The Science of Fairy Tales Part 13

FOOTNOTES:

[166] Howells, p. 120; "Count Lucanor," p. 77.

[167] Knowles, p. 17.

[168] Im Thurn, pp. 352, 354. _Cf._ Brett, p. 375. So Leland, p. 3: "The Indian _m'teoulin_, or magician, distinctly taught that every created thing, animate or inanimate, had its indwelling spirit. Whatever had an _idea_ had a soul."

[169] _Cf._ Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 962, quoting Harry, "Nieders.

Sagen"; Jahn, p. 228, quoting Temme. Many of the sanctuaries of the Celts were upon mounds, which were either barrows of the dead, or were expressly made for temples; and the G.o.d was called in Irish _Cenn Cruaich_, in Welsh _Penn Cruc_ (now _Pen Crug_), both meaning the Head or Chief of the Mound (Rhys, "Hibbert Lectures," p. 201). Many mounds in England, now crowned by churches, have been conjectured to be old Celtic temples. See an able paper by Mr. T. W. Sh.o.r.e on "Characteristic Survivals of the Celts in Hampshire," _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, vol. xx.

p. 9. Mont St. Michel, near Carnac, in Brittany, is a chambered barrow surmounted by a little chapel. From the relics found in the tomb, as well as the size of the barrow itself, some person, or persons, of importance must have been buried there. The mound may well have been a haunted, a sacred spot ever since the ashes of the dead and their costly weapons and ornaments were committed to its keeping far back in the Neolithic age. Instances might easily be multiplied.

[170] Muller, p. 203; Map, Dist. iv. c. 13.

[171] Gerv. Tilb., Dec. ii. c. 12; "Book of Days," vol. i. p. 154; Augustine, "De Civ. Dei," l. ii. c. 25.

[172] Jahn, p. 182, quoting Arndt.

[173] Knoop, p. 10; Bartsch, vol. i. p. 273.

[174] Bartsch, vol. i. p. 271; "Early Trav.," p. 138.

[175] Bartsch, vol. i. pp. 269 (citing Niederhoffer, below), 271, 272, 273, 274, 318. In this last case it is a man who is to be saved by a kiss from a woman while he is in serpent form. Niederhoffer, vol. i. pp.

58, 168, vol. ii. p. 235; Meier, pp. 6, 31, 321; Kuhn und Schwartz, pp.

9, 201; Baring-Gould, p. 223, citing Kornemann, "Mons Veneris," and Praetorius, "Weltbeschreibung"; Jahn, p. 220; Rappold, p. 135. Gredt, pp.

8, 9, 215, 228, &c. In one of Meier's Swabian tales the princess appears as a snake and flings herself round the neck of her would-be deliverer--a woman--who is to strike her lightly with a bunch of juniper: Meier, p. 27. In one of Kuhn und Schwartz' collection, where the princess becomes a toad, no ceremony is prescribed: Kuhn und Schwartz, p. 9.

[176] Von Tettau, p. 220; Kuhn, pp. 66, 99; Bartsch, vol. i. p. 272; Jahn, p. 249; Ovid, "Metam." l. xi. f. 5; Child, vol. i. pp. 336 (citing Schmidt, "Volkleben der Neugriechen," p. 115), 340.

[177] Knoop, pp. 6, 57; Kuhn, pp. 113, 172; Kuhn und Schwartz, p. 1. The prohibition to look back was imposed on Orpheus when he went to rescue Eurydice from Hades.

[178] Knoop, pp. 51, 59; Keightley, p. 295, quoting Aubrey's "Natural History of Surrey"; "Gent. Mag. Lib." (Pop. Supers.), p. 280.

[179] Meier, pp. 209, 87; Niederhoffer, vol. iii. p. 251.

[180] Grohmann, pp. 56, 50.

[181] Von Wlislocki, p. 76; Campbell, vol. ii. p. 293; Luzel, "Contes,"

vol. i. pp. 198, 217; "Annuaire des Trad. Pop." 1887, p. 53; Pitre, vol.

v. pp. 238, 248; Grundtvig, vol. i. p. 148; Schneller, pp. 103, 109.

[182] Meier, p. 26; Bartsch, vol. i. pp. 271, 272, 274; Jahn, p. 185; Rappold, p. 135; Bartsch, vol. i. pp. 269, 270, 271, 272, 273, 283, 308, 318; Niederhoffer, vol. i. p. 168, vol. ii. p. 235, vol. iii. p. 171; Knoop, p. 10; Jahn, pp. 182, 185, 206, 207, 217, 220, 221; and many others.

[183] "Gent. Mag. Lib." (Pop. Superst.) p. 51; Brand, vol. i. p. 250, note; Pitre, vol. xii. pp. 304, 307; Bartsch, vol. ii. p. 288; "Antiquary," vol. xxi. p. 195, vol. xxii. p. 67. _Cf._ a legend in which the scene haunted by the enchanted lady is a Johannisberg on the top of which is a chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist, to which pilgrimages were made and the lady appeared on Midsummer Day (Gredt, pp.

215, 219, 225, 579).

[184] Von Tettau, p. 220; Kuhn und Schwartz, pp. 9, 200; Meier, pp. 6, 8; Gredt, pp. 7, 228, 281. In another story, quoted by Meier (p. 34), from Crusius' "Schwab. Chron.", the enchanted maiden is called "a heathen's daughter"--pointing directly to pagan origin.

CHAPTER X.

SWAN-MAIDENS.

The _marchen_ of Hasan of Ba.s.sorah--The Marquis of the Sun--The feather robe and other disguises--The taboo--The Star's Daughter--Melusina--The Lady of the Van Pool and other variants--The Nightmare.

The narratives with which we have hitherto been occupied belong to the cla.s.s called Sagas. But our discussions of them have led us once and again to refer to the other cla.s.s mentioned in the second Chapter--that of Nursery Tales or _Marchen_. For, as I have already pointed out, there is no bridgeless gulf between them. We have seen the very same incidents narrated in Wales or in Germany with breathless awe as a veritable occurrence which in India, or among the Arabs, are a mere play of fancy.

Equally well the case may be reversed, and what is gravely told at the antipodes as a series of events in the life of a Maori ancestor, may be reported in France or England as a nursery tale. Nay, we need not go out of Europe itself to find the same plot serving for a saga in one land and a _marchen_, detached from all circ.u.mstances of time and place, in another.

An excellent example of this is furnished by the myth of the Swan-maiden, one of the most widely distributed, and at the same time one of the most beautiful, stories ever evolved from the mind of man. As its first type I shall take the tale of Hasan of Ba.s.sorah, where it has been treated with an epic grandeur hardly surpa.s.sed by any of its companions in the famous "Nights," and perhaps only by one of the less famous but equally splendid Mabinogion of old Wales.

Hasan is a worthless boy who falls under the influence of a Magian, who professes to be an alchemist, and who at length kidnaps him. Having used him with great cruelty the Magian takes him fifteen days' journey on dromedaries into the desert to a high mountain, at the foot whereof the old rascal sews him up in a skin, together with a knife and a small provision of three cakes and a leathern bottle of water, afterwards retiring to a distance. One of the vultures which infest the mountain then pounces on Hasan and carries him to the top. In accordance with the Magian's instructions, the hero, on arriving there, slits the skin, and jumping out, to the bird's affright, picks up and casts down to the Magian bundles of the wood which he finds around him. This wood is the means by which the alchemy is performed; and having gathered up the bundles the Magian leaves Hasan to his fate. The youth, after despairing of life, finds his way to a palace where dwell seven maidens, with whom he remains for awhile in Platonic friendship. When they are summoned away by their father for a two months' absence, they leave him their keys, straitly charging him not to open a certain door. He disregards their wishes, and finds within a magnificent pavilion enclosing a basin brimful of water, at which ten birds come to bathe and play. The birds for this purpose cast their feathers; and Hasan is favoured with the sight of "ten virgins, maids whose beauty shamed the brilliancy of the moon." He fell madly in love with the chief damsel, who turns out to be a daughter of a King of the Jann. On the return of the maidens of the palace he is advised by them to watch the next time the birds come, and to take possession of the feather-suit belonging to the damsel of his choice, for without this she cannot return home with her attendants. He succeeds in doing so, and thus compels her to remain with him and become his wife. With her he departs to his own country and settles in Bagdad, where his wife bears him two sons. During his temporary absence, however, she persuades her mother-in-law--who, unfortunately for the happiness of the household, lives with the young couple--to let her have the feather-suit which her husband has left under her charge. Clad with this she takes her two boys in her arms and sails away through the air to the islands of Wak, leaving a message for the hapless Hasan that if he loves her he may come and seek her there. Now the islands of Wak were seven islands, wherein was a mighty host, all virgin girls, and the inner isles were peopled by satans and marids and warlocks and various tribesmen of the Jinn, and whoso entered their land never returned thence; and Hasan's wife was one of the king's daughters. To reach her he would have to cross seven wadys and seven seas and seven mighty mountains. Undaunted, however, by the difficulties wherewith he is threatened, he determines to find her, swearing by Allah never to turn back till he regain his beloved, or till death overtake him. By the help of sundry potentates of more or less forbidding aspect and supernatural power, to whom he gets letters of introduction, and who live in gorgeous palaces amid deserts, and are served by demons only uglier and less mighty than themselves, he succeeds in traversing the Land of Birds, the Land of Wild Beasts, the country of the Warlocks and the Enchanters, and the Land of the Jinn, and enters the islands of Wak--there to fall into the hands of that masterful virago, his wife's eldest sister. After a preliminary outburst against Hasan, this amiable creature pours, as is the wont of women, the full torrent of her wrath against her erring sister. From the tortures she inflicts, Hasan at length rescues his wife, with their two sons, by means of a cap of invisibility and a rod conferring authority over seven tribes of the Jinn, which he has stolen from two boys who are quarrelling over them. When his sister-in-law with an army of Jinn pursues the fugitives, the subjects of the rod overcome her. His wife begs for her sister's life and reconciles her husband to her, and then returns with her husband to his home in Bagdad, to quit him no more.[185]

Such in meagre outline is this wonderful story. Its variants are legion, and I can only refer to a few of them which are of special interest. In dealing with these I shall confine my attention to the essential points of the plot, touching only such details as are germane to the questions thus evoked. We shall accordingly pa.s.s in review the maiden's disguise and capture, her flight and her recapture; and afterwards turning to other types of the tale, we shall look at the corresponding incidents to be met with therein, reserving for another chapter the consideration of the meaning of the myth, so far as it can be traced.

The bird whose shape is a.s.sumed by the Jinn in the foregoing tale is not specified; but in Europe, where beauty and grace and purity find so apt an emblem in the swan, several of the most important variants have naturally appropriated that majestic form to the heroine, and have thus given a name to the whole group of stories. In Sweden, for example, we are told of a young hunter who beheld three swans descend on the seash.o.r.e and lay their plumage aside before they plunged into the water.

When he looked at the robes so laid aside they appeared like linen, and the forms that were swimming in the waves were damsels of dazzling whiteness. Advised by his foster-mother, he secures the linen of the youngest and fairest. She, therefore, could not follow her companions when they drew on their plumage and flew away; and being thus in the hunter's power, she became his wife. The hero of a story current among the Germans of Transylvania opens, like Hasan, a forbidden door, and finds three swan-maids bathing in a blue pool. Their clothes are contained in satchels on its margin, and when he has taken the satchel of the youngest he must not look behind until he has reached home. This done, he finds the maiden there and persuades her to marry him. Mikailo Ivanovitch, the hero of a popular Russian ballad, wanders by the sea, and, gazing out upon a quiet bay, beholds a white swan floating there.

He draws his bow to shoot her, but she prays him to desist; and rising over the blue sea upon her white wings, she turns into a beautiful maiden. Surprised with love, he offers to kiss her; but she reveals herself as a heathen princess and demands first to be baptized, and then she will wed him. In a Hessian story a forester sees a fair swan floating on a lonely lake. He is about to shoot it when it warns him to desist, or it will cost him his life. Immediately the swan was transformed into a maiden, who told him she was bewitched, but could be freed if he would say a Paternoster for her every Sunday for a twelvemonth, and meantime keep silence concerning his adventure. The test proved too hard, and he lost her.[186]

The swan, however, by no means monopolizes the honour of concealing the heroine's form. In a Finnish tale from OEsterbotten, a dead father appears in dreams to his three sons, commanding them to watch singly by night the geese on the sea-strand. The two elder are so frightened by the darkness that they scamper home. But the youngest, despised and dirty, watches boldly, till at the first flush of dawn three geese fly thither, strip off their feathers, and plunge, as lovely maidens, into the water to bathe. Then the youth chooses the most beautiful of the three pairs of wings he finds on the sh.o.r.e, hides them, and awaits events; nor does he give them up again to the owner until she has betrothed herself to him. Elsewhere the damsels are described as ducks; but a more common shape is that of doves. A story is current in Bohemia of a boy whom a witch leads to a spring. Over the spring stands an old elm-tree haunted by three white doves, who are enchanted princesses.

Catching one and plucking out her wings, he restores her to her natural condition; and she brings him to his parents, whom he had lost in the sack of the city where they dwelt. The Magyars speak of three pigeons coming every noontide to a great white lake, where they turn somersaults and are transformed into girls. They are really fairy-maidens; and a boy who can steal the dress of one of them and run away with it, resisting the temptation to look back when she calls in caressing tones, succeeds in winning her. In the "Bahar Da.n.u.sh" a merchant's son perceives four doves alight at sunset by a piece of water, and, resuming their natural form (for they are Peries), forthwith undress and plunge into the water.

He steals their clothes, and thus compels the one whom he chooses to accept him as her husband. The extravagance characteristic of the "Arabian Nights," when, in the story of Janshah, it represents the ladies as doves, expands their figures to the size of eagles, with far less effect, however, than where they retain more moderate dimensions.

No better ill.u.s.tration of this can be given than the story from South Smaland of the fair Castle east of the Sun and north of the Earth, versified so exquisitely in "The Earthly Paradise." There a peasant, finding that the fine gra.s.s of a meadow belonging to him was constantly trodden down during the summer nights, set his three sons, one after another, to watch for the trespa.s.sers. The two elder, as usual in these tales, are unsuccessful, but the youngest keeps wide awake until the sun is about to rise. A rustling in the air, as of birds, then heralds the flight of three doves, who cast their feathers and become fair maidens.

These maidens begin to dance on the green gra.s.s, and so featly do they step that they scarce seem to touch the ground. To the watching youth, one among them looked more beautiful than all other women; and he pictured to himself the possession of her as more to be longed for than that of every other in the world. So he rose and stole their plumage, nor did he restore it until the king's daughter, the fairest of them all, had plighted her troth to him.[187]

The story is by no means confined to Europe and Asia. The Arawaks, one of the aboriginal tribes of Guiana, relate that a beautiful royal vulture was once captured by a hunter. She was the daughter of Anuanima, sovereign of a race whose country is above the sky, and who lay aside there the appearance of birds for that of humanity. Smitten with love for the hunter, the captive divested herself of her feathers and exhibited her true form--that of a beautiful girl. "She becomes his wife, bears him above the clouds, and, after much trouble, persuades her father and family to receive him. All then goes well, until he expresses a wish to visit his aged mother, when they discard him, and set him on the top of a very high tree, the trunk of which is covered with formidable p.r.i.c.kles. He appeals pathetically to all the living creatures around. Then spiders spin cords to help him, and fluttering birds ease his descent, so that at last he reaches the ground in safety. Then follow his efforts, extending over several years, to regain his wife, whom he tenderly loves. Her family seek to destroy him; but by his strength and sagacity he is victorious in every encounter. The birds at length espouse his cause, a.s.semble their forces, and bear him as their commander above the sky. He is at last slain by a valiant young warrior, resembling himself in person and features. It is his own son, born after his expulsion from the upper regions, and brought up there in ignorance of his own father. The legend ends with the conflagration of the house of the royal vultures, who, hemmed in by crowds of hostile birds, are unable to use their wings, and forced to fight and die in their human forms."[188] This tale, so primitive in form, can hardly have travelled round half the globe to the remote American Indians among whom it was discovered. And yet in many of its features it presents the most striking likeness to several of the versions current in the Old World.

Sometimes, however, as in the tale of Hasan, the species is left undescribed. Among the Eskimo the heroine is vaguely referred to as a sea-fowl. The Kurds have a strange tale of a bird they call the Bird Simer. His daughter has been ensnared by a giant when she and three other birds were out flying; but she is at length rescued by two heroes, one of whom she weds. When she becomes homesick she puts on her feather-dress and flies away.[189]

A Pomeranian saga forms an interesting link between the Swan-maiden group and the legends of Enchanted Princesses discussed in the last chapter. A huntsman, going his rounds in the forest, drew near a pool which lies at the foot of the Huhnerberg. There he saw a girl bathing; and thinking that she was from the neighbouring village, he picked up her clothes, with the intention of playing her a trick. When she saw what he had done, she left the water and hastened after him, begging him to give back her clothes--or at any rate her shift. He, however, was not to be moved; and she then told him she was an enchanted princess, and without her shift she could not return. _Now_ he was fully determined not to give up the precious article of apparel. She was, therefore, compelled to follow him to his hut, where his mother kept house for him.

The huntsman there put the shift into a chest, of which he took the key, so that the maiden could not escape; and after some time she accepted the position, and agreed to become his wife. Years pa.s.sed by, and several children had been born, when one day he went out, leaving the key of the chest behind. When the heroine saw this she begged her mother-in-law to open the chest and show her the shift; for, we are told, the enchanted princess could not herself open the trunk. She begged so hard that her mother-in-law at last complied; and no sooner had she got the shift into her hands than she vanished out of sight.

When the husband returned and heard what had happened, he made up his mind to seek her. So he climbed the Huhnerberg and let himself down the opening he found there. He soon arrived at the underground castle.

Before its closed gate lay a great black dog, around whose neck a paper hung which conveniently contained directions how to penetrate into the castle. Following these, he presently found himself in the presence of the princess, his wife, who was right glad to see him, and gave him a gla.s.s of wine to strengthen him for the task before him; for at midnight the Evil One would come to drive him out of the castle and prevent the lady's deliverance. At this point, unfortunately, the reciter's memory failed: hence we do not know the details of the rescue. But we may conjecture, from the precedents, that the huntsman had to endure torture. The issue was that he was successful, the castle ascended out of the earth, and husband and wife were reunited.[190]

This story differs in many important respects from the type; and it contains the incident, very rare in a modern European saga belonging to this group, of the recovery of the bride. I shall have occasion to revert to the curious inability of the enchanted princess to open the chest containing the wonderful shift. Meanwhile, let me observe that in most of the tales the feather-dress, or talisman, by which the bride may escape, is committed to the care of a third person--usually a kinswoman of the husband, and in many cases his mother; and that the wife as a rule only recovers it when it is given to her, or at least when that which contains it has been opened by another: she seems incapable of finding it herself.

There is another type of the Swan-maiden myth, which appears to be the favourite of the Latin nations, though it is also to be met with among other peoples. Its outline may, perhaps, best be given from the nursery tale of the Marquis of the Sun, as told at Seville. The Marquis of the Sun was a great gamester. A man played with him and lost all he had, and then staked his soul--and lost it. The Marquis instructed him, if he desired to recover it, to come to him when he had worn out a pair of iron shoes. In the course of his wanderings he finds a struggle going on over a dead man, whose creditors would not allow him to be buried until his debts had been paid. Iron Shoes pays them, and one shoe goes to pieces. He afterwards meets a cavalier, who reveals himself as the dead man whose debts had been paid, and who is desirous of requiting that favour. He therefore directs Iron Shoes to the banks of a river where three white doves come, change into princesses, and bathe. Iron Shoes is to take the dress of the smallest, and thus get her to tell him whither he has to go. Obeying this direction, he learns from the princess that the Marquis is her father; and she shows him the way to his castle.

Arrived there, he demands his soul. Before conceding it the Marquis sets him tasks: to level an inconvenient mountain, so that the sun may shine on the castle; to sow the site of the mountain with fruit trees, and gather the fruit of them in one day for dinner; to find a piece of plate which the Marquis's great-grandfather had dropped into the river; to catch and mount a horse which is no other than the Marquis himself; and to choose a bride from among the princesses, his daughters. The damsel who had shown Iron Shoes the way to the palace performs the first two of these tasks: and she teaches him how to perform the others. For the third, he has to cut her up and cast her into the river, whence she immediately rises whole again, triumphantly bringing the lost piece of plate. In butchering her he has, however, clumsily dropped a piece of her little finger on the ground. It is accordingly wanting when she rises from the river; and this is the token by which Iron Shoes recognizes her when he has to choose a bride; for, in choosing, he is only allowed to see the little fingers of these candidates for matrimony. He and his bride afterwards flee from the castle; but we need not follow their adventures now.[191]

In stories of this type doves are the shape usually a.s.sumed by the heroine and her comrades; but swans and geese are often found, and in a Russian tale we are even introduced to spoonbills. Nor do the birds I have mentioned by any means exhaust the disguises of these supernatural ladies. The stories comprised under this and the foregoing type are nearly all _marchen_; but when we come to other types where sagas become more numerous, we find other animals favoured, well-nigh to the exclusion of birds. In the latter types there is no recovery of the wife when she has once abandoned her husband. An inhabitant of Unst, one of the Shetland Islands, beholds a number of the sea-folk dancing by moonlight on the sh.o.r.e of a small bay. Near them lie several sealskins.

He s.n.a.t.c.hes up one, the property, as it turns out, of a fair maiden, who thereupon becomes his wife. Years after, one of their children finds her sealskin, and runs to display it to his mother, not knowing it was hers.

She puts it on, becomes a seal, and plunges into the waters. In Croatia it is said that a soldier once, watching in a haunted mill, saw a she-wolf enter, divest herself of her skin, and come out of it a damsel.

She hangs the skin on a peg and goes to sleep before the fire. While she sleeps the soldier takes the skin and nails it fast to the mill-wheel, so that she cannot recover it. He marries her, and she bears him two sons. The elder of these children hears that his mother is a wolf. He becomes inquisitive, and his father at length tells him where the skin is. When he tells his mother, she goes away and is heard of no more. A Sutherlandshire story speaks of a mermaid who fell in love with a fisherman. As he did not want to be carried away into the sea he, by fair means or foul, succeeded in getting hold of her pouch and belt, on which her power of swimming depended, and so retained her on land; and she became his bride. But we are not surprised to hear that her tail was always in the way: her silky hair grew tangled too, for her comb and gla.s.s were in the pouch; the dogs teased her, and rude people mocked her. Thus her life was made wretched. But one day in her husband's absence the labourers were pulling down a stack of corn. As she watched them, weeping for her lost freedom, she espied her precious pouch and belt, which had been built in and buried among the sheaves. She caught it and leaped into the sea.[192]

In the last tale there is no change of form: the hero simply possesses himself of something without which the supernatural maiden has no power to leave him. Even in the true Hasan of Ba.s.sorah type, the magical change does not always occur. A variant translated by Jonathan Scott from a Syrian ma.n.u.script merely enwraps the descending damsels in robes of light green silk. When her robe is taken the chosen beauty is kept from following her companions in their return flight. Similar to this is the Pomeranian saga already cited. In the New Hebrides there is a legend of seven winged women whose home was in heaven, and who came down to earth to bathe. Before bathing, they put off their wings. According to the version told in Aurora island, Qatu one day, seeing them thus bathing, took the wings of one and buried them at the foot of the main post of his house. In this way he won their owner as his wife; and she so remained until she found her wings again. In modern Greece it is believed that Nereids can be caught by seizing their wings, their clothes, or even their handkerchiefs. The Bulgarians, who have similar tales, call the supernatural ladies Samodivas; and they are captured by means of their raiment. A number of parallels have been cited from various sources by M. Cosquin, a few of which may be mentioned. A Burmese drama, for instance, sets before us nine princesses of the city of the Silver Mountain, who wear enchanted girdles that enable them to fly as swiftly as a bird. The youngest of these princesses is caught while bathing, by means of a magical slip-knot. A divine ancestress of the Bantiks, a tribe inhabiting the Celebes Islands, came down from the sky with seven companions to bathe. A man who saw them took them for doves, but was surprised to find that they were women. He possessed himself of the clothes of one of them, and thus obliged her to marry him. In a story told by the Santals of India, the daughters of the sun make use of a spider's thread to reach the earth. A shepherd, whom they unblushingly invite to bathe with them, persuades them to try which of them all can remain longest under water; and while they are in the river he scrambles out, and, taking the upper garment of the one whom he loves, flees with it to his home. In another Indian tale, five apsaras, or celestial dancers, are conveyed in an enchanted car to a pool in the forest. Seven supernatural maidens, in a Samoyede _marchen_, are brought in their reindeer chariot to a lake, where the hero possesses himself of the best suit of garments he finds on the sh.o.r.e. The owner prays him to give them up; but he refuses, until he obtains a definite pledge of marriage, saying: "If I give thee the garments thou wilt fare up again to heaven."[193]

In none of these stories (and they are but samples of many) does the feather dress occur; yet it has left reminiscences which are unmistakable. The variants. .h.i.therto cited have all betrayed these reminiscences as articles of clothing, or conveyance, or in the pardonable mistake of the Bantik forefather at the time of capture. I shall refer presently to cases whence the plumage has faded entirely out of the story--and that in spite of its picturesqueness--without leaving a trace. But let me first call attention to the fact that, even where it is preserved, we often do not find it exactly how and where we should have expected it. Witness the curious Algonkin tale of "How one of the Partridge's wives became a Sheldrake Duck." A hunter, we are told, returning home in his canoe, saw a beautiful girl sitting on a rock by the river, making a moccasin. He paddled up softly to capture her; but she jumped into the water and disappeared. Her mother, however, who lived at the bottom, compelled her to return to the hunter and be his wife. The legend then takes a turn in the direction of the Bluebeard myth; for the woman yields to curiosity, and thus deprives her husband of his luck. When he finds this out he seizes his bow to beat her. "When she saw him seize his bow to beat her she ran down to the river, and jumped in to escape death at his hands, though it should be by drowning.