Europa's Fairy Book Part 27

XVIII. THE MASTER-MAID

This is one of the oldest and widest spread tales of the world, and the resultant formula was, therefore, more than usually difficult to reconstruct. The essence of the tale consists in the Menial Hero--Three Tasks--Master-Maid Help--Obstacles to Pursuit--Oblivion Kiss--False Bride--Sale of Bed--Happy Marriage. In essentials this is the story of Jason and Medea, where we have the Tasks, the Pursuit, and the False Bride, though the dramatic genius of the Greeks has given a tragic ending to the tale. Lang, in his _Custom and Myth_, pp.

87-102, has pointed out parallels, not alone in modern folk-tales, like Grimm 92, Campbell 2, Dasent 11, and Basile 11, but even in Madagascar (_Folk-Lore Journal_, Aug., 1883), and Samoa (Turner 102) while the Flight and Obstacles are found in j.a.pan and Zululand. Even in America there is the Algonquin form of the Tasks (School-craft, Algic Researches ii., 94-104), and the Flight is given in an interesting article in the _Century Magazine_, 1884. According to Lang's general views, he seems to regard these incidents as being universally human and having no affiliation with one another, though he ent.i.tles his essay, "A Far Travelled Tale."

The modern Folk-Tales, however, make it practically impossible that these at least could have arisen independently. Many of them have an introductory set of incidents, Jephtha-Vow, Herd-Boy, Shepherd-Boy, Prince; this I have adopted in my version. But besides this the Tasks are often identical, Cleaning Stable (Dasent, Campbell), Finger-Ladder (Campbell, trace in Cosquin 32), Building Castle (Grimm 113, Hahn 54); the Oblivion Kiss occurs in Scotland, Germany, Spain, Tyrol, Tuscany, Sicily, and Rome, all in connection with similar stories.

The tale has been especially popular in Celtdom. I have enumerated no less than fourteen versions in my notes on the "Battle of the Birds"

(_Celtic Fairy Tales_, p. 265). There we have the Obstacles to Pursuit mainly in the form of forest, mountain, and river, which the late Mr.

Alfred Nutt pointed out to be the natural boundaries of the Nether-World in Teutonic Paganism. It is, therefore, possible that our story has been "contaminated" or influenced by the notion of the "Descent to h.e.l.l."

Here, as in the parallel case of Cupid and Psyche, we find a cla.s.sical story, with many of the incidents clearly reproduced in modern Folk-Tales, while others have been inserted to make the tale longer or more of the folk-tale character.

At the same time the story as a _whole_ is found spread from America to Samoa, from India to Scotland, with indubitable signs of being the same story dressed up according to local requirements. The Master-Maid is, accordingly, one of the most instructive of all folk-tales, from the point of view of the problem of diffusion.

XIX. A VISITOR FROM PARADISE

This droll, in its two parts, occurs throughout Europe as has been shown by Cosquin in his elaborate Notes to No. 22. The Visitor from Paradise, for example, occurs in Brittany, Germany, Norway, and Sweden, England, Roumania, Tyrol, and Ireland. In some of the versions the silly wife gives some household treasure to a pa.s.ser-by because her husband had said that he was keeping this for Christmas, for Easter, or for "Hereafterthis" and the Visitor claims it in that name.

(See _More English Fairy Tales_.) The idea also occurs in the literature of jests in Pauli, 1519, Hans Sachs, and in _Tresor du Ridicule_, Paris, 1644. Cosquin has also traced it to Ceylon, _Orientalist_, 1884, p. 62.

The adventure of the door and the robbers is equally widely spread in Normandy, Germany, Austria, Bosnia, Rome, Catalonia, and Sicily.

(Gonz., i., 251-2.) It forms part of the tale of "Mr. Vinegar" in _English Fairy Tales_. The two adventures are, however, rarely combined; Cosquin knows of only two instances. I have, however, ventured to combine them here instead of making two separate tales of them.

In telling the story one has to slur over the p.r.o.nunciation of "Paradise," making the last vowel short, so as to explain the misunderstanding about "Paris." I have retained the Paris _motif_ as all through the Middle Ages, wayfarers from and to Paris (wandering scholars or clerics) would be familiar sights to the peasantry throughout Europe.

Bolte gives in full (ii., 441-6) a Latin poem by Wickram in 1509 ent.i.tled, "De Barta et marito eius per studentem Parisiensem subtiliter deceptis," which is practically identical with the early part of our story and has this misunderstanding about Paris and Paradise. It accordingly occurs in most of the German books of Drolls as those by Bebel and Pauli, and it is possible that the folk versions were derived from this, though they stretch as far as Cairo and North India. See Clouston, _Book of Noodles_, pp. 205, 214. In some of the folk-tales, there is an introduction in which the Foolish Wife sells three cows, but keeps one of the three as a pledge.

Thereupon her husband leaves her until he can find any one as silly, which he does by posing as a Visitor from Paradise. This is more suitable for an introduction for "The Three Sillies."

XX. INSIDE AGAIN

This story is one of the most interesting in the study of the popular diffusion of tales, and I therefore give it here though I have given an excellent version from Temple and Steel in _Indian Fairy Tales_, ix., "The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal," and have there discussed the original form. Its interest, from the point of view of diffusion, lies in the fact that it occurs in India, both early (see Benfey, i., 117) and late (Temple, 12, Frere, 14), in Greece, both cla.s.sical (aesopic fable of the serpent in the bosom) and modern (Hahn, 87, Schmidt, p. 3), and in the earliest mediaeval collection of popular tales by Petrus Alfonsi (_Disciplina clericalis_, vii.), as well as in the Reynard cycle. Besides these quasi-literary sources ranging over more than two thousand years, there are innumerable folk-versions collected in the last century and ranging from Burmah (Semeaton, _The Karens_, 128) to America (Harris, _Uncle Remus_, 86). These are all enumerated by Professor Krohn in an elaborate dissertation, "Mann und Fuchs" (Helsingfors, 1891). In essentials the trick by which the fisherman gets the djin inside the bottle again, in the first story within the frame of the _Arabian Nights_ (adapted so admirably by Mr.

Anstey in his _Bra.s.s Bottle_), is practically the same device. Richard I. is said, by Matthew Paris (ed. Luard, ii., 413-16), to have told the n.o.bles of England, after his return from captivity in the East, a similar apologue proving the innate ingrat.i.tude of man. This is derived from the Karma Jataka, which was possibly the ultimate source of the whole series of tales.

Amid all these hundred variants there is one common idea, that of the ingrat.i.tude of a rescued animal (crocodile, snake, tiger, etc.), which is thwarted by its being placed back in the situation from which it was rescued. In some cases the bystander who restores equilibrium is alone; in most instances there are three of them; the first two having suffered from man's ingrat.i.tude see no reason for interfering. This is the "common form" which I have adopted in my version. In India the sufferer from ingrat.i.tude is sometimes a tree (a mulberry tree, in _Indian Fairy Tales_), but the European versions prefer horses or dogs.

Now it is obvious that such an artificial apologue on man's ingrat.i.tude could not have been invented twice for that particular purpose; and thus the hundred different versions (to which Dr. Bolte could probably add another century) must all, in the last resort, have emanated from a single source. When and where that original was concocted is one of the most interesting problems of folk-tale diffusion; the moralizing tendency of the tale, the animistic note underlying it, all point to India, where we find it in the Bidpai literature before the Christian era and current among the folk at the present day. The case for Indian origin is strongest for drolls of this kind.

I may add that the ingrat.i.tude of the man towards the fox at the end is not so universal a tail piece to the story as the rest of it, and is ultimately derived from the Reynard cycle, in which I have also introduced it (see "Bruin and Reynard").

But it occurs in many of the variants and comes in so appropriately that I thought it desirable to add it also here. The subst.i.tution of a dog for something else desired also occurs in the story of the Hobyahs in _More English Fairy Tales_, where Mr. Batten's released dog is so fierce (p. 125) that it drives one of the Hobyahs over on to the next page belonging to altogether another story.

XXI. JOHN THE TRUE

I have followed Bolte's formula "Anmerkungen" 45, keeping however as far as possible to the alternatives nearest to Basile, iv., 9, and where that fails making use of the Grimms' "Faithful John," No. 6, one of their best told tales. The story is popular in Italy where Crane, 344, refers to six other versions. It is also found in Greece (Hahn 29), and Roumania (Schott, p. 144), and indeed throughout the east of Europe. Traces of it in British Isles are but slight.

In India, however, there are a number of very close parallels (Day, 17-52; Knowles, 421-41; Frere, 98; and Somadeva; edit. Tawney, i., 519, ii., 251, which contains the similar story of Vivara the True); Benfey, i., 417, draws attention to other Oriental traits in the story and aptly compares the half-marble figure of the King of the Black Islands in the Arabian Nights. The probabilities of an Indian origin for this formula are rendered greater by the early age of the Pantschatantra and Somadeva parallels.

On the other hand the sacrifice of the children for the faithful servant has its closest parallel in the old French romance of Amis and Amilun, where Amis smears Amilun with the blood of his child to cure him of leprosy. The a.n.a.logy is so close as almost to force the a.s.sumption of derivation. Koehler accordingly in his _Aufsaetze_, 1894, pp. 24-35, regards the tale as a development of the Indian story influenced by the romance of Amis.

XXII. JOHNNIE AND GRIZZLE

I have followed Bolte's formula s. v. Hansel and Gretel, 15, i., 115, though with some misgivings. Very few of his variants have his section F, which he divides into three variants: F 1. Ducks or angels carry the children over the stream. F 2. Or they throw out obstacles to pursuit. F 3. Or the witch drinks up the stream and bursts. F 2 is obviously "contaminated" by the similar incident in the Master Maid, and the existence of such alternatives indicates, to my mind, an absence of a consistent tradition as to the ending of the story, which obviously ended with the baking of the witch in the oven. I have combined, in my ending F 1 and F 2, the former from the Grimms'

"Hansel and Gretel"; I have also adapted their t.i.tle, with a reminiscence of Sir James Barrie.

The predicament of the farmer must have often really occurred in the Middle Ages when famine was the rule rather than the exception; and the decision to "expose" the children recalls the general practice in ancient Greece and Rome and in Arabia. A touch of comedy, however, is given to this grim beginning of our tale by the house made of cookies and sweetmeats, probably derived from the myth of a Schlarafenland of the Germans and similar imaginations of the Celts (see _More Celtic Fairy Tales_).

The beginning of the tale occurs early in Basile, v., 8, "Nennillo and Nennila," in which the three kings' children find their way home twice by similar devices, but at the third time scatter peas, which the birds eat up. Perrault has the same beginning in his "Pet.i.t Poucet,"

which has been Englished as "Hop o' my Thumb," who shares some of the adventures of Tom Thumb, as well as of the valiant Tailor. Lang has an interesting but, as usual, inconclusive discussion of the incidents of our tale in his Perrault civ.-cxi., and finds many of the incidents among the Kaffirs, Zulus, and other savage tribes, but scarcely the whole set of incidents from A to F, and that is what we want to find in studying the story. Dr. Bolte finds several instances where the full formula still exists in popular tradition. It is surely easiest to a.s.sume that they were once brought together by a folk artist whose bright little tale has spread among various folks, with the alterations suggested by the divergent fancy of the different folk minds.

XXIII. CLEVER La.s.s

The Clever La.s.s is of exceptional interest to the student of the Folk-Tale because of its exceptionally wide spread throughout Europe and Asia, and also because it is one of those tales which have been made the basis of the theory of the Eastern origin of all Folk-Tales.

Bolte, in his elaborate monograph on the formula ("_Anmerkungen_,"

ii., 349-73), enumerates no less than eighty-six variants, twelve in Germany, six in other Teutonic lands, thirteen in Romance countries, no less than thirty-seven in Slavonic dialects, seven in Finnish, Hungarian and Tartar, six in the Semitic tongues, and also five in India, though there the parallelism is only partial. But in the European variants the parallels are so close and the riddles answered by the Clever La.s.s are in so many cases identical, and the order of incidents is so uniform that none can doubt the practical ident.i.ty of the story throughout the Western area. There occurs some variation in the opening which, at times, takes the form of the father of the Clever Girl finding a golden mortar and giving it to the King, against the advice of his daughter who foresees that the monarch will demand the accompanying pestle. This seems however to be confined to the Teutonic lands or those in immediate cultural connection with them.

The riddles about strongest, richest, most beautiful, form the opening elsewhere, and I have therefore chosen this alternative. The variations, both in questions and answers, are many, as is perhaps natural considering the popularity of the riddle in the folk mind, which would make it easy for a story-teller to make changes.

The King or Prince, in some of the variants, discovers the cleverness of the farmer's daughter on a visit to the farmer, when he elaborately carves and divides a chicken on a method which the Clever La.s.s discerns. This however does not occur so frequently except in Italy, and I have therefore omitted it. The discovery of the theft by the King's messenger is much more widely spread. (See Crane, 382, and compare "Gobborn Seer," in _More English Fairy Tales_.)

The Grimms, in their notes, point to a remarkable parallel in the Saga of Aslaug, the daughter of Brunhild and Sigurd. Here the King Ragnar demands that Aslaug should come to him naked yet clothed, eating yet not eating, not alone but without companion. She uses the fish-net as in the Folk-Tale, bites into an onion, and takes her dog along with her. From the last incident some of the Folk-Tales have possibly taken the awkward att.i.tude of limping along with one of her feet on the back of a dog. But the first incident, being dragged along in a fish-net, is so unlikely to occur to anybody's mind without prompting, that one cannot help agreeing with the Grimms that the incident was taken into the Folk-Tale from the Saga, or that both were derived from a common source. On the whole subject of the curious ride, R. Kohler has an elaborate treatment in his _Gesammelte Schriften_, i., 446-56.

The attraction of the riddle for the folk mind is well known, and before the spread of cards appears to have been one of the chief forms of gambling in which even life was staked, as in the case of Samson or the Sphinx. In the Folk-Tale it often occurs in the form of the Riddle-Bride-Wager, in which a princess is married to him that can guess some elaborate conundrum. The first two of Child's Ballads deal with similar riddles, and his notes are a mine of erudition on the subject: on the Clever La.s.s herself see his elaborate treatment, _English Ballads_, i., 485 _seq._

It is perhaps worthy of note that the questions as to the strongest, most beautiful, and richest occur in Plutarch's Symposium, 152 a, and it is a striking coincidence that, in the same treatise, 151 b, occurs another practical riddle, how to drink up the ocean, which occurs in several variants of the Clever La.s.s. But there is no evidence of any story connection between the two riddles in Plutarch, and one can easily imagine this sort of verbal amus.e.m.e.nt spreading from the learned to the folk.

The plan by which the Clever La.s.s becomes reconciled to the King, by carrying off what is dearest to her, is found in the Midrash probably as early as the eighth century. A still more remarkable parallel is that of the True Wives of Weinsberg who, when that town was invested, were allowed by the besiegers to carry off with them whatever they liked best. When the town gate was opened they tottered forth, each of them carrying her husband on her shoulders. But whether the incident ever really occurred, and if it occurred, whether the ruse was suggested by the Folk-Tale, cannot now be ascertained.

Benfey, in an elaborate dissertation, first communicated to "Ausland"

in 1859, but now included in his _Kleinere Schriften_, ii., 156-223, argues for the Eastern origin of the whole cycle, which he traces back to the "Seventy Tales of the Parrot" (Suka Saptati) probably as early as the sixth century. Here the vizier Sakatala of the King Nanda is released from prison in order to determine which of two identical horses is mare and which is foal, and which part of a truncated log is root or branch. Benfey traces this and similar riddlesome difficulties to a good deal of Eastern literature in Tibet, Mongolia and Persia, and Arabia. But he fails to find any very exact parallels in the European area which, at that time, was very little explored. He finds the nearest parallel in Wuk, No. 25, but this is by no means a full variant of the other European tales and may have even been "contaminated" from the East. Benfey notices the Saga parallel but goes so far as even to claim this as being influenced by Eastern stories. Since his time a much closer parallel has been found in Kashmir by Knowles' _Folk Tales of Kashmir_, pages 484-90, repeated in _Indian Fairy Tales_, No. xxiv., "Why the Fish Laughed." But the parallelism here extends only to the cleverness of the girl and the ingenuity of her answers to the riddles, not to the actual plot of the story which is so uniform in Europe. Altogether we must reject Benfey's contention, at any rate for this particular story.

XXIV. THUMBKIN

I have followed, for the most part, Bolte's reconstruction, which practically consists of a combination of Grimm, 37 and 45. But in combining the two I have found it necessary to omit sections D and E of Bolte's formula which form the beginning of Grimm, 45, "Thumbkin as Journeyman."

The notion of a baby the size of a doll might be regarded as "universally human"; even the Greeks knew of manikins no bigger than their thumbs and weighing not more than an obolus (Athenaeus, xii., 77); there is an epigram of the same subject in the Greek Anthology, ii., 350. But the particular adventures of Thumbkin are so consistently identical throughout Europe, especially with regard to the adventures in the cow's stomach, that it is impossible to consider the stories as independent. Cosquin, 53, has more difficulty than usual in finding real parallels in the Orient. In England, of course, Thumbkin is known as Tom Thumb (see _English Fairy Tales_). In the days when mythological explanations of folk-tales were popular, Gaston Paris, in a special monograph ("Pet.i.t Poucet," Paris 1875) tried to prove that Tom Thumb was a stellar hero because his French name was given to the smallest star in the Great Bear. But it is more likely that the name came from the tale than the tale from the star.

According to Gaston Paris, the chief variants known to him were Teutonic and Slav. Those of the Roumanians, Albanians, and Greeks were derived from the Slavs. He concludes that the French form must have been borrowed from the Germans, and declares that it is not found in Italy or Spain, but Cosquin, ii., gives Basque and Catalan variants, as well as a Portuguese one, and Crane gives a Tuscan variant, 242, with other occurrences in Italy in note 3, p. 372. This only shows the danger of deciding questions of origin on an imperfect induction.

The opening is not found in Grimm; I have taken it from Andrews; for which an excellent parallel is given in Crane, lxxvii., "Little Chick-pea." A similar beginning occurs in Hahn, 56, "Pepper-corn."

XXV. SNOWWHITE