The Science of Fairy Tales Part 14

But as she fell into the water she became a sheldrake duck." The Pa.s.samaquoddies, who relate this story, have hardly yet pa.s.sed out of the stage of thought in which no steadfast boundary is set between men and the lower animals. The amphibious maiden, who dwelt in the bottom of the river, could not be drowned by jumping into the stream; and it is evident that she only resumes her true aquatic form in escaping from her husband, who, it should be added, is himself called Partridge and seems to be regarded as, in fact, a fowl of that species. A still more remarkable instance is to be found among the Welsh of Carnarvonshire, who, it need hardly be said, are now on a very different level of civilization from that of the Pa.s.samaquoddies. They tell us that when the fairy bride of Corwrion quitted her unlucky husband, she at once flew through the air and plunged into the lake; and one account significantly describes her as flying away _like a wood-hen_. Can it have been many generations since she was spoken of as actually changing into a bird?[194]

We may now pa.s.s to wholly different types of the tradition. In all the stories where the magical dress appears, whether as a feather-skin, the hide of a quadruped, or in the modified form of wings, a robe, an ap.r.o.n, a veil or other symbol, the catastrophe is brought about by the wife's recovery, usually more or less accidental, of the article in question.

But it is obvious that where the incident of the dress is wanting, the loss of the supernatural bride must be brought about by other means. In some traditions, the woman's caprice, or the fulfilment of her fate, is deemed enough for this purpose; but in the most developed stories it is caused by the breach of a _taboo_. _Taboo_ is a word adopted from the Polynesian languages, signifying, first, something set apart, thence holy and inviolable, and lastly something simply forbidden. It is generally used in English as a verb of which the nearest equivalent is another curious verb--to boycott. A person or thing _tabooed_ is one avoided by express or tacit agreement on the part of any cla.s.s or number of persons; and _to taboo_ is to avoid in pursuance of such an agreement. In Folklore, however, the word is used in a different and wider sense. It includes every sort of prohibition, from the social or religious boycott (if I may use the word), to which it would be more properly applied, down to any injunction addressed by a supernatural being to the hero or heroine of a tale. Folklore students of the anthropological school are so apt to refer these last prohibitions for their origin to the more general prohibitions of the former kind, that perhaps this indiscriminate use of the word may be held to beg some of the questions at issue. It is certain, however, that the scholars who originally applied it to what I may call private prohibitions, had no such thought in their minds. They found it a convenient term, applicable by no great stretch of its ordinary meaning, and they appropriated it to the purposes of science. I shall therefore use it without scruple as a well recognized word, and without any question-begging intent.

Having premised so much, I will proceed to set forth shortly the balder type of the story, where there is no taboo, then the fuller type. Their relations to one another will be dealt with in the next chapter.

An Algonkin legend relates that a hunter beheld a basket descend from heaven, containing twelve young maidens of ravishing beauty. He attempted to approach, but on perceiving him they quickly re-entered the basket and were drawn up again out of his sight. Another day, however, he succeeded, by disguising himself as a mouse, in capturing the youngest of the damsels, whom he married and by whom he had a son. But nothing could console his wife for the society of her sisters, which she had lost. So one day she made a small basket; and having entered it with her child she sang the charm she and her sisters had formerly used, and ascended once more to the star from whence she had come. It is added that when two years had elapsed the star said to his daughter: "Thy son wants to see his father; go down, therefore, to the earth and fetch thy husband, and tell him to bring us specimens of all the animals he kills." This was done. The hunter ascended with his wife to the sky; and there a great feast was given, in which the animals he brought were served up. Those of the guests who took the paws or the tails were transformed into animals. The hunter himself took a white feather, and with his wife and child was metamorphosed into a falcon.[195] I will only now remark on the latter part of the tale that it is told by the same race as the Sheldrake Duck's adventures; and if we deem it probable that the heroine of that narrative simply resumed her pristine form in becoming a duck, the same reasoning will hold good as to the falcons here. This type of the myth we may call the "Star's Daughter type."

The other type may be named after Melusina, the famous Countess of Lusignan. The earliest writer to mention the legend which afterwards became identified with her name, was Gervase of Tilbury, who relates that Raymond, the lord of a certain castle a few miles from Aix in Provence, riding alone on the banks of the river, unexpectedly met an unknown lady of rare beauty, also alone, riding on a splendidly caparisoned palfrey. On his saluting her she replied, addressing him by name. Astonished at this, but encouraged, he made improper overtures to her; to which she declined to a.s.sent, intimating, however, in the most unabashed way, that she would marry him if he liked. He agreed to this; but the lady imposed a further condition, namely, that he should never see her naked; for if once he did so, all the prosperity and all the happiness with which he was about to be blessed would depart, and he would be left to drag out the rest of his life in wretchedness. On these terms they were married; and every earthly felicity followed,--wealth, renown, bodily strength, the love of his fellow-men, and children--boys and girls--of the greatest beauty. But one day his lady was bathing in the bedroom, when he came in from hunting and fowling, laden with partridges and other game. While food was being prepared the thought struck him that he would go and see her in her bath. So many years had he enjoyed unalloyed prosperity that, if there ever were any force in her threat, he deemed it had long since pa.s.sed away. Deaf to his wife's pleadings, he tore away the curtain from the bath and beheld her naked; but only for an instant, for she was forthwith changed into a serpent, and, putting her head under the water, she disappeared. Nor ever was she seen again; but sometimes in the darkness of night the nurses would hear her busy with a mother's care for her little children. Gervase adds that one of her daughters was married to a relative of his own belonging to a n.o.ble family of Provence, and her descendants were living at the time he wrote.[196]

The story, as told of Melusina, was amplified, but in its substance differed little from the foregoing. Melusina does not forbid her husband to see her naked, but bargains for absolute privacy on Sat.u.r.days. When Raymond violates this covenant he finds her in her bath with her lower extremities changed into a serpent's tail. The lady appears to be unconscious of her husband's discovery; and nothing happens until, in a paroxysm of anger and grief, arising from the murder of one of his children by another, he cries out upon her as an odious serpent, the contaminator of his race. It will be remembered that in the Esthonian tale cited in Chapter VIII the youth is forbidden to call his mistress mermaid; and all goes well until he peeps into the locked chamber, where she pa.s.ses her Thursdays, and finds her in mermaid form. Far away in j.a.pan we learn that the hero Hohodemi wedded Toyotamahime, a daughter of the Sea-G.o.d, and built a house for her on the strand where she might give birth to her child. She strictly forbade him to come near until the happy event was over: he was to remain in his own dwelling, and on no account to attempt to see her until she sent for him. His curiosity, however, was too much for his happiness. He peeped, and saw his wife writhing to and fro on the floor in the shape of a dragon. He started back, shocked; and when, later on, Toyotamahime called him to her, she saw by his countenance that he had discovered the secret she had thought to hide from all mankind. In spite of his entreaties she plunged into the sea, never more to see her lord. Her boy, notwithstanding, was still the object of her care. She sent her sister to watch over him, and he grew up to become the father of the first Emperor of j.a.pan. In a Maori tale the hero loses his wife through prematurely tearing down a screen he had erected for her convenience on a similar occasion. A Moravian tale speaks of a bride who shuts herself up every eighth day, and when her husband looks through the keyhole, he beholds her thighs clad with hair and her feet those of goats. This is a _marchen_; and in the end, having paid the penalty of his rashness by undergoing adventures like those of Hasan, the hero regains his love. A Tirolese _marchen_ tells us of a witch who, in the shape of a beautiful girl, took service with a rich man and made a conquest of his son. She wedded him on condition that he would never look upon her by candlelight. The youth, like a masculine Psyche, breaks the taboo; and a drop of the wax, falling on her cheek, awakens her. It was in vain that he blew out the taper and lay down. When he awoke in the morning she was gone; but a pair of shoes with iron soles stood by the bed, with a paper directing him to seek her till the soles were worn out, and then he should find her again. By the aid of a mantle of invisibility, and a chair which bore him where he wished, he arrived in the nick of time to prevent her marriage with another bridegroom. The proper reconciliation follows, and her true husband bears her home in triumph. Not so happy was the hero of a Corsican saga, who insisted on seeing his wife's naked shoulder and found it nothing but bones--the skeleton of their love which he had thus murdered.[197]

At the foot of the steep gra.s.sy cliffs of the Van Mountains in Carmarthenshire lies a lonely pool, called Llyn y Fan Fach, which is the scene of a variant of Melusina, less celebrated, indeed, but equally romantic and far more beautiful. The legend may still be heard on the lips of the peasantry; and more than one version has found its way into print. The most complete was written down by Mr. William Rees, of Tonn (a well-known Welsh antiquary and publisher), from the oral recitation of two old men and a woman, natives of Myddfai, where the hero of the story is said to have dwelt. Stated shortly, the legend is to the following effect: The son of a widow who lived at Blaensawdde, a little village about three-quarters of a mile from the pool, was one day tending his mother's cattle upon its sh.o.r.e when, to his astonishment, he beheld the Lady of the Lake sitting upon its unruffled surface, which she used as a mirror while she combed out her graceful ringlets. She imperceptibly glided nearer to him, but eluded his grasp and refused the bait of barley bread and cheese that he held out to her, saying as she dived and disappeared:

"Cras dy fara; Nid hawdd fy nala!"

("Hard-baked is thy bread; It is not easy to catch me!")

An offer of unbaked dough, or _toes_, the next day was equally unsuccessful. She exclaimed:

"Llaith dy fara!

Ti ni fynna'."

("Unbaked is thy bread!

I will not have thee.")

But the slightly baked bread, which the youth subsequently took, by his mother's advice, was accepted: he seized the lady's hand and persuaded her to become his bride. Diving into the lake she then fetched her father--"a h.o.a.ry-headed man of n.o.ble mien and extraordinary stature, but having otherwise all the force and strength of youth"--who rose from the depths with _two_ ladies and was ready to consent to the match, provided the young man could distinguish which of the two ladies before him was the object of his affections. This was no small test of love, inasmuch as the maidens were exactly alike in form and features. One of them, however, thrust her foot a little forward; and the hero recognized a peculiarity of her shoe-tie, which he had somehow had leisure to notice at his previous interviews. The father admits the correctness of his choice, and bestows a dowry of sheep, cattle, goats, and horses, but stipulates in the most business-like way that these animals shall return with the bride, if at any time her husband prove unkind and strike her thrice without a cause.

So far Mr. Rees' version. A version published in the "Cambro-Briton" is somewhat different. Three beautiful damsels appear from the pool, and are repeatedly pursued by the young farmer, but in vain. They always reached the water before him and taunted him with the couplet:

"Cras dy fara, Anhawdd ein dala!"

One day some moist bread from the lake came floating ash.o.r.e. The youth seized and devoured it; and the following day he was successful in catching the ladies. The one to whom he offers marriage consents on the understanding that he will recognize her the next day from among the three sisters. He does so by the strapping of her sandal; and she is accompanied to her new home by seven cows, two oxen, and a bull from the lake. A third version presents the maiden as rowing on New Year's Eve up and down the lake in a golden boat with a golden oar. She disappears from the hero's gaze, without replying to his adjurations. Counselled by a soothsayer, who dwells on the mountain, he casts loaves and cheese night after night from Midsummer Eve to New Year's Eve into the water, until at length the magic skiff again appears, and the fairy, stepping ash.o.r.e, weds her persistent wooer.

In all three versions the bridegroom is forbidden to strike "three causeless blows." Of course he disobeys. According to the "Cambro-Briton" version it happened that one day, preparing for a fair, he desired his wife to go to the field for his horse. Finding her dilatory in doing so, he tapped her arm thrice with his glove, saying, half in jest: "Go, go, go!" The blows were slight, but they were blows; and, the terms of the marriage contract being broken, the dame departed--she and her cattle with her--back into the lake. The other two accounts agree in spreading the blows over a much greater length of time. Mr. Rees' version relates that once the husband and wife were invited to a christening in the neighbourhood. The lady, however, seemed reluctant to go, making the feminine excuse that the distance was too far to walk. Her husband told her to fetch one of the horses from the field. "I will," said she, "if you will bring me my gloves, which I left in the house." He went, and, returning with the gloves, found that she had not gone for the horse, so he jocularly slapped her shoulder with one of the gloves, saying: "Go, go!" Whereupon she reminded him of the condition that he was not to strike her without a cause, and warned him to be more careful in future. Another time, when they were together at a wedding, she burst out sobbing amid the joy and mirth of all around her.

Her husband touched her on the shoulder and inquired the cause of her weeping. She replied: "Now people are entering into trouble; and your troubles are likely to commence, as you have the second time stricken me without a cause." Finding how very wide an interpretation she put upon the "causeless blows," the unfortunate husband did his best to avoid anything which could give occasion for the third and last blow. But one day they were together at a funeral, where, in the midst of the grief, she appeared in the highest spirits and indulged in immoderate fits of laughter. Her husband was so shocked that he touched her, saying: "Hush, hush! don't laugh!" She retorted that she laughed "because people, when they die, go out of trouble"; and, rising up, she left the house, exclaiming: "The last blow has been struck; our marriage contract is broken, and at an end! Farewell!" Hurrying home, she called together all her fairy cattle, walked off with them to the lake, and vanished in its waters. Even a little black calf, slaughtered and suspended on the hook, descended alive and well again to obey his mistress' summons; and four grey oxen, which were ploughing, dragged the plough behind them as they went, leaving a well-marked furrow, that remains to this day "to witness if I lie." The remaining version, with some differences of detail, represents the same eccentric pessimism on the lady's part (presumably attributable to the greater spiritual insight of her supernatural character), as the cause of the husband's not unwarranted annoyance and of his breach of the agreement. She had borne him three fair sons; and although she had quitted her husband for ever, she continued to manifest herself occasionally to them, and gave them instruction in herbs and medicine, predicting that they and their issue would become during many generations the most renowned physicians in the country.[198]

Such is the legend of the Van Pool. It has a number of variants, both in Wales and elsewhere, the examination of which I postpone for the present. Hitherto I have been guided in the mention of variants of this myth chiefly by the desire of showing how one type insensibly merges into another. The only type I have now left for examination may be called the "Nightmare type." It is allied not so much to the stories of Melusina and the Lady of the Van Pool as to stories like that of the Croatian wolf-maiden. According to German and Slavonic belief the nightmare is a human being--frequently one whose love has been slighted, and who in this shape is enabled to approach the beloved object. It slips through the keyhole, or any other hole in a building, and presses its victim sometimes to death. But it can be caught by quickly stopping the hole through which it has entered. A certain man did so one night; and in the morning he found a young and lovely maiden in the room. On asking her whence she came, she told him from Engelland (angel-land, England). He hid her clothes, married her, and had by her three children. The only thing peculiar about her was that she used constantly to sing while spinning:

"Now calls my mother (_or_, blows my father) in Engelland, Mary Catharine, Drive out thy swine."

One day her husband came home and found that his wife had been telling the children that she had come as a nightmare from Engelland. When he reproached her for it, she went to the cupboard where her clothes were hidden, threw them over herself, and vanished. Yet she could not quite forsake her husband and little ones. On Sat.u.r.days she came unseen and laid out their clean clothes; and every night she appeared while others slept, and taking the baby out of the cradle quieted it at her breast.

The allusion to the nightmare's clothes is uncommon; but it is an unmistakable link with the types we have been considering. In other tales she is caught in the shape of a straw; and she is generally released by taking the stopper out of the hole whereby she entered. The account she gives of herself is that she has come out of England, that the pastor had been guilty of some omission in the service when she was baptized, and hence she became a nightmare, but to be re-christened would cure her. She often hears her mother call her. In one story she vanished on being reproached with her origin, and in another on being asked how she became a nightmare.[199]

An Esthonian tale speaks of a father who found his little boy one night in an unquiet slumber. He noticed over the bed a hole in the wall through which the wind was whistling, and thought it was this which was disturbing him. Wherefore he stopped it up; and no sooner had he done so than he saw on the bed by the boy's side a pretty little girl, who teased and played with him so that he could not sleep in peace. The child was thus forced to stay in the house. She grew up with the other children, and being quick and industrious was beloved by all. Specially was she dear to the boy in whose bed she was found; and when he grew up he married her. One Sunday in church she burst out laughing during the sermon. After the service was over the husband inquired what she was laughing at. She refused to tell him, save on condition of his telling her in return how she came into his father's house. When she had extracted this promise from him, she told him she saw stretched on the wall of the church a great horse-skin, on which the Evil One was writing the names of all those who slept or chattered in church, and paid no heed to G.o.d's word. The skin was at last full of names; and in order to find room for more the Devil had to pull it with his teeth, so as to stretch it further. In so doing he b.u.mped his head against the wall, and made a wry face: whereat she, who saw it, laughed. When they got home her husband pulled out the piece of wood which his father had put into the hole; and the same instant his wife was gone. The husband was disconsolate, but he saw her no more. It was said, however, that she often appeared to his two children in secret, and brought them precious gifts. In Smaland a parallel legend is current, according to which the ancestress of a certain family was an elf-maid who came into the house with the sunbeams through a knot-hole in the wall, and, after being married to the son and bearing him four children, vanished the same way as she had come. In North Germany it is believed that when seven boys, or seven girls, are born in succession, one among them is a nightmare. A man who had unknowingly wedded such a nightmare found that she disappeared from his bed at nights; and on watching her he discovered that she slipped through the hole for the strap by which the latch was lifted, returning the same way. So he stopped up the opening, and thus always retained her. After a considerable time he wanted to use the latch, and thinking she had forgotten her bad habit and he might safely take the peg out, he did so; but the next night she was missing, and never came back, though every Sunday morning the man found clean linen laid out for him as usual.[200]

A Pomeranian tradition relates the adventure of an officer who was much troubled by the nightmare. He caught her in the usual manner and wedded her, although he could not persuade her to say whence she came. After some years she induced her husband to open the holes he had stopped up; and the next morning she had disappeared. But he found written in chalk on the table the words: "If thou wilt seek me, the Commander of London is my father." He sought her in London and found her; and having taken the precaution to rechristen her he lived happily with her ever after.[201] This is the only instance I have met with where the nightmare-wife is recovered. It would be interesting to know why England is a.s.signed as the home of these perturbed spirits.

FOOTNOTES:

[185] Burton, "Nights," vol. viii. p. 7.

[186] Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 69, quoting Afzelius; Haltrich, p. 15; Hapgood, p. 214; Meier, "Volksmarchen," p. 39; Baring-Gould, p. 575. No authority is given by Mr. Baring-Gould, and I have been unable to trace the Hessian tale; but I rely on his correctness. He also cites an incoherent Swan-maiden tale from Castren, of which he manages to make more sense than I can (Castren, "Altaischen Volker," p. 172). In an Irish tale Oengus, the son of the Dagda, falls in love, through a dream, with Caer ib Ormaith, who is one year in the form of a swan and the next in human shape. After union with her he seems to have undergone the same alternation of form (_Revue Celtique_, vol. iii. p. 342, from a MS. in the British Museum).

[187] Schreck, p. 35; Vernaleken, pp. 274, 287; Jones and Kropf, p. 95; "Bahar-Da.n.u.sh," vol. ii. p. 213 (an abstract of this story will be found in Keightley, p. 20); Burton, "Nights," vol. v. p. 344; Steere, p. 349; Cavallius, p. 175, freely translated by Thorpe, "Yule-Tide Stories," p.

158. Mr. Morris turns the doves into swans. _Cf._ a South-Slavonic tale from Varazdina, Krauss, vol. i. p. 409.

[188] Brett, "Legends and Myths," p. 29. This legend is told with further details by Im Thurn, p. 381.

[189] Rink, p. 145; Prym und Socin, p. 51.

[190] Knoop, p. 104.

[191] "F. L. Espan." vol. i. p. 187.

[192] Keightley, p. 169, from Hibbert, "Description of the Shetland Islands"; Wratislaw, p. 290; "F. L. Journal," vol. vi. p. 165. As a point of resemblance with the Lady of the Van Pool, quoted further on, it may be noted that these seal-women (the legend of their capture is a common one in the Shetland Islands) had the power to conjure up from the deep a superior breed of horned cattle, many of whose offspring are still to be seen (Dr. Karl Blind in "Contemp. Rev." 1881, quoted by Mac Ritchie, p. 4).

[193] Kirby, p. 319; "Arch. Rev." vol. ii. p. 90; Schmidt, p. 133; Bent, p. 13; Von Hahn, vol. i. p. 295 (_cf._ vol. ii. p. 82); Garnett, p. 352, translating Dozon's "Chansons Populaires Bulgares"; Cosquin, vol. ii. p.

18. _Cf._ Ralston, "Tibetan Tales," p. 53; Landes, p. 123; Comparetti, vol. i. p. 212, translated "F. L. Record," vol. ii. p. 12; Grimm, "Tales," vol. ii. p. 331; Poestion, p. 55; Vernaleken, p. 274; Pitre, vol. iv. p. 140; Sastri, p. 80.

[194] Leland, p. 300. _Cf._ ibid. p. 140, where the maidens are called weasels, and ultimately marry stars. "Y Cymmrodor," vol. iv. p. 201. In a tale rendered from the modern Greek by Von Hahn the name Swan-maiden is preserved in the t.i.tle, though the plumage has disappeared from the text. Stress can hardly be laid upon this, as the t.i.tle is no part of the tale. Von Hahn, vol. i. p. 131.

[195] "La Tradition," March 1889, p. 78, quoting the Abbe Domenech, "Voyage pittoresque dans les deserts du Nouveau Monde," p. 214. Mr.

Farrer gives the same story from "Algic Researches" (Farrer, "Primitive Manners," p. 256).

[196] Gerv. Tilb. Dec. i. c. 15.

[197] Brauns, p. 138; White, vol. ii. p. 141; Vernaleken, p. 294; Schneller, p. 23; Ortoli, p. 284.

[198] "The Physicians of Myddfai--Meddygon Myddfai," translated by John Pughe, Esq., F.R.C.S., and edited by Rev. John Williams ab Ithel, M.A.

(1861), p. xxi. "Cambro-Briton," vol. ii. p. 315; Sikes, p. 40. Mr.

Sikes gives no authority for the third version. I have a.s.sumed its genuineness, though I confess Mr. Sikes' methods are not such as to inspire confidence.

[199] Jahn, p. 364, _et seqq._; Knoop, pp. 26, 83, 103; Kuhn, pp. 47, 197, 374; Kuhn und Schwartz, pp. 14, 91, 298; Schleicher, p. 93; Thorpe, vol. ii. p. 169, quoting Thiele. Note the suggestion of Pope Gregory's pun in the name of the native land of the nightmare. Elsewhere a child becomes a nightmare who is born on a Sunday and baptized on a Sunday at the same hour, or one at whose baptism some wicked person has secretly muttered in response to one of the priest's questions some wrong words, or "It shall become a nightmare" (Lemke, p. 42). Similar superst.i.tions attached to somnabulism; see Lecky, "History of Rationalism," vol. i. p.

81, note 2.

[200] Jannsen, vol. i. p. 53; Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 70, quoting Afzelius, vol. ii. p. 29, quoting Mullenhoff. It is a common Teutonic belief that knot-holes are attributable to elves (Grimm, "Teut. Myth." p. 461).

[201] "Am Urds-Brunnen," vol. vi. p. 58.

CHAPTER XI.

SWAN-MAIDENS (_continued_).

The incident of the recovery of the bride not found in all the stories--New Zealand sagas--Andrianro--Mother-right--The father represented under a forbidding aspect--Tasks imposed on the hero--The Buddhist theory of the Grateful Animals--The feather-robe a symbol of bride's superhuman character--Mode of capture--The Taboo--Dislike of fairies for iron--Utterance of name forbidden--Other prohibitions--Fulfilment of fate--The taboo a mark of progress in civilization--The divine ancestress--Totems and Banshees--Re-appearance of mother to her children--The lady of the Van Pool an archaic deity.