is a story which, in all its wonderfully varying forms, can only, we may assume, have sprung from one single mind. It is extremely difficult to assert with confidence that any plot can only have been invented once for all. Every new successful plot, fromDr. JekyltoShe, fromVice VersatoDean Maitland, is at once claimed for half a dozen authors who, unluckily, did not happen to writeSheorDr. Jekyl. But if there can be any assurance in these matters, we may feel certain that the idea of a story, wherein a young man is brought from poverty to the throne by aid of a match-making and ingenious beast, could only have been invented once for all. In that casePuss in Bootsis a story which spread from one centre, and was invented by one man in a fairly civilised society. True, he used certain hereditary and establishedformulæ; the notion of a beast that can talk, and surprises nobody (except in the Zanzibar version) by this accomplishment, is a notion derived from the old savage condition of the intellect, in which beasts are on a level with, or superior to, humanity. But we can all use theseformulænow that we possess them. Could memory of past literature be wholly wiped out, while civilisation still endured, there would be no talking and friendly beasts in the children's tales of the next generation, unless the children wrote them for themselves. As Sainte-Beuve says, 'On n'inventerait plus aujourd'hui de ces choses, si elles n'avaient été imaginées dès longtemps[56].'

If we are to get any light on the first home of the tale—and we cannot get very much—it will be necessary to examine its different versions. There is an extraordinary amount of variety in the incidents subordinate to the main idea, and occasionally we find a heroine instead of a hero, a Marquise de Carabas, not a marquis. Perhaps the best plan will be to start with the stories near home, and to pursue puss, if possible, to his distant original tree. First, we all know him in English translations, made as early as 1745, if not earlier, of Perrault'sMaître Chat, ou Chat botté, published in 1696-7. Here his motives are simple fun and friendliness. His master, who owns no other property, thinks of killing and skinning puss, but the cat prefers first to make acquaintance with the king, by aid of presents of game from an imaginary Marquis de Carabas; then to pretend his master is drowning and has had his clothes stolen (thereby introducing him to the king in a court suit, borrowed from the monarch himself); next to frighten people into saying that the Marquis is theirseigneur; and, finally, to secure a property for the Marquis by swallowing an ogre, whom he has induced to assume the disguise of a mouse. This last trick is as old as Hesiod[57], where Zeus persuades his wife to become a fly, and swallows her.

The next neighbour of the FrenchPuss in Bootsin the north is found in Sweden[58]and in Norway[59]. In the Swedish, a girl owns the cat. They wander to a castle gate, where the cat bids the girl strip and hide in a tree; he then goes to the castle and says that his royal mistress has been attacked by robbers. The people of the palace attire the girl splendidly, the prince loses his heart to her, the queen-mother lays traps for her in vain. Nothing is so fine in the castle as in the girl's château of Cattenburg. The prince insists on seeing that palace, the cat frightens the peasants into saying that all the land they pass is the girl's; finally, the cat reaches a troll's house, with pillars of gold. The cat turns himself into a loaf of bread and holds the troll in talk till the sun rises on him and he bursts, as trolls always do if they see the sun. The girl succeeds to the troll's palace, and nothing is said as to what became of the cat.

Here is even less moral than inPuss in Boots, for the Marquis of Carabas, as M. Deulin says, merely lets the cat do all the tricks, whereas the Swedish girl is his active accomplice. The change of the cat into bread (which can talk), and the bursting of the ogre at dawn, are very ancient ideas, whether they have been tacked later on to theconteor not. InLord Peterthe heroine gives place to a hero, while the cat drives deer to the palace, saying that they come from Lord Peter. The cat, we are not told how, dresses Lord Peter in splendid attire, kills a troll for him, and then, as in Madame d'Aulnoy'sWhite Cat, has its head cut off and becomes a princess. Behold how fancies jump! All the ogre's wealth had been the princess's, before the ogre changed her into a cat, and took her lands. Thus George Cruikshank's moral conclusion is anticipated, while puss acts as a match-maker indeed, but acts for herself. This form of the legend, if not immoral, has no moral, and has been mixed up either with Madame d'Aulnoy'sChatte Blanche, or with the popular traditions from which she borrowed.

Moving south, but still keeping near France, we findPuss in Bootsin Italy. The tale is told by Straparola[60]. A youngest son owns nothing but a cat which, by presents of game, wins the favour of a king of Bohemia. The drowning trick is then played, and the king gives the cat's master his daughter, with plenty of money. On the bride's journey to her new home, the cat frightens the peasants into saying all the land belongs to his master, for whom he secures the castle of a knight dead without heirs.

Here, once more, there is no moral.

In a popular version from Sicily[61], a fox takes the cat's place,from motives of gratitude, because the man found it robbing and did not kill it. The fox then plays the usual trick with the game, and another familiar trick, that of leaving a few coins in a borrowed bushel measure to give the impression that his master does notcount, but measures out his money. The trick of frightening the peasants follows, and finally, an ogress who owns a castle is thrown down a well by the fox. Then comes in the new feature: theman is ungrateful and kills the fox; nevertheless he lives happy ever after.

Now, at last, we have reached the moral. A beggar on horseback will forget his first friend:a man will be less grateful than a beast.

This moral declares itself, with a difference (for the ingrate is coerced into decent behaviour), in a popular French version, taken down from oral recitation[62].

Here, then, even among the peasantry of Perrault's own country, and as near France as Sicily, too, we havePuss in Bootswith a moral: that of human ingratitude contrasted with the gratitude of a beast. May we conclude, then, thatPuss in Bootswas originally invented as a kind of parable by which this moral might be inculcated? And, if we may draw that conclusion, where is this particular moral most likely to have been invented, and enforced in an apologue?

As to the first of these two questions, it may be observed that the story with the moral, and with a fox in place of a cat, is found among the Avars, a Mongolian people of Mussulman faith, on the northern slopes of the Caucasus. Here the man is ungrateful, but the fox, as in Sicily, coerces him, in this case by threatening to let out the story of his rise in life[63]. In Russia, too, a fox takes the cat'srôle, and the part of the ogre is entrusted to the Serpent Uhlan, a supernatural snake, who is burned to ashes[64].

It is now plain that the tale with the moral, whether that was the original motive or not, is more common than the tale without the moral. We find the moral among French, Italians, Avars, Russians; among people of Mahommedan, Greek, and Catholic religion. Now M. Emmanuel Cosquin is inclined to believe that the moral—the ingratitude of man contrasted with the gratitude of beasts,—is Buddhistic. If that be so, then India is undeniably the original cradle ofPuss in Boots. But M. Cosquin has been unable to find anyPuss in Bootsin India; at least he knew none in 1876, when he wrote on the subject inLe Français(June 29, 1876). Nor did the learned Benfey, with all his prodigious erudition, know an IndianPuss in Boots[65]. Therefore the proof of this theory, that Buddhistic India may be the real cat's cradle, is incomplete; nor does it become more probable when we actually do discoverPuss in Bootsin India. For in the IndianPuss in Boots, just as in Perrault's,there is no moral at all, and the notion of gratitude, on either the man's side or the beast's, is not even suggested.

There could scarcely be a more disappointing discovery than this for the school of Benfey which derives ourfairy talesfrom Buddhism and India. First, the tale which we are discussing certainly did not find a place in thePantschatantra, theHitopadesa, or any other of the early Indian literary collections ofMärchenwhich were translated into so many Western languages. Next, the story does not present itself, for long, to European students of living Indianfolklore. Finally, when pussisfound in India, where the moral element (if it was the original element, and if its origin was in Buddhist fancy) should be particularly well preserved, there is not any moral whatever.

The IndianPuss in Bootsis calledThe Match-making Jackal, and was published, seven years after M. Cosquin had failed to find it, in the Rev. Lal Behari Day'sFolk Tales of Bengal(Macmillan). Mr. Day, of the Hooghly College, is a native gentleman well acquainted with Europeanfolklore. Some of the stories in his collection were told by a Bengali Christian woman, two by an old Brahman, three by an old barber, two by a servant of Mr. Day's, and the rest by another old Brahman. Unluckily, the editor does not say which tales he got from each contributor. It might therefore be argued thatThe Match-making Jackalwas perhaps told by the Christian woman, and that she adapted it fromPuss in Boots, which she might have heard told by Christians. Mr. Day will be able to settle this question; but it must be plain to any reader ofThe Match-making Jackalthat the story, as reported, is too essentially Hindoo to have been 'adapted' in one generation. It is not impossible that a literary Scandinavian might have introduced the typically Norse touches into the NorsePuss in Boots, but no illiterate woman of Bengal could have made Perrault's puss such a thoroughly Oriental jackal as the beast in the story we are about to relate.

There was once a poor weaver whose ancestors had been wealthy men. The weaver was all alone in the world, but a neighbouring jackal, 'remembering the grandeur of the weaver's forefathers, had compassion on him.' This was pure sentiment on the jackal's part; his life had not been spared, as in some European versions, by the weaver. There was no gratitude in the case. 'I'll try to marry you,' said the jackal, off-hand, 'to the daughter of the king of this country.' The weaver said, 'Yes, when the sun rises in the west.' But the jackal had his plan. He trotted off to the palace, many miles away, and on the road he plucked quantities of the leaves of the betel plant. Then he lay down at the entrance of the tank where the princess bathed twice a day, and began ostentatiously chewing betel-leaves. 'Why,' said the princess, 'what a rich land this jackal must have come from. Here he is chewing betel, a luxury that thousands of men and women among us cannot afford.' The princess asked the jackal whence he came, and he said he was the native of a wealthy country. 'As for our king, his palace is like the heaven of Indra; your palace here is a miserable hovel compared to it.' So the princess told the queen, who at once, and most naturally, asked the jackal if his king were a bachelor. 'Certainly,' said the jackal, 'he has rejected princesses from all parts.' So the queen saidshehad a pretty daughter, stillzu haben, and the jackal promised to try to persuade his master to think of the princess. The jackal returned on his confidential mission, telling the weaver to follow his instructions closely. He went back to court, and suggested that his master should come in a private manner, not in state, as his retinue would eat up the substance of his future father-in-law. He returned and made the weaver borrow a decent suit of clothes from the washermen. Then he made interest with the king of the jackals, the paddy-birds, and the crows, each of whom lent a contingent of a thousand beasts or birds of their species. When they had all arrived within two miles of the palace, the jackal bade them yell and cry, which they did so furiously that the king supposed an innumerable company of people were attending his son-in-law. He therefore implored the jackal to ask his master to come quite alone. 'My master will come alone in undress,' said the jackal; 'send a horse for him.' This was done, and the jackal explained that his master arrived in mean clothes that he might not abash the king by his glory and splendour. The weaver held his tongue as commanded, but at night his talk was of looms and beams, and the princess detected him. The jackal explained that his philanthropic prince was establishing a colony of weavers, and that his mind ran a good deal on this benevolent project.

Here thePuss in Bootscharacter of the tale disappears. The weaver and the princess go home, but the jackal doesnotcajole anyone out of a castle and lands. He has made the match, and there he leaves it. The princess, however, has fortunately a magical method of making gold, by virtue of which she builds the weaver a splendid palace, and 'hospitals were established for diseased, sick, and infirm animals,' a very Indian touch. The king visits his daughter, is astonished at her wealth, and the jackal says, 'Did I not tell you so?'

Here, as we said, there is no moral, or if any moral, it is the gratitude of man, as displayed in founding hospitals for beasts, not, as M. Cosquin says, 'l'idée toute bouddhique de l'ingratitude de l'homme opposée à la bonté native de l'animal.' Plainly, if any moral was really intended, it was a satire on people who seek great marriages, just as in the story ofThe Rat's Wedding, the moral is a censure on bargain-hunters.

The failure of the only IndianPuss in Bootswe know to establish a theory of an Indian origin, does not, of course, prove a negative. We can only say that puss certainly did not come from India to Europe by the ordinary literary vehicles, and that, when he is found in India, he does not preach what is called the essentially Buddhist doctrine of the ingratitude of man and the gratitude of beasts.

There remains, however, an Eastern form of the tale, an African version, which is of morality all compact. This is the Swahili version from Zanzibar, and it is printed asSultan Darai, in Dr. Steere'sSwahili Tales, as told by Natives of Zanzibar(Bell and Daldy, London, 1870). If a tale first arose where it is now found to exist with most moral, with most didactic purpose, thenPuss in Bootsis either Arab or Negro, or a piece in which Negroes and Arabs have collaborated. For nowhere is theconteso purposeful as among the Swahilis, who are by definition 'men of mixed Negro and Arab origin.' There may be Central African elements in the Swahili tales, for most of them have 'sung parts,' almost unintelligible even to the singers. 'I suppose,' says Dr. Steere, 'they have been brought down from the interior by the slaves, and perhaps corrupted by them as they gradually forgot their own language.' Thus Central Africa may have contributed to the Swahili stories, but the SwahiliPuss in Boots, as it at present exists, has been deeply modified by Mussulman ideas.

Sultan Darai, the SwahiliPuss in Boots, really contains two tales. The first is about a wicked step-mother; the second begins when the hero, losing his wife and other kinsfolk, takes to vicious courses, and becomes so poor that he passes his time scratching for grains of millet on the common dustheap. While thus scratching he finds a piece of money, with which he buys a gazelle. The gazelle has pity on him, and startles him by saying so: 'Almighty God is able to do all things, to make me to speak, and others more than I.' The story comes, therefore, through narrators who marvel, as in the fairy world nobody does marvel, at the miracle of a speaking beast.

The gazelle, intent on helping the man, finds a splendid diamond, which he takes to the sultan, just as puss took the game, as 'a present from Sultan Darai.' The sultan is much pleased; the gazelle proposes that he shall give his daughter to Sultan Darai, and then comes the old trick of pretending the master has been stripped by robbers, 'even to his loin-cloth.' The gazelle carries fine raiment to his master, and, as in the French popular and traditional form, bids him speak as little as may be. The marriage is celebrated, and the gazelle goes off, and kills a great seven-headed snake, which, as in Russia, is the owner of a rich house. The snake, as he travels, is accompanied (as in the Kaffir story ofFive Heads) by a storm of wind, like that which used to shake the 'medicine lodges' of the North American Indians, puzzling the missionaries. The snake, like the ogre in allHop o' My Thumbtales, smells out the gazelle, but is defeated by that victorious animal. The gazelle brings home his master, Sultan Darai, and the Princess to the snake's house, where they live in great wealth and comfort.

Now comes in the moral: the gazelle falls sick, Sultan Darai refuses to see it, orders coarse food to be offered it; treats his poor benefactor, in short, with all the arrogant contempt of an ungrateful beggar suddenly enriched. As the ill-used cat says in thePentamerone—

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