This class of stories, embracing nearly one-third of those represented inTable B, is much the most interesting, not only as scattered over a far wider area than the others, but also, made up as it is partly of stories within the true Perseuscycle, and partly of stories beyond it, because several of the stories present problems of difficulty and importance. The direct derivation of the Tuscan tale already referred to from the classical legend may be assumed. In it the mirror, replacing the classical shield, is given by two old women, who are the degraded representatives of the Graiai. The same incident is found in another form in a Norwegian tale given by Asbjörnsen, where the hero steals the single eye of each of three one-eyed hags successively, and thus succeeds in wresting from them a magical sword, a magical ship, and the art, equally magical, of brewing one hundred lasts of malt in one brew. It is curious that this highly barbarous incident has not been recovered elsewhere. We cannot suppose the direct descent of the Norwegian tale from the classical, since the remaining incidents are so different. But it is, of course, possible that during the numerous Norse raids in the Middle Ages the incident may have been picked up by Wicking adventurers, and carried home from the Mediterranean shores with other spoils to Scandinavia, where it became imbedded in a native tale recognised in other respects as similar, and there replaced some equivalent incident. The conjecture cannot be rated very highly; and alternative modes of transmission will naturally present themselves to the reader. On the whole, however, transmission of the incident, not of the entire story, seems best to account for the facts.164.1
The only two variants of the Perseus group recovered from the East belong to this class. Somadeva’s tale of Indívarasena has already been abstracted at length.165.1Its divergencies from the type to which it belongs are striking—so striking that we cannot postulate transmission from Europe without conceding such alterations on the way as almost to disguise it out of all recognition. On the other hand, it is even harder to suppose that any European version can derive its origin from either theKathá-sarit-Ságaraor from the oral narrative worked up into Somadeva’s rhetorical periods. Let us examine the other Eastern variant. It is found in Cambodia, and has been published since the first volume of this inquiry was issued. Its heroes are not described as twins, though children of the same parents, and nearly of the same age. From their childhood they were, like the heroes of many Westernmärchen, incurably idle. To avoid being put to work, they left home together. A magician gives them two enchanted sabres, either of which will vanquish a whole army. Moreover, if one of the youths die, the sabre of the other will rust; and by means of it the dead youth can be brought back to life. These gifts they accept, though almost too lazy to carry them. They reach a city in mourning on account of the depredations of two yaks, winged monsters which have devoured already more than twenty of the king’s children, and have now demanded the last of them,his beautiful daughter, Neang (Miss) Pou. In vain the king had kindly offered them the daughter of one of his subjects in her place. They insisted on having Pou, and threatened terrible misfortunes on both the people and the king if he refused. Compelled by the prayers of his subjects, he had therefore caused poor Pou to be conducted to the house where the ogres were wont to hold their banquets of royal flesh. The brothers, passing through the city, arrived at the yaks’ house, and lay down to sleep away the heat of the day, in spite of the princess’ warnings. While they were talking to her the yaks drew nigh, and the whirr of their enormous wings resounded above the house. The princess fainted from terror, while the brothers addressed themselves to the fight, and with their enchanted weapons speedily laid the monsters low. After the fight they took the trouble to restore the princess to consciousness, but, too lazy to take her home, rambled forth again. The king, meanwhile, sent two officers to gather up her bones for burial. These men, finding the yaks dead, dipped their staves in the blood, reported to their master that they had slain the monsters, and demanded a reward. Two other mandarins were then sent to find the lady’s bones and tresses; and after some search they found her alive, and hidden in the brushwood beside the road. She refused to return to a father who had so cruelly given her up to be eaten, until he went himself mounted on the royal elephant, and forced her into the palanquin he had brought for the purpose. The king then proposed to give her in marriage to one of the mandarins who pretended to have killed the yaks; but when she told her father the facts, he sent to find the brothers, who were her true deliverers. They refused to go back with the messengers; they were too lazy;and, armed as they were, they repudiated allegiance to the king, and laughed at the threat of compulsion. However, the bodies of the yaks were unburied; they poisoned the air; and even a thousand men were unable to remove them. Nay, all the inhabitants were requisitioned, and an attempt with ten thousand proved unsuccessful in stirring one of the corpses. The brothers had not left the country, and they were incommoded by the terrible odour. Wherefore at last they offered their services, which were gladly accepted. A single touch of their sabres made a great hole in the earth, into which they pushed the yaks, and with another touch threw back the soil and covered them over. The elder brother then weds the princess, while the other sets forth on his travels again, taking the precaution, at his brother’s request, to sow along his path the seeds of a certain rare tree, to show the way he has gone. The adventurer arrives at a depopulated city, where he is attacked by a troop of gigantic birds, and overcomes them only after a fearful fight. Then he sat down to rest on a gong which he found lying in an inner court of the palace, and from a hole in which an agreeable perfume arose. He had not sat there more than an instant, when he was pricked from beneath. He jumped up and examined his seat, but could find nothing but the small hole he had noticed before. So he sat down again. Again he was pricked. He jumped up once more, and taking his sabre he clove the gong in two, when to his astonishment a lovely girl emerged, magnificently clad, and shedding around her a delicious perfume. This leads to explanations. She is called the Maiden of the Scented Locks, and is the king’s daughter. The dreadful birds he had slain had devastated the kingdom, and her father had shut her up in the gong to carryher away to a place of safety. She excused herself for pricking her deliverer because he had sat down on the hole which gave her air, and she was being stifled. The people, who had fled away, by-and-by returned—all save the maiden’s father. He had deserved the misfortunes and desolation of the country, and he returned no more. The younger brother accordingly married the Maiden of the Scented Locks, and they became king and queen. One day the queen’s favourite waiting-woman was carried away by the current of the river while bathing. She was not, however, drowned; and ultimately she was made attendant on the leprous king of a neighbouring country. From her the leper learns about her mistress of the Scented Locks. Here we have, in a rationalistic form, the incident familiar to us in the Egyptian tale ofThe Two Brothers. The leprous king offers to make his attendant (woman though she was) viceroy if she will only get him the Lady of the Scented Locks. The temptation was too great for her. She returned to her former mistress; and, received by her with joy, she watched her opportunity to murder the king by touching him with his own enchanted sabre. To divert the widow from her grief, she induces her to walk along the river-bank, and to board a trading junk for the purpose of looking at the silks and other merchandise it contains. But the trade was a sham; and before she knew it, the hapless queen was far away down the river, in the hands of the servants of the leprous king. All this time the elder brother was often wondering what had become of his cadet since he departed. One day he found the blade of his sabre rusted, and knew that his brother was dead. Setting out in search of him, he soon found his realm and his tomb. With his magical sabre he openedthe tomb, and brought his brother back to life. Then both, disguising themselves with long beards and old garments, set out for the capital of the leprous king. Announcing themselves as able to cure leprosy, they are conducted to the monarch. The treacherous favourite has extorted a promise from the widowed Lady of the Scented Locks to yield to the desires of the king if his leprosy be cured; for leprosy is well known to be an incurable disease. By directions of the pretended physicians a house is built right in the middle of the river; and there they induce the king to put himself under a shower-bath, with which they are to mingle some drops from a bottle containing an infallible remedy. Instead of curing him, they scald him to death. They fling off their disguise, deliver the younger brother’s queen, and conquer the kingdom by means of their sabres. The treacherous favourite is not put to death, but simply banished; and the others live happy ever after.169.1
This tale presents more than one point of interest. Save that the brothers are two (instead of three, as in so large a number of European variants), and that the magical weapon is a sword, it bears hardly any material resemblance to Somadeva’s tale. It comprises three out of the four cardinal incidents of the cycle (though the Medusa-witch appears much modified), as well as the secondary incidents of the Gift of Weapons and the Impostor; yet without attaining any very close similarity in the manner of its telling to the European tales. To its most striking peculiarity I have already referred, namely, the incorporation of an incident found in the tale ofThe Two Brothers. The form of the incident in the Cambodian is obviously much later than inthe Egyptian story. The comic scene of the Lady in the gong is a tolerably good guarantee that, by whatever route the incident arrived in Cambodia and became annexed to the tale, it was conveyed not by literary means, but by oral tradition. Other parts of the story betray Indian influence;170.1but so far as I know, the Lady of the Scented Locks has never yet been discovered in Hindustan. A near kinsman, however, appears in amärchentold by the Santals, where the hero has hair twelve cubits long. He sat down one day to dress it on the river-bank. “In combing his tangled tresses a quantity was wrenched out; this he wrapped up in a leaf and threw into the stream. It was carried by the current a great distance down to where a raja’s daughter and her companions were bathing. The raja’s daughter saw the leaf floating towards her, and ordered one of her attendants to bring it to her. When the leaf was opened it was found to contain hair twelve cubits in length. Immediately after measuring the hair the raja’s daughter complained of fever, and hasted home to her couch.” The long and short of the matter, of course, was that she had fallen in love with the unseen owner of the hair; and her father was compelled to search all over the world for him that she might marry him.170.2Upon this it is to be observed that the story,of which I have given only a single incident, is, as we should expect, much more savage than the Cambodian tale, and that it could not have influenced the latter. But it points to some such incident as that of the lost lock being, like the lost slipper, part of the story-plasm out of which the folk-tales of the eastern world have been evolved. The special form of the incident in M. Leclère’s tale renders probable its transmission somehow from Egypt—in the absence, that is, of any evidence of a more archaic shape from which alike the Egyptian and the Cambodian incidents with their peculiarities could have been derived. This does not necessarily involve the transmission of the entire story from Egypt, where neither in ancient nor in modern times have we found any variant from which it could have been descended. But it does smooth the way for us to accept the probability that the entire tale was transmitted from the West; and so far as it goes it is evidence against its oriental origin.
Hitherto we have not reached any very definite results in our quest. InTables AandBI have exhibited the distribution of the stories containing either the Helpful Animals or the Magical Weapons. If these tables establish anything, it is that the greater number of the modern members of the Perseus group are independent of the classical legend. In an overwhelmingly large proportion of cases the Helpful Animals and the Magical Weapons are obtained in some other than the classical way, and usually they are congenital. In the tables account is taken not only of stories including two or more of the chief incidents, and therefore reckoned as properly members of the cycle, but also of those which only contain the incident of the Rescue of Andromeda. If we reckon the former alone,the proportion is greatly increased. The total number of cases inTables AandBrespectively will then be reduced to 65 and 39; while of these, the cases in which the Helpful Animals and the Weapons are respectively congenital will be 42 and 22, or 65 and 56 per cent. Both the Helpful Animals and the Weapons are indeed subordinate incidents in the story; but they are incidents, especially when congenital, which are important enough to influence its entire development. The stories in which horses, dogs, and lances are congenital with the heroes cannot be derived from the classical legend; and although some of the ancient variants are known to connect a fish with the demi-god, Perseus, we have no means of ascertaining whether anything corresponding to these animals and weapons was included in any of them.
The independence of the classical legend and most of the modern variants is confirmed by another test. There is no feature more marked in the modern stories than that of the Impostor and the Tokens. Of the Impostor we find a trace in antiquity, but none of the Tokens. It is true that another classical story, located at Megara, mentions both. It is preserved by the scholiast upon Apollonius Rhodius, who attributes it to Derichidas, the historian of Megara. Alkathoos, the son of Pelops, we are told, having been exiled for the murder of Chrysippe, encountered on the territory of Megara a lion which desolated the country, and which the king had commissioned some of his subjects to destroy. Alkathoos after a fight succeeded in killing the animal. Thereupon he cut out its tongue, which he placed in his wallet, and proceeded to Megara. But the men whom the king had sent against the brute claimed the honour of the victory; nor were they convicted of the impostureuntil Alkathoos in the king’s presence drew forth the tongue. The king offered the tongue in sacrifice to the gods, and gave his daughter Euaichme in marriage to Alkathoos, who ultimately succeeded him upon the throne.173.1Now it is fairly certain that this striking incident could never have been part of the ancient legend of Perseus, otherwise it would have come down to us in one or other of the classical writers. But not only is it absent from the versions of Ovid and Lucian; another account, mentioned by the mythographer Hyginus, points in a diametrically opposite direction. He calls the betrothed of Andromeda, Agenor, and declares that when Perseus wished to take Andromeda away, her father, Cepheus, and Agenor, attempted secretly to murder him, and were turned with their followers to stone by the exhibition of the Gorgon’s head.173.2This is more inconsistent with the modern variants than Ovid’s narrative.
So far, then, our results are the same; and it can only be claimed that the modern stories are at most (with the exception of a few variants) derived from a common stock with the classical legend. But it may be suggested that the former have been contaminated by the local tradition of Megara. The possibility of such contamination cannot be denied. An examination, however, ofTable Cfails to disclose any sure ground for believing it probable. For it will be observed that of the stories properly belonging to the cycle, upwards of fifty-two per cent. give the tongues aloneas the tokens of identity; while, if we reckon the tales wherein the tongues are found, either alone or in combination with other tokens, we reach more than seventy per cent. And they are by no means confined to countries and nationalities which have come directly under classical influence, but seem to be scattered impartially over the whole of Europe. A less certain mark of contamination, but not without some value, is the character of the impostors. In the Megaran tradition they were the men whom the king had commissioned to slay the lion; therefore of the class of warriors or nobles. In stories properly belonging to the cycle less than thirty-two per cent. of the impostors come under this description, including all cases where vague description may mean any servant of the king other than menial, whereas fifty per cent. are charcoal-burners, coachmen, gipsies, and members of other despised classes. What is most remarkable is that an overwhelming proportion of the cases in which the impostors may be considered as of the class indicated in the Megaran tradition are found in lands beyond the direct classical influence. In the Balkan peninsula and the Greek islands, in Italy, Spain, and France, the all but invariable impulse of the story-teller is to degrade the impostor in rank and to render him physically, as well as morally, repellent. If all the stories, both within the Perseus group and beyond it, be taken into the calculation, the results will not be found very different. It would seem, therefore, that, to whatever cause we must ascribe the remarkable uniformity of the incident in the folk-tales of Europe, the evidence hardly warrants us in attributing it to contamination by the one local legend of Megara.174.1
Turning for a moment to the saga forms assumed by the Rescue incident, there is one instance wherein contamination by a local legend may have taken place, though to an altogether smaller extent. All our information points to an eastern origin for the legend of Saint George. I have already discussed the cause of the appropriation of the Rescue incident to the Christian martyr; and I need not repeat what was then said. Mr. Baring-Gould’s theory ascribes the tale to a misunderstanding of the words of a definite hagiologist. Whether we accept that theory or not, the only difference will be one of date at which the legend became current; it will not alter the geographical direction in which we must look for its origin. As preserved in some of the songs and legends of the Balkan peoples, it shows traces of being affected by the story, handed down to us by Diodorus Siculus and by Tzetzes the scholiast, of the Rescue of Hesione by Herakles. “Troyan, the white city” of the Bosnian ballad, inevitably recalls to us the Troy of Laomedon. Diodorus knew nothing of the version preserved by Tzetzes, which represents the slaughter of the monster as effected from the inside; or, if he did, he suppressed it, either as less probable or less artistic. It is clear from the story of Kleostratos recorded by Pausanias, and from the ancient vase referred to in a note on an earlier page,175.1that the incident of a dragon-slaughter was currentin antiquity in both forms. It may be suggested that, with growth in civilisation, the fight face to face gradually superseded the ruder notion of the hero being swallowed and fighting his way forth from the serpent’s belly. Probably, therefore, the feat ascribed to Saint George in Bosnian song and Bulgarian legend is that of Herakles, rather than that of Perseus contaminated by that of Herakles. The tale of Troy was, like the story of Perseus, much more than a local legend. It was the common property of the classical world, and may well have formed part of the inheritance of all the Balkan nations. The intrusive barbarians who settled from time to time during the decadence of the empire about the Danube and the Balkans, must also have had their legends of dragon-slaying, whose essential identity with those of the original population would be recognised. The confusion thus caused would render it all the easier to substitute a new hero consecrated by religion, and consequently having claims upon belief which the older heroes had ceased to wield. Yet the previous details would not be all effaced; and in such as were preserved we should find evidence of the double procession. Thus the interference of “the thundering Elijah” bears witness to Slavonic influences, for Elijah as a saint is but a Christian disguise of the pagan Slavonic thunder-god. In the same way the name of Troyan enables us to say which of the classical Rescue legends it is that has been worked up, with the Slavonic tradition, into the ballad of Saint George. The names and special details connected with the feat of Perseus are conspicuously absent.
We need not, however, conclude that everywhere the legends and songs concerning Saint George embodied the saga of Hermione rather than that of Andromeda. Thegenerally accepted ecclesiastical version laid the scene of the conflict at a town of Libya, which would assuredly point to the latter; while the local traditions whereof the martial saint is hero indicate anything but descent from a story told of so famous a city as Troy. Nor must we leave out of view the probability that in antiquity, as in modern times, beside the sagas fitted with names of heroes and of places, there was current a variety ofmärchen, similar in plot, and to some extent in detail, ready to be adapted to any names which might happen to lay hold of the popular fancy. Such might easily infect the legend of Saint George while it was taking shape among the folk, and as yet no version had acquired preponderant authority, and thus form variants either of local, or, if fortune smiled upon them, of more than local, acceptance.
But this christianised saga was not quite the only form of the Rescue story known during the Middle Ages. Cuchulainn’s fight with the Fomori was told as early as the legend of Saint George, if not indeed earlier. I have already noted its remarkable resemblance to the corresponding incident inmärchenof theHerdsmantype—a highly specialised type, differing considerably from any form of the classical story, and peculiar to the west of Europe. We have no direct evidence as to the date when the stories of theHerdsmantype arose; but it will be recollected that there is reason to think the type belongs to the Celto-Iberian race, and therefore is of prehistoric age. Nor will the reader fail to note that the Rescue of Devorgoil from the Fomori appears to be an offshoot of the same type, that it is found among one of the branches of the same Celto-Iberian race, and that it is one of the oldest—nay, perhaps, the oldest—post-classical variant in Europe of the Perseusgroup. All these considerations make for its independence of the classical tale; and their cumulative weight may fairly be called decisive.
It has been contended, and it may be thought, that we should look for evidence of transmission rather to the general identity and sequence of the main incidents than to the recurrence of trivial details. An able and well-known writer, criticising M. Bédier’s use of special accessories as a test of transmission, has lately traversed its validity as applied to folklore. “It is obviously derived,” he says, “from considerations current in literary criticism, as might be expected from M. Bédier’s training. His method is exactly the process by which literary critics prove the derivation of one species ofmss.from an archetype, or affiliate a translation in one language to its original in another. Minute and unimportant accessories,e.g.the form of a proper name, are just the tests in such cases. But with oral tradition, with transmission in folklore, I would exactly reverse the process and adopt M. Bédier’s test”—namely, similarity in the general idea—“as a proof of such transmission.”178.1
If Mr. Jacobs be a disciple of M. Cosquin, he here diverges widely from his master, who has rightly insisted on the value of trivial details in proving the connection between two folktales belonging to the same cycle. His opinions on this point are gathered up in a small compass in a paper contributed to the International Folklore Congress of 1891, where he examines a number of stories of the rescue of a maiden from the monster, with a view to showing the repetition of minute details.178.2One of the mostcurious and important of these details is the lousing of the hero by the maiden.179.1InTable DI have brought together as many of such tales as I could find. Under the lady’s gentle fingers the hero usually falls asleep; and M. Cosquin points particularly to the fact that when the dragon comes on the scene the deliverer is in many variants aroused by the damsel’s tears. The table shows that this is, in fact, the usual method of awakening him; for it occurs in no fewer than fifty per cent. of the stories. But what will strike the reader is, that with the exception of a Portuguese tale from Brazil, all the stories in which it occurs are found within an area whose salient angles may be placed in Georgia, Nubia, and Bosnia. In only one of the variants from that part of the world can the mode of awakening be definitely said not to be by a tear, while in one other it is left uncertain. Now, it is not expressly said in every instance that the maiden performed the delicate office of lousing the hero; but I think that where this realistic trait has disappeared it has probably dropped out, in M. Cosquin’s phrase, “by an excess of delicacy on the part of the collector.” The trait is unquestionably a savage one. It is also one well known both in real life and in other stories to the peasantry, at all events of southern and eastern Europe, if not elsewhere. Outside the sphere centring in the Levant it is, however, found attached to the Rescue of Andromeda only in the Iberian peninsula, in Scotland, Ireland, and Sweden, the most numerous instances having been recovered in the west of Scotland. There, in four cases out of five, the lady awakens the hero by inflicting personal mutilation or bestowing personal adornments which afterwards serve to identify him, while in the fifth case the mode of awakening is notrecorded. The phenomena both in the Levant and in Scotland are thus entirely in favour of the value of similar details as proving transmission. For, as M. Cosquin says, it is evidently impossible to believe that these details have been separately developed. The form under which the savage idea is presented must have been imported already specialised.
We are not, however, left to seek all over the world for the place of origin of either of these two modes of awakening the sleeping deliverer. We are shut up in each case to a fairly defined area within which the detail is found, and within which, therefore, it probably originated. Something of the sort meets us in the case of the Impostor and the Tokens. If we extend our view to include stories which comprise the Rescue of Andromeda alone of the four cardinal incidents of the Perseus group, we appear to find some geographical connection in the tokens. Teeth, for example, are the tokens in Hungary and Oldenburg, ears in the Caucasus and Armenia, mutilations of the hero’s person in the Western Highlands. But we have no such guide where tongues are the tokens; for their distribution, in Europe at all events, is as wide as the story itself. In like manner, if we glance over the other tables, or turn to the distribution of the various types of the story as distinguished in the earlier chapters of this work, we can undoubtedly find geographical limits for many, both of types and of details. To discuss them individually after the examples already given would be tedious; nor would it lead to any more assured result. There are a few cases, like that of the Scented Locks, where we think we can with tolerable certainty trace an accessory back to its source. Even in such cases, however, we have no decisive evidence, as inliterary questions, to fix the exact provenience. The peculiarities of a manuscript are not quite parallel with those of a tale. We cannot be positive that the incident in the Cambodian story is derived from the Egyptian. We can only say that its form is later in civilisation, and therefore perhaps in time. For aught we know the incident in the Egyptianmärchenmay in its turn be derived from an earlier one, which may be the common parent of the incident in the tale ofThe Two Brothersand in the Cambodian variant of the Perseus group. There is no record which will enable us to pronounce with entire confidence an opinion on the point. Much more then in examples, like those of the Deliverer’s Sleep, where the form discloses no difference in civilisation or in manners, we are at a loss to say whence the detail has come. We can put boundaries within which it has probably arisen; but we have no means of tracing it from Syra to Nubia, or from Nubia to Syra, from Bosnia to Georgia, or from Armenia to Bulgaria. The form of the savage idea may have been imported, as M. Cosquin says, already specialised; but imported whence, imported whither? Those are questions too hard for us with our present means of knowledge. And what is true of the detail is true of the type. We cannot say, in more than a few isolated cases, whether a type has been evolved from another type, either by development or decay. The modern types of the story, we can indeed say, have not been derived from the classical type. It is possible that they may have been derived from some local variant of ancient Greece or the Red Sea shores, of which we have no more than hints in classical writers. It is, at least, equally possible that they and the local variants and the classic legend all alike owe their origin to a common ancestor. Nor can weassign to the modern types any order of precedence among themselves.
Our difficulty in solving these problems arises not merely, or chiefly, from the want of records; still more does it issue from the conditions of oral transmission. Narrative tradition is fluid and changeable. It may be run into any mould, and from one mould to another with equal ease. To change the figure, its constituents are, like chemical elements, found in combinations which are sometimes comparatively stable, at other times tending to change and the formation of new combinations. The permanence of the new combinations depends upon the stability and isolation of the culture-conditions, upon the ability of the storytellers and the customs which bind them, now encouraging invention, and anon imprisoning them with the chains of verbal, if not literal, accuracy. This is not the place to consider the conditions of conservation and of variation. Enough here to draw attention to the reason of the difficulty which lies in the path of him who would trace a folktale to its source.
The truth is that when we speak of amärchenas an artistic whole, we must be careful to guard ourselves against conveying a false impression. Like every human work, there is, of course, a sense in which it is true so to speak of it. Every tale-teller is more or less of an artist, and every tale he tells is a work of art. It is formed of his recollections of other tales told by other tellers, joined and cemented together as best he can by the aid of his own invention. A plot is composed of incidents cohering sometimes more firmly, sometimes less. Often the tale-teller forgets one, patches the story with another from his stock, or inserts an additional incident at pleasure. The new elementthus introduced may or may not unite with the old. The character of the tale will be modified, and may be entirely changed, by the substitution or addition. As with the incidents, so with the accessories. Every time the tale is passed through the memory it is exposed to the risk of variation, not only in its main lines, but also, and still more, in its details. Hence we can speak of the story embodied in the Perseus cycle as an abstract ideal whole with even less propriety than we can, by eliminating individual peculiarities from the entire series of pictures of the Annunciation, or the Marriage of the Virgin, from the earliest to the latest, speak of the scene they present with so many variations as one abstract ideal whole. The mediæval painters and the painters of the Renascence developed and modified the traditional scene as they would, or as their skill and circumstances dictated. But the limitations of the limner’s art preserved a certain unity amid all changes. The art of the story-teller is not thus circumscribed. He can run on from one subject to another, as his memory or his imagination may prompt, for the purpose of giving pleasure. He unites the incidents of the Life-token, the Rescue of Andromeda, and the Slaughter of the Gorgon, with that of the Fatal Bird whose flesh gives wealth or exalts its eater to kingship; or he unwinds from the Supernatural Birth the tangled skein of a Bluebeard story. But, save in rare examples, it is impossible to predicate the order of succession, or to say why this line of development has been followed rather than that.
Such may seem an impotent conclusion of the inquiry. Disappointing it must be admitted to be; and, so far as the results of research as to one story may enable us to forecastthe results of research as to others, it favours the view of those students who declare that the hope of tracking a folktale to its pristine home is illusory, and the attempt a waste of time. If a story which must have taken up its crucial incident so late in civilisation cannot be assigned to its primitive tellers, how can we hope to find the birth-places of other tales, all whose elements are rooted in a distant and dateless savagery? Henceforth, if it be true, as Mr. Jacobs alleges, that “the problem of diffusion is of prior urgency to that of origin”184.1—that is to say, if we cannot employ the tales as evidence of belief until we know whence they come—it seems likely that we shall have to deny ourselves the use of this evidence, and rely wholly upon evidence of a more direct character. But is the contention true? I have elsewhere tried to give some grounds for thinking that we need not wait to know where a tale was first conceived ere we use it as evidence of the belief of the peoples who tell it.184.2And I would fain hope that fresh and more cogent reasons to the same effect may be gathered from the foregoing pages. In this connection I should like to insist on the fact that these evidences of belief are to be found, not in the tale as a whole, but in the separate incidents of which it is composed. To such, and even lesser details, our attention must be directed, if we would avail ourselves of the full advantage which the study of folktales gives us in investigating the early ideas of mankind.
The story of Perseus opens a thousand vistas to the student. In these pages we have been content to follow only a few of them, though there is not one but would have led us upon enchanted ground. It remains to gatherup in a few words the results of our inquiry. After reviewing and illustrating the principal types of the story, we took its four leading incidents and sought for their distribution in other combinations, or alone, and for their sources and meaning. The Supernatural Birth we found related in various forms, not merely for amusement, but as sober fact, over so large an area of the world as to justify the belief that it was universal. Every nation has its heroes; and in the popular mind the mightier the hero, the greater the need for providing him with a worthy entrance upon his mortal existence. Nay more. We found that the abnormal means of impregnation, to which the heroes of the stories we examined owed their birth, were, and still are, actually held capable of causing a similar result; therefore were, and are, prescribed for, and used by, women who desire children and are unable to obtain them in the natural way.
The Life-token presented other problems. Both in tale and in custom it is not less generally known than the former incident. Its virtue is derived from the belief that it is part of the substance of the personage whose welfare it indicates. It is the converse and essential correlative of the External Soul. At this point it became necessary, for the elucidation of the idea at the root of both the External Soul and the Life-token, to enter upon a discussion whose length I trust the reader will hold fully excused by the importance of the subject; for it involved nothing less than the savage conception of life in its relation to personality: a conception that permeates savage society; a conception without which it is impossible to understand savage institutions or savage customs; indeed, a conception that underlies much of our modern civilisation,and from which the most sacred act of Christian worship derives its meaning and its virtue.
Like the Supernatural Birth and the Life-token, the Medusa-witch is widely famous, and the superstition out of which the incident of her slaughter—at all events in its classical form—springs is universal. It is that of the Evil Eye. Recent works by other writers rendered it needless to examine this superstition at length.
The incident of the Rescue of Andromeda, though celebrated throughout a large part of the Old World, is more limited in its range than the others. It is based on the change of a horrible custom which has not everywhere been practised, and where it has been practised has not everywhere passed away in such circumstances as to leave behind it the possibility of a Rescue myth. It is therefore the youngest of the four chief incidents of the tale. This limitation of range of the Rescue incident restricts the area within which to seek for the birthplace of the tale as a whole. The search has been interesting; but while it has produced some substantial results, it has failed in its main object. On the causes of failure I have already sufficiently dwelt.
Yet the inquiry has not been wholly in vain, even in regard to storyology pure and simple. We have seen that the classical form of a tale distributed throughout a large part of the Old World owed its peculiar features to the fact of its entrance into the higher literature of the race at a period of relatively advanced civilisation: a traditional selection had been established against the ruder forms of the saga. That ruder forms existed is evident from the hints and allusions preserved by classical writers. The classical form, in spite of its acceptance andof its literary handling by some of the authors of antiquity most widely read, affected to a very slight extent the versions current in tradition. The latter go back in very few instances to the classical form; they frequently contain important incidents—not mere episodes, but incidents of the fibre of the narrative—such as that of the Helpful Beasts, far more barbarous than the classical story; while they are further distinguished by the remarkable peculiarity that they have preserved the cardinal incident of the Life-token, which in the classical saga is entirely wanting. We are bound, therefore, to postulate the existence in Greece, in an earlier and more barbarous age than that which was familiar with the legend in its classical shape, of a folktale substantially similar to that recovered in the last hundred years from all parts of the area I have described. For if the modern form of the tale be not derived from the legend as found in classical literature, neither can it be ascribed to derivation in post-classical days from the special story-store of India. On the contrary, so far as derivation on either side is considered necessary, we are compelled to treat the variants from India and Further India as derivatives, and not as sources. To establish, if not with mathematical, at least with reasonable certainty, the prehistoric age of a famousmärchen, as well as the fact that the lower and ruder forms are not killed out by the higher literary forms, but survive them, and to circumscribe the native region of the tale by the limits of Europe, south-western Asia, and northern Africa, may be considered worth the pains spent in the investigation.
I have written of the Legend of Perseus with no polemical object. Yet, valuing the science of folklore, as I do, chiefly for the light it throws on the mental constitutionof mankind and the genesis of ideas and of institutions, I cannot hide from myself the important bearing that some of the subjects dealt with in these pages may have upon matters of Christian controversy. Our illustrations of the Supernatural Birth have been drawn entirely from certain forms of the story, to the exclusion of other forms which, interesting as they are in themselves, were for our purpose irrelevant. But sufficient has been said to raise questions which may be summarily stated thus:—If these legends be universal, if they must be rejected in every case but one as the product of an inevitable tendency of human imagination, then why not in that one case also? Assuredly that one case can be regarded as exceptional, only if it stand upon historical evidence totally different in kind from the others, and of inevitable cogency. But can any one who sits down (as it is the duty at least of every educated man to do) calmly and, so far as he can, with scrupulous impartiality to weigh the evidence, say that the testimony of ecclesiastical tradition, or even of our Gospels, is different in kind from, or of greater cogency than, that which we reject, without hesitation, in the case of Sákyamuni, or of Alexander the Great? About ecclesiastical tradition I need say nothing. The records in the two Gospels which bear the names of Saint Matthew and Saint Luke are, carefully considered, irreconcilable. Both Gospels are now admitted to be secondary documents. It is hardly claimed for either of them that it was written less than sixty years after the event. It is by no means certain that they were in existence, as we now have them, when Justin Martyr wrote in the middle of the second century. Outside them there is no record, no unambiguous allusion even, that can be dated within one hundred and ten yearsof the Birth, and then only if we admit the genuineness of the questionableEpistlesof Saint Ignatius, and the earliest possible date for his very doubtful journey. Is this the testimony on which belief in so amazing an event can be safely built?
Our researches into sacramental beliefs and practices, and the ideas underlying them, must have suggested once and again the central rite of Christianity. The institution of the Eucharist is not an event of the same supernatural character as the Birth is alleged to be. Yet if the difficulties of testimony be smaller, those of interpretation are even greater. That sacramental superstitions were rife as well in Judæa as elsewhere in the time of Jesus Christ is certain, though our information concerning them is still lamentably deficient. The influence of the Mysteries upon Christianity has been hitherto little studied. But it is manifest that we cannot appreciate the intention of the rite, or understand the course of its history, without a more extended knowledge of these things.
Doubt is often a more imperative duty than belief. Nor is it the less a duty because it is painful. To the priest, everywhere and in all time, it is the gravest of sins; for the corporate interest of a priesthood adds strength to the sincere belief of the individual, a belief usually founded upon complete ignorance of all but his own side of the question. Priests, therefore, always favour the growth of beliefs of which they are the centre, so leading men deeper and deeper into the slough of superstition. Pleading that it is safer to believe too much than too little, they are not content with a ready-made creed, imperfectly verified, if verified at all. Their inclination and interest alike tend to its enlargement by continual additions, whose only test isconsonance with the emotions awakened by something previously accepted. They cannot away with reason, with patient inquiry, and the judicial temper. They seek to prejudice the question before it be tried. Hence they conspire with reactionary statesmen to obtain, or to keep, the control of education. This treachery against civilisation, against the public weal, against truth itself, may succeed for a moment; but only to evoke a retribution which will be strictly measured by its success. It is no light thing to divorce the intellect of a nation from its religion; it is disastrous to attempt to coop the intellect within the bounds of a religion which have become too strait for it.
But abhorrent as doubt and inquiry may be to the priest, they are the means whereby we have gradually reached a more correct and adequate view of the universe, and of human history, than was formerly imposed in the name of divine revelation. He who seeks truth by such means bears a more devoted allegiance to himself and to humanity than he who, for the sake of safety or of ease, flings himself into the lap of a priesthood, which professes to assure to him in the next world eternal salvation, and can certainly bestow upon him, in this, comfort and social consideration and freedom from petty parochial persecution. He will recognise it as a duty to withhold his assent from dogmas, even though the most solemn articles of the Christian faith, until in the open court of reason his objections have been answered and his difficulties solved by sounder arguments and a deeper historical and scientific knowledge than have yet been applied by apologists to the issues.
[The End]
i. Campbell, 71
Argyllshire
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Luzel, _Contes Bretons_, 63
Brittany
Horses and dogs
Congenital
i. Cosquin, 60
Lorraine
Horses and dogs
Congenital
i. Cosquin, 64
Lorraine
Horses and dogs
Congenital
ii. Cosquin, 56
Lorraine
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Zéliqzon, 63
Lorraine
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Bladé, _Agenais_, 9
Gascony
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Webster, 87
Basque Provinces
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Caballero, 27
Spain
Horses and dogs
Congenital
i. Gonzenbach, 269
Sicily
Horses and dogs
Congenital
xviii. Pitrè, 45
Sicily
Horses and dogs
Congenital
vii. Pitrè, 296
Sicily (Albanian)
Horses and dogs
Congenital
i. Finamore, pt. i., 105
Abruzzi
Horses and dogs
Congenital
iii. De Nino, 321
Abruzzi
Horse and dog
Congenital
Nerucci, 61; and Imbriani, 375
Tuscany
Horses and dogs
Congenital
De Gubernatis, 40
Tuscany
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Visentini, 104
Mantua
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Schneller, 186
Tirol
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Schneller, 79
Tirol
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Zingerle, _K. und Hausm._, 122
Tirol
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Wolf, _Deutsche M._, 134
Germany
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Cavallius, 348
Sweden
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Leskien, 385
Lithuania
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 316
Transylvania (Gipsy)
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Vernaleken, 193
Lower Austria
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Leskien, 543 (from Jukié)
Bosnia
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Leskien, 544 (from Valjavec)
Croatia
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Leskien, 544 (from Mikuliĕié)
Croatia
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Karajich, 174
Servia
Horses and dogs
Congenital
i. Von Hahn, 166; and Geldart, 74
Epirus
Horses and dogs
Congenital
Legrand, 161
Greece
Horses and dogs
Congenital
*Leskien, 546 (from Afanasief)
Russia
Horses and dogs
Congenital
*Leskien, 546 (from Valjavec)
Croatia
Horses and dogs
Congenital
ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 174
Brittany
Horses and dogs
?
Coelho, 120
Portugal
Horses
Congenital
Grimm, i. _Tales_, 331
Hesse
Horses
Congenital
*Leskien, 546 (from Erlenvein)
Great Russia
Horses
Congenital
De Gubernatis, 41
Tuscany
Dogs
Congenital
ii. Von Hahn, 214
Greece
Dogs
Congenital
ii. Macdonald, 341
Quilimane (probably from Portugal)
Dogs
Congenital
Wardrop, 25
Georgia
Eight Dogs
Congenital
Leskien, 546 (from Vrána)
Moravia
Dogs
?
v. _Folklore_, 156
Donegal
Horses, dogs, and hawks
Congenital
i. Grundtvig, 277
Denmark
Horses, dogs, and sparrowhawks
Congenital
Pedroso, 100
Portugal
Horses and lions
Congenital
Braga, i. _Contos_, 117
Portugal
Horses and lions
Congenital
i. Campbell, 93
South Uist
Horses and dogs
Lion, wolf, and falcon
Congenital
Gratitude for dividing carcase justly
Cavallius, 354
Sweden
Horses and dogs
Bears, wolves, and foxes
Congenital
Given by parent animals
Kuhn und Schwartz, 337
North Germany
Horses and dogs
Bears, wolves, and lions
Congenital
Given by parent animals
i. Comparetti, 126; and Crane, 30
Pisa
Horses and dogs
Lion, eagle, and ant
Dog-fish
Congenital
Gratitude for dividing carcase
Gratitude for saving life
Cavallius, 95
Sweden
Dogs
Bears, wolves, and foxes
Given by mother
Given by parent animals
*Cox, _Cinderella_, 450 (from iii. _Journ. Gipsy Lore Soc._, 208)
England (Gipsy)
Bull-calf
Given by father
*Zingerle, _K. und Hausm._, 35; and Busk, _Hofer_, 207
Tirol
Three dogs
Left to hero by his father
*Dennys, 110
China
Dog
Supplied by heroine’s father
Grimm, i. _Tales_, 244
Hesse
Hares, foxes, wolves, bears, and lions
Given by parent animals
Grimm, i. _Tales_, 419
Hesse
Bears, lions, and wolves
Given by parent animals
Stier, i.; and Jones and Kropf, 110
Hungary
Wolves, bears, and lions
Given by parent animals
Leskien, 544 (from Radostova)
Bohemia
Wolves, bears, and lions
Given by parent animals
Leskien, 389
Lithuania
Wolves, boars, foxes, lions, hares, and bears
Given by parent animals
Leskien, 544 (from Nowosielski)
Little Russia
Hares, foxes, wolves, bears, and lions
Given by parent animals
*Schott, 135
Wallachia
Fox, wolf, and bear
Given by parent animals
*i. _Mélusine_, 57
Brittany
Hare, fox, and bear
Gratitude for sparing lives
Meier, _Märchen_, 204
Swabia
Bear, wolf, and lion
Gratitude for sparing their lives
Zingerle, _K. und Hausm. aus Süddeutsch._, 260
Tirol
Fox, wolf, and bear
Gratitude for sparing lives
*Schleicher, 54
Lithuania
Hare, she-wolf and lioness
Gratitude for sparing lives
i. Campbell, 98
Berneray
Fox, wolf, and hoodie
Gratitude for dividing carcase justly
*Dasent, _Fjeld_, 237 (from Asbjörnsen)
Norway
Lion, falcon, and ant
Gratitude for dividing carcase justly
Carnoy, _Contes F._, 135
Normandy
Dogs
Given by fish to father in gratitude for sparing life
i. Gonzenbach, 272
Sicily
Horses
Given by fish in gratitude for sparing life
Denton, 256
Servia
Bears, wolves, dogs, and cats
Winged horse
Bought from persons about to kill, or who were torturing them
Conquered
Pitrè, _Toscane_, 1
Tuscany
Flying horse
Given by an old man
Leskien, 542 (from Afanasief)
Russia
Horses
Given by an old man
*Larminie, 196
Achill Island
Pony
Given by Druid by means of magical bridle
*Webster, 22
Basque Provinces
Horses and dog
Given by Tartaro in gratitude for release
Auning, 87
Lithuania
Horses and hounds
Given by an old man
*Bernoni, _Fiabe._ 50
Venice
Three dogs
Given by priest
*ii. Kirby, 6 (from Kreutzwald)
Esthonia
Three dogs
Sold by one-eyed old man
*Schleicher, 4
Lithuania
Three dogs
Given by man in exchange for calves
*Waldau, 468
Bohemia
Three dogs
Given by butcher in exchange for sheep
*Haltrich, 101
Transylvania (Saxon)
Three dogs
Given by butcher in exchange for goat and cock
*ii. Strackerjan, 330
Oldenburg
Three dogs
Given by man in exchange for sheep left by hero’s father
*ii. Strackerjan, 333
Oldenburg
Three dogs
Given by man in exchange for cow left by hero’s parents
*Pitrè, _Toscane_, 9
Tuscany
Three dogs
Given by a fair gentleman in exchange for cattle
*ii. _Rivista_, 28
Maremma
Three dogs
Given by man in exchange for cattle
*Visentini, 85
Mantua
Three dogs
Given by man in exchange for corn
*De Gubernatis, ii. _Zool. Myth._, 36 note
Piedmont
Three dogs
Given by hunter in exchange for sheep
*Coelho, 114 (English version, 61)
Portugal
Three dogs
Given by Our Lord disguised as beggar in exchange for sheep
*x. _Bibl. Trad. Pop. Españ._, 258
Extremadura
Three dogs
Given by old man in exchange for cows
*x. _Bibl. Trad. Pop. Españ._, 249
Extremadura
Three dogs
?
*Dorsey, _Cegiha_, 114
Omaha (N. A. Ind. Probably from France)
Two white dogs
Given by man in exchange for bow that never missed
*Dorsey, _Cegiha_, 127
Omaha (N. A. Ind. Probably from France)
Two dogs
Given by man in exchange for gun that never missed
*_F. L. Andaluz_, 357
Andalucia
Five dogs,
Horse
Given by man in exchange for goats
Came out of dung heap
*ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 173
Brittany
Three dogs
White horse
Obtained in exchange for cow
Found in castle of witch slain by hero
*Grimm, i. _Tales_, 420
Germany
Dogs
Hare, deer, and bear
Given by forester in exchange for goats
?
i. _F. L. Journ._, 54
Tralee, Ireland
Horse
From castle of giant conquered by hero
*Curtin, _Ireland_, 157
West of Ireland
Three horses
Acquired by conquest of three giants
*vi. _Folklore_, 309 (from O’Faherty, _Siamsa an gheimhridh_, 60)
Connaught
Horse
Taken from giants killed by hero
*i. Campbell, 97
Argyllshire
Horses
Acquired from conquered giants
*ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 280
Brittany
Three horses
Taken from castle of foes slain by hero. [In the abstract of the tale given by M. Sébillot it is not explicitly said that hero made use of horses]
*Romero, 129
Brazil (Portuguese)
Three horses
Taken from palace of ogre
*Vinson, 56
Basque Provinces
Three olanos (dogs)
Taken from castle of ogre conquered by hero
*Wolf, _Deutsche Hausm._, 369
Odenwald
Three horses
Taken from uninhabited castle
*Luzel, ii. _Contes Pop._, 296
Brittany
Horse
Transformation of Murlu, a mythical creature (enchanted form of hero’s father’s first wife), released by hero from captivity
*Vasconcellos, 274
Portugal
Two dogs
Come out of eyes of witch destroyed by help of St. Antony
*Romero, 83
Brazil (Portuguese)
Three dogs
Issue from head of old woman slain by hero
*Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 323
Transylvania (Gipsy)
Horse
Transformation of horse’s head found by hero under a tree
*_Roumanian F. T._, 48
Roumania
Bull
Found in hole made in earth by hero’s arrow
*Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 260
Transylvania (Gipsy)
Horse
Sent by dead river-nymph
*Leskien, 396
Lithuania
Lion, bear, boar, fox, and hare
Caught
Zingerle, _K. und Hausm. aus Süddeutsch._, 124
Tirol
Dancing bears
Caught
* Stories thus marked do not belong to the Perseus cycle though containing the incident of the Slaughter of the Dragon.