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Title: The legend of Perseus, Volume I (of 3)
The supernatural birth
Author: Edwin Sidney Hartland
Release Date: June 30, 2023 [eBook #71074]
Language: English
Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LEGEND OF PERSEUS, VOLUME
I (OF 3) ***
The
Legend of Perseus
A STUDY OF TRADITION IN STORY
CUSTOM AND BELIEF: BY
Edwin Sidney Hartland
F.S.A.
VOL. I.
THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH
Published by David Nutt
in the Strand, London
1894
[IMPRINT]
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty
PREFACE
{v}
The classical myth of Perseus belongs to a group of folktales
ranking among the foremost in interest for the student of the
evolution of human thought and human institutions. It is compounded,
like other folktales, of incidents which have varied in their order
and prominence, as well as in their mode of presentment, at different
times and in different lands. What constitutes its importance is the
fact that certain of these incidents are grounded upon ideas,
universal in their range, and found fully developed in the depths of
savagery, which, rising with mankind from plane to plane of
civilisation, have at last been embodied in the faith and symbolism of
the loftiest and most spiritual of the great religions of the
world--the religion of civilised Europe. The figure of Perseus, the
god-begotten, the dragon-slayer, very early became a type of the
Saviour of the World; while the conception underlying the Life-token
(an incident not extant in classical sources) obtained its ultimate
expression in the most sacred rite of Christian worship.
In these volumes I have attempted an examination of the myth upon
scientific principles. The first three {vi} chapters of the present
volume are devoted to an account of the story, as given by the poets
and historians of antiquity, and in modern folklore. Taking, then, the
four chief incidents in order, the remaining chapters comprise an
inquiry into analogous forms of the Supernatural Birth, alike in tale
and custom, throughout the world. They will be followed by similar
inquiries into the incidents of the Life-token, the Rescue of
Andromeda, and the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head. Having thus analysed
the incidents, and determined, so far as the means at my command will
permit, their foundation in belief and custom, and the large part
played by some of the conceptions in savage life, I shall return to
the story as a whole, and, treating it as an artistic work, I shall
inquire whether it be possible to ascertain what was its primitive
form, where it originated, and how it became diffused over the Eastern
continent.
I am deeply sensible of the difficulties of the task I have
undertaken, and of the very imperfect way in which I have hitherto
performed it. Unfortunately, I cannot hope to succeed better in that
portion which has yet to be laid before the reader. All I can hope is
that I may have exhibited, however inadequately (if further exhibition
were needful), the advantage for psychological purposes of research
into the ideas and the usages of uncultured peoples and of the less
cultured classes in civilised communities.
My sincere thanks are due to many friends who have rendered me
valuable assistance from time to time; among others to Miss Marian
Roalfe Cox, who has been kind {vii} enough to supply me with abstracts
of several variants of the tale--some of them not readily accessible;
to Mr. W. H. D. Rouse, M.A., and Mr. G. L. Gomme, F.S.A., President of
the Folklore Society, to whom I am indebted for help on some important
points; to Dr. Oscar W. Clark for calling my attention to various
interesting superstitions; to the Rev. R. H. Codrington, D.D., for his
ready response to my questions; and last, but not least, to Mr. Alfred
Nutt, for his kindness in reading the proof-sheets, and for the
suggestions and help he is so well qualified to give in many
departments of folklore, particularly in all matters relating to
Celtic literature and tradition. In making this acknowledgment, of
course, I do not seek to shift from my own shoulders any portion of
responsibility for the opinions I have expressed. In some of those
opinions all the friends whose aid has been thus generously rendered
would probably agree. Perhaps none of them would accept all. Our
common possession is the single desire for truth and a perennial
interest in everything which may cast light on the past--and the
future--of humanity.
For the reader’s convenience I have compiled a list of the modern
works cited, with such bibliographical information as will admit of
the editions used being readily identified. An index will be issued in
the concluding volume; and meanwhile it is hoped the list of contents
will be found to contain a sufficient analysis of the chapters.
Barnwood Court, Gloucester,
_June_ 1894.
CONTENTS
{ix}
CHAPTER I
The Legend of Perseus as preserved in Classical Writers--Its three
trains of incident--The Danae type of the Story in Modern Folklore
The classical story of Perseus--Its localisation in Greece, in Latium
and at Joppa--References by Herodotus--The Assyrian hero,
Gilgames--References by Ælian--The three leading trains of
incident--Modern folktales--The Danae type in Italy and Greece--The
Irish saga of Balor and MacKineely--German, Swedish, and Russian
stories.
CHAPTER II
The Story in Modern Folklore--The King of the Fishes type
The Breton tale of The King of the Fishes--Four trains of incident
here developed--Variants in Lorraine, Tirol, Gascony--The Wonderful
Pike and other Scandinavian variants--Greek story--The Argyllshire
tale of the Sea Maiden--A German variant--The Enchanted Hind in the
Pentameron, and its variants in Italian folklore--Slavonic and Gipsy
tales--Sanskrit tale.
{x}
CHAPTER III
The Remaining Types of the Story
The Mermaid type--Scottish, Lithuanian, and Sicilian tales--The Gold
Children type--German, Flemish, Italian, and Breton tales--The Tower
of Babylon type--The Enchanting Bird type--Variants in the Tirol,
Normandy, and the Lowlands of Scotland--The Knife-grinder’s Sons
type--Found in the Tirol and Germany--A favourite type among Slavonic
peoples--Kabyle and Italian variants--The Enchanted Twins
type--Variant from East Africa--Abruzzian and Swabian variants--Saint
George type--Stories from Portugal and Lorraine.
CHAPTER IV
The Incident of the Supernatural Birth in Märchen
Stories of Supernatural Birth are world-wide--Only examples analogous
to those in the variants of Perseus to be dealt with--Birth caused by
something eaten or drunk--Fish--Fruit and cereals--Drugs--Portions of
human corpses--Flowers and leaves--Water and other liquids--Birth
caused by scent--By touching flowers, herbs, and other things--Zulu
story of aid by pigeons--Conception by rays of the sun--By a wish.
CHAPTER V
The Supernatural Birth in Sagas
Stories of Supernatural Birth not only told for amusement but believed
to be true--The eating of fish a rare cause--The eating of fruit and
cereals frequently {xi} found in both hemispheres--Indian and
Mongolian stories--Heathen and Christian elements in the fiftieth rune
of the _Kalevala_--Yehl, the Thlinkit hero--Heitsi-Eibib, the
Hottentot ancestor-god--Birth of Vikramâditya--Siamese
tradition--Other Mongolian traditions--Irish legends--Impregnation by
drinking--By eating portions of human bodies--By smell--By touching
stones and other magical substances--By saliva--Conception by the
foot--Pictures of the Annunciation--Birth of Quetzalcoatl--Conception
by bathing--Saoshyant--Anti-christ--Conception by wind, rain, and
vapour--By the sun--Legend of Genghis Khan--Impregnation by a
glance--Birth from a clot of blood.
CHAPTER VI
The Supernatural Birth in Practical Superstitions
The supernatural means of conception in the stories actually believed
to be still effectual--Practices to obtain children--Vedic
ceremonies--The eating of fruit, cereals, and leaves--The
mandrake--Animal substances eaten--Salt--Drinking of water--Sacred
wells--Drinking of blood--Eating of portions of human
bodies--Bathing--Exposure to the rays of the sun--Striking of
childless women--Amulets--Phallic symbols and their use--Simulation as
a magical practice--Fertilisation by wind--Imperfect recognition by
savages of paternity.
CHAPTER VII
Death and Birth as Transformation
Birth often merely a new manifestation of a pre-existing person--The
Egyptian tale of The Two Brothers--European and other
variants--Transformation {xii} in _märchen_--The Singing Bone--The
Scottish ballad of Binnorie--Santal variants--New birth of dead man
from eating a portion of his body--Metamorphosis of dead man into a
tree in _märchen_, saga, and superstition--Origin of maize and of
manioc--Attis--Metamorphosis into animal forms--Savage doctrine of
Transformation--Buddhist popular belief--Alleged Celtic dogma of
Transmigration--Taliessin--Tuan mac Cairill--Etain--Son a new birth of
the father or other ancestor--Superstitions current in India, Africa,
the South Seas, Europe, America--The naming of
children--Transformation the creed of savages.
List of Works referred to
Endnotes
Errata
The Vignette on the title-page is from the well-known 5th century bowl
from Caere, figured by Gerhard, Berl. Winckelmann Progr. 1854.
THE LEGEND OF PERSEUS
{1}
CHAPTER I.
THE LEGEND OF PERSEUS AS PRESERVED IN CLASSICAL WRITERS. ITS THREE
TRAINS OF INCIDENT. THE DANAE TYPE OF THE STORY IN MODERN FOLKLORE.
In _The Earthly Paradise_ William Morris has made English the Doom
of King Acrisius in such lovely wise, and in the main with such close
adherence to the story as told by Ovid and other classical writers, as
to render thankless the task of repeating it at length. But in
undertaking an inquiry into the foundations and history of the legend
of Perseus, it is needful to bear in mind its salient features. I
shall therefore ask the reader’s patience for a summary of these.
Acrisius, the son of Abas and king of Argos, having been warned by an
oracle that he should die by the hands of his daughter Danae’s son,
built a tower of brass in which he imprisoned the maiden, that he
might keep her celibate and so frustrate the oracle. Jupiter, however,
visited her in a shower of gold; and she bore a son, Perseus. By the
king’s orders, mother and babe were enclosed in a chest and cast into
the sea. The chest came to land on the island of Seriphos, and was
drawn ashore by a fisherman {2} named Dictys. Polydectes, the king of
the island, took Danae under his protection, and in process of time
desired to marry her. For this purpose he found it necessary first to
get rid of her son. He accordingly set him the task of cutting off and
bringing to him the head of Medusa, the only mortal of the three
Gorgons, hoping, of course, that he would perish in the attempt. But
the youth had friends in high places. Pallas provided him with a
buckler brightly polished as a mirror, Pluto with a helmet of
invisibility, Mercury with his own winged shoes, and Vulcan with a
sword. Thus equipped, he set out on his adventure. Reaching the
dwelling of the Graiæ, he possessed himself of the single eye which
these three hideous sisters owned among them and passed from hand to
hand, and thus compelled them to direct him where he might find the
Gorgons. The chief danger of the expedition was Medusa’s power of
turning to stone with a glance all who approached her. Perseus escaped
this danger by coming upon her asleep, and by regarding her in his
shield while he swept off her head with his sword. On his way back,
with the prize deposited safely in his wallet, he visited Atlas, the
giant king of Libya; but, receiving scant hospitality, he repaid it by
trying the power of the Gorgon’s head on the king and his servants,
and so converted them into the mountain range on whose huge top the
heaven with all its stars (so the gods willed) has ever since reposed.
Flying thence over land and sea, he descried Andromeda, the daughter
of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia, and of his wife, Cassiope, bound to the
rock. He descended, and learned that she was thus exposed to a marine
monster to be devoured, in obedience to an oracle of Jupiter Ammon.
The monster had been sent by Neptune to ravage the country, in order
to revenge {3} a boast by Cassiope that she herself was equal to the
Nereids in beauty. Perseus fought and killed the instrument of divine
vengeance, and wedded Andromeda. The wedding feast, however, was
disturbed by Cepheus’ brother, Phineus, to whom Andromeda had been
betrothed, and who, though he had stood by while she was being bound
and made no effort to save her, now came with a band of followers to
claim his bride from her deliverer. He attacked Perseus and broke up
the banquet with a bloody fight, described in much detail by Ovid,
which was only ended by the hero’s producing Medusa’s head and
petrifying his foes. Perseus, with his bride, afterward sailed for
Argos, where he restored his grandfather, who had been dethroned by
Proetus, his own brother; and, passing on, he reached Seriphos just in
time to save his mother, Danae, from Polydectes. He turned the tyrant
to stone, and gave the realm to the faithful Dictys. The oracle in
reference to Acrisius was fulfilled later, at Larissa, on the occasion
of the funeral games celebrated by Teutamias, king of Thessaly, for
his father. Perseus, throwing a quoit in one of the contests,
accidentally struck his grandfather on the head and killed him.[3.1]
This is the substance of the story that engaged the genius of some of
the greatest poets of antiquity. I have followed in the main Ovid’s
narrative; but the only parts he deals with at length are the episodes
of Atlas and Andromeda. The absurdities and impossibilities of the
tale were as obvious as its beauties to the ancients themselves; and
many were the attempts to rationalise it. We need not concern
ourselves with these. For our immediate purpose {4} the interest lies
in the localisation of the different scenes and the variations we can
trace of its episodes.
Perseus, like other Greek national heroes, was the object of worship.
The chief seat of his cult seems to have been the isle of Seriphos,
where it was believed that not only Polydektes, but also most of the
inhabitants with him, were petrified by the dead Gorgon’s glances. The
later coinage of the island exhibited Medusa’s head; and the peasants,
when they find such coins now, relate that they are the coins of the
first queen of the island, who dwelt in the mediæval castle upon the
scarped hill above the port of Livadhi.[4.1] Next to Seriphos, Argos
and Mykene honoured, as was natural, the hero. He had ruled the one
and founded the other. The name of Mykene was believed to record the
place where he dropped the sheath of his sword; and a fountain, which
bore his name, marked the spot where it fell. A different derivation
of the name of Mykene is given in the lost work of Ctesias the
Ephesian on Perseus. He there attributes it to the bellowing
(μυκηθμὸς) made by Stheno and Euryale, the sisters of Medusa, in their
impotent rage against the hero, whom they pursued as blood-avengers to
this spot, and here finally abandoned the pursuit as hopeless.[4.2] At
Argos his tomb was shown; and in the forum there, beneath a barrow of
earth, it was claimed that the awful trophy of his victory over the
Gorgon lay--the trophy which, according to another version of the
legend, was for ever fixed in Athene’s shield, the most dangerous of
her {5} weapons. Elsewhere the Argives showed a subterranean building
containing a brazen bedchamber, said to have been that made by
Akrisios for his daughter--a variation from the brazen tower of the
story usually current.[5.1]
But Argos and Seriphos were not allowed to monopolise the sacred
scenes of Perseus’ life. The city of Ardea in Latium disputed with
Seriphos the honour of being the refuge of Danae ‘pregnant with
almighty gold.’ From her, according to Vergil, Turnus, who competed
with Æneas for Lavinia’s hand, derived his lineage.[5.2] Although
Andromeda’s father is described as king of Ethiopia, the general
consent of antiquity laid the scene of her rescue at Joppa. Near that
town was a fountain wherein the hero washed away the stains of the
combat, and whose water was coloured ever after by the monster’s
blood.[5.3] Upon the rocks which bounded the haven were pointed out
the marks left by the maiden’s chains; and Marcus Scaurus, when
ædile, brought from Joppa, and exhibited at Rome, the bones of the
monster. A rumour of this event seems to have reached the forger of
Sir John Maundeville’s travels, for he relates that the place was
still shown where the great giant Andromeda was fastened with chains
before the Flood, and not only the place where he was confined, but
one of his ribs measuring forty feet in length![5.4] It is evident
that he took pains to ascertain the exact truth.
In Egypt and in Persia, the Father of History found traditions of a
personage identified with Perseus. “According {6} to the Persian
story,” he tells us, “Perseus was an Assyrian who became a Greek; his
ancestors, therefore, according to them, were not Greeks. They do not
admit that the forefathers of Akrisios were in any way related to
Perseus, but say they were Egyptians, as the Greeks likewise testify.”
And elsewhere he represents Xerxes as telling the Greeks that Perses,
from whom he claimed descent, was the child of Perseus, the son of
Danae, and of Andromeda, the daughter of Kepheus--a statement
apparently accepted by the historian, as well as by other Greek
writers.[6.1] Both these stories probably were Assyrian in origin, and
obtained currency, first among the Persians and afterwards among the
Greeks, from political causes. In the latter story Kepheus is
presented as the son of Bel. It is unlikely that the Achæmenian kings
of Persia would have claimed descent from him, had they not been
conquerors of Babylon. The Assyrian hero equated with Perseus in the
former story we are fortunately enabled by recent discoveries to
identify. He is no other than Gilgames, whose name was at one time
transliterated as Izdubar, the hero of the epos from the library of
King Assurbanipal, preserved in an imperfect form in the British
Museum. The fragments we have of the tablets do not include the hero’s
birth. Upon this, however, the solution of the characters embodying
his name has thrown unexpected light. For Ælian the rhetorician,
writing in the third century of the Christian era, has transmitted to
us an account of the birth of Gilgamos, whom he styles King of the
Babylonians. According to this account, the Chaldeans predicted to a
monarch, whose name is variously read as Sakchoros, Senéchoros and
Enéchoros, that his daughter would have a {7} son who would deprive
his grandfather of the kingdom. Fearing this, he ordered her to be
kept in close confinement. His precautions were vain, for fate was
cleverer than the Babylonian king. His daughter bore a son whose
father was unknown. No sooner was the infant born than her guards
threw it down, for fear of the king, from the citadel wherein she was
immured. But an eagle, beholding the falling child, darted beneath it,
and, receiving it on its back, bore it gently to the ground in a
certain garden. The gardener found the boy, and adopted him for his
beauty. “If anybody think this a fable,” says the rhetorician, eager
to shuffle off all responsibility for it, “I admit I don’t believe it
myself; yet I am told that Perses the Achæmenian, from whom the noble
stock of the Persians is derived, was an eagle’s nursling.” On
examining the epos of Gilgames we recognise none of the adventures as
those of Perseus. This may be owing to its imperfect preservation, or
to its being a literary recension wherein only those parts of the
story proper to the writer’s purpose are combined. It can hardly be
that the sole resemblance is in the circumstances of the hero’s birth.
On the other hand, the career of Gilgames has many points of likeness
to that of Herakles.[7.1] He rejoices in a divine origin and in the
favour of the gods; he conquers lions and monsters; he triumphantly
accomplishes a journey to the other world. Now, a story of the rescue
of a maiden similar to that by Perseus was told of Herakles. When
Laomedon, king of Troy, had bound his daughter Hesione to a rock, to
be devoured by a sea-monster sent by Poseidon, Herakles undertook her
deliverance, and sprang full-armed into the fish’s throat, whence {8}
he hacked his way forth again after three days’ imprisonment,
hairless.[8.1] We are left to conjecture that, if we had the
traditions of Gilgames fully presented to us, we should not only have
his birth as told by Ælian, but also some other features of his story
linking it to that of Perseus--features that perhaps would at the same
time explain why the king his grandfather is called an Egyptian.
Herodotus seems to have attached more credit to the tale he found in
Egypt. He describes the temple to the hero at Chemmis in the canton of
Thebes, and mentions the games celebrated in his honour. The
Chemmites, he says, claimed Perseus as Chemmite by descent, and
related that on his way from the slaughter of the Gorgon he paid a
visit to their city, acknowledged them for his kinsfolk, and
instituted the games. They declared that he was in the habit of
appearing to them, sometimes in his temple, at other times in the open
country, and that one of the sandals he had worn was often found,
measuring two cubits in length; and it was a sign of prosperity to the
kingdom. There was also a watch-tower called by the name of Perseus
near the Canopic mouth of the Nile.[8.2]
But, with regard both to the Persian and to the Egyptian tales, it
must be borne in mind that all classical writers had a light-hearted
way of calling foreign gods and heroes by the names of their own
divinities, whenever they could get an excuse for so doing in the
resemblances they traced, or fancied, either in attributes or legends.
This practice has introduced endless confusion into their accounts,
perfunctory {9} at the best and often contemptuous, of the mythologies
of other nations. If we learn little from the historian’s references
to the Persian, or Assyrian, tradition, we know less of that of the
Egyptians; and, with all our discoveries, we have yet to find the clew
to the object of veneration at Chemmis, and the legends clustered
about him.
Coming down to a later period, Ælian makes mention of a fish caught
in the Red Sea, and called Perseus equally by the dwellers on the
shore, by the Greeks, and by the Arabs. He informs us that the latter
honoured Perseus, the son of Zeus, and declared that it was from him
this fish derived its name. He also describes a gigantic marine
cricket, something like a rock-lobster, which many persons abstained
from eating, because they deemed it sacred. The inhabitants of
Seriphos, if they caught it in their nets, would not keep it, but
returned it to the sea; if they found one dead, they would bury it,
weeping; and they held that these creatures were dear to Perseus. The
importance of these statements will appear hereafter. Another
tradition of Seriphos noticed by the same writer attributes the
silence of the frogs (which never croaked) on the island to the
prayers of Perseus, when they disturbed his sleep on his return from
the contest with Medusa.[9.1] The hero of the island would naturally
be credited with many of its peculiarities.
The general result is that legends identical in substance with that of
Perseus were widely known in ancient times. From Persia to Italy, from
cultured Greece to the barbarous shores of the Red Sea, a tale was
told, a hero was celebrated, identified by Greek and Roman writers
with {10} the son of Danae. The tale, however, was not told without
variations, of which the underground chamber in the Argive territory
and the escape of Danae to Ardea are specimens; while the hero’s
mysterious connection with a fish, or marine crustacean, points to
another.
The legend consists of three leading trains of incident, namely:--
1. The Birth, including the prophecy, the precautions taken by
Akrisios, the supernatural conception, the exposure of mother and
babe, and the fulfilment of the prophecy by the death of Akrisios.
2. The Quest of the Gorgon’s Head, including the jealousy of
Polydektes, the divine gift of weapons, the visit to the Graiæ, the
slaughter of Medusa, and the vengeance on Polydektes.
3. The Rescue of Andromeda, including the fight with the monster and
the quelling of Phineus, the pretender to the maiden’s hand.
Singly, these trains of incident appear in many traditions, sometimes
in one form, sometimes in another. We shall consider them first in
combination, with the object of tracing the legend in its wanderings
and modifications. Afterwards, leaving out of account the surrounding
details, we shall examine the central incidents, so as, if possible,
to arrive at the ideas which underlie them. In other words, we shall
first treat the story as a whole, and then analyse it into its
component parts. A tale, however, in its passage through the world is
susceptible of almost infinite modifications. It will be obviously
impossible in the analysis to deal with more than a few of these; and
I shall confine my attention to the above three leading trains of
incident and one other, which appears in many modern versions, and
{11} which we shall find to be not the least important and interesting
of the four.
Considering the story as a story-whole, we may begin by reminding
ourselves that the forms in which we receive it from Ovid and Lucian
are literary forms of a pre-existing oral version. This version was
probably the most widely accredited, though, as we have seen reason to
think, not the only version current in classical times. And in
transferring our inquiries from literature to tradition, we shall be
met by variations much wider than those manifested in ancient
writings. On the other hand, we shall not be left without
approximations to the form with which we are familiar there.
Of these approximations, perhaps the closest was told a few years ago
to Signor Giovanni Siciliano by an absolutely illiterate peasant woman
of Pratovecchio in the Val d’Arno. It runs thus:--A childless king,
praying for offspring, hears a voice asking him to choose between a
son who will die and a daughter who will run away. By the advice of
his subjects he chooses the latter; and a daughter is accordingly
born. Some miles from his city the king has a palace in the midst of a
fair garden. Thither he brings the child, with nurse and maid of
honour, to keep her in safety; and he and his wife visit the little
one but rarely. No sooner, however, had she arrived at the age of
sixteen than the son of King Jonah, passing by, saw her and bribed her
nurse to let him have access to her. The young people fell in love
with one another, and were secretly married. In due time the bride
gave birth to a son; and her father, learning this, refused to see her
again. When the boy was fifteen years of age he went to find his
grandfather, who would not so much as speak to him. He endured this
silence for three {12} or four months, and then demanded the reason
for it, offering the king, if he would tell him, to go and cut off the
Witch’s head for him. The king replied that this was just what he
wanted him to do. Now, the witch in question was so terrible that all
who looked at her became statues; and the king hoped that the youth
would perish in the adventure. But on the way he met an old man who
gave him a flying steed, and directed him to a palace wherein dwelt
two women who had only one eye between them, from whom he was to
obtain a mirror. And the old man warned him always to regard the witch
in the mirror, and never to look at her otherwise, lest he should
become a statue. The flying steed carried the adventurer safely over a
mountain inhabited by all sorts of wild and ravenous beasts; and he
arrived in due course at the palace of the one-eyed women. There, by
possessing himself of the eye while one of them was handing it to the
other, he extorted the mirror which enabled him to accomplish the
object of his journey. After cutting off the witch’s head, he returned
home another way; and coming to a seaport town he found a chapel by
the sea-side, and a lovely maiden within it, clad in mourning garb and
weeping. She bids him depart, lest he also be eaten by the
seven-headed dragon whereto she has been offered, and whose coming she
is then awaiting. He refuses to leave her. Instead of doing so, he
attacks the dragon on its rising from the sea, turns it to stone, and
cuts out its seven tongues, which he ties up in a handkerchief and
puts in his pocket. But, having delivered the lady, he ungallantly
refuses to see her home, saying that he wishes to see a little more of
the world. Before leaving her, however, he makes an appointment to
return in six months. This inscrutable conduct gives opportunity to a
cobbler, who {13} meets her alone, to threaten her with death unless
she will tell her father that he is the slayer of the dragon. Deprived
of her champion, she is compelled to submit to the terms; but when her
father offers her in marriage to her supposed deliverer, she pleads
for a delay of six months. Then the king sent placards through all his
cities, announcing his daughter’s deliverance by a cobbler and her
approaching marriage to him. Her real deliverer _hears_ the placards,
and returns to the capital just as the six months are expiring. He
attends an audience, and inquires of the king how many heads the beast
had, and whether the cobbler has any proof of his victory. The cobbler
is summoned, and asked where are the dragon’s seven tongues? The
damsel settles the question, however, by declaring that the youth it
was who slew the dragon and cut out his tongues, and that the rascal
of a shoemaker had taken her by force and compelled her to say that it
was he. The shoemaker is promptly burned in the great square, and the
hero married. He returns with his bride to his grandfather, to whom he
shows the witch’s head, with the inevitable result, and then fetches
his father from the garden where he had himself been born.[13.1]
That there should be so striking a resemblance between this story and
that of the classical writers is not surprising to any one who
realises the tenacity of popular traditions. It is not, indeed,
necessary to suppose that it has been handed down from pagan times in
Tuscany: it may only date, as a popular tale, from the revived
paganism of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. If so, however, it
would stand alone among Italian traditions, not one of which has been
traced to the great movement known as the Revival of Learning, and a
large number of which were already current {14} while that movement
was in progress. The assumption, therefore, that the Tuscan tale is a
relic of two thousand years or more does not seem unwarranted.
Moreover, it is confirmed by an Albanian _märchen_, obtained from the
recital of a woman at Ljabovo in the district of Riça. It had been
foretold, we learn, to a certain king that he should be put to death
by his grandson, yet unborn. Wherefore he flung into the sea and
drowned every boy born of his two daughters. The third boy, however,
escaped with his life, and was cast by a wave on the shore, where he
was found by two herdsmen and taken home to their wives to bring up.
When he was in his twelfth year, beautiful and strong, a Lubia, or
ogress, dried up all the waters; and it was prophesied that she would
never let them flow again until she had eaten the king’s daughter. The
maiden is accordingly bound in a certain spot, to await the Lubia; but
the hero of the story, accidentally finding her, learns the fate in
store for her, and bids her fear not, but call him when the Lubia
comes. Meanwhile he hides behind a rock, and covers himself with a
cap, so that he is no longer visible. He slays the Lubia with his
club; and at the same moment the waters begin again to flow. The king
offers his daughter in marriage to the victor; and the hero proves his
right to the reward by the possession of the Lubia’s head. During the
wedding games he throws his club and by mischance kills the king, thus
fulfilling the prophecy, and himself becomes king in his stead.[14.1]
Imperfections and confusion--especially the confusion between the king
who is the hero’s grandfather and him who is the father of the maiden
exposed to the ogress--are {15} to be noted in this version. They are
probably due to the reporter, or perhaps, as Von Hahn (to whom the
story was supplied) suggests, to defects in the telling. But it is
clear withal that here, in another of the classic lands, the tale of
Perseus has been preserved in its main features by oral transmission
to this day. Whether it be due to the truncated character of this
version that the hero’s birth is not actually ascribed to a
supernatural cause, it is difficult to say. In this omission it agrees
with the Tuscan variant; but in both, the circumstances, though
different from one another, are similar to those of Perseus. As we
shall shortly meet with types of the story in which the cause and
circumstances of the birth are broadly distinguishable from those of
the two foregoing tales, we may classify the latter as belonging to
the _Danae type_.
The Albanian tale, it will be observed, omits the Quest of the
Gorgon’s Head. A modern Irish saga, on the other hand, omits the
rescue of Andromeda; and not only so, but modifies the supernatural
birth, and identifies the hero’s grandfather with the Gorgon. Tory
Island was the stronghold of a warrior, Balor by name, to whom a Druid
had prophesied that he should be slain by his own grandson. Balor had
two eyes, but not in the usual place. One of them was in the middle of
his forehead, and the other in the back of his skull. The latter was
venomous, and had the property of striking dead or petrifying all on
whom its glances fell, wherefore it was usually kept covered. He had
also an only daughter, Ethnea, whom, in consequence of the prediction,
he kept secluded in an impregnable tower on the summit of Tor-more, an
inaccessible rock at the eastern end of the island; and he placed with
her in the tower a company of twelve matrons, with strict orders to
keep {16} all men, and all knowledge of men, away from her. On the
mainland, opposite the island, dwelt three brothers, Gavida, a famous
smith, MacSamhthiann, and MacKineely. Balor, by a trick, robbed
MacKineely of a wonderful cow whereon he set a high value; and
MacKineely was determined on revenge. His Leanan-sidhe, or familiar
spirit, called Biroge of the Mountain, dressed him in woman’s
clothing, and wafted him on the wings of the storm across the Sound to
the top of Tor-more, and there, knocking at the door of the tower,
demanded admittance for a noble lady whom she had rescued from a
tyrant. The matrons, fearing to disoblige the Banshee, admitted both
to the tower. No sooner had MacKineely thus gained access to Ethnea
than the Banshee, by her supernatural power, laid the twelve matrons
asleep. When they awoke, the intruders were no longer there, and
Ethnea had lost her maidenhood. In course of time she brought forth
three sons, whom her father, on discovering, sent rolled up in a
sheet, to be cast into a certain whirlpool. But on the way the pin
fell out of the sheet, and one of the boys dropped into the harbour,
where he was received by the Banshee and wafted safely across the
Sound to his father, who sent him to be fostered by his brother
Gavida. Balor, meanwhile, had learned from his Druid that MacKineely
was the father of Ethnea’s children, and now set forth to punish him.
With a band of followers he landed at Ballyconnell, seized MacKineely,
and, laying his head on a large white stone, cut it off with one blow
of his sword. The blood gushed forth and penetrated the stone to its
very centre, thus forming the red veins which are still shown to the
traveller; for the stone was raised in 1794, on a pillar sixteen feet
high, and gives its name, Clogh-an-Neely, to a district comprising two
parishes. Balor {17} now thought himself secure, for he believed his
three grandsons were all drowned. But the heir of MacKineely grew up
unknown to him at Gavida’s forge, and became an accomplished smith.
One day Balor came to the forge to get some spears made. Gavida was
absent, and his foster-son did the work. In the course of the day
Balor happened to mention with pride his conquest of MacKineely. It
was an evil moment for him; for the young smith, who had been nursing
his revenge, watched his opportunity, and, taking a glowing rod from
the furnace, thrust it through the basilisk eye and out through the
other side of Balor’s head, thus slaying his grandfather and
fulfilling the Druid’s prediction.[17.1]
For another story of the Danae type we must go as far as Germany; and
we must piece it out as well as we can from Grimm’s notes to the tale
of _The Two Brothers_, of which it is given as a variant. It is
related in Hesse that a king’s daughter was pursued by mice, until, in
order to save her, he was driven to building a tower, like the
Mouse-tower of the Rhine, in the midst of the river. There she dwelt
with one maid. One day a jet of water springs in through the window,
and fills a tub which they set for it. Both princess and maid drink of
it, and afterwards bear each a son, one of whom is called Water-Peter
and the other Water-Paul. Both children are put into a chest and
floated down the stream. They are rescued by a fisherman, and taught
hunting. Going out together, they spare successively three animals, a
bear, a lion, and a wolf: in return, each of them is gifted with one
of the creature’s young. They part from one another, sticking their
knives into a tree at the {18} parting-place, as a token of life or
death of the owner. Water-Peter comes to a town hung with mourning for
the king’s daughter, who is to be offered up to a seven-headed dragon
the next day. With the help of his beasts he slays the dragon; and
then, having cut out its tongues, he lies down and falls asleep, he
and his animals, from weariness. The king’s marshal, who has been set
to watch, comes and finds the dragon dead and its slayer sleeping. He
kills the hero, and compels the maiden to admit that he and no other
had delivered her. Now the king has promised her in marriage to any
one who would save her from the dragon; but she succeeds in postponing
the marriage for a year and a day. When the faithful beasts awake,
they find their master dead; but happily they are able to bring him to
life again by means of a magical herb. After wandering about the world
he returns to the town in the nick of time, and by producing the
dragon’s tongues he proves that he himself is the victor, and the
marshal an impostor. His own wedding to the king’s daughter and the
marshal’s death follow; and on the king’s demise Water-Peter receives
the kingdom. One day, going out hunting, he loses his attendants, and
at night rests with his beasts beside a fire. An old cat sitting on a
tree asks if she may warm herself at the fire? When he says Yes, she
gives him three of her hairs, and prays him to lay one on each of his
beasts, else she will be afraid of them. As soon as he has done this,
the animals die. Enraged, he is about to kill her, when she says there
is a spring close by of the Water of Death, and another of the Water
of Life: if he will take some of the latter and pour it over them,
they will come to life again. This is accordingly done. Meanwhile,
Water-Paul comes to his brother’s palace, and is received by the queen
{19} as her husband. At night, however, he lays a naked sword in the
bed between himself and her. When Water-Peter returns and finds
Water-Paul in his place, he kills him from jealousy; but on learning
the facts he restores him with the Water of Life.[19.1]
The divergence between this story and that of Perseus is considerable.
Not merely is the hero duplicated; the gift of weapons is transformed
into the acquisition of faithful attendant animals, and the incident
of the Gorgon’s Head, postponed to the slaughter of the dragon,
becomes a night adventure with a supernatural cat in the forest. The
differences, in fact, are such as to preclude the notion of any lineal
connection between them. A large proportion of the modern stories
agree with that of _Water-Peter and Water-Paul_ where it diverges most
widely from the classical legend; and those which do not so agree
differ in one way or other still further. Some of them we shall have
to consider hereafter. There are, however, two other stories of the
same type mentioned by Grimm, both apparently from Hesse. In the one,
a king, having resolved that his daughter shall not marry, builds a
house for her in the forest in the greatest solitude, where she has to
dwell without ever seeing a stranger. But near the house rose a
wonderful spring, whereof the maiden drank and bore two boys exactly
alike, who received the names of John Waterspring and Casper
Waterspring. John fights the dragon, and is brought to life again by
the sap of an oak which the ants have been fetching for their dead,
trampled down during the conflict. In other respects the tale contains
nothing new. The second story omits the supernatural birth of the
twins. It begins with a golden box, wherein two {20} fair boys are
enclosed, falling from heaven into a fisherman’s net. The dragon is
killed by a poisoned seed thrown by the hero into its throat. The
princess’ intended bridegroom tries to poison her deliverer; but his
faithful beasts discover the treachery. He is afterwards turned into
stone by a witch; but his brother forces the witch to tell him by what
means to bring him back to life. A wicked snake, the cause of the
whole enchantment, is lying under a stone: it must be hewn in pieces,
roasted at the fire, and the petrified brother smeared with its
fat.[20.1]
There are resemblances here in some of the details to the story of
Perseus. The petrifying witch in the latter of the two tales reminds
us more nearly of Medusa than does the mysterious cat; while in the
former the Supernatural Birth approaches the Argive tradition, though
no motive is assigned for the king’s resolution not to permit his
daughter’s marriage. The fatal prophecy, which is the centre of the
whole plot in the classical tale, is, in fact, commonly omitted in
modern folktales of this type. We do not find it in either of the
German stories; and even in the Tuscan its force is greatly weakened.
It is absent also from the Swedish _märchen_ of _Silverwhite and
Littlewarder_. In that story a widower-king, going to the wars, places
his only daughter alone with a single waiting-woman in a tower to
guard her honour. An old woman, suborned by youths who are angry at
being denied access to the princess, gives her two enchanted apples.
The princess and her maid, eating them, bear a son each. After seven
years, when the king is expected to return, they let the boys down
from the tower, that they may seek their fortunes. They meet a man who
gives them each a sword and three dogs. At a {21} crossway they part.
Silverwhite throws into the fountain that rises there his knife, given
him by his mother, the princess, and charges his foster-brother, if
the water become red and thick, to avenge him, for then he will be
dead. Then, going on his way, by the help of his dogs he saves a
king’s three daughters on successive days from three sea-trolls.
Having killed the trolls, he cuts out their eyeballs, and goes away. A
courtier claims to be the victor, and is to be married to the youngest
of the three maidens; but on the wedding-day Silverwhite appears,
produces the trolls’ eyeballs, and the king’s daughters recognise the
rings they have bound in his hair previous to the fights. He takes the
place of the bridegroom, who is punished. One night the brother of the
trolls calls to Silverwhite, and challenges him to combat, that he may
avenge them. The troll has three dogs, but they are driven away by the
hero’s dogs; and the troll takes to flight also. Climbing a tree, he
desires to parley, but the dogs bark furiously. In order to quiet
them, he gives three hairs from his head to Silverwhite, with a
request to lay them on the dogs. They lie silent and motionless; and
the troll, descending from the tree, renews the contest and kills
their master. Littlewarder, however, conquers the troll, and extorts
from him two bottles. The water in one of these bottles restores the
dead to life, that in the other holds fast whoever comes to a place
where it has been spread. With the latter he binds the troll
immovably; with the former he brings his foster-brother back to life.
The incident of Water-Peter’s jealousy follows. Silverwhite’s wife has
a sister conveniently ready and willing to marry Littlewarder; and so
all ends happily.[21.1]
Only one other variant need be mentioned here. A story {22} obtained
in Little Russia relates that a maiden coming home from the field was
seized with thirst. She saw in the road two footprints filled with
water, and, drinking, felt herself immediately pregnant; for they were
divine footprints. She bears two sons, who grow with wonderful
rapidity, and at the age of seven go out into the world. In a forest
they meet, one after another, several troops of animals--hares, foxes,
wolves, bears, lions--who dissuade the precocious twins from shooting
them, by bestowing on each of them one of themselves. The brothers
part. The elder rescues a princess from a dragon, and suffers death at
the hands of a Gipsy who has watched the combat; but he is brought to
life again by his beasts with the Water of Life and Healing, and weds
the princess. He observes that a fire burns all night long in a
certain house. On inquiry he is told that an old snake dwells there.
Accordingly he rides thither with his beasts, and fastens his horse in
the courtyard to a stake furnished with golden and silver rings. He
enters, and meets an old woman in an iron mortar, propelled with an
iron pestle--the inconvenient but usual vehicle of the Baba Yaga
(witch, or ogress) in Russian folktales. She pretends to be afraid of
his animals, and bids him flourish over them two rods which lie upon
the oven. As he does it they are changed to stone, together with
himself and his steed. Before they parted, the two brothers had buried
beneath a certain tree, the one red, the other white, wine; when the
white should become red, or the red white, it would be a token of the
death of him whose wine had changed colour. The younger brother now,
coming to the tree, finds that his elder brother is dead, and, going
to seek him, reaches his wife, and is mistaken for her husband. With
the object of getting some clew to his brother’s death, {23} he
remains with her three nights, putting the sword between them every
night. He then goes to the witch, for whom he is too wary. Seized by
his animals, she gives him the Water of Life, which restores his
brother. On the way home the elder brother strikes off his deliverer’s
head from jealousy; but when, at his return, his wife upbraids him
concerning the sword, he recognises his wrong, and hastens the next
morning to set his brother’s head on his shoulders again, and sprinkle
it with the Water of Life.[23.1]
CHAPTER II.
THE STORY IN MODERN FOLKLORE--THE KING OF THE FISHES TYPE.
{24}
In our previous chapter we have examined the classical legend of
Perseus, and a few of the recently recorded popular traditions of
Europe most nearly akin to it, all of which I have ventured to class
together as the _Danae type_. Turn we now to another type, not less
interesting and even more widely diffused, which may be called _The
King of the Fishes type_, from the title of the Breton story I am
about to summarise.
A poor and childless fisherman once caught in his net a fish whose
scales shone like gold. He was going to put it into his basket, when,
to his surprise, the fish addressed him. “I am the King of the
Fishes,” it said; “spare me and thou shalt find many.” The fisherman
accordingly let it slip back into the water, and was rewarded with a
bountiful catch. His wife, however, rebuked him for letting the King
of the Fishes go, and insisted on his trying again to catch it; for
she desired to eat it. Accordingly, the next day he caught it again;
and this time he was not to be moved by its supplications to return it
to the water. Finding its prayers vain, the fish directed its captor
to give its head to his wife to eat, and to throw its scales into a
corner of his garden and cover them with earth, promising {25} that
his wife should give birth to three beautiful boys with stars on their
foreheads, who should be so perfectly alike that their mother herself
should not be able to distinguish between them, and that from its
scales should grow three rose-trees corresponding to the three
children. The rose-trees were to have this property--that when either
of the boys should be in danger of death, his tree should wither. The
boys were born in due course, and grew up. A rumour then reached them
that in a distant land was a seven-headed monster, to which every
month a young maiden was given to devour; and the king of that land
had promised his daughter to any one who would deliver the realm from
so terrible a scourge. The eldest son set forth on the adventure, and
arrived in time to rescue the princess herself from the fate of being
eaten by the monster. He then married her as the reward of his valour.
But this does not end the tale; for from the windows of the castle
where they dwell together, he sees another castle, covered with
diamonds and shining like the sun. On inquiring of his wife what it
is, she tells him that it is a dangerous place; many persons have
entered there, but none have been seen to return; and she prays him
for her sake to beware of going thither. This, however, only excites
his curiosity; so one day, without saying anything to the princess, he
starts as for the chase, accompanied by a large dog. Entering the
castle, he meets a wrinkled beldam, who spins as she comes towards
him. He allows her to pass a thread of wool through his dog’s collar.
The thread is instantly changed into an iron chain; and he himself is
compelled to follow her. At that moment his next brother is walking in
the garden at home; and, casting his eyes on his brother’s rose-tree,
he sees that it {26} is withering. The youth understands at once that
his elder brother is in mortal peril, and sets out to help him. He is
received by the princess, who mistakes him for her husband; and,
happening to catch sight of the castle of diamonds, he asks what it
is. The princess replies that she has already told him it is a place
whence no one who has once entered it ever comes forth. Immediately he
suspects the truth. He makes an excuse to go out, and is joined as he
sallies forth by a dog. With this animal he enters the castle, only to
meet the doom that has previously befallen his brother. The youngest
brother, following for the same reason, and attempting the same
adventure, is more fortunate; for he resists the witch’s importunities
to allow her to tie up his dog, and compels her to show him his
brothers, whom he finds turned into statues of stone. She restores
them at his bidding to life; the three then rifle her castle and
return to the princess, who is puzzled to decide which of them is her
true husband.[26.1]
The plot as developed in this story consists of four incidents,
distinguishable as--
1. The Supernatural Birth,
2. The Life-token,
3. The Dragon-slaying, and
4. The Medusa-witch.
Of these the only one we did not find in the classical legend is that
of the Life-token. It has already appeared in the German, Swedish, and
Russian stories cited in the last chapter. There, however, it assumed
an arbitrary form: the brothers stuck their knives into a tree, or
threw them into a fountain, or buried a measure of wine apiece. In
{27} the present type the Life-token is frequently a consequence of
the Supernatural Birth; it is then inseparably connected with the hero
whose well-being it indicates; it is not dependent on his will, but
is, in fact, part of himself. Born with the heroes, and as inseparable
from them as the Life-token, are usually also their horses and dogs,
and sometimes their weapons.
In the story of _The Fisherman’s Sons_, collected in Lorraine by M.
Cosquin, the fish puts forth no claim to royalty. It is caught thrice
ere it is finally taken home to the fisher’s wife. The counsel it
gives to her husband is to place some of its bones under his bitch,
some under the mare, and some in the garden behind his house, and to
fill three phials with its blood. When the three boys that would be
born should grow up, the fisher was to give one of these phials to
each of them; and if any mischance happened to either, forthwith the
blood would boil. Not only does the woman give birth to three sons,
but the mare also has three colts, and the bitch three puppies. From
the bones in the garden sprang up three lances. The boys, when grown
to manhood, set out together, each with his horse, dog, lance, and
phial of blood. They separated at a crossway; and the eldest reached a
village where every one was in mourning because year by year a maiden
was delivered to a seven-headed monster, and the lot had fallen that
year on a princess. Aided by his dog, he slays the beast, and wrapping
up its seven tongues in the lady’s handkerchief (which she gives him
for the purpose) he bids her goodbye, and leaves her to find her way
back alone to her father’s castle. She meets on the way three
charcoal-burners. Hearing her story, they compel her to show them the
corpse of the beast, whose heads they take, and make {28} her swear to
tell her father it was they who had killed it. The king, overjoyed,
promises his daughter to one of them; but she obtains a delay of a
year and a day. At the end of that time her true deliverer reaches
Paris just as the marriage festivities are beginning, and sends his
dog to get him of the best from the palace. The dog brings him two
good dishes. The cooks complain to the king, who orders some of his
guard to pursue the hound. The hero kills them all but one, whom he
spares to carry back the tidings. Then he sends the dog to steal the
best cakes from the king. Other guards, following the dog, share the
fate of the first; and the king concludes to go himself. He brings the
hero back in his carriage to the feast. Over the dessert the king
calls upon every one to tell his own story--the charcoal-burners
first. They of course relate that they had delivered the princess; and
in proof they produce the monster’s seven heads. The hero asks the
king to see if the seven tongues are in the heads; but the tongues are
not to be found. The hero then brings them forth in the handkerchief,
which the princess at once recognises, and declares that it was he,
and not the charcoal-burners, who had rescued her. The three impostors
are hanged without more ado, and the fisherman’s son weds the
princess. After supper, when he is in the chamber with his bride, he
looks out of window and beholds a castle all on fire; and she tells
him, in reply to his question, that she sees it every night without
being able to explain it. As soon as she is asleep, he gets up and
goes out with his horse and dog to see what it is. The castle stands
in the middle of a fair meadow; and there he meets a wicked old fairy
who asks him to jump down from his horse and help her with a bundle of
grass, that she wishes to lift upon her back. {29} He politely
complies; but no sooner has he touched the ground than she strikes him
with a wand and changes into a tuft of grass himself, his horse and
his dog. His brothers find the blood in their phials boiling; and the
second starts to discover what has become of the eldest. His reception
by the princess as her husband, his inquiry as to the castle on fire,
and his fate correspond with those of the second brother in the Breton
tale. But the youngest, by refusing to come down from his horse and
seizing the fairy by her hair, compels her, under threat of death, to
restore his brothers to life, which she does by striking the tufts of
grass with her wand. When she has finished, the youngest hero cuts her
in pieces. On their return, the princess cannot tell which of the
three brothers is her husband. The eldest claims her; and the two
others are provided with her two sisters, of whom we thus hear for the
first time.[29.1]
In this tale we have the additional detail of the charcoal-burners who
pretend to the princess’ hand on the ground that they have slain the
monster. This has already appeared in some of the stories recounted in
the first chapter, and is the counterpart in modern folktales of
Phineus, the betrothed bridegroom who lifted no finger to avert
Andromeda’s fate, but came to claim her when the fight was safely
over. It is not usual, however, and assuredly it is unnecessary, for
the impostor to be multiplied by three. In a Tirolese tale we find a
cobbler making the same preposterous claim. Here is no mention of the
seven heads, the brothers are two only, and their two dogs, horses and
lances, as well as themselves, are derived from the King of the
Fishes. Setting out together they meet an old woman, who bestows on
each of them a bottle of {30} clear water, which will become foul when
the other meets with misfortune. The day following his marriage the
elder hero sees from the balcony a glittering castle, where dwells a
witch. He goes thither secretly; and the witch meets him, carrying her
brazier, and requests him to blow, for she is cold. He blows and is
turned into stone. The younger brother, on being mistaken for his
elder, lays his sword in the bed, as in the Hessian story; but the
elder brother’s jealousy is omitted.[30.1]
A Gascon variant was told to M. Bladé by an illiterate peasant-girl.
Here the speaking fish directs its head to be given to the bitch, its
tail to the mare; and the fisherman’s wife is to eat the rest. Two
puppies, two colts and two boys are the result. The twins set out
together, with their horses and dogs. They part at a cross-road where
a great stone cross is erected; and the life-token given by the elder
to his brother is to strike the cross on his return with his sword: if
blood flow out, it is a sign of misfortune. No impostor appears to
claim the rescued maiden; but the hero cuts out the seven tongues and
wraps them in his own handkerchief. After his marriage he walks with
his wife--who is no princess, only the fairest girl of the town--in
the fields, and sees a little house, which he thinks he should like to
buy as a hunting-box. She bids him beware, for it has a bad
reputation. This whets his curiosity, and he goes to make inquiries.
Having knocked at the door, he is answered from within and told that
he cannot break the door in, as he threatens to do, but the way to
enter is to pull out a hair from his head and pass it through the hole
for the cat. The earth swallows him as soon as he complies. The
younger {31} brother is wiser. He passes a horse-hair through the
hole, and his horse is swallowed up. Then the door opens; and he
enters with his dog, slays the wicked persons within, makes his way to
the cellar, and delivers thence his brother and his brother’s horse.
So much alike are the brothers that the lady, who has already mistaken
the younger for her husband, cannot decide between the two when they
both present themselves together, until the elder brother pulls out of
his pocket the beast’s seven tongues, which he seems meanwhile to have
carried about in his handkerchief as an agreeable souvenir.[31.1]
The foregoing story doubtless once contained the episode of the
impostor. So many are the variants wherein the episode is found, and
usually associated with the seven tongues, that it is hardly likely
the Gascon tale could have originally preserved the tongues merely for
the purpose for which they are now kept. Occasionally indeed the
impostor is detected without their aid. In the Swedish tale of _The
Wonderful Pike_, told in East Gothland, the impostor is the princess’
coachman; and she recognises her true deliverer by the ring she has
fastened in his locks.[31.2] A curious Norwegian tale goes further. In
it the impostor is detected in spite of his thoughtfulness in
collecting the tongues. A poor woman, already rich in children, bears
a son who, immediately after his birth, insists on going out to seek
his fortune. He has hardly left the house when another son is born,
who, quite as hastily, starts in search of his brother and overtakes
him. They choose names--the younger, Lillekort (Littleshort), the
elder, King Lavring--and then part, King Lavring telling his brother
if ever he fall into {32} extreme peril (but only then) to call him by
name, and he will come and help him. This is the equivalent of the
Life-token. Lillekort meets a one-eyed, humpbacked old woman; he
steals her eye, and only restores it in exchange for a magical sword.
Erelong the adventure is twice repeated; and he gets a magical ship
and the secret art of brewing a hundred lasts of malt at once. Thus
armed, he takes service as a scullion in the palace; and on successive
Thursday evenings he fights a five-, a ten-, and a fifteen-headed
troll, to whom the princess has been promised, and slays them all.
Lillekort and the trolls defy one another in a style leaving nothing
to be desired. “Fire!” screamed the fifteen-headed troll. “Fire
likewise!” shouted Lillekort. “Canst thou fight?” cried the troll. “If
I cannot, I can learn,” retorted the undaunted hero. “I’ll learn
thee!” cried the troll, and struck out with his iron bar so that the
earth flew fifteen ells high in the air. “Fuh!” exclaimed Lillekort,
“that was good! But now thou shalt see a stroke from me!” And
therewithal he grasped his sword and dealt such a blow at the troll
that all fifteen heads danced over the sand. After each combat
Lillekort laid his head on the princess’ lap and slept, and she drew
over him on the first occasion a gold, on the second a silver, and on
the third a brazen dress. Meanwhile the Knight Röd (or The Red, a
title for the impostor which reappears in the Danish variant), who had
previously undertaken her defence, came upon the scene when all was
safely over, and compelled her to promise to say it was he who had
rescued her. Moreover, in proof of his victory he took the tongues and
lungs of the trolls in his handkerchief, but left the monsters’ ships
untouched. Lillekort, on the other hand, on awaking proceeded to sack
the ships; and by the {33} gold, silver, and other precious articles
they contained, he ultimately made good his claim to be the true
deliverer against the trophies brought by the Knight Röd. He
afterwards goes in search of the king’s other daughter, held captive
by a troll beneath the bottom of the sea. By means of his gift of
brewing he brews beer of such enormous strength that even the trolls
on tasting it fall down dead like so many flies. Both princesses then
insist on marrying him. In this awkward dilemma--this extreme
peril--he bethinks himself of his brother, King Lavring, whom he
summons to his aid; and the ladies are suited with a husband
apiece.[33.1]
The encounters with the one-eyed hags here fuse together into one
thrice-repeated episode the divine gifts bestowed upon Perseus and the
adventure with the Graiæ; but the brewing for the troll bears no
resemblance to the slaughter of the Gorgon. In some variants the
Medusa-witch is a relative of the monster, bent upon revenging his
death. In the Swedish tale already referred to, she is the dragon’s
sister. In the Danish tale a cock, by his repeated crowing, keeps the
hero and his bride awake for the first three nights. The bridegroom,
convinced that it is no common fowl, pursues it through the forest to
the sea-shore, where he had fought the sea-monster. There the cock
vanishes, and an old woman appears. She beguiles the hero into
accompanying her over a magical bridge across the sea to her den, and
laying hairs from her head upon his horse, hound, sparrow-hawk and
sword, thus rendering them harmless. Then she reveals herself as the
sea-monster’s mother, and revenges her loss by striking his conqueror
dead with her wand. The younger brother, repeating the {34} adventure,
burns the hairs, and forces the witch to restore the hero with the
Water of Life. The murder of the younger by the elder brother from
jealousy, and his resuscitation with the Water of Life, follow, as in
many of the other variants.[34.1]
The Greek story of _The Little Red Mullet-Sorcerer_ contains some
curious variations. There the desire to eat the fish does not arise in
the bosom of the fisherman’s wife; but it is suggested to her by
lady-friends, who amiably envy her husband’s good-fortune, and refuse
to believe that he is not a wizard. The fish requests to be divided
between the fisherman’s wife, his mare and his bitch, and that its
tail be planted in the garden. From the tail two cypresses grow up,
which are the life-tokens of the two boys thereafter born to the
fisherman. The king’s only daughter was possessed of an evil spirit.
She had an awkward habit of ascending a balcony every evening and
invoking the stars with insane gestures. Everybody whom she saw
looking at this queer spectacle she struck with madness. The elder of
the brothers, however, overcame her by stealing unawares upon her and
seizing her by the hair of her head. In this way he terrified her into
swearing never to do it again. When the king found his daughter in her
right mind, he desired to know to whom he was indebted for her
recovery; but his benefactor had fled to the inn where he was staying.
Wherefore, in order to find him out, the king issued a proclamation
commanding all the men in the town to pass beneath the palace windows,
at one of which the princess was posted with an apple in her hand,
ready to drop it on her deliverer. The latter, however, was burdened
with the modesty which {35} often affects the heroes of folktales, and
tried to evade the proclamation, but in vain. Even when he was caught
and brought before the king, he refused the offer of the princess’
hand: evidently he knew too much about her. He travels on, and
delivers another princess from a seven-headed monster who haunts a
fountain. The impostor is a charcoal-burner, discovered in the usual
manner. While the princess, his wife, is bathing one day, the hero
takes the opportunity of walking through some of the rooms of their
castle which he has not before examined. At the end of a corridor he
opens a door, and finds himself in a vast plain filled with statues of
human form. He meets an old woman who hands him a stick, on taking
which he is immediately petrified. His brother, warned of the witch’s
tricks, and going in search of him, refused the stick and set his dog
on her. The dog tore her to pieces, and thus delivered his master and
many others from her power. Among her effects the younger brother
luckily discovered a bottle of the Water of Immortality, with which he
restored to life not only his brother, but so many other persons
beside that they formed an entire nation and chose him, out of
gratitude, for their king.[35.1]
It would be tedious to relate all the variants of the tale found in
Europe; nor do the minuter differences between them concern us at this
moment. I am anxious merely to lay before the reader the general
outlines of the plot as they are found in the more striking and
important examples. For that purpose it will be needful to mention one
or two more variants falling under the present type, before proceeding
to consider some {36} in which one or more of the essential incidents
are wanting.
An Argyllshire story runs as follows:--A sea-maiden appears at the
side of a fisherman’s boat one day, and gives him three grains for his
wife, three for the dog, three for the mare, and three to be planted
behind the house, promising him three sons, three puppies, three
colts, and three trees which will be his sons’ life-token. In return,
one of the sons is to be hers at three years of age. This period is
afterwards extended first to seven, and then to fourteen years. The
eldest son, who apparently is the promised one, gets a smith to forge
a sword for him, and goes out upon his horse, with his dog by his
side, to seek his fortune. The carcase of a sheep lay beside the road,
and a great dog, a falcon and an otter were disputing over it. He
divided it between these animals to their satisfaction, and each of
them promised him in reward assistance in the time of need. Going
onward until he reached a king’s house, he took service as a cowherd;
and while in this situation he slew two giants, who owned green
pastures, and fed the herd upon their meadows. Now there was in the
loch a great three-headed she-beast to which some one was thrown every
year; and it happened that year that the lot fell on the king’s
daughter. Her suitor, “a great general of arms,” undertook to rescue
her; but when he saw “this terror of a beast” stirring far off in the
midst of the loch, he took fright and slunk away. In this emergency
the hero appeared; the damsel put a ring on his finger; he fought the
beast and cut one of her heads off. She retired for the night beneath
the waters of the loch. The deliverer sent the maiden home with the
beast’s head over her shoulder, but refused to accompany her. On the
way she met the {37} general, who threatened to kill her unless she
would say it was he who had cut off the monster’s head. The next day
the beast returned, and a second head was struck off. On the third day
the hero struck off the third head and slew the beast. But each day he
ungallantly allowed the princess to go home alone; the general met her
as on the first day, and got the credit for the achievement. When it
came to the point of marriage, however, she refused point-blank to
marry any one but him who could take the heads off the withy on which
the hero had strung them, without cutting it. Of course the cowherd
alone succeeded. He also produced the ring, and two earrings beside,
which the lady averred she had given to the man who took the heads off
the beast. What became of the general is not stated: the cowherd
married the king’s daughter. His adventures were now fairly begun:
they were far from being at an end. Another, “a more wonderfully
terrible,” beast came out of the loch and tore him away from his
bride. By the advice of a smith (smiths are often men of more than
ordinary powers and wisdom, in fairy tales) the lady spread all her
jewellery out on the strand, on the spot where her husband had been
captured. The bait took: in exchange for this finery the beast gave up
the man. Encouraged, probably, by success, the beast, shortly after,
seized the princess. Again it is the old smith who gives advice. The
beast was only to be killed in one way. Her soul was in an egg, in the
mouth of a trout, inside a hoodie, which was inside a white-footed
hind that dwelt on an island in the midst of the loch. If the egg were
broken, the beast would die. The hero invoked the help of the great
dog, the falcon and the otter. The great dog caught the hind. A hoodie
sprang out of her, and the falcon brought it to earth. A {38} trout
leaped out of the hoodie into the water, and the otter brought the
trout to land. The egg fell out of the trout’s mouth, and the hero put
his foot on it. He made the beast give up his wife, and then broke the
egg. After that the hero and his wife were walking one day, and he
noticed a little castle beside the loch in a wood. On inquiry, his
wife warned him that no one who went thither had ever returned to tell
the tale. He goes to see who dwells there; and the crone who meets him
draws “the Slachdan druidhach on him, on the back of his head, and at
once--there he fell.” His tree accordingly withers; his next brother
sets out to find his corpse, and shares his fate. The third brother is
beforehand with the hag, and after a terrible tussle slays her with
the “Slachdan druidhach.” Then with the same weapon he strikes his
brothers’ corpses, and they rise to their feet. The three take the
spoil and come back rejoicing.[38.1]
This long and not very coherent story gains a little in unity in a
variant by the identification of the second and “more wonderfully
terrible beast” with the sea-maiden to whom the hero had been promised
ere his birth. Omitting this episode and that of the giants, we have
the ordinary plot of the King of the Fishes with little change, beyond
the substitution of the sea-maiden for the wizard-fish. The alteration
does not affect the substance of the tale, for it matters little
whether the food which results in the birth of the twin heroes be the
flesh of the King of the Fishes, or some other gift of supernatural
power.
The opening of the North German tale of _The Two Similar Brothers_
approaches that of _The Sea-Maiden_, while {39} it also recalls one of
the great stories of _The Arabian Nights_. A fisherman, casting his
net into a pool, brings up, instead of fish, a little urn covered with
a lid. On his opening the urn, a thick red cloud curls up from within;
and before he is aware of it a big burly fellow appears in the midst
of the cloud and begs to be put back into the vase. “How can I put you
back,” asks the fisherman, “when you are so big and the vase so
little?” But the apparition prevails on him to try, promising in
reward not merely a good catch of fishes, but also a casket which he
must divide into six parts, whereof one is to be given to his wife,
one to his horse, one to his dog, and the remaining three are to be
buried under the eaves of his dwelling; but he is to beware of looking
into the casket before he gets home. Thereupon the fisherman lays
hands upon the apparition, finds him as collapsible as a modern
travelling-bag, and soon succeeds in fastening down this fairy
Jack-in-the-box once more. Flinging the vase again into the water, he
cast his net, and was rewarded as the apparition had promised. Before
a year had passed, the fisherman’s wife had borne twin boys so much
alike as to be indistinguishable. Two foals and two puppies were also
added to the household; and under the eaves up-sprouted two swords,
two pistols and two guns. The twins set out together. They obtained
the usual helpful animals--in this case, two young bears, wolves and
lions. Parting at a crossway, one of them sticks his knife into a
tree; and it is agreed that they will meet there again in a year’s
time. Whichever of them comes first is to examine the blade of the
knife: if it be rusted, that will be a token that his brother is dead.
The dragon in this tale has no fewer than fourteen heads, and is
beside reinforced by fourteen giants, to whom he belongs. The {40}
hero, of course, kills them all; and the rest of the story follows the
ordinary course.[40.1]
In the _Pentameron_ the magical food is a sea-dragon’s heart, which
must be cooked by a pure maiden. A king who wants offspring is advised
by a beggar to get this powerful medicine. When it is brought to him
he gives it to a pretty maid of honour to cook. No sooner has she put
it on the fire than it begins to emit a pitch-black smoke so powerful
in its effects that not merely the condition of the queen who tastes
the heart, but that of the maiden who cooks it, as well as of every
article of furniture in the room where it is cooked, becomes
interesting. The old four-post bedstead gives birth to a cradle, the
chest to a little chest, the settle to a little settle, the table to a
little table: nay, the very night-commode brings forth a tiny
night-commode so charming and pretty that one could have kissed it! At
the end of four days the queen and her maiden bear each a son, who
grow up fast friends. The queen’s jealousy, however, causes Canneloro,
the maid’s son, to leave his friend. Before departing, in a final
interview with Fonzo, the queen’s son, he flings his dagger on the
ground, and a spring starts forth, which he declares will run clear so
long as his life is clear and serene. Not satisfied with this, he
sticks his sword in the earth, and there sprouts a bilberry bush from
the soil as a further token. But whereas the magical elements in the
opening scenes are thus grotesquely exaggerated, the central portion
of the story is tamed down to a commonplace tournament, at which
Canneloro wins a king’s daughter. This treatment has for its purpose
to throw into relief the episode of the Medusa-witch. As the Enchanted
Hind, the witch {41} gives her name to the story. Pursuing this
animal, Canneloro is met by a snowstorm, and takes refuge in a cave,
where he kindles a fire. The hind he has been following appears at the
door of the cave, and asks leave to come in and warm herself. To calm
her fears the hero binds his dogs, his horse and his sword. The hind
then changes into an ogre, who throws Canneloro into a pit, whence he
is of course rescued by Fonzo.[41.1]
That Basile took some liberties with the story might thus be suspected
from internal evidence. How slight those liberties really were has
been proved by the discovery of an almost exact parallel as a folktale
in the Basilicata. Even the hero’s name is preserved as Cannelora. His
life-tokens are a jet of water and a myrtle. He is directed at a
crossway by two gardeners whose quarrel he has reconciled; and he
rescues a fairy under guise of a serpent from some boys who are
persecuting it and have already cut off its tail. The Medusa-witch is
a golden-horned snake. The storm is a tempest of thunder and
lightning, from which he takes refuge in a cavern. The snake becomes a
giant and imprisons the hero, exactly as in Basile’s version.
Delivered by Emilio, as the queen’s son is here called, together with
the giant’s other prisoners, he weds the fairy, who provides wives
also for Emilio and the rest.[41.2]
In a Pisan tale of the same collection we are brought back to the
talking fish of the typical story. The life-token is a bone tied to a
beam in the kitchen: it sweats blood when anything untoward happens to
either of the fisherman’s three sons. The dragon is a fairy in the
shape of a cloud that carries away a girl every year. The lot having
{42} fallen on the king’s daughter, the cloud sucks her blood through
her finger, and, when she faints, carries her away. The hero, having
previously obtained from three grateful animals, a lion, an eagle and
an ant, the power of transforming himself into their shapes, sets out
after the cloud, in the form of an eagle. The fairy-cloud could only
be slain by hitting her on the forehead with an egg, which was in the
body of a seven-headed tigress. The hero accomplishes this, and weds
the princess. The Medusa-witch is a supernatural mist. Penetrating
this, the hero is invited to play a game with some ladies. He loses,
and is, with his horse and dog, turned into marble.[42.1] In a Tuscan
variant, imperfectly recollected by the teller, the fish is an eel
with two heads and two tails; the boys are twins; the tails, planted
in the garden, yield two swords; and the heads, given to the bitch,
produce puppies; the life-token is a cornel-tree planted by the hero
before leaving home. The hero’s brother, arriving in search of him,
finds that he is imprisoned with his horse and dog in an enchanted
castle, leaves him to his fate, and, being precisely like the unhappy
prisoner in appearance, he takes possession of the princess his wife.
This chivalrous conduct, however, is perhaps to be imputed rather to
the teller’s defective memory than to the original sin of the younger
brother.[42.2]
When the childless fisherman, in a Lettish tale, catches a certain
pike, the latter gets its freedom by giving two fishes in its stead,
both of which the fisher’s wife is to eat. The two boys thereafter
born set out on their adventures together, and part at a cross-road,
leaving as their life-token a knife sticking in an oak. The one who
goes to the right {43} spares to shoot five animals in succession, and
out of gratitude they follow him. With their help he wins a princess
from demons who haunt a castle; and by virtue of his victory over them
he becomes king. The other brother is, for our purpose, the hero.
Going to the left, he obtains similar animals, which conquer the
nine-headed devil to whom a princess is to be given. The princess’
coachman is the impostor; and the Medusa-witch is the mother of the
nine-headed devil, who lures and petrifies the hero in revenge. He is
rescued at last by his brother.[43.1]
A Gipsy tale from Hungary attributes the Supernatural Birth to the
mother’s having drunk from the two breasts of an _urme_, or fairy, who
also suckled at the same time the dog and mare, and dropped milk into
two holes in the earth. Each of the two boys had a golden star on his
forehead; and from the earth sprang two oaks, the twins’ life-tokens.
The hero’s horse and dog assist him in winning his bride by the
performance of three tasks, the third of which is the lady’s
deliverance from the enchanted form of a dragon watching three golden
apples. Her father then sends him to hunt for the wedding-feast, and
he meets the Medusa-witch. His younger brother delivers him, with his
animals, from the enchantment by means of the golden apples; and by
the same means the witch is destroyed. In the fit of jealousy often
found in stories of this type, the hero subsequently kills his
deliverer, who is, after explanations, restored to life with a magical
plant.[43.2]
In two Russian tales the Medusa-witch incident precedes that of the
Rescue of Andromeda. One of these calls for no special mention. But in
the other--from Great {44} Russia--the two heroes are the sons of the
king’s granddaughter and her maid, born in consequence of their eating
fish. The Medusa-witch is the Baba Yaga, who finds the youth sleeping
on her meadow, and, giving him a hair, directs him to tie three knots
in it and blow, whereupon he is, with his horse, turned to stone. His
brother, having rescued him, passes on to the fight with the dragon.
The life-token is a knife which runs with sweat.[44.1]
A Sanskrit tale departs more widely from the type than any of the
foregoing. In _The Ocean of the Streams of Story_, a work of the end
of the eleventh or the beginning of the twelfth century of our era,
Somadeva relates that a childless king sacrificed to the goddess
Durgá, and did penance, to obtain a son. The goddess appeared to him
in a dream, giving him two heavenly fruits, one for each of his two
wives. But one of the wives, not satisfied with the prospect of one
son, ate both fruits, and in due time gave birth to twins. The other
wife nursed vengeance in her heart; and when the two princes attained
manhood, and were sent on a warlike expedition, she forged a despatch
in the king’s name to the chiefs in the camp, commanding them to put
both princes to death. Their maternal grandfather, however, was with
the army in his capacity of royal minister. He found means to escape
with them, but died of the hardships of the road; and his two
grandsons made their way to the shrine of Durgá in the Vindhya Hills,
where they underwent a course of fasting and asceticism to propitiate
her. Pleased with their austerities, she appeared in a dream to
Indívarasena, the elder brother, and presented him with a magical
sword. Armed with this, he forced an entrance into the palace of the
king of the {45} Rákshasas, or ogres, and found the mighty monarch
sitting on his throne, “having a mouth terrible with tusks, with a
lovely woman at his left hand, and a virgin of heavenly beauty on his
right hand.” Indívarasena challenged the ogre to fight, but found it
useless to cut off his head, for as often as he cut it off it grew
again, until he took a hint from the virgin, who made him a sign to
cut the head in two after smiting it off. The treacherous virgin
turned out to be the Rákshasa’s sister. She had fallen in love at
first sight with the valorous youth, and on his victory immediately
offered herself in marriage to him. This conduct is not uncommon in
Somadeva’s amusing work, and is always eagerly responded to by the
lucky (and polygamous) heroes. Indívarasena was no exception. He
married her on the spot, and lived happily with her for some time. By
virtue of his magical sword he obtained everything he wished for. In
this way he got a flying chariot, and sent his brother in it to bear
tidings of him to his parents. Meanwhile the other lady, who was the
widow of the Rákshasa, attracted Indívarasena’s attention. His wife
naturally grew jealous, and in a fit of pique flung his magical sword
into the fire. She hardly expected the consequence. The sword was
dimmed by the fire, and her husband lay senseless on the ground.
Warned by a dream at that instant, his brother returned; and on
hearing the miserable woman’s confession he thought he ought not to
kill her, on account of her repentance; so he prepared to cut off his
own head. However logical and proper this alternative may have been,
the goddess interfered. He heard a voice arresting him, declaring that
Durgá had struck his brother senseless--not, of course, for flirting,
but for not taking enough care of the divine sword--and {46} directing
him to propitiate her. When he complied, the sword lost its stain, and
his brother regained consciousness. By a revelation as convenient as
those of Mohammed, the hero then learned that both ladies had been his
wives in a former existence, and therefore it was quite right for him
to have both now. So they were all happy ever after--especially
Indívarasena.[46.1]
Here we have the Supernatural Birth, the Dragon-slaying, and the
Medusa-witch, though the two latter are somewhat disguised. For the
Life-token a miraculous dream is substituted. And the whole is
overlaid by the practices and beliefs of the revived Hinduism
paramount in India after the expulsion of Buddhism.
CHAPTER III.
THE REMAINING TYPES OF THE STORY.
{47}
We have now surveyed the stories of the Danae type and those of the
King of the Fishes type. There remain a large number of variants
wherein one or more of the incidents are wanting. Some of these have
already been mentioned. Where, as in many stories of the Danae type,
the hero is not duplicated, the Life-token is not found. A few
stories, however, approximate to the King of the Fishes type, but want
the Life-token. We may, perhaps, class these together as _The Mermaid
type_, from a variant of Campbell’s Argyllshire tale, told him by an
aged man in South Uist, which lays the scene in the Isle of Skye. The
eldest of three sons is promised to the mermaid; and when, at the age
of eighteen, he learns this, he wisely sets out for a place where
there is no salt water. He divides equitably the carcase of an old
horse between a lion, a wolf and a falcon, who are disputing over it,
and receives in return the power to transform himself into either of
their forms at pleasure, or (for Mr. Campbell was uncertain which) the
promise of their help at need. By this means, when acting as a king’s
herd, he overcomes three giants and a giantess, and obtains three
enchanted flying horses, {48} three splendid dresses and a
washing-basin and silver comb, on using which he would become the most
beautiful man in the world. He fights the “draygan” from the sea on
three successive days, and rescues the king’s daughter. The latter
afterwards recognises him by a scratch that she had made on his
forehead, as he lay with his head in her lap the third day, waiting
for the dragon. They are married, but their happiness is of no great
length; for the lady longs for dulse, and as he goes to seek it the
mermaid catches and swallows him. But mermaids are susceptible to
music; so by playing on the harp the hero’s wife succeeds in inducing
the creature to bring up her husband, who in the form of a falcon
flies to shore. The mermaid then takes the wife instead. A soothsayer
informs him that the mermaid’s soul is an egg, inside a goose, inside
a ram, inside a hurtful bull that dwells in a certain glen. With the
help of the Grateful Animals he succeeds in recovering his wife and
slaying the mermaid.[48.1]
Here, after the beginning, the hero’s brothers drop out of the story.
The more complex Lithuanian tale of _Strong Hans and Strong Peter_
retains both twins. An angel brings to a childless queen a golden
fish; and a witch brings her a silver fish. She eats both and bears
twins, the elder with golden hair and a golden star on his forehead,
the younger with the like in silver. In their nurses’ absence they are
suckled, the one by a lioness and the other by a she-bear. Two snakes,
deputed by the witch to kill Hans, the golden twin, are taken by him
one in each hand, though he is only a few weeks old, and strangled.
The witch, later on, sends a monster to kill him; but an angel meets
him, and bids {49} him bathe in a certain brook and then anoint his
body with an ointment, which he gives him. This renders Hans
invulnerable, and enables him to overcome the monster. The brothers
then set out together, and part at a crossway. Hans encounters a
twelve-headed dragon, and slays him in the same manner as Herakles did
the Hydra, dipping subsequently his arrows in the poisonous blood. He
thus rescues the princess; but before allowing him to marry her, her
father imposes other Herculean tasks upon him--among them, the
slaughter of the Nemean lion, the capture of the stag of Mount
Mænalus (here a horse, captured by wounding his foot), and the theft
of the apples from the Garden of the Hesperides. The way to the
apple-tree (here called the Tree of Health and Life), we are told, lay
through Hell; and incidentally Hans overthrew both Cerberus and the
Devil. To his astonishment, he found his brother Peter bound to a rock
in the place of torture, together with his wife. He freed them both,
and sent them back to earth. On bringing the apples to the king, Hans
was at last permitted to wed his daughter. The story then turns to
Peter, to explain how he and his wife had had the misfortune to get
into Hell. It appears that Peter’s first adventure after quitting his
brother was that of Theseus overcoming the Minotaur. It naturally
ended in his marrying the king’s daughter and becoming ruler. Various
neighbouring peoples, however, made war on him--among them, the
Amazons, described as a tribe of women whose hands were swords.
Against this foe he invoked the Devil, and gave his wife in return for
help. But ere long, repenting of the bargain, he descended into Hell
to fetch her back. He had reckoned without his host: the Devil was too
strong for him; and it was only {50} by his brother’s intervention
that he and his wife were delivered.[50.1]
In a Sicilian tale, a dethroned king catches a golden fish, which
desires to be cut into eight pieces, two to be given to his wife, two
to his horse, two to his dog, and two to be buried in the garden. The
two latter pieces shoot up into magical swords. The twins set out
together and afterwards part. One of them wins in a tournament the
daughter of the king who had dethroned his father. This recalls
Basile’s Neapolitan tale; but, unlike that, there is no stress laid on
the episode of the Medusa-witch. On the contrary, it is presented as a
mere ordinary hunt at which the hero is detained for three days, while
his brother comes to the city and is mistaken for him.[50.2] In the
stories previously given of this type the same episode is hardly, if
at all, to be recognised.
Another type, wanting the Dragon-slaughter, contains the Life-token.
The best-known story of this type is Grimm’s tale of _The Gold
Children_. There the life-token is a golden lily which grows up with
each of the twins. Disguised in bear-skins, the hero wins the love of
a beautiful village-maiden. After his marriage he goes to hunt and
chases a stag. The stag disappears; and he finds himself standing
before a hut inhabited by a witch, who petrifies him for threatening
her obstreperous dog. His brother compels the witch to restore him to
life.[50.3]
As told in Flanders, the talking fish directs the fisher to cut it
into three pieces, one for himself, one for his wife, {51} and the
third to be buried in the garden. Three boys of marvellous beauty are
the result; and digging, in accordance with the fish’s instructions,
where he had buried the third piece, the fisherman finds three swords,
three pistols, and three flageolets of stone. The eldest son, going to
seek his fortune, reaches a magnificent palace, where one of the
king’s daughters, looking out of window, falls over head and ears in
love with him. Against her advice he goes to visit a palace of
crystal, inside whose glittering walls whosoever put his foot was
changed into a pillar of salt. Seeking in vain for the entrance, he
meets an old witch, who opens the door by her magical wand, and
invites him to enter. Before doing so, he puts his flageolet to his
lips to warn his brothers; for the instrument’s property was that
wherever in the world its owner played on it his brothers would hear,
and would know where to find him. Then he enters, and, like thousands
before him, is changed into a black stone. The second brother, on
hearing the pipe, set out to seek his brother; and he too was changed
into a pillar of salt. The youngest draws his sword and pistol upon
the witch, and compels her to disenchant her victims. Then, on opening
the door, hundreds and hundreds of men and women pour forth, with one
voice thanking heaven and their courageous deliverer. The three
brothers marry the king’s daughters with banging of bells and clanging
of cannon.[51.1]
This type is found not only in Germany and Flanders, but also among
the southern branches of the Slavonic race, as well as in Greece, in
northern Italy, and in Brittany. Two more examples, however, must
suffice. The Mantuan {52} version follows that of Grimm in its
opening, where the Father of the Fishes, as he is here called,
repeatedly enriches the fisherman before the latter’s wife insists on
knowing the secret of his wealth, and seeing the fish. The boys, as in
the Flemish tale, are three in number; and the life-token is the
fish’s blood preserved in three vases. The first of the brothers,
going to liberate a king’s daughter who is enslaved by an ogre in an
enchanted palace, is touched by a witch with a magical berry and
turned to stone. The second brother meets the same fate. They are both
delivered, together with the princess, by the youngest, who restores
them to life by anointing them with the fish’s blood. The maiden is
the reward of the youngest brother’s heroism.[52.1] In the Breton
story the fisher’s wife is already pregnant, and has a fancy for
eating fish. The large fish caught by her husband gives directions for
the wife to eat its flesh, the mare to drink the water wherein it has
been washed, and the dog to eat its entrails and lungs. The life-token
is a laurel, into whose trunk a knife is to be stuck daily by the
twin-brother (there are but two) left at home: if blood follow, the
absent one is dead. Being hired as groom, the first brother is married
by his master’s daughter. He notices that the windows on one side of
the castle are always closed; and on asking why, his wife tells him
that there is a yard on that side full of venomous reptiles. He goes
that way, and is entertained by the Medusa-witch, who pushes him upon
an enormous wheel covered with razors, where he is hacked to pieces.
He is revenged by his brother upon the witch, at whose death a
princess transformed into a vixen resumes her human shape, and aids
her deliverer in putting the bits of his {53} brother’s body together
and reviving him with the Water of Life.[53.1]
A Bosnian _märchen_ presents us with a type wherein only the
Supernatural Birth and the Medusa-witch are preserved. A pilgrim gives
an apple to a childless man. His wife is to eat it, the peel is to be
divided between the mare and the bitch, and the seeds are to be
planted in the garden. The elder twin, with his horse and dog, and his
lance of apple-wood, swims across the sea, and in doing so becomes
gilt. He marries a king’s daughter, and pursues a stag with golden
horns, which leads him to a tower. There he gambles with a lady for
the stag; but, losing, he is thrown into her dungeon, whence he is
rescued by his brother, who wins him back and weds the lady. The
elder’s jealousy, however, is aroused on the way home; and he draws
his sword against the younger, but is prevented from doing him any
harm, and at his return recognises how groundless his passion has
been.[53.2] In a Portuguese variant it does not end quite so
innocently; for when the elder learned that his wife had mistaken the
younger for her husband, he put him to death from which there was no
revival.[53.3] The Bosnian version differs also in its opening from
the other variants, all of which refer the supernatural birth to a
fish, or eel. This type is found in Sicily and in Germany, as well as
in the Balkan and Iberian peninsulas. It may be called, from the
Portuguese variant just cited, _The Tower of Babylon type_.
A type more interesting, because more various in its evolution, is
that which comprises only the Life-token and {54} the Medusa-witch. It
is usually associated with Galland’s tale of _The Two Sisters who
envied their Cadette_, where it appears as an episode. In the Wortley
Montagu Codex, at Oxford, it is found as a separate tale, and has been
thence translated by Sir Richard Burton. The eldest of three brothers,
it tells us, determines to procure a certain little nightingale which
transmews to stone all who come to it. Before starting, he takes his
seal-ring from his finger and gives it to his next brother as his
life-token: it will squeeze his finger if a mishap occur. The bird’s
habit was to cry out to its would-be captor, and, if he replied, to
take a pinch of dust and, scattering it upon him, turn him to stone.
The third brother only is successful in holding his tongue and
catching the bird. By sprinkling another material upon his unfortunate
predecessors, they are disenchanted, and among them his elder
brothers. The latter fling him into a well, that they may take the
credit of the exploit; but he escapes by means of a ring he has
obtained from the bird, and vindicates his claim.[54.1]
Another variant is found in the Tirol as a pendant to a story of an
innocent persecuted wife. The elder brother exhibits a dancing bear to
the king of Babylon, who is so delighted with it that he bestows his
daughter on the exhibitor, and names him viceroy. The viceroy goes to
hunt with his bear in the forest. He is overtaken by a tempest, and
kindles a fire to warm himself. The Medusa-witch conquers him by the
usual wiles. His brother is his deliverer, and happily there is no
jealousy. The life-token is a knife stuck in a tree and becoming rusty
when a misfortune befalls either of the brothers.[54.2]
{55}
A tale from Normandy leads us back to the fisherman. He catches the
King of the Fishes, who recommends that, after frying, its bones be
buried in the garden. A treasure would be found at the spot indicated;
from its head three faithful dogs would spring for his three sons, and
three rose-trees would grow from the earth--his son’s life-tokens. The
eldest son, having married a rich wife, sees the castle of the
Medusa-witch, and falls a victim to her. When the youngest, by his
dog’s help, destroys her, the second and third brothers wed two of the
loveliest ladies, who are disenchanted by her death.[55.1] A Milanese
variant omits all the marriages, and gives as the life-token a
handkerchief, which is besmirched with blood when its owner is
bewitched.[55.2]
The Scottish _märchen_ of _The Red Etin_ represents the three youths
as the sons of two widows. The two sons of one of the widows depart
successively with their mother’s malison. The life-token is a knife
which will become rusty, as in the Tirolese variant. The Medusa-witch
is the Red Etin of Ireland. He puts three questions, and petrifies him
who is unable to answer them. Moreover, he holds in captivity King
Malcolm’s daughter. The third youth gets his mother’s blessing and
half a cake by way of provisions for his journey; the others had got
whole cakes, though small ones, thanks to their carelessness in
drawing water to make them. He meets an old woman, to whom he gives a
piece of his bannock, and receives in return the solution of the three
questions, as well as a magical wand enabling him to quell the
dreadful beasts he encounters. When the questions are answered the
monster’s power is {56} gone. The youth hews off his three heads,
delivers King Malcolm’s daughter, and disenchants his two
friends.[56.1] The relation between this tale and that of Œdipus need
not be pointed out.
The Tirolese tale of _The Knife-grinder’s Sons_ will afford us the
next type. Two brothers catch a bird on whose head is inscribed the
words: “Whosoever roasts and eats my head will find every day a bagful
of gold.” Their father, reading this, intends to eat the head; but the
two boys steal the bird when it is cooked; and the elder eats the
body, and the younger the head. They wander out together, and part at
a giant oak-tree. The life-token is a knife stuck in the tree. Hans,
the elder, by sparing the lives of a fox, a wolf and a bear, gets them
as followers. With their help he slays the seven-headed dragon and
rescues the king’s daughter. She meets him in the chapel whence the
dragon was to fetch her, and gives him a ring, a chain, and a silk
neckerchief. Too weary with the contest to accompany her back to her
father, he lies down to rest, and is found and put to death by her
father’s servant, who cuts off the dragon’s heads and compels the
maiden to identify him as the dragon-slayer. The faithful animals,
however, find the Herb of Life, and revive their master. The false
servant is torn to pieces by the animals, and Hans is recognised by
the princess as her true deliverer. We may note that he had cut out
and preserved the dragon’s tongues, but they are not referred to in
the recognition scene. On retiring with his bride, he sees a magical
roebuck, and at once pursues it, thus falling into the hands of the
Medusa-witch. He is delivered by the younger brother; but the two
brothers, quarrelling {57} for the bride, are drowned in crossing a
river on the way back.[57.1]
In this type only the Supernatural Birth is wanting. The story is
found in almost identical terms elsewhere in the Tirol and other
German lands. In a version preserved by Pröhle, one of the two
brothers is lucky, the other unlucky. The unlucky one goes to an inn,
whose hostess is a witch and strangles him and his dog. The lucky one
delivers the princess from the seven-headed dragon, and then goes in
search of his brother. He comes to the inn, and is attacked at night
by twelve witches, of whom he slays eleven, but spares the twelfth.
She turns out to be the hostess. He forces her to bring his brother to
life again by means of some magical ointment, a portion whereof she
also gives him in case of any other misfortune to the luckless
brother. Both brothers then go to the town. The king’s servant has
possessed himself of the dragon’s tongues, and is about to be married
to the princess as her saviour. This catastrophe is happily prevented
by the assistance of the dog and the production of the princess’
kerchief given to the dragon-slayer after the fight. One day, while
hunting, the lucky brother is seized with jealousy of the unlucky one,
whom he has left at the palace with his wife. He suddenly goes home
and finds his brother gazing at her. Deeming this confirmation strong
as Holy Writ, he draws his sword and hews the unlucky brother to
pieces, thus finding occasion for the use of the ointment thoughtfully
provided by the witch; for he soon discovers how groundless his
suspicions have been.[57.2] This variant distinguishes {58} between
the victim of the Medusa-witch and the dragon-slayer, disconnects the
hero’s jealousy from the Medusa-witch incident, and, like the
Scandinavian tale cited in a previous chapter, gives the impostor the
dragon’s tongues. Moreover, it contains a mere relic of the
Life-token; for the brothers on parting agree to obtain tidings of one
another through their two dogs. These dogs, with the heroes’ horses
and spears, have grown up from seed sown by their father in a small
plot of ground. It is probable that both this variant and that cited
in the preceding paragraph have been derived by degradation from some
version, or versions, of _The King of the Fishes_, or the _Danae,
type_.
The Slavs of various parts of Russia are familiar with the type now
under consideration. In a Lettish tale the brothers steal and eat the
bird after having sold it. They then flee together. Coming to a
crossway, they find an old man who gives them each a horse, dog, whip
and bottle. The bottle is the life-token: its contents turn red if the
owner’s brother die. The dragon is a serpent with thrice nine heads.
The hero is enticed to the Medusa-witch’s hut by a roebuck.[58.1] A
soldier’s two sons, in a story given by Afanasief, receive from an old
man wonderful horses and swords. The life-token is not detailed in the
abstract of the story before me. One brother weds a king’s daughter.
The other delivers another king’s daughter from a dragon, and marries
her. He follows a stag, whose tracks he loses, and, after shooting a
pair of ducks, comes to a deserted castle. There he meets the
Medusa-witch, in the shape of a fair maiden, who changes into a
lioness and swallows him. His brother compels her to cast him up and
bring {59} him to life again with Living-and-Healing-Water. She then
changes back into a maiden and begs forgiveness. They weakly pardon
her. Afterwards each of them is met by a beggar, who, being
transformed into a lion, tears him to pieces. These lions are the
Medusa-witch’s brothers.[59.1] A Lithuanian tale speaks of three
brothers and a sister. The brothers, sparing a wolf, boar, fox, lion,
hare and bear, receive a whelp apiece. Parting from one another, each
of them chooses a birch-tree and strikes it with his axe: the mark
will run with milk or blood, according as he is alive or dead. The
eldest brother takes charge of the sister, by whom he is betrayed to a
robber. He subdues the robber with the assistance of his beasts, nails
his sister by hands and feet to the wall of the robber’s castle, and
leaves her. After slaying a nine-headed dragon and rescuing the
princess, the latter takes him into her carriage; but on the way to
her house he is put to death by the coachman and lackey. His lion
catches a crow and compels it to bring the Water of Life to restore
him. He is recognised by means of the ring and handkerchief the
princess has given him, and marries her. Going hunting, he falls at
night into the power of the Medusa-witch, whom he finds in the shape
of an old woman at a fire. The youngest brother first attempts his
rescue, and afterwards the second, who is successful.[59.2]
The incident of the sister’s treachery, which forms part of the
Lithuanian tale, is found in several Slav versions. {60} In a Swedish
tale from north-western Finland the sister plays a different part. She
has been carried off by a dragon. The brothers are twins. Their
father, a fisherman, had caught a pike, which had bequeathed its eyes
as the life-tokens, to turn black when the heroes were in mortal
peril. The elder brother goes into the world, visiting on the way his
sister, from whom he receives a sword. He saves the king’s only
daughter from a sea-troll, and marries her. The Medusa-witch dwells on
a floating island, which the youth must needs explore. Since his
rescue by the younger brother, and the slaughter of the witch, the
island is no longer visible.[60.1] The fish reappears in a Sicilian
tale, though in a different capacity. There it is caught by the
brothers, who are fishermen. It is a voparedda, a poor kind of fish;
and its life is spared in consequence of its piteous appeals. In
return, it furnishes the brothers with horses, clothing, armour,
swords and money; and they ride forth to seek adventures. The
life-token is a cut in a fig-tree, which flows with milk or blood. The
elder youth is the dragon-slayer. A slave is the impostor who claims
the reward of the victory. The worm’s seven tongues in the lady’s
handkerchief prove his treachery and the hero’s right. One evening
after his marriage the hero goes out to see a bright light upon a
certain mountain, and falls a victim to the Medusa-witch. On his way
to rescue him the younger is met by Saint Joseph, who advises him how
to accomplish his task. The incident of the rescued man’s jealous fury
follows.[60.2]
The Kabyles are tribes of Libyan stock, inhabiting the mountains of
Algeria. They have a tale of two brothers, sons of a man by different
wives. One of the wives is {61} dead; and the other so persecutes the
dead woman’s son that he determines to go away. Before doing so, he
plants a fig-tree as his life-token. He slays a seven-headed serpent
which dwelt in a fountain and withheld the water. The king’s daughter
in this case is not a sacrifice to the snake: she is simply charged
with the duty of bringing it food. She gives the food to the hero
after the slaughter; and, taking one of his sandals, she returns and
reports the event to her father. He calls a public assembly, in order
to try the sandal on the men. The hero dresses in rags, and lames his
horse, his falcon and his hound. Consequently, he is at first passed
by in contempt; but he cannot escape the trial. The ascetic instincts
of the heroes of these tales are remarkable: they will do anything to
escape recognition and marriage. In the present case, when the sandal
is fitted to his foot, the king generously says to the dragon-slayer:
“I will give you my daughter gratis: become king, and I will be your
minister.” This is an offer the masculine Cinderella cannot refuse.
The Medusa-witch is an ogress, whose domain he invades with his horse,
hound and falcon. She binds the animals with hairs, and then eats them
and their master. The younger brother and his animals avenge him. He
watches two tarantulas fighting; the one kills the other, and brings
it to life again by pressing the juice of a herb under its nose. The
younger brother takes the hint, and thus revives the hero and his
beasts.[61.1]
Two Italian variants omit the Life-token. As Basile tells the tale,
there are two brothers, sons of a Neapolitan merchant. The elder,
playing with the king’s son, wounds him and has to flee the country.
He passes the night at a {62} deserted house, and by his courage frees
it from three ghosts and acquires a treasure, which, however, he
leaves to the lord of a neighbouring tower, and goes on his way with
horse and hound. His next feat is to deliver a fairy from a band of
robbers, from whom her honour was in danger. The Dragon-slaughter
follows. He takes the seven tongues and goes to an inn, allowing the
king’s daughter to return alone to her father. His want of gallantry
results, as usual, in the pretensions of an impostor, who possesses
himself of the dragon’s heads, and is about to be married to the
princess, when the hero puts in his claim. The morning after the
wedding he goes to the house of a lovely maiden, seen from his window.
She is, of course, the Medusa-witch. He is rescued by his brother, and
afterwards kills the latter in an access of jealousy. On finding out
his mistake, he restores him by means of a herb which he has seen the
dragon use, during the fight, to mend his own heads when struck
off.[62.1] The other variant is a folktale recently collected in
Tuscany. It is much less elaborate, and reads like a half-forgotten
narrative. Here are three brothers born at a single birth. Each of
them owns a horse and dog which came into the world at the same time.
The first, seeking adventures, meets an old woman in the mountains,
and asks for a steel that he may light a fire, for it is cold. She
replies by transforming his horse, his dog and himself into salt. The
second brother is dealt with in the same manner. The third, instead of
asking for a steel, threatens the witch with death unless she revive
his brothers. By way of recompense, he takes his two elder brothers’
animals, and goes further. With the aid of his dogs he saves the
king’s {63} daughter from a seven-headed lion. He takes the tongues;
but a charcoal-burner takes the heads, and pretends to be the
deliverer. On the hero’s vindicating his right, he marries the lady,
and the charcoal-burner is condemned to the fire.[63.1]
From the remaining types the Medusa-witch is absent, and from the
first of them the Life-token also. Traces of the witch’s influence,
however, are found in some of the stories. Such a story is that of
_The Enchanted Twins_, of which we have two versions, almost exactly
alike, from different parts of Sicily. It seems properly to belong to
the Albanian colonists settled in the island for the last four or five
hundred years. A king, childless and dethroned, catches a fine red
fish, which gives him the accustomed directions. In this case it is to
be cut, according to one version into four, or according to the other
into eight, pieces, which are to be equally distributed to the
fisherman’s wife, his bitch, his mare, and for burial in the garden.
Two boys, two colts and two puppies are born, and, according to one
version, two magical swords grow up in the garden. The twins set out
together, but part. One of them wins, in a tournament, the daughter of
the king, who has dethroned his father. After his marriage he goes
hunting. While absent, his brother comes to the town, and is mistaken
for him as in most of the foregoing types, but puts the customary
sword between himself and his sister-in-law when he goes to bed. The
dragon-slayer, returning, is about to kill his wife from jealousy, but
is happily informed of the facts in time.[63.2]
An African variant, told, presumably at Blantyre, on {64} Lake Nyassa,
to the Rev. Duff Macdonald of the Church of Scotland Mission, by a
native of Quilimane, speaks of a fisherman who caught a large fish.
The fish gave him millet and some of its own flesh, and spoke to him,
directing him to cause his wife to eat the flesh alone, while he ate
the millet. Compliance with these instructions was followed by the
birth of two sons, who were called Rombao and Antonyo, with their two
dogs, two spears and two guns. The explanation, however, of the origin
of the dogs and weapons has been forgotten. The boys became hunters,
not hesitating to kill whoever opposed them and to take possession of
his land and other property. There was a whale which owned a certain
water, and the chief of that country gave his daughter to buy water
from the whale. But Rombao slew the whale, thus saving the maiden, and
cut out its tongue, which he providently salted and preserved. The
credit of the exploit is claimed by the captain of a band of soldiers,
commissioned by the chief to ascertain why the whale had not sent the
usual wind as a token that the girl had been eaten. The chief
accordingly gives the captain his daughter in marriage. When, however,
the marriage-feast is ready, and the people assembled, the lady is
unwilling. Rombao, who has made it his business to be present,
interferes at the critical moment with the inquiry why she is to wed
the captain, and is told it is because he has killed the whale. “But
where,” he asks, “is the whale’s tongue?” The head, of course, has
been produced in evidence of the captain’s brag; but the incident is
omitted by the narrator. The tongue cannot be found until Rombao
triumphantly produces it, and proves that he, not the captain, is
entitled to the victor’s honours. He marries the maiden, while the
captain and his men, {65} who aided and abetted his falsehood, are put
to death.[65.1] This variant contains manifest traces of weathering,
which may point to a foreign, perhaps a Portuguese, provenience. The
atmosphere and most of the details, however, are purely native. The
husband and wife eating apart, the hunting and filibustering
proceedings of the twins, the scarcity of water, the salting of the
monster’s tongue (which, I think, never occurs in an European
variant), and the wedding customs, are among the indications of the
complete assimilation of the story by the native mind. The only
details distinctly traceable to Portuguese influence, paramount on the
Quilimane coast, are the names Rombao and Antonyo, and the
guns--neither of them essential to the story.
In an Abruzzian version the fisherman has but one son, born after his
wife has consumed broth made of the magical fish. The bitch, having
eaten the head, brings forth a puppy, and the mare, having eaten the
flesh, a foal. Swords sprout up in the garden where the bones have
been buried. The boy, grown to manhood, fights a seven-headed dragon
and rescues the princess who was to have been its prey; and the story
ends with his confutation of the fraudulent charcoal-burner in the
ordinary way.[65.2]
Three Swabian variants substitute the Life-token for the Supernatural
Birth. Two of them, almost exactly the same, display, so far as they
go, some similarity to the Argyllshire tale mentioned in a previous
chapter. Three brothers depart on their travels together. At the first
finger-post they separate, each of them sticking his staff into the
post until he return, so that either, coming back to the place, would
know whether the others had gone home. Hans, {66} the hero, takes
service with a nobleman as a shepherd, and is cautioned never to go
into the forest; for three giants dwell there, and they will kill him.
One Sunday he goes into the forest and finds a castle. Entering it, he
meets with no one until he gets to the last room of the top story,
where is an enchanted princess. She gives him a pipe, by blowing into
which he can make all things dance that hear him. He afterwards drives
the sheep repeatedly into the forest, to feed on the excellent pasture
there. At length the giants catch him on successive days; but Hans
blows in his pipe and sets them dancing, and then takes the
opportunity to kill them. He cuts out their tongues and eyes, which he
wraps in his handkerchief. The princess whom he thus frees asks him to
marry her and become king; but he excuses himself at present on the
ground that his time of service is not up. After a while, the maiden’s
father, being tired of waiting, issues a proclamation for her
deliverer. The nobleman, to whom Hans has foolishly confided his
victory, sends his own son to court, with the bodies of the giants, to
claim the reward. Hans, however, by means of the tongues and eyes,
easily convicts him of falsehood. But before permitting Hans to marry
the princess, the king requires him to win at the sport of running at
the ring. The giants’ servants in the castle furnish him with horse
and splendid clothes, and instruct him in the game, so that he wins.
But the king, under pretence of sending him to a monastery to learn,
shuts him in an enchanted castle, haunted by thirteen devils. Hans
with his pipe dances the devils to death, and the king can no longer
withhold the promised reward of the princess’ hand and the kingdom.
After some years, Hans makes up his mind to go home, whither his
brothers have preceded {67} him. So he puts on his old
shepherd-clothing, and is despised by his brothers, one of whom has
become a general, and the other a merchant. He endures all their
indignities for some six weeks, until his consort, wearying of his
absence, comes to look for him. He still pretends stupidity, and does
all sorts of foolish things; but she recognises him through it all,
and induces him to resume his royal garb, to the confusion of his
father and brothers, who have been ill-using him.[67.1]
Here the Life-token has dwindled into a mere token of the brothers’
having returned home, and all its magic is lost. The remaining variant
presents no special points of interest, save that it too is obviously
in a state of decay. There are three brothers who depart together. The
life-token is a sword stuck in a fir-tree, to become spotted with rust
if its owner die. The hero obtains helpful animals (a bear, a wolf and
a lion) in the old familiar manner. The dragon is seven-headed; the
coachman is the impostor, and is found out by the want of the tongues.
What became of the hero’s brothers nobody knows.[67.2]
{68}
Finally, there is a type, not very common, which includes only the
three incidents of the Supernatural Birth, the Life-token, and the
Dragon-slaying. The Portuguese legend of _Saint George_ may be taken
as the typical form. The saint is represented as one of the twin sons
of a fisherman who caught the same fish three days successively. The
first two days it had begged for life; but the third day it directed
that it should be cut into six pieces, two for the fisherman’s wife,
two for his mare, and two to be buried behind his garden-gate. From
the last-mentioned pieces two lances grow. Saint George and his
brother start on their adventures together, but soon part, the saint
giving his brother a branch of basil-gentle, and saying: “When it
withers, come in search of me, because I shall then be in danger.”
George rescues the princess from the dragon; and her father desires to
make him general and give him the maiden in marriage. At this critical
moment his brother perceives the branch withering, and hurries off to
find him. The difficulty is that George, by virtue of vows he has
taken, cannot marry. His brother comes in time to accommodate his
tender conscience, by taking the lady himself and leaving George the
honours of canonisation.[68.1] In a story from Lorraine a different
turn is given to the characters of the two younger brothers, but one
which indicates a close relation with the Portuguese legend: they are
the impostors who pretend to have slain the dragon. Here the fisherman
catches the Queen of the Fishes repeatedly, until his wife insists on
eating her majesty. The fish requests that some of its bones be placed
under the bitch, some under the mare, and the rest under a rose-tree
in the garden. Three puppies are found {69} under the bitch, three
foals under the mare, and three boys beneath the rose-tree. The
life-tokens are the roses on the tree, one of which falls when
misfortune happens to either of the brothers. The first brother takes
all three dogs; and, with their help, in a three days’ conflict he
quells the seven-headed beast and delivers the princess. She thereupon
invites him to come home with her; but he prefers to return to his
father’s house, carrying the beast’s heads. The king issues a
proclamation for him. The youngest brother personates him; but the
heads he brings turn out to be of wood, with which the real victor has
deceived him. The king throws him into prison, and condemns him to be
hanged the next day. His rose falls from the tree. The next brother
goes to rescue him; and the king condemns him to the like punishment.
His rose falls. The real victor then takes the seven heads and the
seven tongues to the castle. For his sake his brothers are spared. He
weds the princess, and they wed two of her maids of honour.[69.1]
The mention of the seven tongues, as it were by accident, is a
reminiscence of what I hold to be the ancient and typical form of the
Imposture-episode. A similar survival occurs in another tale from
Lorraine, wherein the dragon and the Medusa-witch are confounded
together. In this tale there are likewise three brothers, sons of a
fisherman who had given three drops of blood of a certain big fish to
his wife, three to his mare, and three to his bitch, and had preserved
three in a glass as the life-token. The eldest brother, seeking
adventures, enters the castle of a seven-headed witch, and is
forthwith changed into a toad. The blood at home boils in the glass;
and {70} the second brother sets out, only to meet with the same
reverse. The third brother conquers the witch with the assistance of a
charcoal-burner, and cuts out her tongues. Now, he who slew the witch,
and brought her tongues in proof, would have the castle and marry the
king’s daughter. The charcoal-burner bethinks himself of his folly in
not taking the tongues. To secure them, he kills the youth; and,
exhibiting them to the king, he succeeds in obtaining the
princess.[70.1] Charcoal-burners are the favourite villains of the
Perseus _märchen_; but it is rarely they are successful. Nor, indeed,
is it often that the folktale descends to a style of art worthy of
Miss Braddon.
CHAPTER IV.
THE INCIDENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN MÄRCHEN.
{71}
We have found the story of Perseus to consist of three leading
trains of incident, namely, the Supernatural Birth, the Quest of the
Gorgon’s Head, and the Rescue of Andromeda. In a large number of
modern variants, however, the hero is duplicated, or even tripled.
This introduces a fresh element, that of the Life-token. And in nearly
all the modern European variants the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head
undergoes a modification, and suffers a displacement to the end of the
narrative. Other incidents are of course frequently mixed up with
these, or even substituted for one or other of them. But, speaking
broadly, the tale may be taken to consist essentially of the four
elements I have named, which I now propose to examine separately.
The first in order is the Supernatural Birth. Stories of supernatural
birth may be said to have a currency as wide as the world. Heroes of
extraordinary achievement or extraordinary qualities were necessarily
of extraordinary birth. The wonder or the veneration they inspired
seemed to demand that their entrance upon life, and their departure
from it, should correspond with the impression left by their {72}
total career. Tales of supernatural birth are accordingly so numerous
that it is hopeless to give an adequate account of them here. The
utmost that can be done is to lay before the reader a few of the most
interesting and important examples analogous to those we have been
considering in previous chapters.
If we examine stories of the Danae type, or The King of the Fishes
type, we find that when, as usually in the former case, a maiden is
the hero’s mother, only one child is born of her. It is sufficiently
remarkable for a virgin to bring forth one child. But when, as in the
greater number of variants of the latter type, a married woman is the
mother, the prodigy must be placed beyond doubt by a double or
threefold birth, and often by its repetition upon other animals who
partake of the impregnating influence. This influence is generally
conveyed in food. The peoples among whom the stories originated were
either savages, or in a stage of civilisation but little advanced
beyond that of savagery. They credited every marvel because they knew
little of the properties of nature. Of the organisation of their own
bodies they entertained the most rudimentary notions. Whether from an
analogy between the normal act of impregnation and that of eating and
drinking, or because they had learned that at least one mode of
operating effectively on the organism, for purposes alike of injury
and healing, was by drugs taken through the mouth, this was the
favourite method of supernatural impregnation. In the stories we have
already considered, fish or fruit has been the kind of food oftenest
employed. Similar incidents are very numerous outside the Perseus
group.
Among Slavonic nations, the agency of a fish, even in the special form
in which it appears in the story of _The King {73} of the Fishes_, is
not uncommon as an opening to other tales. Several are cited by
Leskien and Brugman in the notes to their _Litauische Märchen_; and
of them we may mention one or two. A Serbo-Croatian tale exhibits an
eel cut into four pieces, of which the woman, the mare and the bitch
eat one each and bear twins; the remaining piece, being buried, grows
up into two golden swords. In a tale from the seaboard of Croatia a
fisherman cuts a fish into three, giving a part each to his wife, the
mare and the bitch, and hanging the scales in the chimney. The latter
are forgotten in the sequel; but twins are born to the woman and the
animals. A king in a Czech tale causes two fish with golden and silver
fins to be caught. He eats one and his consort the other, with the
result that she bears two boys, one with a golden, the other with a
silver, star on his forehead. One of Afanasief’s Russian tales relates
how a beggar advised a king to assemble boys and girls of seven years
old, and let the maidens spin and the boys in one night knit together
a net with which a carp having golden fins is to be caught for the
queen to eat. The dog, however, gets the intestines, and the three
mares the water wherein the fish has been washed; while the cookmaid
gnaws the bones. Queen, cook and dog bear each a son named Ivan, of
whom the dog’s son is the strongest; and he makes a successful raid
underground on the realm of the monsters. The mares bear a foal each.
A childless king, in another of Afanasief’s tales, builds a bridge
over a pathless swamp; and when it is finished he sends a servant to
hide and listen to the remarks of the wayfarers. Two beggars approach.
The one praises the king; the other says: “One ought to wish him
posterity.” And he goes on to prescribe a silken draw-net knit by
night {74} before cock-crow. This, if let down into the sea, would
catch a golden fish; and the queen, eating thereof, would bear a son.
A Polish tale represents a Gipsy woman as counselling a noble, but
barren, lady to catch a fish full of roe in the sea, and to eat the
roe at sunset at full-moontide. Her chambermaid, however, tastes it
also, and, like her mistress, bears a son.[74.1] In Bohemia the tale
is related of a childless monarch, who issues a proclamation offering
a reward to any one who will find means whereby he may obtain an heir.
An old woman presents herself and offers her help, on condition of
being maintained until her death in honour in the royal palace. Her
terms being accepted, she hastens to the brook which flows through the
royal gardens and draws forth a gold-fish and a silver-fish. When
these are cooked the queen eats the gold-fish and the beldam the
silver-fish. The former bears a son on whose forehead beams a golden
star, and the latter a son similarly adorned with a star of
silver.[74.2]
The population of Eastern Pomerania is probably in the main Slavonic.
There the people tell of a queen to whom a beggar-woman brought two
fishes to be eaten by herself; nobody else was to taste them. The cat,
however, stole one; and she and the queen bore a son apiece.[74.3]
Outside the Slavonic populations, the incident in this form does not
seem a favourite in Europe. But we find in Iceland a story of an
earl’s wife, to whom three women in blue mantles appear in a dream,
and command her to go to a stream at hand, and, laying herself down,
to drink of it and try to get into her mouth a certain trout she will
see {75} there, when she will at once conceive. These women are
doubtless Norns, for they appear again at the birth and pronounce the
fate of the daughter who is born to the lady in consequence.[75.1]
Among the Eskimo it is also a woman who provides the fish. She meets
the husband, and from her bag produces two small dried fishes, a male
and a female. His wife is to eat the former if a son be desired, the
latter if a daughter. As he does not want a daughter, he himself eats
the female fish, with the wholly unexpected result that he himself
gives birth to the daughter.[75.2]
Two curious tales are recorded from Annam. One of them, thought by M.
Landes, who collected it, to be of Chinese provenience, speaks of a
childless man who determined to eat an enormous eel known to inhabit a
certain river-confluence. To him a bonze comes and begs him to spare
it. When he cannot prevail, the holy man asks for food ere he retires.
He is given the usual vegetables, cooked according to Buddhist ritual
for this purpose without salt or seasoning, and then goes away. The
other man catches the eel by poisoning the water; and when it is
cooked the food offered to the bonze is found in its stomach: hence it
is known that the bonze was no other than a manifestation of the eel.
After the man has eaten the eel, his wife becomes pregnant and gives
birth to a son, who ultimately proves the ruin of his parents. In
short, he is no other than the eel, who thus avenges itself on its
murderer.[75.3] Here we find expressly asserted the identity of the
progeny with the mysterious fish, a subject whereto {76} I shall have
to return in a future chapter. The other Annamite story is a variant
of the well-known group of _The Lucky Fool_. A lazy man was once lying
on a raft when a fish leaped upon it. The man caught the fish, scraped
off its scales; and, being too slothful to rise and wash it in the
water, he rinsed it in his own urine, and threw it on the raft to dry.
It is, however, carried off by a raven into the king’s daughter’s
garden. Her maids bring it to her; and when it is cooked she eats it,
and immediately becomes pregnant. In due time she gives birth to a
son; and the king summons all the men of his kingdom that he may
choose a husband for her. The lazy man floats his raft to the front of
the palace. The princess’ son sees him from the palace-roof, and hails
him as his father. Believing in this wise child, the king sends for
the lazy man to his presence, and gives him the princess in
marriage.[76.1] Such was the reward of laziness.
In India the ordinary mode of supernatural conception is by the eating
of fruit. A few examples will suffice. I have in a previous chapter
related Somadeva’s tale of Indívarasena and his brother, who were
born in consequence of their mother’s eating two heavenly fruits. The
_Kathá-sarit-Ságara_, or _Ocean of the Streams of Story_, contains
other narratives to the same effect. Concerning the birth of the
famous hero Vikramáditya, it tells us that Siva appeared to his
mother in a dream and gave her a fruit.[76.2] Another childless queen,
after propitiating Siva, receives a fruit in a dream from “a certain
man with matted locks,” no doubt a fakir.[76.3] In modern folklore
Siva appears in the garb of a _jogí_, or fakir, to a childless king
{77} and hands him four fruits, which the queen is to eat the
following Sunday before sunrise, and she will then bear four sons, who
will be exceedingly clever and good.[77.1] Elsewhere we are told of a
rajah, who has seven wives, but no offspring. He is given by a fakir a
stick, with instructions to knock down seven mangoes from a certain
tree and, catching them as they fall, to take them home to his seven
wives. Six of the wives eat the seven mangoes; and the seventh wife is
reduced to eating one of the mango-stones thrown away by the other
wives. All seven give birth to sons; but the son of the seventh is
born in monkey-form. He is, of course, the hero, his brothers playing
the same part towards him as those of Joseph, or those of Khodadad in
the _Arabian Nights_.[77.2] A barren woman in another tale goes to
Mahadeo, or Siva. He meets with her in his customary disguise as a
fakir, and gives her a mango, whereof she and two other women, who
desire the same boon but have been deterred from reaching the god by
the dangers of the way, are to eat. She is blessed with a son, and the
other women with a daughter each.[77.3] Mangoes, indeed, seem the
usual prescription in Indian folktales.
Other fruits are not wanting. A fakir gives to a monarch who is
without issue one hundred and sixty _lichí_ fruits, which resemble
plums--one for each of his wives.[77.4] Barleycorns are given by
another holy man for the same pious purpose.[77.5] The _Adventures of
Kâmrûp_, a literary romance {78} in Hindustani, tells of a king who
had no children. He is presented by a fakir with a fruit of _srî_, or
prosperity. It is eaten by his queen; and she and six other ladies who
taste it add to the population on the same day.[78.1] The youngest of
seven brothers, in a Santali story, plants a certain vegetable which
bears a fruit. He measures its growth daily, until it becomes a span
long and then remains stationary. He warns his sisters-in-law: “Do not
eat my fruit, for whoever does so will give birth to a child only one
span long.” The temptation is too great for one of them. She plucks
the fruit and eats it; and though she, in common with the other
sisters-in-law, positively denies the theft, she is found out in due
time by the advent of a baby one span long--a Santali Tom Thumb.[78.2]
According to a tale of the Altaic tribes of South Siberia, a girl when
married is found to be already pregnant. On being questioned, her
account of the matter was that she had picked up a lump of ice which
had fallen with a heavy rain, and on breaking it in pieces she had
found inside, and eaten, two grains of wheat. When her time came she
bore twin boys.[78.3] A curious legend obtained by Professor Haddon
from an islander of Torres Straits declares that a woman, who had been
deprived of her husband by a supernatural female and set adrift on the
sea, was cast away on an island where she had no other food than some
seeds which ornamented her ear-pendants. After consuming them she
discovered that she was in the way to become a mother, and laid an
egg, like a sea-eagle’s, out of which she hatched a bird. The bird
supported her, and at length brought her back to her husband.[78.4]
{79}
Mohammedan stories attach, as we might expect, inordinate value to the
male sex. They represent the fruit as eaten by the father, rather than
by the mother. The _Qissa Agar o Gul_ is an Urdu adaptation of a
Persian romance. It was published as lately as 1880 at Lucknow. Here
the fruit, a couple of apples, is given by a dervish to a king and his
vizier, neither of whom has issue. Each of them eats his apple, and
begets--the king, a son, and the vizier, twins, boy and girl.[79.1] I
have already referred incidentally to the case of Khodadad, who was
one of fifty brethren begotten by a childless monarch upon his fifty
wives, after eating as many pomegranate seeds. He had incessantly
prayed for offspring, and was commanded in a dream by a man “of
semblance like unto a prophet” to rise at dawn, and, saying certain
prayers, to go to his Chief Gardener, from whom he was to require a
pomegranate and to take of it as many seeds as seemed best to
him.[79.2] Another sultan is represented in the same great collection
as receiving from a _Takrúri_, one of a Moslem negroid people
credited by the Arabs with magical powers, a portion of certain
medicinal roots, to be eaten by himself.[79.3] So in the Turkish
_History of Forty Vezirs_, where a childless king beseeches the
intercession of a convent of dervishes, and sends them a fat ram and
an offering of rice, honey and oil, the sheykh of the convent returns
him a bowlful “of that meat,” ordering him to “desire a son and eat of
the dervishes’ portion.”[79.4] Yet the rule is not without exception.
A sovereign of Serendib, in the _Bahar Danush_, receives from a
religious recluse an apple with instructions to give {80} it to his
consort.[80.1] A tale told by the Kabyles of the Lower Atlas speaks of
a man who bought seven apples for his seven wives. Growing hungry, he
ate half of one, or, according to a variant, he gave it to a man who
met him. The result was that the wife who had only the other half
brought forth a dwarf.[80.2] And in a Balochi tale a fakir gives a
king two kunar-fruits (_Zizyphus Jujuba_), one to be eaten by himself
and the other by his wife.[80.3] These exceptions, however, are more
apparent than real. The _Bahar Danush_ is an Indian work, composed in
the reign of Shah Jehan by Ināyatu ’llāh of Delhi, who professed to
have received the stories of which it is composed from a Brahman. This
is merely another way of saying that they are drawn from earlier
Indian sources. The Kabyles are mountain tribes related to the
Berbers. The religion of the Apostle of Allah sits lightly upon them.
Their aboriginal precepts are at least as much regarded as those of
the Koran; and so far are their social relations from being dominated
by Arab customs, that their women enjoy free and unrestricted
intercourse with both sexes, and are looked upon as almost if not
quite the equals of men. The Balochis pay little more respect than the
Kabyles to Islam; and their religious practices are largely tinged
with their ancestral paganism and that of their neighbours.
When a European folktale, on the other hand, exhibits the husband as
devouring the magical fruit meant for his wife, it does not fail to
make him repent it. For example, in a Portuguese tale from Algarve, a
woman who confesses to Saint Antony, and confides to him her despair
of children, receives from the saint three apples to be eaten fasting.
Arrived at home, she puts the apples down and {81} prepares breakfast.
Her husband, meanwhile, coming in, finds and eats them. When he
learned what he had done he was terrified, and sent his wife back to
the holy man, only to have his terrors confirmed. As the time arrived
he began to scream; nor had he any alleviation of his agony until a
person who understood came and cut him open, and brought forth a
daughter.[81.1] But in cases where both parents partake of the fruit,
the natural way of birth is the result. An old woman in an Abruzzian
tale gives a fisherman’s wife an orange, to be eaten, half by herself
and the other half by her husband. The rind is to be thrown at the
foot of an orange-tree in the garden. A boy is born, and a sword grows
at the foot of the orange-tree.[81.2] A Greek tradition belonging to
the Bluebeard cycle relates that an ogre divided an apple between a
king and his wife, on condition that the eldest son was to be given to
him. The queen thereafter bears three boys. This is from the island of
Syra. A story from Ziza in Epirus speaks of two spouses who had lived
with one another for forty years without issue, and who obtained a boy
under similar conditions; and a mare to which they give the
apple-parings bore a foal.[81.3] On the whole we are probably
warranted in {82} conjecturing that Mohammedanism has influenced all
the stories where the husband consumes the fruit without evil results;
and that they are a departure from the earlier form, in which the wife
eats it alone. A variant of the last-mentioned _märchen_, also from
Epirus, follows the usual rule. There a queen was presented with an
apple by a Jew. She ate it and threw the peel away, and the mare
devoured it. By and by the queen and the mare were both found
pregnant.[82.1] Beyond the Ægean Sea the Hellenic population has
preserved the same version of the incident in a tale from Smyrna of a
queen on whom a dervish confers three apples, with directions to eat
them and she will have three boys.[82.2] So, in a French tale from
Louisiana, a lady is given an apple by an old woman. She eats the
apple and throws the peel in the yard, where it is eaten by a mare.
The next morning, so rapid is the effect of magical power, both she
and the mare have brought forth young.[82.3]
The Russians have the story in a shape recalling some of the variants
of the Danae type. A Tsaritsa, to quench her thirst, draws water from
a white marble well in a golden cup. She drinks eagerly, and with the
water swallows a pea, thus becoming pregnant of a son who is destined
to achieve the destruction of the Savage Serpent.[82.4] In White
Russia we hear of a woman who, having drawn water, is returning with
her bucket when she sees a pea rolling along. Saying to herself, “This
is the gift of God,” she picks it up, eats it, and in course of time
becomes the {83} mother of a tiny boy, “who grew not by years, but by
hours, like millet-dough when leavened,” and became a hero of enormous
strength and wisdom, called Little Rolling-pea.[83.1]
The consumption of some kind of drug, or enchanted compound, is also
an approved method of causing pregnancy, especially (if we may judge
by the proportion of tales wherein it appears) in India. In the
Bengali tale of _Life’s Secret_ a fakir offers a drug to a childless
queen, to remove her barrenness, telling her that if she swallow it
with the juice of a pomegranate flower a son will be born, whose life
shall be bound up in a golden necklace, in a wooden box, in the heart
of a big boal-fish, in the tank in front of the palace.[83.2] A
Buddhist tale, originally from India, has been found, containing the
incident, in Ceylon, and also in the _Kah-gyur_, a Tibetan version of
an Indian collection no longer extant. It narrates how Indra, the king
of the gods, taking pity on his friend, King Sakuni, sends him a
medicine, of which his wives are to drink, and he will thereby obtain
sons and daughters.[83.3] Often a bargain is made, as in some of the
European tales already cited, that the queen shall bear twins, one of
whom is to be given to the holy man, or supernatural being, through
whose gift the curse of barrenness has been taken away. So in another
Bengali tale a religious mendicant came to a king who had no issue,
and said: “As you are anxious to have a son, I can give the queen a
drug, by swallowing which she will give birth to twin sons; but I will
give the medicine on this condition, that of those twins you will {84}
give one to me and keep the other yourself.”[84.1] And the same
bargain is made by a _jogi_ in a folktale from the Kamaon in the
Himalaya, in giving a fruit, which, divided between a king’s seven
wives, causes them to bear a son apiece.[84.2] Nor is the bargain
confined to India. In a tale told by the Swahili, or mongrel
inhabitants, half Negro half Arab, of Zanzibar, a demon came disguised
as a man to a sultan who lacked a son, and asked: “If I give you a
medicine, and you get a son, what will you give me?” The sultan offers
half his property; but it is rejected. He then offers half his towns.
The demon replies: “I am not satisfied.” The sultan inquires: “What do
you want, then?” And he said: “If you get two children, give me one,
and take one yourself.” The sultan said: “I have consented.” The demon
accordingly brings him a medicine, which his wife takes and bears
three sons.[84.3]
Sometimes the drug is given by one of the lower animals, most of
which, it is hardly necessary to remind the reader, are regarded by
peoples in the lower culture as of superhuman power or knowledge. In a
Kaffir story, a bird gives a childless wife some pellets to be taken
before food, and she consequently bears a beautiful daughter.[84.4] A
curious tale was related to the Rev. Charles Swynnerton in the Panjab
of a snake who was about to eat a young man, when his wife wept and
asked the creature what would become of her when her husband was
eaten;--why was he {85} going to inflict this injury upon her? The
serpent in remorse crept back to his hole and fetched two magical
globules, saying: “Here, foolish woman, take these two pills and
swallow them, and you will have two sons to whom you can devote
yourself, and who will take good care of you!” The girl, however,
replied: “But what about my good name?” The snake, who knew not that
she was already wed, became exasperated. “Women are such preposterous
beings!” he cried, as he fetched two more pills. These he gave to the
disconsolate girl, telling her: “When any of your neighbours revile
you on account of your sons, take one of these pills between finger
and thumb, hold it over them, rubbing it gently so that some of the
powder may fall on them, and immediately you will see them consume
away to ashes.” Tying the former pills in her cloth, the girl looked
at these new pills incredulously. Then, with a sudden thought, she
gently rubbed them over the snake, saying with an innocent air: “O
snake, explain this mystery to me again! Is this the way I am to rub
them?” The moment the magical powder touched the snake he was set on
fire; and in another instant he was merely a long wavy line of grey
dust lying on the ground.[85.1] In one of the _Arabian Nights_ the
potent drug is the flesh of two serpents. It is prescribed by King
Solomon to a king of Egypt and his vizier, both of whom were without
issue. The serpents in question were remarkable: the one had a head
like an asp’s, the other a head like an ifrit’s. And their flesh forms
an exception to the Mohammedan rule already noted in these cases, for
it was to be given to the wives of the childless men.[85.2]
Coming to Europe, we find a story told at Torricella {86} Pelligna, in
the Abruzzi, where a fairy, under the form of an old woman, tells the
king that he will have no children until the queen shall drink a
decoction made with three hairs from the devil’s beard. A servant is
accordingly despatched for these precious materials; and when, after
various adventures, he returns with them, the prescription proves so
successful that the queen bears a daughter fair as the sun.[86.1] The
medicine, however, is more frequently used in European _märchen_ to
gratify spite against an unfortunate maiden, by putting her
unwittingly into a condition inconsistent with maidenhood. In a Tuscan
tale, for example, a stepmother hates her stepdaughter, and is taught
by a beggar-woman how to injure her. She accordingly prepares, from
the blood of seven wild beasts, a philtre whose property it is to
cause pregnancy. Her father consents to her being put to death; but
the ruffians charged with the crime content themselves by simply
abandoning her in the wood. She is delivered in due time of a dragon
with seven heads of different animals, who becomes his mother’s
guardian, procures for her an honourable marriage with a king, and
ultimately transforms himself into a man.[86.2] A South Slavonic tale
from Varadzin yields a similar plot. There it is a queen whose
daughter is beloved by her father to such an extent as to rouse her
jealousy. She is advised by a tramp to go on Good Friday to a
churchyard, dig up a bone, grate it, and give the gratings to her
daughter next {87} morning in her coffee. The girl becomes pregnant,
and is set adrift on a ship. She bears a son who is spotted, but who,
after various adventures, is disenchanted of his foul deformity.[87.1]
We shall hereafter have to consider several superstitious beliefs and
practices in connection with the dead. Here I simply pause to mention
two other Slav stories attributing to portions of dead human bodies
the reproductive faculty. The first comes to us from Bohemia, where it
is said that a gravedigger’s beautiful daughter was followed about by
a skull that never quitted her feet. By a witch’s advice her father
burned it and made his daughter swallow the ashes. In consequence of
so doing, she gave birth to a son who held mysterious converse with
the Sleeping Heroes beneath Mount Blanik.[87.2] The other is a
Lithuanian story from Godleva, concerning a hermit who, in obedience
to God’s express command, burned himself alive by way of penance. The
day after his immolation a hunter passed by the place, and turned
aside to see the remains of the pyre, and ascertain the cause of the
strange smell. Poking among the ashes he found the hermit’s heart,
which he took home to his daughter to cook for his supper. She,
however, ate it herself and in two hours bore a son of powers, it need
hardly be said, as remarkable as his parentage.[87.3] It is {88}
interesting to observe that in India potency of this kind is attached
to fakirs and religious mendicants. A special privilege would seem to
belong in the popular mind to such religious consecration. Vows of
celibacy and other ascetic usages have their compensation. In all ages
and countries, indeed, the virtue of asceticism, of self-sacrifice, or
of suffering however caused, has been recognised. The Egyptian
_märchen_ of _The Two Brothers_, which was written down more than
twelve hundred years before the Christian era, exhibits this as one of
its central ideas. I shall have to refer to this legend again. It is
enough to remark here that, just as the self-immolation of the hermit
in the Lithuanian story seems to have conferred upon his heart the
strange quality we are discussing, Bata, the younger of the Two
Brothers, by his unmerited sufferings acquired an inherent and
miraculous capacity of metamorphosis and reproduction. When the
persea-trees, in whose form he found himself during his chequered
career, were being cut down, a chip flew from one of them and entered
the mouth of the king’s favourite, once his own wife. She swallowed it
and, conceiving, gave birth to a male child, who was no other than a
new manifestation of her former husband, Bata.[88.1]
For in these tales not only the fruit but also other parts of a tree
or shrub are endowed with the power of causing conception. In Denmark
we are told of a wise woman, by whose counsel a childless queen goes
down before sunrise into the royal garden and eats the three buds of a
certain {89} thorny bush. After six months the queen bears a daughter,
who must be kept from her parents’ sight until her fourteenth
birthday, else both mother and child will suffer a dire
misfortune.[89.1] An Icelandic tale gives, by a beggar-woman’s mouth,
the following recipe for growing the magical plant: “Your majesty must
make them bring in two pails of water some evening before you go to
bed. In each of them you must wash yourself, and afterwards throw away
the water under the bed. When you look under the bed next morning, two
flowers will have sprung up, one fair and one ugly. The fair one you
must eat; the ugly one you must let stand.” The temptation, however,
was too great for the lady. Having eaten the fair one and found it
delicious, she proceeded to eat the ugly one, and gave birth in due
time to two daughters, a fair and a loathly one. The latter, though
hideous, is her sister’s good angel, and eventually wedding the king’s
son, becomes the most beautiful woman in the world.[89.2] It will be
remembered that the fakir in one of the Bengali tales already cited
prescribes the juice of a pomegranate-flower to be taken with his
drug. Annamese folklore recounts the history of a maiden who, walking
in a garden, plucks and eats a lovely flower. Her parents (who seem to
have had a shrewd opinion of religious celibates) suspected the bonze
of a neighbouring pagoda of having dishonoured her, and sent her to
the pagoda, where she was delivered of no fewer than five sons of
marvellous powers, and all exactly alike. Questioned as to their
names, the first calls himself The Strong, the second
Steel-body-iron-liver, the third Search-cloud-drive-dust, the fourth
The Dry, and the fifth The Damp. They get up a quarrel with the king,
and ultimately compel him {90} to yield his throne to Search-cloud,
who is the wisest of the brothers.[90.1] In the _Pentameron_ a
nobleman’s sister offers a prize to that one of her maids who succeeds
in clearing a certain rosebush at a jump. All fail; and the lady
herself, trying it, knocks off a leaf. With great adroitness she picks
it up and swallows it unobserved, and thus wins the prize. After three
days, mysterious pains seize her; and she learns with horror from a
friendly fairy that no doubt she is pregnant from the roseleaf she has
swallowed. This turns out to be the fact. A lovely baby-girl is born,
for whom a strange destiny is in store. A spell is laid upon her by
the fairies that if, at seven years of age, her mother be allowed to
comb her, the comb will be left stuck in her hair, and she will
thereupon die. The story follows a similar course to that of the
Danish one just cited.[90.2] In a Tuscan folktale a woman wedded for
many years, but childless, obtains a son by eating “a certain herb”
pointed out to her by a fairy, to whom she promises in return a fair
present. But she and her husband neglect to fulfil the promise; and to
punish them the boy is born and remains of diminutive size.[90.3] The
Passamaquoddies, a North American tribe of tolerably pure blood in New
England, attribute the birth of a medicine-man, a hero of their
folklore, to his mother’s biting off every bush as she travelled
through the woods. From one of these bushes, the narrative does not
say which of them, she comes to be with child.[90.4]
Romances are, of course, literature, not folklore. In {91} other
words, they are the deliberate productions of civilisation, they are
works of conscious art. Their authority, therefore, as evidence of
tradition is greatly inferior to that with which the report of a
folktale is invested. Folktales, when written down, cease to be
traditions. They are merely evidence of tradition preserved for us by
reporters. Their value depends on the accuracy and knowledge with
which they have been reported. The more closely they represent the
very words of the tellers of the tales--the bearers of the
traditions--the more valuable, the more authentic, they are. Romances,
on the other hand, cannot claim to be reports of traditions. They are
subject to the laws of art, as developed under the influences of
civilisation. Even when starting from real traditions, their aim is
not accuracy but amusement. Whatever changes are required by the
development of taste or fashion, whatever changes will from any cause
add to the pleasure of the reader, their authors are at liberty--nay,
they are bound--to make. But when all this is conceded there remains
the fact that an immense number of romances start from tradition, and
embody its characteristic barbarisms and its fantastic
impossibilities. Of this kind is an incident in the Spanish _Romance
de don Tristan_ by Alonso de Salaya, written towards the end of the
fifteenth century. It is related there that, Tristram being wounded in
a transport of jealousy by King Mark, Isolte visited him; and the two
lovers shed abundant tears. From these tears a lily sprang. “Every
woman who eats of it forthwith feels herself pregnant; Queen Isolte
ate of it to her sorrow.”[91.1]
In the Annamite story of _The Lazy Man_ mentioned {92} just now, the
fish had been washed in the man’s urine. A variant, also from Annam,
describes a sort of female Tom Thumb, born in answer to prayer, as
eating the rind of a water-melon, the substance of which had been
eaten by a prince. The prince, before throwing the rind away, had made
water into it; and the heroine consequently became pregnant.[92.1] In
both these cases it is the man’s urine that confers the efficacy upon
the food. A nasty Nubian tale ascribes the same result to a woman’s
drinking, under stress of great thirst, the urine of an ass.[92.2]
Other stories recall the German _Water Peter and Water Paul_,
discussed in a previous chapter. A maiden in a Tjame tale, being
thirsty, sees water spring from the midst of some rocks in the forest
and fill a rocky basin. There she drinks and bathes. But when, on
returning to her father who is at work hard by, he asks her to show
him the spring that he may drink also, it is already dried up. Her
subsequent pregnancy is said to be the result of having drunk of that
spring. She gives birth to a son round as a cocoa-nut, and covered
with a cocoa-nut envelope. He turns out to be a great magician. A
princess penetrates his disguise and marries him. At night when he
comes out of his envelope, his wife buries it and persuades him to
exhibit himself in his true and beautiful manhood.[92.3] A Wallachian
_märchen_ brings before us a maiden condemned by the king, her
father, to seclusion from her earliest infancy in a castle to which no
men were allowed access. {93} His precautions were vain. At the age of
sixteen a Gipsy woman gives her a flower she declares herself to have
found in the forest, not far from the castle. The princess plays with
it until the evening, and then puts it in water until the morning. The
water becomes purple-red, like the lovely flower itself, with little
golden and silver stars swimming in it, like the fragrant dust on the
petals. The princess had never seen anything of the kind. She was so
delighted that she dipped the whole flower into the water and crumpled
it up. At last she lifted up the glass, and, finding the water had
taken a delicious scent, she drank it to the bottom. Before long she
had reason to repent. Her condition became manifest, and her stern
father would listen to no denials. Beside himself with rage, he caused
her to be fastened up in a cask and thrown into the sea. There she
bore a son, and was, with the child, cast after a while on shore. The
rest of the story unfortunately is not so much to her credit; for she
forms a tender connection with an ogre, and plots against the son who
has been her support and comforter in her outcast condition.[93.1] A
Gipsy story from southern Hungary represents a childless woman as
given by a witch a certain liquid, with instructions to pour it into a
gourd, and drink it in the waxing of the moon. Unhappily, however, the
child is born dead. Now, a stillborn child becomes a Mulo, a kind of
ghoul dwelling in the mountains and guarding hidden treasure. This
prospect was so terrible to the woman and her husband, that the latter
made a journey to the mountains, and at last got the child back from
the Mulo-folk, and he grew up a clever man.[93.2]
{94}
Nor is it only by the mouth that supernatural impregnation has been
fabled to take place. A variant from Varadzin of one of the South
Slavonic tales quoted a few paragraphs back mentions a youth who was
fated to kill his parents. Rather than fulfil so horrible a doom he
burnt himself to death. But his heart remained intact and palpitating.
A maiden passed by, saw and smelt the heart, and gave birth to a boy,
who was no other than the first come to life again. He had struggled
against his fate in vain, and in due course, though unwittingly, he
slew his former parents.[94.1] In a Sanskrit romance, the Princess
Chand Ráwati, bathing in the Ganges, sees a flower afloat on the
water and takes it up to smell. It contains some _sperma genitale_
which has escaped from a Rishi; the lady inhales this, with
consequences readily guessed, having regard to the holiness of the
ascetic. But in this case her son appropriately finds his way into the
world by his mother’s nose. It is satisfactory to add that she
eventually marries the lad’s father, and that the lad himself by his
filial obedience and courage obtains immortality.[94.2] Even without
the adventitious aid of a saint, the scent or the touch of flowers has
been known in traditional songs and fairy tales to produce the same
result. A Gipsy story from the Land beyond the Forest speaks of a
woman who, by smelling a certain flower, became pregnant of a son,
born in the form of a serpent; and in another, from southern Hungary,
a childless queen receives from a beldam a camomile flower to bear in
her bosom, on the stipulation she should give in exchange one of the
sons whom she would bring into the world.[94.3] A Portuguese {95}
_romanceiro_ speaks of an enchanted herb, which any woman who touched
would at once feel herself fertilised. A ballad current in Asturia
narrates that the princess Alexandra was fated to tread on so
apparently innocent a herb as borage. The king of Spain, her father,
with his parental eyes, detected that there was something the matter.
He summoned the doctors; and when she had given birth to a boy he
executed summary justice upon her by cutting off her head.[95.1] In
Sardinia the folk tell of a maiden who, while buying some roses from a
woman, took them up to examine, when they all fell to pieces. The
woman, annoyed, cursed her to become pregnant by the petals; and her
imprecation was only too effective.[95.2] Here it is the curse which
provides the magical power. A different origin is attributed to it in
a Bulgarian ballad. A widow, we are told, had nine sons who were all
carried off by the plague. One of them was his mother’s idol. She
buried him in her courtyard, and every day she came to weep upon his
grave. In obedience to a voice proceeding from the earth, she gathered
two hyacinth flowers which grew upon the tomb, hid them in her bosom,
and thus conceived afresh. A son was born, over whom she uttered the
wish: “Mayest thou one day reave the kingdom from the king!” When her
words were reported to the monarch he ordered the boy to be thrown
into an underground dungeon, and there left. After several years the
king was attacked by a horrible malady; grass grew between his bones
and his eyes littered mice. He naturally believed that this was the
consequence of the widowed mother’s curses, and sent to the dungeon
for the boy’s bones, for the purpose of forwarding them to her, as the
only consolation in his power to give her. But {96} the messengers
found the boy alive and reading the gospel, which was held before him
by Saint Friday, while Saint Sunday further contributed to his
convenience by holding the candle. The youth, fated by his mother’s
words, arose from his pious exercises, and going to the king, tore out
his eyes, cut off his hands, and turned him out of doors to beg his
bread. Then he placed himself upon the throne, trifling the while with
a sceptre that weighed, mere toy that it was, some three hundred
pounds.[96.1]
I have cited fully the substance of this ballad as given by M.
Dragomanov, because that scholar is inclined to trace the influence of
Buddhism in the last touch. Buddha, he says, is considered as a man of
great physical force, and in several places his sceptres of
considerable weight are shown. The learned critic specifies none of
the places in question; but we may for the nonce admit the literal
accuracy of his statement. He does not commit himself, however, to the
assertion that no other hero of legend or fairy tale had ever been
possessed of gigantic strength or material “properties” of unusual
proportions. He merely assumes it; and upon the validity of this
assumption his reasoning is founded. Gautama no doubt underwent many
incarnations; and perhaps European students may yet be persuaded to
hold that the paladin Roland was a Bodisat and Thor a full-blown
Buddha. They will then probably extend their articles of belief over
the rest of the world, including the countless personages of wondrous
might and bulk that swarm in the traditions of the Slavonic race, to
which, in great part at all events, the Bulgars belong. The task of
converting them may be commended to M. Dragomanov; {97} and,
meanwhile, we may dismiss the suggestion of Buddhist influence on this
Bulgarian ballad.
But it is not only flowers and herbs that possess the magical virtue
of causing conception by the touch. In an Eskimo tradition a man who
longs for offspring is advised to set off in his kayak to the open
sea. When he hears a voice like that of a child crying, he must go
towards it; and he will then find a worm, which he must bring home and
throw on his wife’s body. Having followed this counsel, he beholds the
worm disappear in the woman’s body; and soon afterward she gives birth
to a son, who becomes a seal-fisher of marvellous powers.[97.1]
According to a story given by Dr. von Wlislocki as current among the
Armenian settlers at the foot of the Carpathians, a childless queen
picked up in her garden a half-dead bird. She restored it to life,
putting its bill between her lips to give it breath. Her saliva
touched its tongue and gave it human speech. By its directions she hid
in the garden at midnight and watched until a Luckwife--that is to
say, a Fate or Norn--came to bathe in the pool. Then she caught up the
golden veil left by the Luckwife lying on the margin, and ran off with
it. Binding it round her body, she wore it next her skin for nine
months, until she at length brought forth a lovely daughter.[97.2]
Another form of assistance by birds is found among the Zulus. The
birth of Unthlatu was on this wise. Two pigeons came to his mother,
who was a chief’s wife. One said: “Vukutu;” the other asked: “Why do
you say ‘Vukutu,’ since she has no children?” They bargain with {98}
her for a feed of castor-oil berries in exchange for the promise of a
child. When they had eaten the berries they scarified her in two
places on the loins, saying: “You will now have a child.” She
accordingly gave birth to a beautiful boy, whom she hid in a boa’s
skin to save him from the envy of her fellow-wives; for they had only
given birth to brutes. In a variant the pigeons direct the woman to
take a horn and cup herself, draw out a clot of blood, place it in a
pot, lute it down and only uncover it in the ninth month. She acts
accordingly; and on opening the pot a child is found within, to the
astonishment of herself and her husband. Here, too, she has to hide
the boy from the envy of the other women.[98.1]
A favourite _märchen_ in Italy and Sicily is one which approaches far
more nearly to the Danae type of the Perseus group. As told in Sicily,
a king unblessed with {99} issue summons a wizard, to inquire of him
whether his queen will have a babe, or not. The wizard replies that
she will have a daughter, who in her fourteenth year will be
impregnated by the sun. The child is accordingly born, and shut up
with her nurse in a tower where the sun cannot penetrate. One day the
little maiden finds a pointed bone in her food; and with its aid she
scratches the wall of the tower until she scrapes a hole in it.
Through this hole the sun shines on her and fulfils the prediction. A
daughter is born in due course and exposed, but found by a king’s son,
who ultimately falls in love with her, and weds her after learning of
what ancestry she comes.[99.1] The opening of this tale admits of many
variations having nothing to do with the Supernatural Birth. Thus, in
a Greek story from Epirus, a woman prays to the sun for a daughter,
promising him that he may take her away when she is twelve years old.
When she obtains the child, however, she seeks to evade the fulfilment
of her promise, and hides the girl in the house, stopping up all
windows, chinks and holes whereby the sun can reach her. But she
forgets to stop up the keyhole; and the sun sends a ray that way into
the house to seize and bring him the maiden.[99.2] A Florentine story
represents the astrologer as predicting that the lass will be carried
away by the wind; and all {100} precautions against her destiny are
vain.[100.1] In another Sicilian tradition the soothsayer is wisely
vaguer, his denunciations only extending to a dreadful fate at the age
of eleven. A bird comes in through the hole the maiden has bored in
the wall of her tower, and becomes a man. He is, in fact, an enchanted
prince; and the misfortune she undergoes is the loss of her beauty in
disenchanting him--a woe of light account in fairyland, where the
virtuous are ever rewarded.[100.2] A tale from the Azores relates that
a king to whom a daughter had been born consulted his book of
astrology; and in obedience to the directions he there found he
confined her at the age of twelve in a tower having only one aperture,
by which food was conveyed to her, and commanded that no bones be left
in the meat supplied. By accident his command was disobeyed; a duke
dressed, like MacKineely in the Irish tale, in female attire gains an
opportunity of talking with her through the aperture. Who could resist
such a temptation? The bone she had found in her food she utilises to
enlarge the opening, so as to get out and flee with him.[100.3] A
similar illustration of the impossibility of cheating fate occurs in
an old Hebrew manuscript. King Solomon, we learn from this veracious
authority, had a beautiful daughter whose horoscope disclosed that she
was to marry a poor Israelite of low birth. He therefore built a very
high tower with no entrance, and there he imprisoned her with a stock
of victuals. For some time his precautions appeared successful; but
after a while a poor youth, exhausted from long travel, took shelter
for the night in the carcase of an ox. When he had fallen asleep a
large bird obligingly carried {101} carcase and youth up to the roof
of the tower. There to his great surprise he found himself the next
morning; and, like the prince borne by the Enchanted Horse in the
_Arabian Nights_, he lost no time in making the princess’
acquaintance. They speedily fell in love with one another; but, with
scruples that King Solomon perhaps would hardly have appreciated, he
wrote a marriage contract in his own blood, calling upon God and the
angels Michael and Gabriel to witness it.[101.1] In a modern
Transylvanian Gipsy version the foreign “common” man is carried up by
a magical wooden bird, with which he has been gifted by Saint Nicholas
in return for hospitality when the saint appeared to him in beggar’s
guise. Though a favourite with the saint, his conscience does not seem
to have been quite so tender as that of the poor Israelite.[101.2]
These tales carry us back to that of Gilgamos, as it is recounted by
Ælian.
Happily I am not called upon to stand sponsor here for every irregular
birth in a fairy tale. Cases of birth direct from fruit, diminutive
births, impregnation in the ordinary way but by a supernatural being,
and other instances, therefore need not detain us. But we ought not
altogether to overlook the widespread story of _The Lucky Fool_. In
the _Pentameron_ Basile has given us what may be regarded as the
typical form. Pervonto is a ninny who, going to cut wood in the
forest, finds three youths asleep and perspiring in the hot sunshine.
Taking pity on them, he sets up a shade of oak-leaves over their
heads; and on their awaking they endow him with the power of obtaining
anything by a wish. When the hero has made up a bundle of wood he sets
himself astride of it and wishes it to carry him home. On the {102}
way he passes on his strange palfrey the king’s palace; and the
princess Vastolla, beholding him from the window, bursts out into loud
laughter. Pervonto retorts by wishing her to become pregnant by him.
The wish takes effect. Her children are twin boys; and at a banquet
given by the king, to which all his male subjects are summoned, they
identify their father. The king, enraged, encloses them with his
daughter and Pervonto in a cask, and flings the cask into the sea.
Again Pervonto’s magical wish becomes useful; for by its means he
saves them all from peril, changes himself into a fair youth, and at
last is reconciled to the king and recognised as Vastolla’s husband.
Whence Basile, or the lady into whose mouth he puts the tale, draws
the very relevant moral: Man proposes, God disposes.[102.1]
CHAPTER V.
THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN SAGAS.
{103}
Hitherto, dealing exclusively with _märchen_, or tales told for
simple amusement, we have found the incident of the Supernatural
Birth, outside the cycle of the Perseus myth, widely scattered in
Europe, in Asia as far east as Annam, southward among the Zulu kraals
of Africa and northward among the snows of Greenland. Nor does it
occur in modern folklore only. It formed one of the chain of events in
a tale of wonder carefully guarded for us through the long silence of
three thousand years by an Egyptian mummy, to whose arms it had been
intrusted at his burial, a precious fragment of the literature he had
known and loved in life, and therefore deemed a gift appropriate to
his service in his everlasting home. But the story of Perseus was, at
all events in early ages, believed as an actual occurrence by the
simple folk of Greece and wherever Greek influence extended the hero’s
cult. Has the possibility of a Supernatural Birth of this kind been
credited elsewhere and under other conditions of culture? In a land
dominated by Christian thought the question seems superfluous. The
mystery taught by the creeds of the Church, however, is believed to be
something apart from all the other beliefs of the world, something
altogether above {104} them, alike in its evidence and its
consequences. Christians in thus thinking overlook the fact that to
the believer in any religion its evidences are undeniable and its
claims are supreme. The fact is that the incident in question is part
and parcel of many other religions than the Christian, and is also
gravely accepted among what we may call the secular and
quasi-historical traditions of tribes in various parts of the Old and
New World. Beyond this, as we shall see in another chapter, pregnancy
is held actually producible by means analogous to those described in
the legends, means outside the ordinary operations of nature. Into the
bearing of these facts on the dogma of the Supernatural Birth of Jesus
Christ, or on the historical evidence on which that dogma rests, it is
not my purpose to inquire. This is a question of apologetics, not of
folklore.
Many stories of Supernatural Birth belong to the cosmogonic legends of
savage and barbarous tribes. These we may for the most part pass over.
What may have happened to the monsters that in the dawn of things were
the first to loom upon the horizon is hardly relevant. They may have
had reasons of their own for their extraordinary conduct. Our business
is with beings conceived in distinctly human terms and something like
human proportions. The distinction may be hard to define, seeing that
savage tribes hold savage opinions as to the power of men and brutes
(or of some men, at least, and some brutes) to change their forms at
will. In the same way _märchen_ have no clear dividing line in the
savage mind from sagas (or stories believed in as recording actual
events) nor religious narratives from secular histories. It is one of
the characteristics of savagery that these things are not as yet
differentiated. Intellectual evolution is going on; but until a {105}
much higher grade of civilisation be reached we cannot be sure that
the divergence is complete. If, therefore, some of the stories I am
going to refer to seem scarcely within the limits I have laid down,
these difficulties in the way of definition must be borne in mind.
We began our review of _märchen_ containing the incident of the
Supernatural Birth by examples of the results of eating a magical fish
or fruit. The fish is a means of impregnation comparatively little
known in sagas. A legend of the Tupis of Brazil, however, bearing
resemblances to stories of the type of _Beauty and the Beast_,
represents the hero, a supernatural being, as fertilising a young
virgin by means of a mysterious fish.[105.1] A curious piece of gossip
is recorded by John Aubrey concerning Archbishop Abbot’s mother, who
is said to have dreamed that if she ate a jack the son then in her
womb would be a great man. Accordingly, “she arose early the next
morning and went with her pail to the river-side (which runneth by the
house, now an ale-house, the sign of the Three Mariners) to take up
some water, and in the water in the pail she found a good jack, which
she dressed, and ate it all, or very near.” Her son in due time was
born, and grew up to be Archbishop of Canterbury.[105.2] If not
exactly a great man, he was an able and honest one and a patriot, who
suffered, by no means alone, from the superstition, or the malignity,
of his successor, the “martyr” Laud.
On the other hand, the eating of fruit is found in {106} both
hemispheres. In India it is told, as we might have expected, of the
birth of Râjâ Rasâlû. Rânî Lonân, one of the two wives of
Râjâ Sâlbâhan of Siâlkot, fell in love with her stepson Pûran,
and, because he did not return her passion, traduced him to her
husband, who cut off his hands and feet and threw him into a well.
Pûran, however, like the hero of the Bulgarian ballad, survived this
cruel treatment. After some years he was rescued by the Gurû
Gorakhnâth, a Brahman of great sanctity, and became a celebrated
fakir. Not knowing who he really was, the Rânî and her husband,
desirous of offspring, came to him to pray for a son. He induced her
to confess her crime; then, revealing himself, he gave her a grain of
rice to eat, and told her she would bear a son who would be learned
and brave and holy. That son was Râjâ Rasâlû, a monarch identified
with the historical Sri Syâlapati Deva.[106.1] Gogá, a favourite
Mahratta saint, is said to have been childless until his guardian
deity bestowed upon him two barleycorns, one of which he gave to his
wife and the other to his favourite mare. A son and the famous steed
Javadia were the consequence.[106.2] The ancestry of the present, or
Manchu, dynasty of China is traced to a heavenly maiden, who, having
bathed one day in a certain pool, found on the skirt of her raiment a
red fruit, placed there by a magpie. After eating it she found herself
pregnant, and was delivered of a son of remarkable appearance, who
spoke on the day of his birth. In obedience to a supernatural {107}
voice she called him Aisin-gioro, ‘the heaven-born to restore order to
disturbed nations.’ Having grown up, he embarked in a boat and drifted
down the river, until he reached a place where families of three
surnames were in constant broils. There he landed, and was breaking
off willow branches, when a warrior, coming to draw water, saw him.
Amazed at the hero’s aspect, the warrior fetched his people, who came
and inquired who he was. “I am the son of the heavenly maiden
Fokolun,” replied the youth, “ordained by heaven to restore peace
among you.” They took him and made him king; and he reigned there in
Odoli city, in the desert of Omohi, east of the mountains of
Ch’ang-pai-shan. A Japanese tradition, reported by Père Amyot,
appears to be a variant of the same story. It relates that three
heavenly maids, of whom Fokolun was one, descended to bathe. While
they were praying Fokolun saw a tree half-covered with black cherries.
She proceeded to eat of them, with the consequences we know. Being in
this condition, she could not return with her sisters until she had
brought forth her son and handed him over to a fisherman to be bred
up.[107.1] Fokolun is identified by Amyot with a goddess whom he calls
Pussa. It is quite possible that the present dynasty of China owes
this legendary origin to a similar feeling to that which dictated so
many of the mediæval miracle-stories in Europe. Fo-hi, the original
founder of the Empire, was said to have sprung from a virgin named
Ching-Mon, who ate a certain flower found on her garment after
bathing. The striking resemblance {108} to this tale of that of
Fokolun is due to conscious forgery as little, and as much, as the
achievements of Christian saints, equalling and surpassing the wonders
recorded in the Bible.[108.1]
The magpie mentioned in the Chinese version of the legend just
recorded is replaced by a crow in the analogous incident at the
opening of the _Volsungasaga_. A childless king and queen, we are
told, besought the gods for an heir. Frigg, the mother-goddess, heard
their prayers and sent them, in the guise of a crow, the daughter of
the giant Hrimnir, and with her an apple, of which when the queen had
eaten, she soon perceived that her wish would come to pass.[108.2] In
the fiftieth rune, that beautiful postscript to the Kalevala,
Marjatta, the fair and gentle virgin, is addressed by the red bilberry
and invited to pluck and eat. With the help of a staff she reaches
down the mysterious fruit; but from the ground it climbs her shoe and
then her knee, and so upward to her mouth, into which it slips and is
swallowed. In this way she conceives. Her parents’ reproaches are met
by the assertion that she is the paramour of none unless it be of
fire, and that she will bear a hero who will rule the mighty, albeit
Väinämöinen himself. In her extremity she applies to Ruotus for the
vapour-bath which Finnish women are accustomed to take to facilitate
delivery; but from him and his loathsome wife she gets nothing better
than a contemptuous recommendation of a stable in the fir-forest.
There, in a vapour-bath of the breath of horses, her child is born,
and cradled in a {109} manger. She cares for him as a mother; but
after a while he suddenly disappears, and she goes seeking him
everywhere. In her wandering she meets a star, and, sinking before it
on her knees, she asks:
“‘O thou star, that God created!
Of my son dost thou know nothing,
Where my darling son abideth,
Where my golden apple tarries?’
And the star made haste to answer:
‘If I knew I would not say it;
He it is who hath created
Me to gleam thro’ cold and evil,
Me to sparkle in the darkness.’”
The moon gives her the like answer. Then she meets the sun; and the
sun tells her:
“‘Well I know thy little loved one.
He it is who hath created
Me thro’ all the hours of daylight
In the sheen of gold to dazzle,
Me to glint in sheen of silver.
Well I know thy little loved one.
Yonder, woman, is thy darling,
Plunged in marshes to the girdle,
In the moor e’en to the armpit.’”
Thus directed, Marjatta found her son and brought him home. He grew up
beautiful but nameless. His mother called him Floweret, but strangers
dubbed him Idler. An old man named Virokannas came to baptize and
bless him, but hesitated to do so ere he had been examined and proved.
Then came Väinämöinen old and trusty, who sentenced the boy, as he
had been taken from the marsh and was sprung from a berry, to be laid
upon the ground of the berry-bearing meadow, or taken to the marsh,
and {110} his head crushed with a tree. But the son of the berry
replies:
“‘O thou old man without insight,
Without insight, full of folly!
Thou hast given a foolish sentence;
Ill thou hast the laws expounded!’”
Väinämöinen himself had taken the child of his own mother and
thrown it into the water to redeem his own life. The boy reminds him
of this, and hints that he will have to pay the penalty of his deed.
Virokannas then quickly baptizes the boy, and blesses him to become
king of Karjala and guardian of all powers.
I have narrated this incident somewhat at length, to exhibit the
obvious mixture of heathen and Christian elements which it contains.
Marjatta, there can be little doubt, is the Virgin Mary; Ruotus has
been identified with Herod; and the discomfiture and departure of
Väinämöinen, which follow the cited passages, point very clearly to
the expulsion of paganism as typified by the mighty figure of the
great sorcerer. Lönnröt’s method in the compilation of the epic from
fragmentary songs leaves much to be desired in the certainty of
traditional origin of many of its verses, perhaps of entire episodes;
and the one before us may not be free from suspicion. Yet it is hardly
likely that the poet would have had recourse to the savage conceit of
the berry, had he not found it already in the legend he has presented
to us. It would be difficult to match it in the sagas of modern
Europe. As we saw just now, the analogous conceit of the fish is found
in the case of Archbishop Abbot in no bolder shape than a dream. So
the Irish _Life of Saint Molasius of Devenish_, preserved to us in a
manuscript, written, probably from dictation, in {111} the sixteenth
century--that is to say, not long before the English tale became
current--presents the holy man’s mother as dreaming “that she got
seven fragrant apples; and the last apple of them that she took into
her hand her grasp could not contain it for its size; gold (as it
seemed to her) was not lovelier than the apple.” Her husband
interprets the dream of “an offspring, excellent and famous, with
which the mouths of all Ireland shall be filled:” an interpretation of
course justified by the saint’s birth.[111.1] We may conjecture that
the legend in an earlier form related that impregnation took place by
means of an apple; but before it was put into writing, perhaps long
before, the incident had been modified by the slowly growing
intelligence of the folk who related it.
To the aborigines of North America, however, this unusual mode of
generation has always been within the limits of belief. Yehl, the
famous hero of the North-west Coast, effected one of his numerous
births by transforming himself into a spear of cedar or a blade of
grass, or, as it is told in a variant, a drop of water, and being
swallowed by his principal opponent’s daughter, or sister, as she was
drinking. Most legendary heroines have been satisfied with one such
miracle. This lady seems to have been {112} specially unfortunate; and
we do not wonder at the suspicions of her natural guardian, when we
are expressly told that she was not allowed to eat or drink anything
until the chief had examined it, as she had become pregnant from
eating certain things many times before. One man cannot know all
Yehl’s adventures, as the Thlinkit very truly assert; for all their
accounts differ. The adventure we are now dealing with was undertaken
for the purpose of rescuing the sun, moon and stars, which his
antagonist, whose favourite grandson he thus became, had stored away
in three mysterious chests. On a previous occasion he had assumed the
unlikely form of a small pebble on the sea-shore. A woman whose sons
had all been slain by her brother was pacing the beach and weeping for
the dead, when a large fish--it is equally credible whether a dolphin
or a whale--pitied her and spoke to her, telling her to swallow the
pebble and drink some sea-water. She did so, and bore a child, Yehl,
who avenged her on his uncle. After all his various achievements on
behalf of mankind, Yehl became the totem of the Raven Clan of the
Thlinkit.[112.1] When America was discovered, the Aztecs, though they
had not emerged from the Stone Age, were, compared with the Thlinkit,
a civilised people. Yet they continued to believe in the generation of
their famous god Quetzalcoatl in a similar manner to that of Yehl. One
{113} account relates that he owed his birth to a precious green
stone, identified by Captain Bourke with the turquoise, which his
mother Chimalma found one day while sweeping, and swallowed.[113.1]
I shall have to recur to American traditions; but I must first mention
other instances of pregnancy from eating or drinking. Heitsi-Eibib,
the Hottentot ancestor-god, owed his birth to this cause. In one of
the legends a young girl picks a kind of juicy grass, chews it and
swallows the sap. Thence becoming pregnant, she gives birth to the
hero. In another legend it is a cow that eats of a certain grass, and
Heitsi-Eibib is consequently born as a bull-calf.[113.2] In the saga
of _Ardshi-Bordshi_ we are told that a childless queen procured from a
hermit a handful of earth to be boiled in sesame oil in a porcelain
vessel. On boiling it, behold! it was changed into barley porridge,
which she ate, but neglected to eat the whole of it, as the hermit
commanded. When she had eaten she found herself “in blessed
circumstances,” and bore Vikramâditya, a Bodisat and a king of
renown. Her maid, having finished what was left of the porridge, was
also delivered of a boy, who became the Bodisat’s faithful
companion.[113.3] Here, as M. Cosquin remarks, we are reminded of the
_märchen_ in the _Pentameron_, already cited. The material eaten
bears us back to a story alleged to be part of the Siamese cosmology.
{114} After a gradual degeneration of the human race, we are assured,
the sea will be dried up and the earth destroyed by fire. Converted
into dust and ashes, it will be purified by a wind, which will carry
off all remains of the conflagration. So sweet an odour will then
exhale from the purified soil that it will draw from heaven a female
angel, who will take of this sweet-smelling substance and eat. The
pleasure will cost her dear; for she will no more be able to ascend to
her native home, and by means of her strange food she will conceive
and give birth to twelve sons and daughters, who will repopulate the
world. For an inconceivably long period this new race will remain
gross and ignorant, until in the fulness of time a god will be born to
dissipate the darkness by teaching the true religion, the virtues that
must be practised, the vices that must be shunned and all other
sciences needful to be known, giving to the people scriptures where
all these things are explained, and writing upon their hearts the holy
law, so long effaced from the mind of man.[114.1]
The _Shih King_, one of the sacred books of the Chinese, contains an
ode intended to be recited at a sacrifice in the ancestral temple of
Shang. It refers to the origin of Shang’s father Hsieh. His mother was
a concubine of Khû, a ruler who flourished in the twenty-fifth
century before Christ. She was bathing, as these Chinese heroines
frequently are on such occasions, when a heaven-commissioned {115}
swallow dropped an egg, which she took and gulped down, becoming in
this way the mother of Hsieh.[115.1] The lady is not here, as in the
case of other founders of Chinese dynasties, represented as a maiden.
Yu’s mother, for instance, appears to be thus regarded. A pearl, a
substance not more unpromising than a pebble, fell in her bosom, and
she swallowed it. According to one version the boy was born from her
breast.[115.2] A Mongolian tale traces the origin of the Chinese
nation to a Khan’s daughter, who compelled a poor Bandé to disgorge a
precious stone as big as a sheep’s eye, which he had stolen from two
men, and swallowed. As soon as he brought it up, she seized and
swallowed it in her turn. It rendered her pregnant. The Bandé, by
reading a charm, turned her into a she-ass; and in this form she gave
birth to twin boys, one good, the other evil. From them the Chinese
nation is descended.[115.3] Several Tartar tribes ascribe their
lineage to Alankava, the virgin daughter of Gioubiné, son of Bolduz,
king of the Mongols. One night a great light awakened and embraced
her, entering her mouth and passing through her body. As this peculiar
proceeding was repeated every night, in order to dissipate suspicions
of her virtue (for she had become pregnant) the chiefs of the national
assembly were introduced into her chamber to witness the occurrence.
When her time was come she gave birth to three boys, each of whom was
the ancestor of a tribe, and from one of whom Genghis Khan and
Tamerlane descended.[115.4] An Irish tradition more modestly (probably
{116} for reasons discussed on a previous page) presents the mother of
Kieran, the first saint born on Hibernian soil, as only dreaming that
a star fell into her mouth.[116.1]
The heroic traditions of Ireland--at least those of Ulster--do not
stick at a dream. Both Conchobar and Cuchulainn were of supernatural
birth. Cathba, the noble Druid, was thirsty one night; and Ness, his
wife, finding nothing in the house, went down to the river Conchobar
and drew from thence, filtering the water through her veil. When she
brought it to her husband and a light was struck, lo! there were two
worms in the water. Thereupon Cathba drew his sword and forced his
wife, under threat of death, to drink what she had brought for him.
She drank two mouthfuls, and swallowed at each mouthful one of the
worms. She soon found she had conceived; and it was of those worms she
had conceived, though later times discredited this, asserting that the
king of Ulster was her lover and the father of her child
Conchobar.[116.2] This mode of conception was a family failing, for
Cuchulainn, Conchobar’s nephew, was born in the same way. His mother,
Dechtire, Conchobar’s sister, returning from the funeral of a
foster-son of whom she had been very fond, asked for a drink in a
bronze cup. As she put the cup to her lips she felt a little creature
enter her mouth with the drink. After drinking she lay down to sleep,
and a man appeared to her in a dream, telling her, among other things,
that {117} he had been her foster-son, that now he had entered her
womb and she was pregnant of him, and that he was to be called
Setanta. This man was Lug, one of the ancient Celtic divinities,
identified with the grandson of Balor, the mythical warrior of Tory
Island.[117.1]
The manuscripts in which both these stories are preserved are much
older than those that record the dreams preceding the births of Saints
Kieran and Molasius. Yet the life of Saint Molasius, modern though it
be in the recension we possess, attributes to its hero the power so
often wielded by an Indian fakir. When he was journeying, with certain
of his clerics, in the land of Carbery he saw a woman milking, who
replied courteously and even generously to a request for a drink for
his attendant. In return, she prayed for the saint’s intercession to
be relieved of her barrenness, for hitherto she was childless. Then
Molasius bade her: “Call thy husband; let him take my cup to the well
and bring us back its fill of water in it.” When the water was given
into his hand he blessed and consecrated it, and passed it to the
woman to drink, prophesying that henceforth she should be pregnant and
bear a son, who was to be “good, miraculous, saintly, wonder-working,
righteous.” Thus was born “the very noble bishop Finnacha,” so named
by Molasius when he gave his mother to drink.[117.2] The _Book of the
Dun Cow_ at the end of the eleventh century gives a similar incident
in a much more savage form. Dermot, king of Ireland, had {118} several
wives, of whom Mughain was unhappy, because she had no children and
the king was purposing to dismiss her. So she sought out Finnian and
bishop Aedh, and implored their succour. They blessed water and gave
it her to drink; but the result was nothing more encouraging than a
lamb. Finnian consoled her as best he could for the mishap, and
blessed more water. The next time she brought forth a salmon literally
of silver. This, of course, was appropriated by the holy man for the
service of the church as material for a reliquary and other sacred
objects. Then he and bishop Aedh made another and supreme effort. They
blessed her, and one of them put water into his cup and gave it to the
queen, who both drank of it and washed in it. She ought perhaps to
have done this before, for “by this process she found herself with
child, and, this time, had a son, who was Aedh Sláine.”[118.1]
Before considering other stories of impregnation by drinking, let me
refer to one more Irish tale. It concerns the birth of Boethíne, son
of Cred, the daughter of Ronán, king of Leinster, and is found in the
_Leabhar breac_, a manuscript of the beginning of the fifteenth
century. The maiden gathered cress on which the _sperma genitale_ of a
certain robber, Findach by name, had just fallen, and ate it, “and
thereof was born the everliving Boethín.”[118.2] This unsavoury story
reminds us of the Princess Chand Ráwati in the Sanskrit romance. It
bears even a closer resemblance to two legends from opposite quarters
of the globe. One of them relates to a Peruvian goddess, Cavillaca.
She {119} was a beautiful maiden who spurned the advances of the gods.
One day she sat down to weave a mantle at the foot of a lucma-tree.
The wise Coniraya Uiracocha thereupon turned himself into a beautiful
bird, and sat in the boughs of the tree. He took some of his semen,
made it into the likeness of a ripe and luscious lucma, and dropped it
at the maiden’s feet. She picked it up, ate it with much relish, and
immediately conceived. In due course she gave birth to a son. When the
boy could crawl, she called an assembly of the gods, and, indignantly
protesting her virginity, demanded which of them was the father of the
child. As nobody came forward to claim the honour, she put the little
one on the ground, saying: “Doubtless his father will be the one to
whom he crawls, and at whose feet he rests.” The child crawled to the
feet of a ragged beggar, who sat humbly in the lowest place of all.
The beggar was Coniraya; but Cavillaca, not recognising him, disdained
the thought of being mated with such dirt and squalor; and, catching
up her boy, she fled from his pursuit, though he assumed magnificent
golden robes and divine splendour, until she came to the sea-coast of
Pachacamac, where she and the child, entering the sea, were changed
into two rocks, yet visible long after the Spanish Conquest, and
doubtless to the present day.[119.1] The other legend is that of the
nymph Adrikâ in the _Mahâbhârata_. Being by the curse of some god
metamorphosed into a fish, Adrikâ feeds on a leaf dropped into the
water by the favourite agency of a bird--in this instance, a hawk.
{120} Upon the leaf was the sperm of her lover, King Uparicharas. The
fish is then caught by fishermen and brought to him. When it is opened
the nymph resumes her proper form, and two fish, a male and female,
are born of her.[120.1] The same incident is the substance of a
folktale slightly less loathsome in form among the Gipsies of southern
Hungary. They say that a rich peasant’s wife repulsed Saint Nicholas,
who appeared to her as a beggar, and was transformed by him into a
little fish and condemned to remain in that state until impregnated by
her husband. Her husband threw the fish into the brook; and there it
abode a long time, until one day the goodman sat before his door and
thought of his wife, and how he could deliver her. So as he sat there
he spat, and the spittle fell on a green leaf at his feet. Then a
magpie, so often a go-between in these matters, snapped up the leaf in
her beak and flew away with it. But as she flew she met another who
would have torn the leaf from her; and in their struggle it fell into
the water and was devoured by the little fish. Thereupon the heroine
returned to her true woman-form and to her husband, for she had been
fertilised by his spittle.[120.2] The Gipsy version appears to be
derived from the _Mahâbhârata_, or more probably from the saga
whence the poet fashioned the episode in question, and was doubtless
brought from the East by the remote forefathers of the tribe.
We might linger long on the supernatural might of Indian {121} kings
and rishis, as well as the equally chaste and pious saints and reavers
of Irish legend; but we must tear ourselves away from their edifying
and veracious histories to seek the magical potation and the magical
food elsewhere. The most illustrious birth by the former means was
that of Zoroaster. A Parsee tradition preserved in the _Selections_ of
Zâd-sparam, who wrote shortly before the year A.D. 881, ascribes the
conception of the great Iranian teacher to his mother’s drinking of
homa-juice and cow’s milk infused with his guardian spirit and
glory.[121.1] The lark, it is said in Roumania, was a maiden born of
Gheorghina, the consort of an emperor named Titus. The imperial pair
were childless; but an old woman in a dream directed the emperor that
his wife should drink of the brook which watered a certain forest. She
did so, and gave birth to a lovely daughter, who fell in love with the
sun, but was cursed by his mother and changed into a bird.[121.2] Two
divinities worshipped in a country temple in Annam are thus accounted
for. A childless man and wife dwelt in the village. One rainy autumnal
night the woman put an earthen vessel to receive the drippings of the
roof, and she saw a star fall into the vessel. Astounded at the
occurrence, she called her husband and told him what had happened.
They resolved to say nothing about it, but to drink the water. The
woman became pregnant, and after going three years in that state she
was at length delivered of three blue eggs. The storyteller considered
it necessary at this point to observe that the husband was very much
surprised, and carefully kept {122} the adventure to himself. However,
they hatched the eggs, and three serpents crawled out, which followed
their father about whithersoever he went. One day he had the ill-luck
to cut off the tail of one of them. The wounded serpent forthwith was
transformed into a fair youth, who said: “My brothers and I are
heavenly genii who committed a sin, and were sent upon earth to
succour the kingdom. They will stay, but I reascend to heaven in a
tempest which will be a sign of the truth of my words.” The two other
serpents remained. Sometimes they were changed into men of
extraordinary powers; they rendered signal service against China, and
ultimately were deified.[122.1] According to a Finnish song, the
lovely maiden Kasaritar was also three years in a state of pregnancy.
An ogress had spat upon the waves, and Kasaritar had swallowed the
bubble of froth. When at length she brought forth, it was an evil
brood, the lizard.[122.2] The Kotons are a Mongolian tribe. They say
that the daughter of one of their khans went with forty of her maidens
to a field to gather _djemuis_ to eat. Becoming thirsty, the girls all
went to the water and drank. In the midst of the water was a drop of
blood, which was imbibed by the khan’s daughter and caused her to
conceive. Her father drove her away; but her son afterwards became
khan.[122.3]
{123}
We are not told here whether the blood was human. The analogy of some
other sagas, and of several _märchen_, would lead to the supposition
that it must be understood to be a man’s blood. Almost any portion of
a man may be possessed of fructifying power. One of the _märchen_
already passed in review attributes it to a man’s heart, and another
to the ashes of a burnt skull. A story current among the Serbs is
parallel to the latter. The emperor, hunting, finds a skull and causes
his horse to step on it. The death’s-head cries out: “Why dost thou
tread upon me? I am able to injure thee yet.” The emperor, hearing
this, picks it up, burns it and collects the ashes in a casket. His
daughter opens the casket and discovers the ashes. To ascertain what
the contents of the box are, she wets her finger, dips it in the ashes
and licks it. A boy is the result, who after a variety of adventures
becomes the founder of Constantinople. This saga is found also in
Ukrainia attached to the name of a national hero, Paliq.[123.1] As M.
Dragomanov, who has brought these Serbian and Ukrainian legends under
the notice of Western students, remarks, the tale is found as a
_märchen_ in the Turkish _Tuti-Nameh_, where it appears under the
name of “The story of the skull through which eighty persons lost
their lives.” There the man who picked up the skull was a merchant;
instead of burning it, he ground it to powder; his daughter’s son had
a reputation for wisdom, and was called in to say why a fish laughed
when the vizier’s over-modest slave-girl refused to look at it, lest
it should be a male. The youth, thus called on, reveals to the vizier
the presence in his harem of forty men disguised as women, the lovers
of his forty slave-girls; and the slaves and their {124} lovers are
all put to death, to the number of eighty.[124.1] I mentioned in the
last chapter a Lithuanian story of a hermit who was burned, all but
his heart, which was afterwards eaten by a maiden and caused her to
give birth to a son. In a Sicilian legend this holy man is identified
with Saint Oniria, or Neria. The maiden’s son is a new birth of the
saint, who proves his sanctity when a child of only five years by
convincing his grandfather and his mother’s godfather of the salvation
of a poor, despised, dead beggar, and the damnation of a wealthy
sinner, though borne to his grave upon a costly bier and accompanied
by monks with burning tapers, and by revealing the existence of a
hoard of gold beneath a dunghill. He is then taken up to heaven, and
only appears again to save his grandfather’s life when accused of
murder.[124.2]
A Gipsy tradition from Transylvania derives the origin of the Leïla
tribe from a king’s daughter who was thrust out by her brother and his
wicked wife, because the latter envied her that she was the fairer. In
her wanderings she was pitied by three Keshalyi, or Fates; and one of
them dropped some of her hairs, which the lovely maiden ate and
brought into the world a son. From this child sprang the tribe, and he
gave his descendants the name of his mother.[124.3]
{125}
But the Supernatural Birth comes about in _märchen_ by other means
than eating or drinking. It is the same in sagas. The sense of smell
has been known to possess this marvellous virtue. The spirit of the
pole-star, if we may credit a Chinese tale, visited a girl and gave
her a fragrant herb called Hêng-wei, which caused her to become the
mother of Chang, who was appointed about the year 25 of our era to the
office of Master of Heaven.[125.1] The Gurû Gorakhnâth, whom we have
already found performing wonders, once gave a queen desirous of
offspring two flowers. Two sons were born to her; but because she had
deceived him she was doomed to die at their birth.[125.2] According to
a poem written in Old French by a priest at Valenciennes about the
middle of the thirteenth century, Abraham planted in his garden the
Tree of Knowledge, flung by God out of Paradise after the Fall. His
daughter became pregnant by the scent of a blossom broken off from it,
and bore Phanuel, from whom the Virgin Mary descended.[125.3]
Or it is enough for the magical article to be placed in the
predestined maiden’s bosom. When from the blood of the mutilated
Agdestis a pomegranate-tree sprang up, Nana the nymph gathered and
laid in her bosom some of the fruit wherewith it was laden, and from
hence, in classical belief, Attis was born.[125.4] In a Latin myth,
Cæculus, the son of Vulcan and Præneste, was conceived by means of a
spark {126} which leaped into his mother’s bosom. The forty companions
of the khan’s daughter, in the Koton legend already cited, were
quickened by laying stones on their bosoms; and in this way from them
multiplied the Sarabash tribes of the Altai mountains. On the western
continent, one of the great Aztec deities, Huitzilopochtli, the
brother and rival of Quetzalcoatl, had a similar origin. Coatlicue,
the Serpent-skirted, was already the mother of many children. She
dwelt on the mountain of the Snake, near the city of Tulla, and, being
very devout, she occupied herself in sweeping and cleansing the sacred
places of the mountain. One day, while engaged in these duties, a
little ball of feathers floated down to her through the air. She
caught it and hid it in her bosom; nor was it long before she found
herself pregnant. Thereupon her children conspired to put her to
death; but Huitzilopochtli, issuing from her womb all armed, like
Pallas from the head of Zeus, speedily destroyed his brethren and
sister and enriched his mother with their spoils.[126.1]
The Dorahs of New Guinea trace their parentage to a solitary old man,
who caught the Morning Star in the act of stealing his palm-wine. As
ransom he obtained from the felon a magical wand. This wand possessed
the property of making a virgin a mother, by simply touching her
bosom. The old man put its virtue to proof at once upon the loveliest
girl of his island-home. She gave birth to a son {127} called Konori,
who proved his miraculous descent, as these children alone know how to
do, by pointing out his father.[127.1] This calls to mind a well-known
passage of the _Mabinogion_ of which Lady Charlotte Guest’s modesty
made nonsense. I venture to quote her charming English, with the
needful correction. Math, the son of Mathonwy, is taking counsel with
Gwydion and Gilvaethwy, the sons of Don, what maiden he shall seek for
a wife. “‘Lord,’ said Gwydion, the son of Don, ‘it is easy to give
thee counsel; seek Arianrod, the daughter of Don, thy niece, thy
sister’s daughter.’ And they brought her unto him, and the maiden came
in. ‘Ha, damsel,’ said he, ‘art thou _a_ maiden?’ ‘I know not, lord,
other than that I am.’ Then he took up his magic wand and bent it.
‘Step over this,’ said he, ‘and I shall know if thou art _a_ maiden.’
Then stepped she over the magic wand, and there appeared forthwith a
fine chubby yellow-haired boy. And thereupon some small form was seen;
but before any one could get a second glimpse of it Gwydion had taken
it and flung a scarf of velvet around it and hidden it. Now the place
where he hid it was the bottom of a chest at the foot of his bed.” The
yellow-haired boy was baptized by the name of Dylan. “As Gwydion lay
one morning on his bed awake, he heard a cry in the chest at his feet;
and though it was not loud, it was such that he could hear it. Then he
arose in haste, and opened the chest: and when he opened it, he beheld
an infant boy stretching out his arms from the folds of the scarf, and
casting it aside. And he took up the boy in his arms, and carried him
to a place where he knew there was a woman that could nurse him. And
he agreed with the woman that she should take charge of the boy. And
that {128} year he was nursed. And at the end of the year he seemed by
his size as though he were two years old. And the second year he was a
big child and able to go to the Court by himself.” This second boy was
afterwards named Llew Llaw Gyffes, and the rest of the story deals
with his adventures.[128.1] It is clear that the wand is credited with
phallic power. A saga of the Warraus of British Guiana is unambiguous
in the ascription of such power to the stump of a tree. This stump was
half-submerged in a pool where two Indian women were bathing, when one
of them touched it and it promptly made her its wife. To her brothers’
indignation, a child was born; and after it died, a second interview
with the stump resulted in a second child. This child, a boy, was
slain by his mother’s brothers, who cut his body into small pieces.
But from the grave arose a man stronger and fiercer than any Warrau.
He was the first Carib; and hence there has always been enmity between
the Caribs and the Warraus.[128.2]
We have found several cases, both of _märchen_ and of sagas, where
the masculine saliva and other secretions, if swallowed, produced
pregnancy. The same consequence is believed to result from the
spittle’s being received into the woman’s hand. The twin divinities,
Hun Ahpu and {129} Xbalanque, honoured by the Quiché of Central
America, were thus begotten. Hunhun Ahpu and Vukub Hun Ahpu having
been put to death by the two kings of Xibalba, a mysterious
subterranean realm, the head of the former was placed between the
withered branches of a calabash-tree of the kind afterwards called
Hunhun Ahpu’s head; and immediately the tree became laden with fruit;
the head turned into a calabash, and was indistinguishable from the
rest. Thereupon the kings tabooed the tree as sacred. Xquiq, the
daughter of a prince named Cuchumaquiq, broke the taboo. As she
approached to pluck the fruit, Hunhun Ahpu’s head spat into her hand,
and she thereby conceived. Her father, perceiving her condition,
condemned her to death; but she persuaded the executioners to deceive
him, and gave birth in due time to twins of extraordinary power, who
avenged themselves on the rulers of Xibalba after the manner of Medea
upon Pelias.[129.1]
A similar incident is told in the Far East by the people of Annam
concerning an historical personage who was put to death in the year
1443 of our era. He was, according to one account, the parent of the
king’s wife. According to another account, this lady was a serpent who
had taken the form of a young girl and been adopted by the hero of the
legend, and given by him in marriage to the king. At all events, she
slew the king by biting off his tongue; and she, with her father (or
guardian) and all his family, was put to death. Her father was buried
alive with one of his soldiers. The soldier’s wife succeeded in
penetrating the grave, but only to find her husband already dead. His
chief, however, was still living, and, protesting his innocence, he
spat in {130} the woman’s hand, wherefrom she became pregnant and bore
a son who founded a new dynasty.[130.1]
Conception has taken place in legend not only by the hand but by the
foot, as in some of the _märchen_ reviewed in the preceding chapter.
The _Shih King_ relates of Hâu-_k_i, the ancestor of the kings of
_K_âu, that _K_iang Yüan, his mother, was childless until she trod
on a toe-print made by God. The instant she did so she felt moved; she
conceived, and at length gave birth to a son.[130.2]
Impregnation, however, by an unusual part of the body is often
attended by the inconvenience of birth by other than the natural exit.
In the Sanskrit books kings are mentioned as born from hand, or right
arm, or from the thigh or the top of the head, just as Bacchus was
born from the thigh, and Athene from the head, of Zeus. The divine
Parvati herself was conceived by a look and spit forth upon the world.
The old French poem already referred to represents Saint Anne, the
mother of the Virgin Mary, as born from her father Phanuel’s thigh,
which he touched with a knife after cutting an apple, and thus caused
it to conceive.[130.3] Buddha, in the form of a white elephant, {131}
entered his mother’s right side, and from her right side he was
born.[131.1] Cases like these are frequent in cosmogonic myths which
we need not discuss.
But, before we leave the subject of impregnation by an unusual part of
the body, it is not unimportant to observe that, during the Middle
Ages, a similar idea was current respecting the conception of Jesus
Christ. Sometimes painters represented the Holy Ghost as entering his
mother at her ear in the shape of a dove. In the Church of the
Magdalen at Aix, in Provence, is a picture of the Annunciation
attributed to Albert Dürer, wherein waves of glory descend from God
the Father, and in the midst of them a microscopic babe floats down
upon the Virgin. During the fifteenth century the opinion seems to
have been common that Our Lord entered already completely formed into
the Virgin’s womb--an opinion which orthodox theologians, in their
perfect acquaintance with the divine arrangements, were able summarily
to pronounce heretical. But a remarkable parallel to the story of
Buddha’s conception is presented by a picture of Fra Filippo Lippi,
painted for Cosmo de’ Medici and now in the National Gallery. The
Virgin is seated in a chair with her Book of Hours in her hand, and
the angel Gabriel bows before her. Above is a right hand surrounded
with clouds. A dove, cast from the hand amid circling floods of glory,
is making for the Virgin’s navel, which it is about to enter; while
she, bending forward, curiously surveys it. The picture is well worth
{132} studying, not merely for its exquisite grace, colouring and
finish, as one of the masterpieces of Tuscan art in the earlier half
of the fifteenth century, but also as an exposition of the ideas which
were prevalent at that time under the sanction of the Church, and for
the purpose of comparing them with Buddhist legends and other stories
of supernatural birth, such as we are now considering. Mohammedan
tradition ascribes the miraculous conception by the Virgin to
Gabriel’s having opened the bosom of her shift and breathed upon her
womb.[132.1] Parallel with this is a legend concerning Quetzalcoatl.
Tradition varied much as to his life. This probably means that his
worship and story were ancient and widespread among folk of the
Mexican stock. One version, as we know, records his birth from a
precious stone swallowed by his mother Chimalma. In a variant the Lord
of Existence, Tonacatecutli, appears to Chimalma and her two sisters.
The sisters were both struck dead by fright; but he breathed upon
Chimalma, and by his breath quickened life within her, so that she
bore Quetzalcoatl. Her son cost her her life. Having thus perished on
earth, she was translated to heaven, like the Virgin Mary in the
traditions of the Church, and was thenceforward honoured under the
name of Chalchihuitzli, the Precious Stone of Sacrifice.[132.2] But
there is a world of difference between this apotheosis and that of the
Virgin Mary. The latter is true, being guaranteed by the authority of
the Church; while the former rested only on the testimony of heathen
priests and peoples, deceived of course by the Tempter of Mankind.
{133}
It will be remembered that Mughain, before she bore Aedh Sláine, did
more than drink of the consecrated water: she washed in it. Stories of
conception by bathing have been seriously believed alike in the Old
and New Worlds. A Zulu saga represents a king’s daughters as bathing
in a pool in the river. The youngest, a mere child, comes out with
breasts swollen as large as a woman’s. By the advice of the council of
old men she is driven away. After wandering from place to place she
gives birth to a boy who grows up a wise doctor. From what is said of
his beneficent deeds it has been conjectured that we have here a
corrupted account of Our Lord’s birth, derived possibly from the
Portuguese.[133.1] If this be so (which is quite uncertain) it is
important to note that the story has coalesced with native tradition
as completely as the fiftieth rune of the _Kalevala_ with the
adventures of Väinämöinen. The main incident was apparently in
harmony with native thought, and therefore easily attracted to itself
the details of native life and discarded its own proper details, which
would be incomprehensible. In the Hindu mythology Parvati, the spouse
of Siva, justified her own irregular entrance upon the world by
conception through bathing, without intercourse, and thus brought
forth Ganesa.[133.2] A story is told, in a work attributed to
Plutarch, of Bacchus in the shape of the river Tigris carrying away
the nymph Alphesiboea and begetting on her a son, Medus. If
Aristonymus, who seems to have been originally responsible for it, was
reporting a genuine tradition, it must, so far as we can penetrate its
Greek disguise, have referred to a similar adventure on the part of
Alphesiboea. Medus was the {134} eponym of the Medes.[134.1] Some of
the Algonkins of North America traced the lineage of mankind from two
young squaws who, swimming in the sea, were impregnated by the foam
and produced a boy and girl.[134.2] So the black Kirghiz pretended to
have for their great foremother a princess who became pregnant by
bathing in a foam-covered lake.[134.3]
The ancient Persians held a curious belief anent Saoshyant, the future
hero who was to come from the region of the dawn to free the world
from death and corruption before the Resurrection. Three drops of the
seed of Zoroaster, we are told in the sacred books, fell from him.
What was bright and strong in it has been preserved by the agency of
angels. At the appointed time a maid, bathing in the lake Kâsava,
will come in contact with it, and will conceive by it and bring forth
the Saviour. Indeed, the orthodox view appears to be that she will
triple the miracle, by thrice conceiving in this way and bringing
forth three sons, of whom the two elder will be forerunners of the
third. He will come with authority to reduce all peoples under the
yoke of the true religion; and the general Resurrection will follow
his conquest of the world.[134.4] The Middle Ages, which believed that
Antichrist, in rivalry with Christ, would declare himself born of a
virgin,[134.5] would have seen nothing impossible in the kind of birth
foretold for Saoshyant. Averrhoes, in fact, put forward as having
actually occurred a case of a woman who became pregnant {135} in a
bath, by attracting the semen of a man bathing near. The admirable
common sense of Sir Thomas Browne rejected this, with many more
absurdities current in his day.[135.1] But he failed to convince those
who stood by tradition. A singular little book, refuting “Doctor
Brown’s _Vulgar Errors_, the Lord Bacon’s _Natural History_ and Doctor
Harvey’s Book _De Generatione_, Comenius and Others,” was published in
the year 1652. The writer, conscious no doubt of powers commensurate
to the task he had undertaken, too modestly concealed his name, and
has left the world baffled at the mystery of his identity. Admitting
Averrhoes’ story to be a strange one, he reproves Sir Thomas Browne’s
incredulity by saying: “Hee that denyeth a matter of fact, must bring
good witnesses to the contrary, or else shew the impossibility of the
fact.” This, he declares, had not been done. Then, after arguing in
favour of the “fact,” he goes on to uphold the belief in Incubi, “for
to deny this, saith Augustine, doth argue impudence;” and moreover it
is “to accuse the ancient Doctors of the Church and the Ecclesiastick
Histories of falshood,” and “to contradict the common consent of all
Nations, and experience.”[135.2] This is crushing, though assuredly an
appeal to “the ancient Doctors of the Church” has always been
successful in putting to shame the wisdom of the world; and Bacon, Sir
Thomas Browne and the rest will for ever lie under the stigma of
impudence, impiety and egregious folly.
Not only water but wind has been deemed sufficient to cause the birth
of gods and heroes. The examples most {136} familiar to us are those
of Hera, who conceived Hephaistos without male concurrence by simply
inhaling the wind, and of the maiden (in Longfellow’s poem, called
Wenonah) who was quickened by the west wind and bore Michabo, the
Algonkin hero better known as Hiawatha.[136.1] To these we may add the
blind Loujatar, source of all evils, ugliest and most hateful of
Mana’s daughters, fructified by the east wind and bearing at a birth
nine sons--nine several diseases to decimate mankind. Nor was she the
first in the Finnish mythology to conceive in this manner, for
Väinämöinen himself was the son of the virgin Ilmatar, who in the
beginning, while as yet there was neither earth nor sun, moon nor
stars, lay down upon the waters and was fecundated by the east wind.
She bore her child for seven hundred years before she could bring him
to the birth.[136.2]
Montezuma, the culture-hero of the Pueblos of New Mexico, was the son
of a maiden of exquisite beauty, but fastidious and coy. When the
drought fell on her people she opened her granaries and fed them out
of her abundance. “At last, with rain, fertility returned to the
earth; and on the chaste Artemis of the Pueblos its touch fell too.
She bore a son to the thick summer shower, and that son was
Montezuma.”[136.3] The Chinese and the Tartars appear {137} able as
usual to match all these traditions of parthenogenesis. The historian
Ma-twan-lin has recorded that the king of the So-li, or northern
barbarians, having been absent on a journey, found one of his
concubines pregnant at his return. He would have put her to death, had
she not asserted that a vapour about the size of an egg descended on
her from the sky and caused her interesting condition. He shut her up,
however, and she bore a son, who was thrown by the king’s orders into
the pigsty. The pigs warmed the babe with their breath. He was thrown
into a stable, and the horses did the same, reminding us of the birth
of Marjatta’s child. The king then was persuaded of his slave-girl’s
truth. He brought up the boy; but he feared him as he grew and became
a skilful archer, and sought therefore to destroy him. The youth fled
southward until he reached a certain river. There was no way over; so
he struck the water with his bow, and the fishes and turtles,
gathering together, formed a compact mass, that served as a bridge for
the hero. He crossed dryshod, and, reaching a land to the north of
Corea, founded there the nation and kingdom of the Fou-yu.[137.1]
The following seems a Corean variant of this legend. A king held
captive in his palace a daughter of the river Ho. She was fertilised
by the rays of the sun and laid an {138} enormous egg, which the king
caused to be thrown successively to the swine and to the dogs, to the
horses and to the cattle. None of these would touch it; and it was
flung out into the desert. There the birds of the air flocked to it
and covered it with their wings. The king then tried to break it, but
failed; and it was restored to the captive maiden. She wrapped it up
and warmed it for some time, until it burst and a boy came forth. The
people became attached to him; but the king’s ill-will was excited,
and, warned by his mother, the youth deemed it prudent to flee.
Announcing himself as the sun’s son and the grandson of the river Ho,
he was assisted to cross that river by the turtles and fishes as
above; and he at length arrived at the town of Ke-ching-ko, which he
called Kao-kin-li, and became the founder of the kingdom of that
name.[138.1] As late as the latter years of the sixteenth century,
Hideyoshi, the Taiko of Japan, was not too civilised to make similar
pretensions. They were, however, veiled, after the manner of the Irish
saints we have already mentioned, as a vision. He told the ambassador
of the king of Corea: “I am the only remaining scion of a humble
stock; but my mother once had a dream in which she saw the sun enter
her bosom; after which she gave birth to me. There was then a
soothsayer, who said, ‘Wherever the sun shines, there will be no place
which shall not be subject to him. It may not be doubted that one day
his power will overspread the empire.’”[138.2] A Jesuit father who
visited Siam in the seventeenth century reports concerning
Sommonocodon, the Siamese deity, that he was born of a virgin who had
retired to the depths of a certain forest, there to live in holiness
and austerity pending the {139} advent of God, then speedily expected.
One day while she prayed she conceived by the prolific rays of the
sun. The innocent maiden, ashamed to find herself with child, flew to
a solitary desert, in order to hide herself from the eyes of mankind.
Upon the banks of a lake, and without any sense of pain, she was
miraculously delivered of the most beautiful babe in the world; but
having no milk wherewith to suckle him, and being unable to bear the
thought of seeing him die, she jumped into the water, where she set
him upon the bud of a flower, which blew of itself for his more
commodious reception, and afterwards enclosed him as in a
cradle.[139.1] With these instances of sun-pregnancy may be compared
the Chinese tale of the Emperor Yao’s mother, who was rendered
fruitful by the splendour of a star that flashed upon her during a
dream.[139.2]
The Kirghiz Tartar tradition of the birth of the celebrated Genghis
Khan is perhaps a refinement of some such legend as these, due to
change of religion or other civilising influence. As it has more than
one resemblance to that of Danae I venture to give some of the
details. A khan named Altyn Bel had an only son. At length his wife
became pregnant a second time, and bore a daughter so beautiful that
the khan commanded that no man was to see her; and to conceal her from
all human eyes she must be brought up hidden beneath the ground.
Wherefore her mother gave her in charge to an old woman, who nourished
her in the dark. The babe grew to maidenhood; and one {140} day she
asked her nurse: “Whither dost thou go from time to time?” The nurse
told her in reply that there was a bright world where her father and
mother and all sorts of people dwelt; and thither she herself went.
The maiden prayed to be shown this bright world; and under promise to
tell no one of it the woman took her secretly out into the open air.
As soon as the maiden came forth and looked upon the world she
staggered and fainted; for at the same moment God’s eye fell upon her,
and at His command she became pregnant. When this was known to the
khan he ordered her to be put to death; but, being dissuaded from so
extreme a course, he allowed his wife to lock the maiden in a golden
chest, together with some food, and to fling the chest into the sea,
first binding the key on the outside. Two heroes, hunting, see the
chest on the water. Agreeing between themselves that the one should
take the chest and the other its contents, whatever they were, they
capture and drag it ashore. On opening it they find the girl, who
tells them her tale, and after her babe’s birth weds one of them. Her
son is Genghis. He grew up renowned among the youth for his
uprightness and excellence; and when the ruler of the town died
childless the people chose Genghis in his place, and swore obedience
to him. So Genghis ruled the folk in justice and peace; and theft and
lying vanished from among them. But his mother had borne to his
stepfather three sons, who envied him and said: “This is a fatherless
child; we cannot suffer him as ruler. We have a father; make one of us
prince.” When Genghis knew it, he resolved to flee, lest they should
put him to death. He told his mother he would go to the source of the
waters whereon she had come floating thither; to the place where his
father dwelt he {141} would go, and live. “O mother, I will let thee
know whether I am alive or dead. I will throw feathers into the water:
when you see the feathers floating by, you will know I am well; if the
feathers do not float by, I shall be dead.” Then he went upwards along
the stream. (It was called the sea just now; but the Tartars are
inlanders.) He shot game. Out of the fells of the beasts he made a
house; the feathers of the birds floated down to his mother, and she
knew that he lived. The people made one of his half-brothers prince.
But his rule was corrupt; liars and thieves and all sorts of criminals
abounded, and he could not protect his people. Wherefore they resolved
to depose him and to seek out Genghis again; and five-and-twenty of
their noblest went to find him. They came to the place where he dwelt,
and hid themselves, lest he should flee them again. He was absent.
When he returned they waited until he had eaten and lain down to rest.
Four-and-twenty men then seized him, bowing the head; but he flung
them all aside. They spake: “O Prince and Lord, we are thy servants
and come to thee as suppliants. Since thou hast left us our yourt has
broken up. Come back and take again thy seat as ruler.” He yielded and
went back with them. On their return a council was held, and it was
determined to submit the claims of Genghis and his three brothers to
their mother, who should choose the prince from among them. The mother
said to her sons: “You are all my children; do not quarrel, I will
decide the affair. Hang all your bows upon this sunbeam: whose bow
soever this beam bears, let him be ruler.” All four brought their bows
and hung them on the sunbeam. Only Genghis’ bow remained hanging; the
bows of the other three brothers fell to the {142} ground. And the
woman said to all the folk: “Behold! He became my child by God’s
decree; by God’s decree too the sunbeam bears his bow: make him your
prince. If these three offer him violence, put them to death. You, O
folk, are many: let no harm be done to him.” And again he ruled in
peace and justice. He took a noble wife, who bore him three sons and a
daughter. So renowned was he that a messenger came from the ruler of
the kingdom of Rome and prayed for one of his children to make him
ruler of Rome; and he gave one of his sons. From Crim-Tartary came
another to ask for another son as ruler; and he gave him his second
son. From the Khalif’s people came another on the same errand; and he
gave him the third son. Then came an embassy from the Russians and
asked for a child. As he had no more sons, he gave the Russians his
daughter; and they led her forth to make her their ruler. When he
died, as he had sent all his children away to rule other lands, his
brothers became forefathers of the evil sultans of his own
people.[142.1]
Phallic power is not infrequently exercised in the legends of the Far
East by the glances of divine, or quasi-divine, beings. After the
latest cyclic cataclysm, which preceded by about eighteen thousand
years the coming of Xacca, as the inhabitants of Laos call Buddha, a
genius descended from the highest of the sixteen worlds to repeople
the earth. With his scimitar he cut asunder a flower he beheld
swimming on the water. From the stem a beautiful maiden sprang, and he
grew enamoured of her. But such was her bashfulness that she refused
to listen to his suit. Accordingly he placed himself at a certain
distance from her, but directly opposite, where he could gaze upon
her; {143} and with the ardour of his gaze she became a mother without
ceasing to be a maiden. For the numerous issue that he had in this way
begotten he furnished the earth with mountains and valleys,
fruit-trees and animals fitted for the service of mankind, metals and
precious stones and every other convenience.[143.1] The Japanese
pretend that the ancestors of the present race which possesses their
empire were heroes or demi-gods, who in turn derived their origin from
celestial spirits, of whom seven ruled the empire. The first three of
these spirits had no wives, and three of the others impregnated their
wives merely by their looks.[143.2] The Marquesan islanders report
that Hina, the daughter of the god Taaroa, bore to him a daughter
named Apouvaru, who also became wife to her father. Taaroa and
Apouvaru looked steadfastly at one another, with the result that
Apouvaru became a mother. She brought into the world a son; and the
visual intercourse being repeated she brought forth a second son.
After repeating it again she brought forth a daughter. This seems to
have satisfied these divine beings, for no further experiments are
reported.[143.3] Taaroa, however, according to the Leeward islanders,
begot another son by shaking the shadow of a bread-fruit leaf over his
daughter-wife, Hina.[143.4] At Rome the birth of Servius Tullius was
by tradition imputed to a look. His mother Ocrisia was a slave of
Tanaquil, the wife of Tarquinius Priscus. The likeness of a phallos
{144} appeared on the hearth; and she, who was sitting before it,
arose pregnant of the future king. The household Lar was deemed his
father, in confirmation of which a lambent flame was seen about the
child’s head as he lay asleep.[144.1]
We have found a Zulu _märchen_ narrating the birth of a child from a
clot of blood placed in a pot and covered down. To similar effect is
the Melanesian tradition of Deitari, from Aurora Island. His father
Tari went into his garden to work, when he felt something cut him. He
put the blood into a bamboo vessel, returned to his house and set it
down by the hearth. After many days his wife, going to cook food for
him, was surprised to find food already cooked by somebody unknown.
When this had recurred several times, the woman told her husband, and
he bade her watch. Then she saw Deitari (Tari’s blood) creep out of
the bamboo vessel. He was exceeding fair to look upon; and she hid
him, and asked her husband what he had put in that bamboo vessel. Tari
remembered about his blood, and said: “My blood was in that bamboo.”
His wife replied: “I saw him come forth out of that bamboo that you
had put there.” And she brought him forth, and her husband rejoiced to
see him.[144.2] The Mexicans attributed the origin of the present race
of mankind to a bone of one of the previous races who had perished in
a cataclysm. The goddess Omecihuatl, having had many children in
heaven, was at length delivered of {145} a knife of flint. This knife
was flung by her elder children to the earth, and where it fell there
sprang up sixteen hundred heroes from the ground. By the goddess’
direction, one of these heroes, Xolotl, was sent to Hell to fetch a
bone of one of the men who had died. The god of Hell, having given it,
repented and pursued the messenger, who fortunately escaped, but in
his haste stumbled and broke the bone. He gathered up the pieces and
brought them to his brethren, who put them into a vessel and sprinkled
them with blood drawn from their own bodies. At the end of four days a
boy was formed from the bone, and at the end of three more a girl, who
became the ancestors of all nations.[145.1]
With these cases we may for the present close our long and monotonous
list of Supernatural Births. If anybody shall complain that it is not
exhaustive, he must be congratulated on his appetite for these
marvellous occurrences. Practically the subject is inexhaustible. I
have not attempted to deal with every story, nor with every kind of
story. I have limited myself so far as possible to narratives
analogous to those in the different forms of the Perseus myth, and to
little more than specimens of them. In treating of sagas we have been
able to show a range extended beyond that of _märchen_. The
Supernatural Birth, in the forms in which we have studied it, is known
throughout Europe, Asia, and America, and in large groups of the
Pacific Islands. It is repeated again and again in the Chinese and
other Mongolian traditions. We have found it among the Zulus in South
Africa; and although there may be some doubt as to the native
character of a portion of the story, there {146} can be none as to the
mode of impregnation. When we know more about the legends and beliefs
of the natives of the interior, we shall probably find the myth as
thoroughly at home there as it is in an Italian nursery-tale.[146.1]
CHAPTER VI.
THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN PRACTICAL SUPERSTITIONS.
{147}
The result of the inquiries of the last two chapters has been to
show that the incident of the Supernatural Birth, in forms identical
with, or at least analogous to, those of the Perseus cycle, is found,
broadly speaking, over the whole world,--and that, not merely as a
tale whereto no serious belief is attached, but, even more widely, as
a saga, or record of what are deemed to have been actual events. But
if, amid all differences of race and culture, birth has thus been held
to have been caused on various occasions in these marvellous ways, it
is natural to ask whether it has also been thought possible still to
make effectual use of such means to produce pregnancy in barren women.
The answer is, that it has been, and still is, thought possible. In
other words, the traditions of past miracles are organically connected
in the popular mind with practices expressly calculated to produce
repetitions of those miracles. It will be observed, however, that
parthenogenesis is often spoken of in the stories; whereas, for the
most part, the object of the practices I am about to describe is to
promote conception by women who are in the habit of having sexual
intercourse. The distinction is {148} often immaterial. In the stage
of civilisation wherein the stories are told and the practices obtain,
medicine and surgery are not as yet separated from magic. We cannot
therefore, speak positively as to the meaning and intention of all.
But it is clear that a large number of the practices, as well as of
the stories, imply, if we are not told in so many words, that the real
origin of the child afterwards born is not the semen received in the
act of coition, but the drug, or the magical potency of the
incantation.
In discussing the practices I shall ask the reader’s pardon if I do
not limit myself to such as are precisely analogous to the means found
in the stories, nor even to such as are explicable by reasons already
known to be accepted in barbaric life. I desire, beyond these, to call
the attention of scholars to some of the problems yet to be solved. We
have learned to understand much that used to be mysterious in the ways
and the thoughts of savages. But much remains unknown or
misunderstood. And even if a solitary student cannot explain, he may
render some small service to science in inquiring into, that which
needs explanation.
The favourite method of supernatural impregnation in stories is
perhaps by eating some fruit or herb. Nor is this method by any means
neglected in practice. The maxim attributed to the Druids leaps to the
mind, namely, that powder of mistletoe makes women fruitful. As held
by the Druids this is doubtless to be understood literally, just as
among the ancient Medes, Persians and Bactrians the juice of the
sacred Soma was prescribed to procure for unproductive women fair
children and a pure succession.[148.1] Thus the birth of Zoroaster
himself was, as we have seen, believed {149} to have been caused.
Among the rules for the performance of the Vedic domestic ceremonies,
given in the _Grihya-Sûtras_, the householder who does not study the
_Upanishad_ treating of the rules for securing conception, the male
gender of the child, and so forth, is directed in the third month of
his wife’s pregnancy to give her, after she has fasted, in curds from
a cow which has a calf of the same colour as the dam, two beans and a
barleycorn for each handful of curds. Then he is to ask her: “What
dost thou drink?” To which she is to reply: “Generation of a male
child.” When the curds and the question and response have been thrice
repeated, he is to insert into her right nostril the sap of a herb
which is not withered.[149.1] One can hardly doubt that this is a
ceremonial to procure offspring, though not performed, according to
the rubric, until after conception has taken place. In the book of
medical receipts deemed to be derived from the ancient Physicians of
Myddfai, printed in the year 1861 from a Welsh manuscript bearing date
in 1801, we find it stated that a decoction of mistletoe causes
fruitfulness of body and the getting of children.[149.2] Here the
magical plant seems to have faded into one of merely natural efficacy.
On the other hand, something more than the light of common day still
glorifies the rosemary. Among other things we are told that to carry a
piece of this plant is to keep every evil spirit at a distance, and
that rosemary has all the virtues of the stone called jet. It was
because it was obnoxious to evil spirits that it was used at funerals.
But it was not only used at {150} funerals. There is a story of a
widower who wished to be married again on the day of his former wife’s
funeral, because the rosemary employed at the funeral could be used
for the wedding also. For its use at weddings there was an additional
reason, which is given in the Welsh manuscript; to wit, one of its
remarkable powers was that “it was sovran against barrenness.”[150.1]
Hindu women eat little balls of rice with intent to obtain children. A
woman who wishes for a child, especially a son, observes the fourth
lunar day of every dark fortnight as a fast, and breaks her fast only
after seeing the moon, generally before nine or ten o’clock in the
evening. A dish of twenty-one balls of rice having been prepared, in
one of which is put some salt, it is then placed before her; and if
she first put her hand on the ball containing salt, she will be
blessed with a son. In this case no more is eaten; otherwise she goes
on until she takes the salted ball.[150.2] At the festival of Ráhu,
the tribal god of the Dosádhs of Behar and Chota Nagpur, the priest
distributes to the crowd tulsi-leaves which heal diseases else
incurable, and flowers which have the virtue of causing barren women
to conceive;[150.3] but whether they are to be eaten or only smelt
does not appear. The same omission occurs in a report by Mr. Leland
that a Tuscan woman who desires offspring goes to a priest, gets a
blessed apple {151} and pronounces over it an invocation to Saint
Anna.[151.1] Presumably she then eats it. At all events, in Hungary a
Gipsy woman in the like circumstances eats at waxing moon grass from
the grave of a pregnant woman.[151.2] Among the Southern Slavs the
woman goes to a pregnant woman’s grave, calls upon her by name, bites
some of the grass off the grave, calls upon her again, conjuring her
to grant her a child, and then, taking some earth from the grave,
binds it in her girdle.[151.3] In the Spreewald no Wendish woman dares
to eat of two plums grown together on one stalk, or she will bear
twins.[151.4] About Mentone it is believed that a woman who finds a
double fruit will have twins.[151.5] The aboriginal inhabitants of
Paraguay supposed that a woman who ate a double ear of maize would
give birth to twins.[151.6] In Saxony, Mecklenburg and Voigtland it
would appear that only pregnant women are forbidden to eat double
fruit; among the Tangalas the prohibition is extended to the husband;
in all cases for the same reason.[151.7] These taboos are inexplicable
save on the supposition that the fruit causes pregnancy.
{152}
It would seem like a relic of the same thought that in Swabia a woman
who is “in an interesting condition” for the first time should eat of
a tree which bears for the first time; then both of them will become
very fruitful. To this there is one exception: if an apple be grafted
on a whitethorn, and some of the fruit be given to a pregnant woman to
eat, she cannot bear.[152.1] In contrast to this is a Bosnian custom
in which the childless woman seeks for a plant called _apijun_, cuts
its roots small and steeps them in foam she has caught from a
millwheel, afterwards drinking of the liquid. She then winds her
wedding-girdle round a newly grafted fruit-tree, when, if the graft
prosper, she also will bear. Another curious magical custom in Bosnia,
still more instructive, is employed when a woman has been married for
upwards of eleven years without having issue. A lady friend who is so
fortunate as to be in that state in which “women wish to be who love
their lords” must endeavour to find a stone lying in a pear-tree, as
sometimes happens when it is thrown at the ripening fruit and caught
by one of the branches. She must then shake the tree until the stone
fall. This she must catch in her hands ere it reach the ground, carry
it in the left skirt of her dress to the brook, put it into a pitcher,
fill the pitcher from the brook so far as to cover the stone, and
carry it home. {153} Next, she gathers dewy grass (it is not stated
what she does with it), and speaks into the pitcher and into the water
the conjuring formula: “So-and-so shall conceive.” After that, she
brings the pitcher with the water to the barren woman to drink, and,
winding the wedding-garment (it does not appear what portion of the
dress is meant) of the latter about her own body, wears it for three
months, or longer, until the woman for whom the ceremony is performed
shall feel that her desire has been accomplished. The friend, however,
must neither eat anything in the patient’s house, nor according to one
account speak during the ceremony.[153.1] Now I am not prepared to
explain every detail of this performance, though I may revert to some
of the items hereafter. The important matter for the moment is the
meaning of the stone shaken down from the tree. This can hardly be
understood to represent anything but a pear; and inasmuch as the
patient cannot eat the stone, its virtues as fruit are transmitted to
the water which is given her to drink, the intention being made clear
by the utterance of the command, “So-and-so shall conceive.”
In China and Japan a medicine called _Kay-tu-sing_, made from the
leaves of a tree belonging to the class Ternstromaceæ, is given at
full moon with cabalistic formulæ. In the Fiji Islands the woman
bathes in a stream, and then both husband and wife take a drink made
with the grated root of a kind of bread-fruit tree and the nut of a
sort of turmeric, immediately before congress. Siberian brides before
the marriage-night eat the cooked fruit of the _Iris Sibirica_.
Asparagus seeds and young hop-buds are given {154} as salad to women
in Styria against barrenness. The Czech women of Bohemia drink an
infusion of juniper to obtain children; and coffee enjoys a high
reputation in Franconia. Serb women get a woman already pregnant to
put yeast into their girdles; they sleep with it over night, and eat
it in the morning at breakfast.[154.1]
Before passing from the eating of fruit and vegetables, let me point
out that the mandrakes, or love-apples, for which Rachel bargained
with Leah, were believed to be possessed of power to put an end to
barrenness; and this, as it appears by the record in Genesis, quite
independently of sexual intercourse, for Rachel gave up her husband to
her sister in exchange for them. Whether it be from the narcotic
properties of the fruit, or from the likeness of the root to the human
form, or both, the mandrake has been during all history credited with
supernatural powers. In particular, it has been held potent as a cause
of pregnancy. Henry Maundrell, travelling in Palestine in the spring
of 1697--barely two centuries ago--was informed that it was then
customary for women who wanted children to lay mandrakes under the
bed.[154.2] The recipe current during the Middle Ages for gathering
mandrakes was very much like that still practised by Danubian Gipsies
to obtain a kind of orchid which they call boy-root. The root is half
laid bare with a knife never before used, and a black dog is tied by
the tail to it. A piece of ass-flesh is then offered to the {155}
animal; and when he springs after it he pulls out the plant. The
representation of a linga is carved out of the root, wrapped in a
piece of hart’s leather, and worn on the naked left arm to promote
conception.[155.1] The Persians are said still to use the mandrake as
an amulet for the same purpose, and to call it man’s root or
love-root.[155.2]
Animal substances of various kinds have been taken with the like
intent. An insect in India, called _pillai-púchchi_, or son-insect,
is swallowed in large numbers by women in the hope of bearing
sons.[155.3] They thus do voluntarily what the mothers of Conchobar
and Cuchulainn are reported to have done against their wills. English
gallants at one time were said to swallow loaches in wine to become
prolific. Farquhar in _The Constant Couple_, written at the end of the
seventeenth century, puts into the mouth of one of his characters the
words: “I have toasted your ladyship fifteen bumpers successively, and
swallowed Cupids like loaches in every glass.”[155.4] On every
Christmas Eve unfruitful wives among the Transylvanian Saxons eat fish
and throw the bones into flowing water, in the hope of bringing
children into the world.[155.5] Hungarian Gipsy-women gather the
floating threads of cobweb from the fields in autumn, and in the
waxing of the moon they with their husbands eat them, murmuring an
incantation to the Keshalyi, or Fate, whose sorrow at this season for
her lost mortal husband causes her to tear out her hair. These threads
are believed to be the Keshalyi’s hair; and the incantation attributes
the hoped-for child to {156} them, and invites the Fate to the
baptism.[156.1] In Kamtchatka, women outdo the Hungarian Gipsies. They
eat the spiders themselves to obtain children; and a woman who, on
bearing, desires to become pregnant soon again, eats her infant’s
navel-string. Among the Southern Slavs the wife places a wooden bowl
full of water beneath a beam of the roof where it is worm-eaten and
the worm-dust falls. Her husband strikes the beam with something
heavy, so as to shake the dust out of the worm-holes; and she drinks
the water containing the dust that falls. Many a woman seeks in knots
of hazelwood for a worm, and eats it when found. Masur women in the
province of West Prussia make use of the water which drips from a
stallion’s mouth after he has drunk. Worse is said to be done in
Algiers. There, when a woman has already had a child, but has ceased
for a long period to conceive, she must drink sheep’s urine, or water
wherein wax from a donkey’s ear has been macerated.[156.2] The ancient
Prussian bride and bridegroom, having been put to bed, but before
consummating the marriage, were served with a dish of buck’s, bull’s,
or bear’s testicles,[156.3] probably with a view to begetting a boy.
The corresponding portion of a hare was prescribed in wine by our
Anglo-Saxon forefathers to the woman who desired a son. “In order that
a woman may kindle a male child,” a hare’s belly dried and sliced and
rubbed with a drink is also recommended in the leechbook to be taken
by both husband and wife. If the wife alone drank it, she would
produce an hermaphrodite. {157} The hare’s magical reputation is well
known, nor are the foregoing the only prescriptions in the same work
from its flesh. Four drachms of female hare’s rennet to the woman, and
the like quantity of male hare’s to the man, in wine, were to be
given; and, after directing that the wife should be dieted on
mushrooms and forego her bath, we are told: “Wonderfully she will be
pregnant.”[157.1] We shall not be inclined to dispute the wonder. In
Fezzan a woman’s fruitfulness is said to be increased by the plentiful
enjoyment of the dried intestines of a young hare which has never been
suckled. The flesh of the kangaroo, like the hare a swift animal, is
held by the Australian aborigines to cause fertility.[157.2] A fox’s
genital organs dried and rubbed to powder are given to women in the
Land beyond the Forest against barrenness.[157.3]
Eggs are naturally supposed to ensure pregnancy. A Gipsy husband will
sometimes take an egg and blow the contents into his wife’s mouth, she
swallowing them;[157.4] or in Transylvania she will give him at full
moon the egg of a black hen to eat by himself.[157.5] On the island of
Keisar in the East Indies, an infertile woman takes a hen’s first egg
to an old man with a reputation for knowledge, and asks him for help.
He lays the egg on a nunu-leaf, and with it presses her breast,
muttering blessings the while. Then he cooks the egg in a koli-leaf,
takes a bit of it, lays it again on the nunu-leaf, and gives it to the
woman to eat. After {158} that, he presses the leaf on her nose and
breasts, and lightly rubs it upon her shoulders, passing it always
downwards, wraps another bit of the egg in the nunu-leaf, and causes
it to be preserved in the branches of one of the highest trees in the
neighbourhood of her dwelling.[158.1] On the other hand, in Galicia
the _last_ egg laid by a hen is credited with having two yolks. It is
said to be no bigger than a pigeon’s egg. A barren woman who swallows
its contents will henceforth bear; or it is given to a cow or other
animal with a similar object.[158.2]
The _Grihya-Sûtra_ of Gobhila gives minute directions for the
sacrifice offered by the ancient Aryans of India. The object of the
Anvashtakya ceremony was the propitiation of the ancestral spirits, to
whom three Pindas, or lumps of food, consisting of rice and cow-beef
mixed with a certain juice, are offered. After the offering, if the
sacrificer’s wife wish for a son, she is to eat the middle Pinda,
dedicated among the manes especially to her husband’s grandfather,
uttering at the same time the verse from the _Mantra-Brâhmana_: “Give
fruit to the womb, O Fathers!”[158.3] No doubt the virtue of this
prescription consists in the food’s having been part of the
sacrificial offering. But the cow is so intimately connected with the
well-being of all tribes in the Old World who have passed beyond the
lower stages of savagery, and has consequently become so
well-recognised a symbol of fecundity, that we need not be surprised
to find it used in charms to produce offspring. An Old English recipe
for a woman who miscarries is to let her take milk of a one-coloured
cow in her hand and sup it up {159} into her mouth, and then go to
running water and spit out the milk therein. Next, she must ladle up
with the same hand a mouthful of the water and swallow it down,
uttering certain words. Lastly, she must, without looking about her
either in her going or coming, return, but not into the same house
whence she came out, and there taste of meat.[159.1] Among the Kaffirs
an amulet to remove the reproach from a childless woman is made by the
medicine-man of the clan from the tail-hairs of a heifer. The heifer
must be given to the husband by a kinsman for the purpose; and the
charm, when made, is hung round the woman’s neck.[159.2] In Belgium,
women desirous of offspring are advised to drink a mixture of the milk
of the goat, ass, and sheep.[159.3]
Of mineral substances Russian women take saltpetre; and in Styria a
woman will grate her wedding-ring and swallow the filings.[159.4] It
was a classical superstition that mice were impregnated by tasting
salt.[159.5]
The drinking of water under certain conditions has been held to be
productive of children. In the first instance I am about to mention,
however, reliance is not placed wholly on the draught. Beside the
Groesbeeck spring at Spa in the Ardennes is a footprint of Saint
Remacle. Barren women pay a nine days’ devotional visit to the shrine
of the saint at Spa, and drink every morning a glass of the Groesbeeck
water. While drinking, one foot must be placed in the holy
footprint.[159.6] Maidens, we know, in more than one of the tales,
have proved the efficacy of divine footprints. In other cases it is
unmistakably the draught {160} which has the virtue. In Thuringia and
Transylvania, women who wished to be healed of unfruitfulness drank
consecrated water from the baptismal font.[160.1] A Transylvanian
Gipsy woman is said to drink water wherein her husband has cast hot
coals, or, better still, has spit, saying as she does so: “Where I am
flame be thou the coals! Where I am rain be thou the water!”[160.2] A
South Slavonic woman holds a wooden bowl of water near the fire on the
hearth. Her husband then strikes two firebrands together until the
sparks fly. Some of them fall into the bowl, and she then drinks the
water.[160.3] The Tusayan, one of the pueblo tribes of North America,
have a legend of one of their women who, being pregnant, was left
behind on the Little Colorado in their wanderings. Beneath her
dwelling is a spring, and any sterile woman who drinks of it will bear
children.[160.4] For Arab women the third chapter of the Koran (which,
among other things, relates the birth of the Virgin Mary) is written
out in its whole interminable length with saffron in a copper basin;
boiling water is poured upon the writing; and the woman in need drinks
a part of the water thus consecrated, and washes her face, breast and
womb with the remainder.[160.5] At Bombay a barren woman would cut off
the end of the robe of a woman who has borne at least one child, when
hung up to dry; or would steal a new-born infant’s shirt, steep one
end of it in water, drink the water and destroy the shirt. The child
to which {161} the clothing belonged would then die and be born again
from the womb of the woman performing this ceremony.[161.1] Other
women in India wash the loin-cloth of a sanyásí, or devotee, and
drink the water.[161.2] We can only surmise that this filthy practice
is followed in the hope of obtaining the benefit experienced by the
Princess Chand Ráwati in the Sanskrit romance, or the nymph Adrikâ
in the _Mahâbhârata_, cited above.
Be this how it may, there is a group of practices to which reference
must be made, and which almost match the foregoing in nastiness.
Unfortunately the dislike of nastiness is an extremely civilised
feeling; and when we read of these things we must remember that we
ourselves are not very far removed from a date when powder of mummy
was one of the least objectionable remedies in our forefathers’
pharmacopœia. We have already found that a Gipsy woman will drink the
water wherein her husband has spit. What is the meaning of the
expression: “He is the very spit of his father!” current not only in
England, but also, according to the learned Liebrecht, in France,
Italy, and Portugal, and alluded to by Voltaire and La Fontaine, if it
point not back to a similar, perhaps a more repulsive, ceremony
formerly practised by the folk all over western Europe? Other Gipsy
customs, if Gipsy women are not belied, are quite as bad. A barren
woman who succeeds in touching a snake caught in Easter- or
Whitsun-week will become fruitful if she spit thrice on it and
sprinkle it with her menstruation-blood, repeating the following {162}
incantation: “Grow thick, thou snake! that I thereby may get a child.
I am lean as thou art now, therefore rest not. Snake, snake, glide
hence, and if I become pregnant I will give thee a crest, an old one,
that thy tooth may thereby receive much poison!”[162.1] Among the
Gipsies of Roumania and southern Hungary a sterile woman scratches her
husband’s left hand between finger and thumb; and he returns the
compliment. The blood of both is received in a new vessel, and buried
under a tree for nine days. It is then taken up and ass’ milk poured
into it; and husband and wife drink the mixture before going to bed,
saying an incantation which reminds us of the Zulu story of the blood
in the pot; for its earlier lines run thus: “In the dawn three Fates
will come. The first seeks our blood; the second finds our blood; the
third makes a child thereout.”[162.2] A Polish woman, to get children,
procures a small jar of the blood of another woman at her first
child-bearing, and drinks it mixed with brandy.[162.3] I mentioned
just now the practice of the Kamtchatkan women. A Magyar believes he
promotes conception by his wife if he mix with his blood white of egg
and the white spots in the yolk of a hen’s egg, fill a dead man’s bone
with the mixture, and bury it where he is accustomed to make
water.[162.4] Nay, shavings of a dead man’s bone taken in drink will
have the same effect; or if taken by a man, they will enhance his
{163} potency.[163.1] It was, as we have seen, a dead man’s bone
which, according to the Mexican saga, when sprinkled with blood,
produced the father and mother of the present race of mankind.
Portions of corpses are, in fact, as valuable for unfruitful women as
the blood and secretions of living persons, at least in the opinion of
the Danubian Gipsies. These people are said to make, for protection
from witchcraft, little figures of men and brutes out of a sort of
dough of grafting wax taken from the trees in a graveyard, mixed with
the powdered hair and nails of a dead child or maiden, and with ashes
left after burning the clothes of one who has died. The figures are
dried in the sun, and, when required for use, ground into powder.
Taken in millet-pap in the increase of the moon this powder
accelerates conception.[163.2] Mr. Lane records disgusting practices
on the part of barren women at Cairo. Near the place of execution
there is a table of stone where the body of every person who is, in
accordance with the usual mode of punishment, beheaded is washed
before burial. By the table is a trough to receive the water. This
trough is never emptied; and its contents are tainted with blood, and
fetid. A woman who desires issue silently passes under the stone table
with the left foot foremost, and then over it. After repeating this
process seven times, she washes her face in the trough, and, giving a
trifling sum of money to the old man and his wife who keep the place,
{164} goes silently away. Others, with the like intent, step over the
decapitated body seven times, also without speaking; and others again
dip in the blood a piece of cotton-wool, of which they afterwards make
use in a manner which Mr. Lane declines to mention.[164.1] The stories
I have quoted, wherein a skull, reduced to powder and given to a
maiden, renders her pregnant, also come from Danubian lands and from
the Mohammedan East. The incident of the skull is less horrible than
these practices; but what other distinction can be found?
We may illustrate the custom of stepping over the dead body, and at
the same time show that in both hemispheres the idea expressed in the
stories just referred to is an active principle of conduct. First let
me recall the superstition which leads a woman in Bombay to steal
another’s child; for that is what the ceremony described a page or two
back amounts to. In the same way Algonkin women who sought to become
mothers flocked to the couches of those about to die, in hope that the
vital principle, as it passed from the dying, would enter their bodies
and fertilise their sterile wombs.[164.2] Among the Hurons in the
seventeenth century babes who died under one or two months were not
placed, like older persons, in sepulchres of bark raised on stakes,
but buried in the road, in order that they might enter secretly into
the wombs of passing women and be born again. The Jesuit father who
reports this custom quaintly adds: “I doubt that the good Nicodemus
would have found much difficulty here, although he doubted only for
old men: _Quomodo potest homo nasci cum sit senex?_”[164.3] So {165}
one of the prescriptions of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers directs a
woman who has miscarried to go to the barrow of a deceased man and
step thrice over it with certain words conjuring the effects of the
miscarriage.[165.1] We are now in a position to understand why a Gipsy
woman eats grass from the grave of a pregnant woman. It is because she
expects that the life of the unborn child will enter into her by means
of the grass. Evidently the object sought by all these ceremonies
connected with the departed is to transfer to the unproductive womb
the life which has been snatched away. In the tales of parthenogenesis
by means of the powdered skull the identity of the child with the dead
man is openly declared; and it is equally unmistakable in the Slavonic
story of the girl who was given the hermit’s heart to eat. I shall
return to this subject in the next chapter.
The blood would impart its power to the water it putrified, wherein
the Cairene women washed. Washing in water endowed with supernatural
power is not uncommon elsewhere. Transylvanian Saxon women not only
drink of baptismal water: they also wash in it, preferably on
Midsummer Day.[165.2] Among the Galician Jews unfruitful women when
they bathe according to their ritual dip themselves nine times under
water.[165.3] Saint Verena, one of the illustrious obscure of
mediæval mythology, bathed in the Verenenbad at Baden in the Aargau,
and thereby conferred on it such virtue that pregnant women or such as
wish for children, if they bathe there, soon attain their
desire.[165.4] The {166} reference to pregnant women must no doubt be
understood of those who wish to avoid miscarriage and to be safely
delivered. German tales and popular saws used to speak--perchance they
still do--of a Kinderbrunnen, or Children’s Well, whence babies were
fetched, as in England from the parsley bed. The Bride’s Well, in
Aberdeenshire, was at one time the resort of every bride in the
neighbourhood on the evening before her marriage. Her maidens bathed
her feet and the upper part of her body with water drawn from it; and
this bathing, we are told, “ensured a family.”[166.1] The well into
which Pûran, that Panjâbî Joseph, was thrown, is situate on the
highroad between Siâlkot and Kalowâl. His residence in it sanctified
it to such an extent that the women of those parts believe that if
they bathe in it they will become fruitful.[166.2] Panjâbî women
sometimes adopt more questionable means. They wash naked in a boat in
a field of sugar-canes, or under a mango-tree. Mangoes, it will be
remembered, are favourite phallic fruits in Indian tales. Properly
these women ought to burn seven houses. But this is cruelly forbidden
by English law; and they have to content themselves with burning
secretly at murky midnight on Sunday, and as far as possible at a
cross-road, a small quantity of clay from seven dwellings. On this
fire they heat the water wherewith to wash. Or, during the night of
the feast of Divali--always a night in the moonless half of the
month--the husband draws water at seven different wells in an earthen
pot, and places in the water leaves plucked from seven trees. He
brings the pot to his wife at a crossway where the roads meet roughly
at right angles. She must sprinkle herself with the water unseen by
anybody. The husband then strips and puts on new {167} clothes. This
is indeed a putting-off of the old man. Or else the woman perfectly
nude covers a space in the middle of the crossway, and there lays
leaves from the five royal trees, the _ficus religiosa_, _ficus
indica_, _acacia speciosa_, mango, and _butea frondosa_. On these she
places a little figure of the god Rama, sits on the figure and washes
her entire body with water in five vases drawn from five wells, four
of which must be situated at the four points of the compass from the
town or village, and the fifth to the north-east in the outskirts. She
pours the water from the vases into a receptacle whose bottom is
pierced by a hole whence the contents may fall on her body. The
ceremony must be accomplished in absolute solitude, and all the
utensils must be left on the spot.[167.1]
Among the ancient Greeks various streams and springs were deemed of
virtue against barrenness. Dr. Ploss cites divers classical writers as
recording the claims of the river Elatus in Arcadia, the Thespian
spring on the island of Helicon, the spring near the temple of
Aphrodite on Hymettos, and the warm springs of Sinuessa. Others might
easily be found, if necessary, both ancient and modern. A curious rite
is reported among the Serbs. A young, sterile married woman cuts a
reed, fills it with wine, and sews it, together with an old knife and
a cake, in a linen bag. Holding this bag under her left arm she wades
in flowing water, while some one on the brink prays for her: “Fulfil
my prayer, O God, O Mother of God,” and so on through the whole gamut
of sanctities. During this prayer the wader drops the bag in the
stream, and, coming out, sets her feet in two braziers, out of which
her husband must lift her and carry her home. Here we have
unmistakably a prayer and {168} offerings of food and drink to the
water, the latter remaining but little changed while the former puts
on a Christian guise. A parallel case is that of the Burmal er Rabba
spring at Sidi Mecid, near Constantine, in Algeria, frequented both by
Jewesses and Moors for the removal of infecundity. Each of these women
slays a black hen before the door of the grotto, offers inside a wax
taper and a honey-cake, takes a bath and goes away assured of the
speedy accomplishment of her wishes. Inasmuch as sacrifices are
foreign to Islam, it is obvious that the ceremony is a survival of an
older cult. Curiously enough, the Dyaks of Borneo, who are still
frankly heathen, offer domestic fowls to the water-goddess against
unfruitfulness. The afflicted person (sometimes it is a man) gives a
big feast called Cararamin, and goes to the haunt of the Jata, or
goddess, in question in a boat beautifully adorned, taking a domestic
and other fowls with gilded beaks as offerings. They are thrown living
into the water, or their heads are merely cut off and offered, while
the body is consumed by the votary. In many instances, we are told,
carved wooden figures of birds are made use of instead of the real
article. In the islands of Watabela, Aaru and the Sula Archipelago,
barren women and their husbands go to the ancestral graves, or, if
Moslems, on Friday to a certain sacred tomb, to pray together with
some old women. They bring offerings which include a goat or pig and
water. The husband prays for a medicine, and promises, if a child be
given him, to offer the goat (or pig, if a heathen), or to give it to
the people to eat. It is expected that after this the medicine will be
prescribed to both husband and wife in dreams. They both wash with the
water they have brought, which is consecrated by standing for a while
on the grave, and eat together some of {169} the food, leaving the
rest on the grave. They take the goat, or pig, back home, to be
sacrificed in accordance with the husband’s vow, only if the wife
become pregnant. The Nature-goddess of the Yorubas on the west coast
of Africa is represented as a pregnant female; and the water that is
consecrated by being kept in her temple is highly esteemed for
infertility and difficult labours.[169.1] And in general we may refer
not only to the numerous wells and springs that even yet in Europe
have a similar reputation, but also to the rites practised in
connection with water by a bride on being brought to her new home. It
would be too great a wandering from our present subject to discuss
these rites in detail. But one at least of the objects they have in
view is the production of offspring. I add a few references at the
foot of the page for those who wish to pursue the inquiry.[169.2]
Meantime it will be seen that the practices passed in review
throughout this and the preceding paragraph bear a remarkable analogy
to the stories wherein we are presented with the Supernatural Birth as
caused by bathing; and it will not be forgotten that the mother of the
Erse hero Aedh Sláine does not succeed in bearing a human child until
she has washed in the consecrated water: drinking of it alone was
insufficient. Having regard to the stories {170} of Danae and the
Mexican goddess who was fructified by the rain, it is interesting too
to note that Hottentot maidens must run about naked in the first
thunderstorm after the festival when their maturity is celebrated. The
rain, pouring down over the whole body, has the virtue of making
fruitful the girl who receives it and rendering her capable of having
a large offspring.[170.1] It is even possible that a similar
superstition was once known in Germany. A saying current in many parts
points in this direction, namely, that when it rains on St. John’s day
the nuts will be wormy and many girls pregnant[170.2]--unless, as a
Slav practice already cited may suggest, the pregnancy be the result
of their eating the wormy nuts.
A few other usages must be referred to before we leave the subject.
Several of the stories I have cited attribute pregnancy to the rays of
the sun. The ancient Parsees, as we might have expected, believed that
the beams of the rising sun were the most effective means for giving
fruitfulness to the newly wedded; and even to-day, in Persia and among
the Tartars in Central Asia, the morning after the marriage has been
consummated the pair are brought out to be greeted by the rising
sun.[170.3] At old Hindu marriages the bride was made to look towards
the sun, or in some other way exposed to its rays. This was expressly
called the Impregnation-rite.[170.4] Among the Chacos, an aboriginal
tribe of the southern part of South America, the bride {171} and
bridegroom sleep the first night on a skin with their heads towards
the west; for, we are told, the marriage is not considered as ratified
until the rising sun shines on their feet the succeeding
morning.[171.1] Whether or not it is really their feet on which the
sun is expected to shine, the ratification of the marriage by the sun
must be intended to obtain the blessing of fertility.
It was customary at Rome to offer goats at the Lupercal; and two
youths underwent the pretence of a human offering, doubtless once
anything but a sham. A sacrificial meal followed. The Luperci, then,
girt with skins of some of the slain animals, cut other skins into
strips, and armed with the strips ran up and down the Via Sacra,
across the Forum and through the city, striking all whom they met.
Women who desired to be made fruitful used, it is said, to place
themselves naked in the way and receive the blows upon their
palms.[171.2] Dr. Ploss compares with this the procedure in Voigtland
and other parts of Germany at the Easter festival, when the young
fellows chase the girls out of their beds with green twigs.[171.3]
Similar is the object of the custom observed from India to the
Atlantic Ocean of throwing grain and seeds of one sort or another over
a bride, and apparently of the custom of flinging old shoes. The
wandering Gipsies of Transylvania are said to throw old shoes and
boots on a newly married pair when they enter their tent, expressly to
enchance the fertility of the union. In Germany, pieces of cake are
thrust against the bride’s body.[171.4] About Chemnitz a table-cloth
seems to acquire prolific virtue by serving at a first christening
{172} dinner; and it is sometimes cast over a barren wife.[172.1] The
Asturian ballad already cited in an earlier chapter ascribes to the
borage the power to affect any woman treading on it as it affected the
unfortunate princess Alexandra.[172.2] Rolling beneath a solitary
apple-tree seems an approved method of obtaining pregnancy among the
Kara Kirghiz women.[172.3]
Amulets play a great part in procuring offspring. I have only space
for a few examples. A porcupine’s foot is a favourite talisman among
the Moorish women of Marocco. The Northern Basuto in the Transvaal lay
the fault of childlessness on the husband. He has done to death by
witchcraft one of his kin, or committed some other wrong towards the
dead man, who is therefore angry. After consulting a wizard, and
ascertaining to whom is to be ascribed the evil, he goes to the grave,
acknowledges his fault, prays to the dead for forgiveness, and takes
back from the tomb a stone, a twig, or some other object, which he
carries about, or deposits in his courtyard, as a fetich or a charm.
If he duly honour it, it will restore the good understanding between
the deceased and himself, and give him the benefit he desires. An
Otchi Negress will take a fetich conditionally on its giving her
children. If a child be born, it is a fetich-child and is considered
to belong to the fetich, just as in many of the tales the child is
given by an ogre upon the stipulation that it shall belong to the
ogre, and be fetched away, either when he pleases, or at a fixed
period. The women of Mecca commonly {173} wear a magical girdle to
yield them fertility. In Persia, as we have seen, the mandrake is worn
as an amulet.[173.1] On the Banks’ Islands, women take certain stones
to bed with them for the same purpose.[173.2]
In the interior of western Africa, over the border of Angola, on the
way from Malange, barren Negresses have been found wearing two little
carved ivory figures representing the two sexes in a string round the
body.[173.3] The phalloi worn by Italian women are familiar to every
student of folklore; and the images worn by Danubian Gipsies have
already been mentioned. The worship of the linga is a favourite one
with Hindu women. The representation is sometimes carved and painted
red, at other times a mere rough upright stone. Such idols are to be
seen everywhere in India; and their pious worshippers may often be
observed decking them with flowers, red cloth or gilt paper, like the
Madonna in Roman Catholic churches. Siva himself, the third in the
modern Hindu Trimurti, is represented under this form; and under this
form--softened down by Southey in his finest poem from the grotesque
obscenity of the original story--he appeared when
“Brahma and Vishnu wild with rage contended,
And Siva in his might their dread contention ended.”
A cannon, old and useless and neglected, belonging to the Dutch
Government, lay in a field at Batavia, on the island of Java. It was
taken by the native women for a linga. Dressed in their best, and
adorned with flowers, they used to worship this piece of senseless
iron, presented it with {174} offerings of rice and fruits, miniature
sunshades, and coppers, and completed the performance by sitting
astride upon it as a certain method of winning children. At length an
order arrived from the Government to remove it as lumber; and removed
it was, to the great dismay of the priests, who had pocketed the
coppers and had manufactured and sold the sunshades--probably also to
the dismay of the ladies who depended upon its miraculous power--but
at all events, it is satisfactory to know, without injuriously
affecting the increase of the population.[174.1] At Roman weddings one
of the ceremonies was the culminating rite so dear to these Batavian
women; and its object was that the bride might conceive.[174.2] At
Athens there is a rock near the Callirrhoe, whereon women who wish to
be made fruitful rub themselves, calling on the Moirai to be gracious
to them. And Bernhard Schmidt, writing on the subject, recalls that
not far from that very spot the heavenly Aphrodite was honoured in
ancient times as the eldest of the Fates.[174.3] At the foot of
another hill is a seat cut in the rock on the banks of a stream. There
the Athenian women were wont to sit and let themselves slip on the
back into the brook, calling on Apollo for an easy delivery. The stone
is black and polished with the constant repetition of these
invocations; for still on a clear moonlit night young women steal
silently to the spot to indulge in the same exercise, though we may
presume their prayers are nominally addressed to some other
divinity.[174.4] Near Verdun in Luxemburg, Saint {175} Lucia’s
arm-chair is also to be seen in the living rock. There childless women
sit and pray, afterwards awaiting with confidence the fulfilment of
their petitions. A curious rite used until the Reformation to be
performed at the shrine of Saint Edmund at Bury St. Edmund’s. A white
bull was kept on the fields of the manor of Habyrdon, and never yoked
to the plough nor baited at the stake. When a married woman wished for
offspring he was “led in procession through the principal streets of
the town to the principal gate of the monastery, attended by all the
monks singing, and a shouting crowd; the woman walking by him and
stroking his milk-white sides and pendent dewlaps. The bull being then
dismissed, the woman entered the church, and paid her vows at the
altar of Saint Edmund, kissing the stone, and entreating with tears
the blessing of a child.”[175.1] In the Pyrenees near Bourg d’Oueil is
a stone figure of a man about five feet in height, on which barren
women rub themselves, embracing and kissing it. In Brittany there are
several shrines of this worship. Newly-wedded pairs from the
neighbourhood of Plouarnel and Saint Renan sometimes go to the menhir
of Kervéathon in the _lande_ of Kerloas; and there bride and
bridegroom rub simultaneously their abdomens against the two rough
sides of the stone. By this the husband hopes to get many sons--the
wife hopes to get not merely fecundity but the whip-hand of her
husband. Near Rennes the newly married go, the first Sunday of Lent,
to jump on a stone called the Bride-stone (_Pierre des Épousées_),
singing the while a special song. Down to the Revolution there stood
at {176} Brest a chapel of Saint Guignolet, containing a priapian
statue of the holy man. Women who were, or feared to be, sterile, used
to go and scrape a little of the phallos, which they put into a glass
of water from the well and drank. Another Breton saint called
Guerlichon was similarly honoured.[176.1]
There is a miraculous stone on the sacred hill of Nikko in Japan, at
which women who want to become mothers throw stones, sure of having
their ambition gratified if they succeed in striking it. And in the
Uyeno Park at Tokio is a seated statue of Buddha. Whoso succeeds in
flinging a stone upon the sacred knees attains the same result. At
Whitchurch near Cardiff, in the last century, a woman animated by the
wish for children would go on Easter Monday to the parish churchyard,
armed with two dozen tennis balls, half of them covered with white
leather and the other half with black, and would throw them over the
church. The operation was to be repeated every year until her wish was
accomplished.[176.2] I shall return to these practices in a future
chapter. In the Tirol there are miraculous images beside which little
waxen figures in the shape of toads are hung. The figures are called
_Muettern_. It is believed that every woman has inside her a creature
in this form. Many a mother has gone to sleep with her mouth open, and
the muetter has crept out and gone to plunge into the nearest water.
If she do not close her mouth, the muetter by-and-bye gets back
safely, and the woman, previously sick, is restored to health. But if
she close her mouth, she dies. Unfruitful women offer these waxen
{177} figures to images of the Madonna, or of the Pietà.[177.1] On
the Gold Coast, Bassamese women who are possessed by a demon of
barrenness meet at the fetich hut and deposit consecrated vases and
figures of clay representing mothers nursing, while they present to
the fetich offerings of tobacco and handkerchiefs. The demons are
frightened away by the noise of fire-arms, drums and the blowing of
horns. The officiating chief makes an offering of gold-dust, and then
spirts a mouthful of rum over the belly of every woman who desires
issue. An improvised banquet brings the solemnity to a close.[177.2]
The figures in both these cases may be regarded as a symbolic
dedication of the mother, or more probably the child, to the
supernatural being whose aid, like that of the ogre in the tale, is
invoked. The women on the Babar islands in the Malay Archipelago take
measures bearing some superficial resemblance to the last, but widely
different in meaning. The help of a man who is rich in children is
first obtained. The husband then collects fifty or sixty young kalapa
fruits, while the wife prepares a doll about twenty inches long in red
kattun. On the appointed day the man comes to their hut, puts the
husband and wife to sit near together, and sets before them a plate
containing sirih-pinang and a young kalapa fruit. The latter is
opened, and both husband and wife are sprinkled with the juice. The
assistant then takes a fowl, holds its feet against the woman’s head
and prays, apparently in her name: “O Upulero, make use of this fowl,
let fall a man, let him step down into my hands, I pray thee, I {178}
implore thee, let fall a man, let him step down into my hands and on
my lap!” He asks the woman: “Is the child come?” She answers: “Yes, it
is already sucking.” Then he touches the man’s head with the fowl’s
feet and mutters certain formulæ. The fowl is put to death by a blow
against the posts of the hut, opened, and the veins about the heart
probed. It is laid on a plate and put on the domestic altar. The news
is spread in the village that the woman is pregnant, and every one
comes and congratulates her. The husband borrows a cradle, in which
the doll is placed, and for seven days it is treated as a new-born
child.[178.1] Here it is simulation that plays the important part. In
addition to the prayer and sacrifice, which might be found anywhere,
the Babar islander pretends that the prayer has been granted, and acts
accordingly. Simulation as a form of magic is well known over the
whole earth. As applied to cause conception it is not one of the
practices to which we have had to direct special attention in this
chapter. But it deserves a passing notice as strengthening the general
argument that conception is held to be caused by other than natural
means. A common form of simulation for the purpose of obtaining
children is found in the custom of putting a boy to sit on the bride’s
lap at a wedding. The ceremony was usual among the ancient Aryans, and
is prescribed in detail in the _Âpastamba_.[178.2] It is still
followed in the east of Europe and elsewhere. In England, to rock an
empty cradle is to rock a new baby into it. The Bechuana, Basuto and
Agni women carry dolls, which they treat like children.[178.3] And in
China a barren {179} woman adopts a little girl to produce
conception--a practice for which an elaborate reason is assigned. In
the invisible world, it is said, every woman is represented by a tree,
which bears as many flowers as she is fated to bear children. If she
be sterile, her tree will not bear; and then, just as a fruit-tree is
grafted to make it bring forth fruit, so by adopting a little girl she
will provoke on her tree the germination of flowers, and thus become
fruitful.[179.1]
Reviewing the superstitious rites here brought together, it will be
seen that no case is found where fecundity has been held to be
procured by the sense of smell, or of sight, as in some of the tales.
It was, however, an ancient classical belief that partridges were
impregnated in some such way; for Pliny tells us that if the female
only stood opposite to the male and the wind blew from him towards
her, or if he simply flew over her head, or very often if she merely
heard his voice, it would be enough.[179.2] Though we do not find the
possibility of obtaining fecundity by a glance, we have in the
superstitions of the Evil Eye so widely, well-nigh universally, spread
a belief in a power quite as great, though exercised in a different
way. In the power of magicians to eat by a look, the Evil Eye
performed the converse of impregnation. The authorities on this
subject have been laboriously collected by M. Tuchmann, to whose work
the reader is referred.[179.3] Belief in impregnation by the wind only
would seem to present difficulties at least as great as any of these.
Yet it was a common belief among {180} the ancients, not merely used
for a poetical ornament by Vergil, but repeated without question as a
literal fact by men of lofty intellect and wide attainments like Pliny
and Augustine, that mares were, in Lusitania, as the former asserts,
or in Cappadocia, according to the latter, fertilised by wind.[180.1]
And if the inhabitants of the district of Lampong, in the island of
Sumatra, be not maligned, they, at the beginning of the present
century, believed all the people on the neighbouring island of Engano
to be females who were impregnated in the same manner.[180.2]
It cannot of course be asserted that in every instance of magical
practices collected in the present chapter, pregnancy is believed to
be supernaturally caused by the means prescribed, apart from the
natural means, as in the tales. Indeed, the natural means are often
expressly to be employed in addition to the magical ceremonies. Yet
the line between natural and supernatural is so faint in savage minds
that it is difficult to know how much is to be ascribed to the one and
how much to the other. And we are justified in believing, not only
that the practices tend to render credible the stories, but further
that the stories and the practices--as well as superstitions, like
those mentioned in the last paragraph, unconnected with practice--are
inextricably intermingled, and owe their origin to the same habit of
thought. Nor must we forget that the relationship between father and
child was in early times imperfectly recognised. The researches of the
last five-and-twenty or thirty years have established that among many
savage races the father was held to be no relation to his children.
Even where he exercised, as among the native Australians, {181}
despotic power over wife and children, the latter were held to be his
rather as owner than as begetter; and the ownership of both wife and
children passed at his death to his brothers, while at the same time
the relationships of the children were reckoned exclusively with their
mother’s kin. This system of relationships, known scientifically as
Mother-right, traces whereof are almost everywhere found, can only
have sprung either from a kind of promiscuity wherein the true father
could not have been ascertained, or from an imperfect recognition of
the great natural fact of fatherhood. Both causes, perhaps, played
their part. But at least we may say that the attitude of mind which
favours the practices and beliefs we have been discussing is one which
would be consistent, and consistent alone, with the imperfect
recognition of paternity. And it is unquestionable that the
superstitions, once rooted, would be likely to survive long after
paternity had become an accepted fact, and, tenacious of their
existence, would seek new grounds of justification. This would have
the effect of gradually transforming the stories from matter-of-fact
statements of no unusual interest into sacred legends, into mere tales
told for pleasure, and into wonders believed but unexplained, and the
practices into religious rites and rude medical prescriptions.
CHAPTER VII.
DEATH AND BIRTH AS TRANSFORMATION.
{182}
In the course of our examination of tales of Supernatural Birth we
have more than once found that birth was to the hero merely a new
manifestation. He had previously existed in other shapes, and by
undergoing birth (preceded sometimes, but not always, by death) he was
entering on a new career, he was ascending a new stage of being. The
child in the Annamite story of Posthumous Revenge had been an eel,
with liberty of metamorphosis into other forms. Marjatta’s child in
the half-heathen postscript to the _Kalevala_ had been the creator of
the sun and moon. Yehl, the Thlinkit hero-god, repeatedly became the
son of ladies, who were beguiled into swallowing a pebble, a blade of
grass, or even a drop of water, which was no other than the divinity
in disguise. The subject, however, is so important, not merely in the
general study of savage ideas, but in relation to the myth of Perseus,
especially in its modern forms, that it is necessary to deal with it a
little more at length.
The oldest known story wherein transformation of this kind forms an
incident is that of _The Two Brothers_. The manuscript now in the
British Museum was written by the scribe Enna, or Ennana, and belonged
to the Egyptian {183} monarch Seti II., of the nineteenth dynasty,
before he came to the throne. We have the story, therefore, in the
shape it bore about the earlier half of the thirteenth century before
Christ. It is a long one, and I have only space for a very meagre
abstract. There were, thus it runs, two brothers, Anpu and Bata, of
whom Anpu, the elder, was married, and Bata served him. Anpu’s wife
fell in love with the younger brother, and tempted him as Potiphar’s
wife tempted Joseph, and with a similar result. The elder brother,
when his wife denounced Bata to him, became like a panther with rage,
and lay in wait behind the stable-door to slay his brother when he
returned from the field. The oxen, however, warn the youth, who flees
and invokes the Sun-god Horus to judge between himself and his
brother. With the god’s assistance he escapes; and Chnum, at Horus’
request, makes a wife for him, that he may not dwell alone. His
happiness, however, is not lasting. The sea carries one of the woman’s
fragrant locks to Egypt, where it is taken to the king, who sends to
seek its owner, and makes her his favourite. Now Bata kept his heart
in the top of the flower of the Cedar. This was known to the woman;
and by her advice the king sent and cut down the Cedar. The flower
fell to the ground, and Bata’s heart with it; and he died. When he
escaped from his brother, Bata had found means to convince him of his
innocence, and had given him a sign, saying that when Anpu should take
a jug of beer in his hand and it should turn into froth, then he
should know that Bata was dead, and he should come and look for him.
Anpu, warned in this way of his brother’s death, sought and found him;
and after a long search he discovered his heart lying beneath the
Cedar. He picked it up and put it into a cup of cold {184} water. Bata
thereupon revived, and having drunk up the water and his heart with
it, he became as he had been before. The next day he assumed the form
of a great bull with all the sacred marks, which his brother brought
and gave to the king. In this form Bata found means to make himself
known to his wife. She for her part was by no means pleased to see
him; and having wheedled an oath out of the king that he would grant
her whatsoever she asked, she demanded the bull’s liver. As he was
being slain two drops of his blood fell upon the king’s door-posts,
and forthwith grew up two mighty persea-trees. One of these trees
spoke to the Favourite, accusing her of her crimes, and declaring: “I
am Bata, I am living still, I have transformed myself.” She caused the
trees to be cut down; but while she stood by to watch, a splinter flew
off, and, entering her mouth, rendered her pregnant. In due time she
gave birth to a son, who became prince, and upon the king’s death
succeeded to the throne. Then he summoned the nobles and councillors;
his wife was brought to him, and he had a reckoning with her.[184.1]
There are many points of exceeding interest in this, one of the oldest
fairy-tales on record. For us, however, they centre on Bata’s
transformations. He changes first into a sacred bull without
undergoing death. He is then slain; and from his blood spring up two
persea-trees. These are cut down; and his final metamorphosis is, by
the medium of birth, once more into a human being; for there can be no
doubt that the child born of the king’s Favourite is regarded as Bata
himself. A modern Transylvanian _märchen_ unfolds a similar series of
adventures; though {185} it is wanting in the consummate irony of the
Egyptian tale, which makes the lady become pregnant of her foe and
give him at last the life to avenge himself of her villainies. A king
overhears two maidens boasting of what they would do, the one, if she
were married to him, the other, if she were his cook. He marries the
former, and makes the other his cook. But the latter is jealous; and
when the queen bears twins, a boy and a girl with golden hair, she
contrives to bury them in the dung-heap, and impose upon the king and
court with a cat and dog, which she alleges to be the queen’s
offspring. The king therefore buries his queen alive, and marries the
cook. Out of the dung-heap grew two golden fir-trees, in whose beauty
the king took great pleasure. His new wife, on the contrary, is
uneasy, and declares she cannot rest unless on boards made from those
very trees. The king reluctantly has them cut down; and now she would
be happy, but that in the night she hears the boards beneath the royal
bed conversing as brother and sister. Accordingly the next day she
causes them to be burnt in the oven; but two sparks fall among some
barley, which is given to an ewe. The ewe drops two lambs with golden
fleeces. As soon as she sees them, the queen falls sick and craves for
their hearts to eat. Once more compliant, her husband allows them to
be killed. Their hearts are roasted for the queen; their entrails are
thrown into the river. Two pieces are carried by the water and thrown
on a distant shore, where the two children with golden hair reappear
from them, and so charm the sun with their beauty that he stands to
watch them and goes not down for seven whole days. God, wondering why
the night so long delayed, went to inquire of the sun, and was shown
the twins. By His means they were restored to their father, {186} the
wicked queen was punished, and their mother brought back to
life.[186.1]
M. Cosquin, commenting on the Egyptian tale, has brought together a
number of analogues, chiefly European. I proceed to notice some of
these, and a few others containing a similar chain of incidents. In a
Roumanian story which follows the main lines of the Transylvanian, an
emperor’s son weds the youngest of three daughters. The heroine’s
foes, however, are not her sisters, but her husband’s stepmother and
_her_ daughter. As she had foredoomed, she bears twin sons with golden
hair and a golden star on the forehead. By his stepmother’s treachery
her husband is induced to believe that she has given birth to two
puppies; and he orders her to be buried in the earth to the breast,
that the world might know what was her punishment who would betray the
emperor’s son. Then he married his stepsister. The twins had been
interred beneath the emperor’s window; and out of their grave grew two
fair aspen-trees. In three days they had attained the stature of three
years, and the emperor took great pleasure in them. Long did his wife
beg for permission to cut them down ere he yielded; but, after all,
emperors are but men. So cut down they were, and made by his command,
the one into a bedstead for himself and the other for the empress. But
the bedsteads talked, as in the Transylvanian tale, and the empress
overheard them. The next day she caused them to be burnt, and their
ashes thrown {187} to the winds. When the fire was hottest there flew
out two sparks and fell into the deep water that flowed through the
realm. There they became two fish with golden scales. They were caught
by the imperial fishermen, and then changed back into their original
form of twin boys with golden hair and golden stars. When they had
grown up they made their way to the palace and told their tale, to the
confusion and condemnation of their enemies, and the restoration of
their mother to her rightful place.[187.1] According to a Sicilian
variant, the heroine, married against the will of the queen, her
mother-in-law, bears thirteen children, twelve sons and a daughter.
They are thrown into the garden, where they grow up as twelve
orange-trees and a lemon-tree. A goat eats them and bears the children
anew.[187.2] In a Bengalee tale the heroine kindly relieves her
fellow-wife by accidentally tumbling into a well. A rishi explains to
her husband that she was not of royal blood, but had been born a rat,
and changed by him at her own wish into a cat, then into a dog, a
boar, an elephant and a beautiful girl, successively. He directs the
well to be filled up, and causes a poppy-tree to grow up out of her
flesh and bones; and that is the origin of opium.[187.3]
A German tale belonging to an entirely different cycle approaches the
Egyptian _märchen_ in representing the transformations as incidents
of a contest between a man and a woman, wherein the man is ultimately
victorious. The hero, having disenchanted a king and all his court,
obtains a magical sword and becomes the champion of the unspelled
monarch against an aggressive neighbour. The {188} latter has a clever
daughter, who entraps the champion by her wiles and makes off with his
sword. This results in his total defeat and capture by her father, who
all-to hacks him, stuffs the pieces into a bag and sends it to the
invaded king with his compliments, and there was his champion. The
hero is, however, restored to life by a master-sorcerer, and endowed
with the power of assuming what shape he will. He takes that of a
magnificent horse, which the invading king is induced to buy. The
king’s daughter scents a trick, and the horse’s head is cut off. Three
drops of his blood fall into the apron of the king’s cook, and she
buries the apron, as the horse has previously directed her, under the
eaves. A cherry-tree grows up on the spot; and when the princess cuts
it down, the cook throws three chips into the pond, where they change
into three golden ducks. The princess kills two, and, capturing the
third, takes it into her bedchamber. There it finds the stolen sword
and flies off with it. Resuming his proper form, the hero defeats and
destroys the aggressive king and his whole family, and marries the
compassionate cook.[188.1] In a Russian story, the hero is betrayed by
his wife to the Turks, and killed. Recalled to life, he changes into a
marvellous horse with a golden mane, which the sultan buys. But
Cleopatra, the hero’s wife, recognises her husband through his magical
disguise. When the horse is slain, from his blood arises a bull with
golden hair. Cleopatra kills it in turn, and from its head an
apple-tree springs with fruit of gold. The apple-tree is cut down; and
its first chip is transformed into a golden duck, which overswims the
river and on the other side regains its pristine form as the
hero.[188.2] A Breton {189} tale represents the hero as changing
himself into a horse. When the horse is put to death, a ball of his
curdled blood is put on a stone in the sun and sprinkled with magical
water. A cherry-tree grows out of it, laden with fine red cherries.
When the cherry-tree is cut down, a cherry is sprinkled, and a
beautiful blue bird comes out of it. The treacherous wife is desirous
of catching it; and her new husband lays down the hero’s magical sword
to enable him to move more freely. The bird then seizes the sword,
and, rapidly changing back into the hero, puts his false wife and her
second choice to death.[189.1]
In none of the foregoing stories do we find the hero victorious by
means of a second birth from a woman. In a White-Russian variant of
_The Outcast Wife_ group, the heroine, married to a king, has two
sisters, who deceive the king as to her offspring and cause her twin
boys to be buried alive. Out of their graves grow two maples, one with
a golden, the other with a silver, stem. The king puts away his wife,
and marries one of her sisters. She has the maples cut down to make a
bed, and afterwards burns the bed and sprinkles the ashes on the road.
An ewe swallows some of the ashes, and bears two lambs, marked like
the boys, with a moon on the head and a star on the nape of the neck.
The new queen orders the lambs to be slaughtered, and their entrails
to be thrown out into the street. Her divorced sister having gathered
up the entrails, cooks and eats them, and thus becomes once more
mother to her sons. When they are grown up they reveal the whole story
to the king, and obtain the reinstatement of their mother and the
punishment of her guilty sister.[189.2] {190} A curious tale from
Cyprus brings before us a girl who is fated to wed her own father, of
whom she is to have a son, and that son she is afterwards to take for
husband. In order to defeat the prophecy she contrives her father’s
murder. From the ground where the body is buried an apple-tree springs
up and produces beautiful apples. The heroine buys some, and, eating
them, becomes pregnant. When she learns where the apples grew she
determines to kill her child. As soon as it is born, therefore, she
stabs it in the breast, nails it up in a coffer, and flings the coffer
into the sea. It is picked up by a vessel; and the captain, finding
the child still living, adopts it. It grows up to manhood and fulfils
the prophecy. From the wound-marks on his breast the mother recognises
in her husband her own child; and on hearing his story she understands
at last how useless it is to struggle against fate, and puts an end to
her own life.[190.1]
Quite another group is reached when we come to a series wherein the
heroine first appears in the shape of a fruit. This is opened by the
hero, and a maiden comes out. In a _märchen_ from Asia Minor the
maiden is, in the hero’s absence, thrown into a well by a black slave,
who takes her place. In the well she becomes a golden fish. When the
prince catches it the slave gets him to kill it and make broth of it
for her. But three drops of its blood fall to the ground and shoot up
into a cypress-tree. The tree is cut down and burnt. A chip clings to
the dress of an old woman who comes and asks for a light; and this
chip changes again into the heroine.[190.2] In Basile’s version the
slave sticks a needle into the lady’s temple and transforms {191} her
into a dove. The dove is caught, killed, scalded and plucked, in order
to be cooked; and the water and feathers are thrown into the garden.
Within three days a citron-tree, like that out of which the heroine
originally came, rises, and bears three fine citrons. The king plucks
them; and when he has opened them, his true love emerges from the
third, and condign punishment is meted out to the slave.[191.1] A tale
from the Deccan presents a maiden, brought up in an eagle’s nest,
after sundry adventures happily married to a rajah. She is pitched
into the water-tank by her jealous fellow-wife. A sunflower grows up
in the tank; and the jealous woman, when she finds her husband
becoming fond of it, orders her servants to dig it up and burn it. A
mango-tree grows up on the spot where the sunflower has been burnt,
bearing one magnificent mango. It is gathered by a milk-woman, and
turns into the heroine.[191.2] A variant, which looks like an earlier
form of the story, brings the heroine originally out of a bél-fruit.
The sunflower is replaced by a lotus; and when the false wife tears
the lotus-flower to pieces a bél-tree grows on the spot, bearing one
fruit, which contains the Bél-princess once more.[191.3] In a
Cinderella tale, told by the Tjames, Kajong, persecuted by her
foster-sister Halœk, throws herself into a lake and suffers
transformation into a golden turtle. The king marries Halœk instead,
but cannot forget Kajong. The golden turtle is caught, and in the
king’s absence his wife kills and eats it, throwing the shell behind
the house. A bamboo springs up from the shell. When Halœk cooks and
eats the bamboo-shoot, the husk becomes a bird. She cooks the bird;
and the {192} feathers, thrown away, turn into a mœkya-tree, the
fruit of which bears a resemblance to the outline of a woman. Out of
the fruit the heroine comes again.[192.1]
There is a group of stories very popular in Europe and known to the
farthest extremities of Asia and Africa. As usually told, a girl or a
boy is killed by an envious brother and buried. Some time after, a
bone is picked up and fashioned into a shepherd’s pipe; or a reed
growing on the grave is cut and made into a similar instrument. No
sooner does the musician put the pipe to his mouth than the voice of
the murdered child is heard within it, reciting his death and accusing
his murderer. Occasionally, however, the tree, or plant, which grows
from the grave sings or speaks of itself, as in the Dahoman version,
where a mushroom appears on the grave. The mother of the murdered boy
is about to pluck it, when it says to her: “Mother, pluck not. I was
with my comrades. They gave me two thousand cowries. They only gave
one thousand to my brother. Then he cruelly killed me; my brother
killed me!” Sometimes it is a rose which speaks of itself, or when it
is put to the mouth; sometimes a flute made from the branch of a tree
which has grown on the grave. In one case it is a pomegranate from
such a tree: when the fruit is brought to the king it changes into the
head of the murdered man. At other times the crime is revealed by a
whistle, or pipe, which has belonged to the victim, or has fallen in
his blood. Again, a bird will proclaim itself the victim and tell the
story, or lead the avenging kindred to the grave. A Chinese drama,
believed to be founded on a folktale, represents the body as burnt by
the assassin, {193} and the ashes made into a dish. The dish denounces
the criminal.[193.1]
The old Scottish ballad of _Binnorie_ belongs to this group, though in
all its British variants it has been modernised. Scott’s version, the
best known, is only half traditional. The elder sister drowns the
younger for the sake of her lover. The body is found by the miller in
“the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie.”
“A famous harper passing by
The sweet pale face he chanced to spy.
. . . . . .
“He made a harp of her breast-bone,
Whose sounds would melt a heart of stone.
“The strings he framed of her yellow hair,
Whose notes made sad the listening ear.”
Here the ballad has obviously been manipulated; but a comparison of
other versions shows that the sense has been preserved.
“He laid this harp upon a stone,
And straight it began to play alone.
“‘O yonder sits my father, the king,
And yonder sits my mother, the queen.
“‘And yonder stands my brother Hugh,
And by him my William, sweet and true!’
“But the last tune that the harp played then,
Binnorie, O Binnorie!
Was ‘Woe to my sister, false Helen!’
By the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie.”
{194}
“According to all complete and uncorrupted forms of the ballad,” says
Professor Child, comparing not only British examples, but also a large
number from Denmark, Scandinavia, Iceland and the Färoe Islands,
“either some part of the body of the drowned girl is taken to furnish
a musical instrument, a harp or a viol, or the instrument is wholly
made from the body.” And he suggests that the original conception was
the simple and beautiful one found in several variants, that the
king’s harper, or the girl’s lover, takes three locks of her yellow
hair to string his harp with. I venture to think he is wrong. The
tradition supplied by the singer of one of the Swedish versions,
though lost from the ballad itself, is much nearer the mark in
relating that the drowned maiden floated ashore and grew up into a
lime-tree, from whose wood the harp was made. As a matter of art it
may be that, as Professor Child goes on to remark, “the restoration of
the younger sister, like all good endings foisted on tragedies,
emasculates the story.” But art is a slow growth, a growth of
civilisation, and this tragedy is an ancient, a barbarous tale. Here
the good ending has not been foisted on. It is of the very essence and
primitive matter of the plot. It is not found in the more modern and
cultured versions, but in the ruder and more archaic. It does not
occur once in England and Scotland, where the influence of culture has
been most decisive.[194.1]
Without tarrying to discuss these ballads any further, let me refer
briefly to three variants of an unmistakably antiquated character
collected among the Santal aborigines of Bengal. In one of them the
maiden is drowned by her seven brothers’ wives. She reappears as a
bamboo growing {195} on the embankment of the tank where she had lost
her life. Out of the bamboo a fiddle is made which, when played, seems
to wail as in bitter anguish, and moves the hearers to tears. It is
acquired by a village chief. In the absence of the household the
maiden comes out of it and prepares the family meal. The chief’s son
watches, discovers and marries her. A second version relates that the
maiden was given by her brothers to the water-spirit to obtain water
in a tank they had made. Right in the middle of the tank where she was
drowned there sprang up an upel-flower, the purple sheen of which
filled the beholder with delight. The bridegroom, to whom she had been
betrothed previously to her sacrifice, comes to claim his bride, and
gathers the flower. Ere the bridal procession reaches the bridegroom’s
dwelling on its return, the flower has become the bride. The third
version is more striking still. Here the heroine was eaten by a
monkey. The monkey died, and from the place where his body decayed a
gourd sprang and grew, and bore a fruit. A banjo was made of this
gourd, which emitted wonderful music and sang the maiden’s fate. Her
sister, the rani, cheated the minstrel out of the instrument and hid
it in her own room. There the maiden, coming out, was discovered by
the rajah, her sister’s husband; and matters were arranged more
happily than in the Scottish ballad, by the two sisters’ sharing one
spouse.[195.1]
In most of the cases we have dealt with, the metamorphoses {196}
undergone by the hero or heroine are, as in the Egyptian tale, stages
of a contest. A curious example, where the contest is between a
_mbulu_, or supernatural female, and a woman, is given in a Zulu tale.
The _mbulu_ was found out and put to death. From the spot where she
was buried a pumpkin came up and tried to kill the child of the woman
who had married the _mbulu’s_ husband. But the people chopped the
pumpkin into pieces, burned them and threw the ashes into the river,
so that nothing more could come of that _mbulu_.[196.1] In the Russian
story of _The Fiend_, the struggle is with a supernatural being over
whose personality Christianity has thrown a deeper tint of horror. The
heroine, having fallen under the Fiend’s power, dies. By her
directions and her wise old grandmother’s advice, her body is not
carried out through the doorway, but (according to an old custom, the
object of which was to prevent the dead from finding the way back) by
a hole dug under the threshold, and is buried at a crossway. A
wondrous flower arises from the spot. Taken home by a young lord and
placed in a flower-pot, the blossom falls at night from its stem and
turns into a lovely maiden, whom of course the nobleman weds.[196.2]
The stories cited in previous chapters of the hermit burnt to death
and then born anew from a girl who eats, or smells, his heart, or some
other portion of his body, are unconnected with a contest. So is the
Eskimo tale of the young woman who was caught by a whale. After living
with him some time she fled and lived with the seals in the form of a
seal. In that shape she was harpooned by a man and cut to pieces. Her
head was taken home and thrown beneath the bench, whence she slipped
into the womb of {197} the man’s wife and was born anew. The name she
received in this fresh birth was her old and euphonious name of
Avigiatsiak.[197.1] A Tjame tale speaks of a youth who dies of
hopeless love of a princess. Before his death he begs his mother, as
soon as he has yielded up the ghost, to take out his liver, dry it and
preserve it in a box. The king is attacked with a disease of the eyes,
and is advised by his astrologers to steep the dried liver of a man in
water and bathe his eyes with it. The lover’s is the only one to be
procured. In bathing his eyes with the water the king observes a
little babe playing in the basin. He calls his daughters to look at
it; and it draws the youngest of them, the object of the dead man’s
love, into the basin, where she disappears. Recourse is had again to
the astrologers, who on consulting the lots discover the history of
the dead lover and the cause of the princess’ disappearance. In the
end, as the astrologers predict, the king’s wife bears a boy, who is
no other than the lover born again, and his first mother bears a girl.
When they grow up the king marries them; and on his death the boy
becomes king.[197.2] Numerous Chinese tales are founded on the same
superstition. In one, a man on dying contrives to avoid drinking the
oblivious potion to which all the dead are condemned, and thus
remembers his transformations. For his crimes he is next born as a
horse, then as a puppy, afterwards as a snake, and lastly as a human
being once more.[197.3] In another, the son of the Thunder-god takes a
man for a trip among the clouds. In the course of his adventures he
manages to steal a small star, which he brings back with him to the
earth. By day it looked an ordinary, dull stone, but at {198} night it
became brilliant and lighted up the house. One evening it began to
flit about like a fire-fly, and finally entered his wife’s mouth and
went down her throat. That night the husband dreamed that an old
friend long dead appeared to him, and said: “I am the Shao-wei star.
Your friendship is still cherished by me, and now you have brought me
back from the sky. Truly our destinies are knitted together, and I
will repay your kindness by becoming your son.” His wife afterwards
bore him a boy.[198.1]
A favourite theme in Western folk-song, a theme also known as far away
as China, is that of the lovers, brought, like Tristram and Isolte, to
a tragic end, from whose graves two trees grow and intertwine their
branches, as if they joined in a lasting embrace. It is obvious that
the trees are merely the lovers transformed. Some of the variants in
ballad or _märchen_ make this clear. Such is the ballad of Count
Nello of Portugal. The hero there falls in love with the Infanta. But
her father opposes the match, and cuts off the lover’s head. The
Infanta then dies, and is buried before the altar, while her lover is
laid near the church-porch. On the one grave sprouts a cypress, on the
other an orange-tree; and their branches unite. The king orders them
to be cut down. Blood flows from the cuts; and from the one tree flies
forth a dove and from the other a wood-pigeon.[198.2] So in the
Highland story of Deirdre the lovers are buried on either side of a
loch. A fir-shoot grows out of either grave, and they unite in a knot
above the loch. Twice the king orders them to be cut down, and twice
they grow again. The third time they are allowed to shoot forth and
unite in peace.[198.3]
{199}
But this theme is found not only in _märchen_ and ballad. It is not
less frequent in saga. In Kurdestan were shown the graves of two
lovers, renowned in Kurdish story, which were, in the sixteenth
century, if we may believe the native writer Ahmed Khain of Bayazid, a
place of pilgrimage. On each of the graves grew a rose-tree, whose
branches entwined themselves together in token, as we are told, of
love.[199.1] In Germany many tales are told of white lilies growing in
sign of innocence and purity out of graves. Zingerle cites, among
others, the case of William of Montpellier, from whose mouth sprang a
lily wherein the words _Ave Maria_ were to be read. From the grave of
Saint Andrew of Rinn in the Tirol a snow-white lily also appeared, on
whose leaves, as they opened, letters were seen. It was plucked by a
boy before the letters could be read; and the deed cost his family
dear, for few of them there were who did not come to a violent or a
premature end.[199.2] In Pomerania, a lad who learned with difficulty,
and only succeeded in remembering the words “Our Father who art in
heaven,” died unconfirmed. The commune would not permit his burial in
consecrated earth, so he was laid outside the churchyard, close to the
fence. Out of his tomb arose a beautiful white lily, bearing plainly
to be read the words “Our Father who art in heaven.” On digging, it
was found to be rooted in his heart. Near Wollin, on the road to
Poblotz, is a spot covered with dog-roses, where, years {200} ago, a
woman was burnt as a witch and her remains buried. Before the end came
to her sufferings she said: “If I be a witch, thorns will grow on my
grave; if not, then roses.”[200.1] Space does not admit of our
following the tale in this shape through all the countries of Europe;
and it is needless. We may turn instead to note a few analogous
superstitions elsewhere. Among the Kirghiz every one on whose grave a
tree spontaneously grows is deemed a saint; while among the Gallas of
Abyssinia wood that has been burning a little is placed upon the grave
after the funeral, and if it grow it is taken as a sign that the dead
man is happy.[200.2] The Santals believe that good men enter into
fruit-bearing trees.[200.3] In the Molucca Islands there is a tree
which bears during the night, from sunset to sunrise, a rapid
succession of fragrant white flowers. To account for this phenomenon
the inhabitants of Ternate have a tradition that there was once a
beautiful woman who was beloved by the sun, and who, being deserted by
her fickle lover, slew herself. Her body was, in accordance with the
custom of the country, burnt; and from her ashes arose the tree,
called by the early Portuguese voyagers the Tree of Sorrow.[200.4] The
legend current among the inhabitants of Nias, an island off the coast
of Sumatra, to account for the origin of the cocoa-nut-tree, relates
that Halu hada, a supernatural being, one {201} day sneezed so
violently that he sneezed his head off. It fell to earth, and, being
covered up, the precious tree, indispensable to man, sprang from the
spot.[201.1] A German practice is manifestly a relic of a belief
similar to that recorded in these tales and superstitions. If a farmer
have several times a foal or calf die, he buries one of them in the
garden, planting a young willow in its mouth. When the tree grows up
it is never polled or lopped, but is allowed to grow its own way, and
is believed to guard the farm from future casualties of the same
kind.[201.2]
But though the identity of the tree with the dead man, or as in the
last-cited custom with the animal, is clear in all these traditions,
it is not precisely affirmed as would seem to be the case with the
story of the pomegranate referred to a few pages back, or with an Arab
_märchen_ from Tunis, in which a vine grows up from the very place
where the blood of a murdered man had flowed. The murderer finds one
enormous bunch of grapes upon it, although the season of grapes is not
yet. Struck with its beauty, as well as with the uncommon occurrence,
he takes the bunch to the sultan. On opening the basket the sultan
found no grapes, but a man’s head freshly cut off, dropping with
blood. The murderer, horror-stricken, confessed his crime, and was
summarily executed.[201.3] Thus too in Ojibway legends, reproduced by
Longfellow, that mysterious being
“… the young Mondamin,
With his soft and shining tresses,
With his garments green and yellow,
With his long and glossy plumage,”
came and wrestled thrice with one of their heroes. The {202} third
time the Ojibway was victorious. His antagonist was overthrown, killed
and buried. The victor watched the grave,
“Kept the dark mould soft above it,
Kept it clean from weeds and insects,
Drove away with scoffs and shoutings
Kahgahgee, the king of ravens.
Till at length a small green feather
From the earth shot slowly upward,
Then another and another,
And before the summer ended
Stood the maize in all its beauty,
With its shining robes about it,
And its long, soft, yellow tresses;
And in rapture Hiawatha
Cried aloud: ‘It is Mondamin!
Yes, the friend of man, Mondamin!’”
The Brazilians have a parallel tradition about the manioc. It was a
maiden who died, and, being buried in her mother’s house, grew up as a
plant, flourished and bore fruit.[202.1] Among some tribes of Kaffirs,
when twins are born they are examined, and the one appearing the more
delicate is suffocated by placing a clod of earth in its mouth. When
dead, it is buried near the doorway of the hut, and a dwarf aloe is
planted over the grave. “The aloe is regarded in some way as the
living representative of the dead infant; its spirit or shade is
supposed to be in it, or to be hovering about it. When it is planted,
its spines are carefully cut away that the survivor may play about it,
and drag himself up by it, and make himself strong, as he would have
done with his fellow-twin had he been permitted to live.”[202.2] It
{203} would be difficult to find a practice which would better explain
that of the German farmer with his dead calf.
In classical legends we meet everywhere cases of transformation,
either before or after death, of men and women into trees or plants,
or into some of the lower animals. The most famous case, and one which
has recently been submitted to careful examination by two
distinguished living anthropologists, is that of Attis, who was
changed into a pine-tree and in that form worshipped. It would be
impertinent in me, after the acute and exhaustive discussions by Mr.
Frazer and Mr. Grant Allen, to occupy any space with the consideration
either of the legend or the cult. I only refer to them in this place
as an illustration of ancient belief in metamorphosis, and for the
purpose of recalling the reader’s attention to its identity with the
superstitions of savage tribes, as well as those preserved in modern
folklore, which we are now reviewing. The cult of Attis may not have
been based, as Mr. Grant Allen thinks, on the worship of a dead man.
“The tree-spirit and the corn-spirit, like most other deities,” may
not “originate in the ghost of the deified ancestor.”[203.1] We need
not go the length of Mr. Herbert Spencer’s Euhemerism; on the
contrary, we may regard it as a child (one among many) of his passion
for explaining everything quite clearly, for stopping up all gaps and
stubbing up all difficulties in his synthesis, rather than an
all-sufficient account of the beginnings of religion. It is certain,
however, that the legend as we have it, the worship as it is recorded
for us, implied a belief in metamorphosis as a possible and actual
occurrence consequent upon death. This belief had descended to {204}
classic times from savagery, for to the savage mind death very often
is merely metamorphosis. Nor, as we have seen, is the metamorphosis
confined to vegetable forms. The pious Æneas beheld his father
Anchises in a snake that crept from his tomb. The Zulu, not less
pious, beholds his father in a snake lurking about his kraal.[204.1]
The ancient Egyptians held that the souls of the departed could assume
animal forms.[204.2] The Yorubas think the souls of the dead are
sometimes born again in animals, or, though more rarely, in
plants.[204.3] In the East Indies, a Dyak who dies by accident, as by
drowning, is not buried, but carried into the forest and simply laid
down there. It is believed that his soul enters a tree, a fish, or
some other brute. Accordingly certain kinds of fish are not eaten, and
certain kinds of wood are not used, because they willingly harbour
souls. On the other hand, the soul of a man over whom all proper
funeral rites have been performed enters the City of Souls. But it
cannot abide there for ever. After a life seven times as long as on
the earth it dies and returns to this world, where it enters a
mushroom, a fruit or a leaf, in the hope that it may be eaten by a
human being or one of the lower animals. In such case the deceased is
born again in the next offspring of the living creature which has
eaten it; otherwise he comes to an end.[204.4] The inhabitants of Nias
believe that the soul at death divides into three parts. One of them
goes to the village of the dead, and there often takes brute-form.
Thus murderers become grasshoppers, those who die without male issue
become {205} night-flying moths, old men become hogs, and young
children earthworms. Another part, called the _ehèha_, must be
received in his mouth by the son of the dying person from the mouth of
the latter, else it turns into a small animal and lingers about the
body until search be made for it. When found, it is safely conveyed
into a statuette representing the deceased.[205.1] The natives of Ugi,
in the Solomon Islands, believe that the souls of the dead pass into
fireflies.[205.2] The Moquis of North America maintained that death
was nothing but a process of transmutation, and that the body was
changed into animals, plants, and inanimate objects.[205.3] The
medicine men and women of the Sioux, it was believed, might be changed
after death into wild beasts.[205.4] Among the Gallinomero of
California bad men were thought to return in the shape of coyotes,
just as the Buddhist population of Ladak hold that a malicious person
is reincarnated as a marmot.[205.5] A Tirolese tale exhibits the
shapes even yet believed over a wide extent of Christendom to be
assumed by guilty and by innocent souls. For many years, it is said, a
large toad haunted the steps of a vaulted grave at Meran. Flung away
it was, and killed it was; but the next Ember Day there it would be
sitting again upon the steps. At last a pious woman guessed that it
was a poor soul, and spoke to it, asking what were the conditions of
its deliverance. They were hard, but she fulfilled them; and as soon
as atonement was made the toad changed into a dove, white as a
stainless flower, and {206} flew up before its deliverer’s eyes into
heaven.[206.1] The numerous British legends of ghost-laying, in which
the dead unquiet soul appears as a bull, a black dog, a toad, a fly,
or what not, recur to the mind in this connection. The beast that is,
after a struggle, imprisoned by the parson, or some other conjurer, in
a boot, a snuff-box, or a bottle, or bricked up in the haunted
chamber, is only the changed form of a once living man or woman. But
the superstition as thus presented has been so often and so well
commented on, that it is needless to illustrate it further.
We can now understand the Bulgarian ballad cited in Chapter IV.,
containing the pathetic narrative of the hyacinths growing out of the
dead man’s grave and causing his mother to give birth to another son.
The flowers were a new manifestation of the youth who had been
untimely slain; and by them he entered again into his mother’s womb
and was born. This and others of the tales referred to in the same
chapter and that which follows it are parallel with the tale of _The
Two Brothers_ in the transformations they present. And both they and
many of the practices detailed in the last chapter point very clearly
to the belief that a dead person can be born again, if only the right
means be taken for that end.
All our illustrations of the doctrine of Transformation have been
drawn from cases where the hero is conceived as having begun his
career in human shape, whether as man or deity, save in the one
instance of the Annamite story of _Posthumous Revenge_. There his
pristine figure was an eel. But if the power of metamorphosis be such
that human beings can be changed by means of death {207} and a fresh
birth into brute and vegetable form, brutes and vegetables may equally
be changed by the same agency into human beings. The _märchen_ of
_The King of the Fishes_ displays this power. In the light of the
transmutations we have passed in review, it is abundantly evident that
the fisherman’s sons, their horses, dogs and life-tokens, are nothing
more nor less than the ancestor-fish in a new mould. In previous
chapters we have examined cases in which men and women deceased have
been held to reappear as human babes without undergoing any
intermediate change into lower forms; and we have others yet to
examine. What is expressly affirmed in tales where pregnancy is caused
by tasting the ashes of a corpse, what is implicit in the disgusting
superstitions which lead women to swallow portions of dead bodies,
must also be understood in the parallel cases where fishes and fruit
are eaten and result in the production of children. Here then we have
the real meaning of the tales and superstitions considered in the last
three chapters. At their root lies the belief in Transformation.
Flowers, fruit, and other vegetables, eggs, fishes, spiders, worms,
and even stones, are all capable of becoming human beings. They only
await absorption in the shape of food, or in some other appropriate
manner, into the body of a woman, to enable the metamorphosis to be
accomplished. In some cases, as where drugs and other compounds are
used, or where water or sunbeams are the fructifying power, this
meaning has been forgotten. The virtue of such means is usually
imputed to magical or divine power. But this does not appear to be the
original belief. The original belief is intimately bound up with the
savage theory of the universe. In that theory no strict line of
cleavage runs across Nature. All things may change their {208} shape,
some at will, others on the fulfilment of certain conditions, whereof
death, as applying to all animal and vegetable life, is perhaps the
most usual. Most of the instances of death and new birth we have yet
to deal with have little apparent relation to this point. But, so far
as they add to the general evidence as to the reappearance of the dead
in fresh births, even the least relevant of them are not without
value.
According to the classical mythology, when Orion’s two daughters
sacrificed themselves for Thebes, two young men sprang from their
ashes. Ovid describes the goblet presented by Anius, the priest-king
of Delos, to Æneas, as carved with a representation of the scene:
“Out of their maiden embers, lo! twin youths,
Lest the race fail, arise, Coronæ named,
And lead the funeral pomp.”[208.1]
Although the poet speaks of the devoted virgins as their mothers, we
shall probably not be far wrong in conjecturing that the youths were
originally regarded as new and worthier manifestations of the maidens
whose virile courage had not hesitated at self-inflicted death, in
pursuance of the oracle, to save their devoted city from the plague.
However this may be, elsewhere we frequently find stories of men who
have died and been born again. The Mogul emperor Akbar is said to have
declared that he had formerly been a Brumhuchari, named Mukundu.
Worldly desires were excited in his mind by cow’s hairs in some milk
which he had drunk; and he began to long for wisdom and greatness. The
pipul-tree under which he was sitting had the power of granting any
wish. Therefore, laying hold of it, he {209} renounced life in Gunga,
and reappeared as Akbar.[209.1] A Mongolian tale relates that Shêduir
Van, a Khotogait prince, having been guilty of plotting insurrection
against the emperor of China, was caught and condemned to execution.
Before being beheaded, he said: “I am to be executed; but that is no
misfortune; my soul shall enter the womb of the emperor’s wife.” The
empress accordingly gave birth to a son, who had a cicatrice on the
neck. The wise men advised the emperor that the soul of Shêduir Van
had entered her womb. The child was therefore destroyed. The empress
conceived once more, and bore a son with a scar. The emperor, again
advised by his wise men that this was the soul of Shêduir Van,
ordered the babe to be thrown into the fire; but the charcoal went out
and changed into water. After this, we are told that the soul of
Shêduir Van did not again enter the empress’ womb, but revealed
itself as a hairless bay mare, whose hide is preserved to the present
day.[209.2]
Like the story of the great monarch Akbar, that of Shêduir Van has
probably been influenced by Buddhistic thought. But in both cases the
influence would be that of Buddhistic thought only as popularly
understood. The common people of India, we may safely assume--still
less the tribes of Tibet and the practical Chinese--never absorbed
into their minds the abstract doctrines of Karma and the Skandhas. It
is, indeed, more than doubtful whether these philosophical
speculations have ever penetrated the intellects of the greatest
doctors of the Northern Church. The current belief is illustrated in
the Chinese tales I have quoted. Even more strikingly is it
exemplified {210} in the successive incarnations which provide a
perpetual succession of Grand Lamas at Lhasa, and of skooshoks for
minor monasteries. While as to the Southern Church, we are not
dependent for our assumption upon the folklore and the general culture
of the Cingalese and the peoples of Further India. In the _Játakas_,
or parables attributed to Gautama, we have irrefragable witness of the
teaching current from a very early period in Buddhist history. They
are apologues, most of them probably of much older date, which have
acquired sacredness by being fitted to alleged events in the ministry
of the Buddha. The Master is represented as taking occasion, from some
remark made by his disciples upon a passing occurrence, to declare
that in a former birth the same things had happened to them; and in
illustration of his statement he tells the tale. The following may
stand for a typical conclusion or application. It is that of the
parable of the cruel crane outwitted by the crab: “When the Teacher
had finished this discourse showing that ‘Not now only, O mendicants,
has this man been outwitted by the country robe-maker, long ago he was
outwitted in the same way,’ he established the connection, and summed
up the Játaka, by saying, ‘At that time he [the crane] was the
Jetavana robe-maker, the crab was the country robe-maker, but the
Genius of the Tree was I myself.’” To the personages of the tale is
thus ascribed complete identity with the Buddha and his
contemporaries. Transmigration, in short, as conceived in popular
Buddhism, was no product of the subtleties of Hindu metaphysics. It
was no refined philosophical doctrine. It is undiscoverable in the
_Rig-Veda_, the earliest sacred book of the Sanskrit-speaking
conquerors of India. Its ethical value, even, if we may judge from the
_Játakas_, was of the smallest. Such as it was, Transmigration {211}
was a direct evolution of the more savage belief in Transformation, as
we have seen that belief exemplified in the present chapter, and
hardly distinguishable from it, either in its terms or in its
consequences.
Far in the west the Celts are reported to have held the dogma of
Transmigration. This report, coming to us from writers imbued with
Greco-Roman philosophy, and interpreting, according to the custom of
classical antiquity, the religions of barbarous races in the terms of
their own, has been understood to imply an elaborate philosophical
system such as those of Pythagoras and Buddha. That the Celts had
imbibed Buddhist theories we cannot suppose. The doctrines of
Pythagoras may, indeed, have penetrated into Gaul by commercial routes
or by contact with Greek colonies. Yet, if they did, it is strange
that no other vestige of the Pythagorean philosophy is imputed to the
Celts, and that the Druidical religion, whereof we are told the dogma
in question was part, blossomed, as it is said to have done, most
perfectly in Britain, where it was furthest removed from all foreign
influences. We know directly little concerning Druidism. Our
knowledge, as far as it goes, leads us to think the religion of the
ancient Britons and Gauls was of the same general character as other
barbarous cults. Arising thus from the common ground of savagery,
there is no reason why Celtic opinion may not have begun to develop in
the same direction as popular Buddhism. Neither Celtic mythology,
however, as known to us, nor Celtic folklore, as reported by mediæval
and modern writers, affords ground for supposing that metempsychosis
in any philosophical sense was part of the ancient Celtic creed. In
touching, a few pages back, on Barguests, as ghosts in animal mould
are technically called, we disposed {212} of the most salient point of
modern Celtic folklore, for we found it to be an expression, in no way
divergent from that of other uncultivated peoples, of the universal
doctrine of Transformation. We shall now briefly discuss the examples
to be found in what remains to us of the ancient mythology.
The story of Taliessin, though only found in a manuscript of the
seventeenth century, comes, it is generally conceded, within this
category; for its coincidences with the older Celtic traditions are
too striking to allow of any other explanation. Ceridwen, the wife of
Tegid the Bald, had, among other children, a son of such extreme
ugliness that she thought he was not likely to be admitted amongst men
of noble birth unless he had some exalted merits or knowledge. So she
undertook, with the aid of the books of Fferyll--that is to say,
Vergil the Magician, a character which Vergil the poet is made to
sustain in mediæval tradition--to boil a caldron of Inspiration and
Science for his benefit. Now, this caldron required to be boiled for a
year and a day; at the end of which time three precious drops would be
obtained, the rest of its contents being poisonous, and indeed highly
explosive. The caldron was placed in charge of Gwion the Little and a
blind man named Mordav, while Ceridwen herself went to gather herbs of
virtue. But before the expiration of the year and a day the three
precious drops flew out of the caldron and fell upon Gwion’s finger,
which he instinctively put to his mouth to allay the scalding. He at
once became possessed of all knowledge, and foresaw his danger from
Ceridwen’s rage when she found her preparations had been in vain. He,
therefore, fled, hotly pursued by the witch. To elude her he changed
into a hare, whereupon she took the shape {213} of a greyhound. He ran
towards the river, and became a fish, to chase which she assumed the
form of an otter. Gwion then flew up as a bird. He soon found himself
followed by a hawk, which was no other than his enemy; and just as she
was about to stoop upon him he dropped among a heap of winnowed wheat
on the floor of a barn, and turned himself into one of the grains.
From a hawk to a black hen the transformation was easy; and Ceridwen
thus pecked up the grain in question and swallowed it. She became by
this means pregnant, and gave birth to a beautiful boy--a new
manifestation of Gwion the Little; and when he was born she wrapped
him up in a hide and cast him into the sea, by which he was ultimately
thrown upon the weir of Gwyddno. From thence he was rescued to become
the king of the bards, Taliessin.[213.1] Two poems attributed to
Taliessin enumerate many more metamorphoses than are mentioned in the
tale. The exact date of these poems is, in the present state of Welsh
scholarship, unascertainable; but they are certainly not later than
the fourteenth century. One of them speaks of the poet’s original
country as the region of the summer stars, and identifies him with
Merlin and other sages and bards. Confining our attention, however, to
the narrative, we may lay aside the earlier changes as links of a
chain of incidents common in fairy-tales, and known technically as the
Transformation-fight. An example of it familiar to every reader is the
contest between the princess and the Jinn in the story of the Second
Calender in the _Arabian Nights_. These changes are not effected by
death and birth as are the ones we are considering now. In the final
{214} change, on the other hand, Gwion is devoured by the witch and
reproduced as her son, just as Bata is swallowed in the shape of a
splinter of the persea-tree by the king’s Favourite, and born again of
her, to become her destruction.
So far the Welsh mythology: a parallel instance is afforded by the
Erse. Both have suffered from the Euhemerism of the Middle Ages that
has preserved them for us; but the true lines of the tales are not too
far obliterated for our present purpose. The story of Tuan mac
Cairill, then, as we find it embalmed in the Irish chronicles, makes
him the sole survivor of the band of Partholon, who first colonised
the island after the Deluge. Fallen into decrepitude after many years,
he saw a new immigration led by Nemed, flying from which he fasted
three days, lay down to sleep and was changed into a stag. Again he
fell into old age, fasted, and was metamorphosed into a wild boar.
Meanwhile, the descendants of Nemed had all died out. Semion, then,
the ancestor of the three tribes of the Fir Domnann, the Fir Bolg and
the Galiûin, established himself in the land. After a time the
process was repeated, and Tuan became a great sea-eagle. Beothach,
from whom descended the Tuatha De Danann, seized the island, and
afterwards the sons of Mile, whose descendants are the living race.
The sea-eagle found himself in the hole of a tree on the bank of a
river. There he fasted nine days, and, sleeping, awoke as a salmon in
the stream. For a long time he escaped the fishermen’s nets; at last
he was caught and carried to the wife of Carell, king of that
district. She saw the fish, longed for it, cooked it, and ate it up.
But this was far from being the end of Tuan. From her he was born
again, {215} wise man and prophet, and was called Tuan, son of Carell.
He lived not only to be baptized at the coming of Saint Patrick, but
to converse with Saint Columba, and to narrate the whole history of
Ireland, as he remembered it during his various transformations, to
Saint Finnen in the middle of the sixth century. All the ancient
history, all the old genealogies rest upon his authority.[215.1]
Etain, another mythological figure of Ireland, had a somewhat similar
adventure. She was one of the two wives of Mider, who belonged to the
Tuatha De Danann. Oengus, son of the Dagde, and foster-son of Mider,
carried her off, and she became his wife. Her first husband, however,
had not ceased to remember her, and he sought if by any means he might
recover her. His other wife, bent on frustrating him, and watching her
opportunity, sent a wind that blew Etain out of the bower built for
her by Oengus, and deposited her on the roof of a house where the
lords of Ulster and their wives were engaged in a drinking-bout. Upon
the table beneath stood a golden cup of beer beside one of the ladies.
From the roof, by the opening which did duty for a chimney, Etain fell
into the cup. The lady swallowed her unperceived in the next draught,
and gave birth to her again after nine months. Thus Etain began a new
life. She became the loveliest of Irish maidens, and wedded the
supreme king Eochaid Airem, who reigned at Tara. But Mider had not yet
ceased to love her. Disguised as a warrior, he sought the king and
challenged him to a game of chess. When the board was set: “Play,”
said he to the king. “I do not play without stakes,” replied the
monarch. Mider, on his side, bet fifty {216} brown horses,
large-breasted, with limbs slender and agile. “For my part,” said the
king, sure of success, “if I lose, I will pay what you like.” They
played; the king lost, and Mider demanded his wife. The king objected
that he was entitled to his revenge; and his adversary, with a bad
grace, yielded. A year passed, during which the king saw nothing of
Mider; though he often appeared to Etain and wooed her, but without
success; for she proved faithful to her husband. At the end of the
year Mider came and claimed the second game. They played; again
Eochaid lost, and Mider demanded to put his arms around Etain and give
her a kiss. “Come back in a month,” replied the king, “and it shall be
granted you.” When the fatal day arrived, his rival found Eochaid
surrounded by his warriors, the fortress closed and guarded on every
side. The day passed, and no antagonist presented himself. But at
night Mider stood all at once in the midst of the hall, the beautiful
Mider, more beautiful than ever. No one had seen him enter. The lady
blushed when he boldly named his errand. “Do not blush,” quoth Mider;
“thou hast no reason to reproach thyself. For a whole year I have not
ceased to woo thee with jewels and wealth--thee, the fairest of the
women of Ireland; and thou hast refused to listen to me so long as thy
husband gave thee no permission.” “I have told thee,” replied she,
“that I will not follow thee, unless my husband yield me. I will only
be taken if Eochaid give me to thee.” “I will not give thee,” cried
the king. “I only consent that he put his arms around thee here in
this hall, as has been agreed.” “It shall be done,” said Mider. Laying
his lance in his left hand, he seized Etain with his right; and,
rising in the air, he disappeared with her through the smoke-hole in
{217} the palace-roof. The warriors that surrounded the king, ashamed
at their own impotence, rushed from the hall to pursue the fugitives.
They only saw, high above Tara, two swans whose long white necks were
encircled and bound together by a yoke of gold. The story adds that
afterwards, by the magical might of his Druids, Eochaid forced an
entrance to the mysterious subterranean palace of Mider and took
possession once more of his wife, so lovely, so beloved. But Mider’s
hate was one day revenged on the posterity of Eochaid and Etain by the
tragic death of Conaire, their grandson.[217.1] The Druidical doctrine
of metempsychosis would appear, alike from these ancient mythological
tales and from modern folklore, to have been nothing more than
Transformation as we find it among savages in all parts of the world.
Before turning to rites and superstitious beliefs, we may notice the
legend of Oankoitupeh, son of the Red Cloud, the hero of the North
American Maidus. A maiden sees a beautiful red cloud, and hears sweet
music. The next day, while picking grass-seed pinole, she finds an
arrow trimmed with yellow-hammer feathers; and suddenly a man is
standing beside her, who is none other than the red cloud she had seen
the day before. The bright and resplendent stranger declares his love;
and the maiden replies: “If you love me, take and eat this basket of
grass-seed pinole.” He touches the basket, and its contents vanish.
Thereupon the girl swoons. When she returns to consciousness, behold!
she has given birth to a son. The Red Cloud tells her: “You love me
now; that is my boy, but he is not of this world.… He shall be greater
than {218} all men; he shall have power over all, and not fear any
that live. Therefore shall his name be Oan-koi-tu-peh (the
Invincible). Whenever you see him, think of me. This boy has no life
apart from me; he is myself.”[218.1] Compare with this the statement
concerning Cuchulainn, one of the epic heroes of Ireland. It will be
recollected that he was a new birth of the god Lug. The great epic
cycles took final shape after the wars with the Danes in the eleventh
century. One of the manuscripts of that period relates that the men of
Ulster took counsel about Cuchulainn, because they were troubled and
afraid that he would perish early, “so for that reason they wished to
give him a wife that he might leave an heir; for they knew that his
re-birth would be of himself.”[218.2]
These passages, though related of more than common men, point to a
belief shared by the ancient Irish with the ancient Californians, that
the son is in some sense identical with his father--a new birth, a new
manifestation of the same person. This curious belief finds
categorical expression in the great Brahman compilation known as the
_Laws of Manu_. There we are told: “The husband, after conception by
his wife, becomes an embryo and is born again of her; for that is the
wifehood of a wife, that he is born again by her.”[218.3]
Corresponding with this declaration, the ritual prescribes, among
other ceremonies when a boy is born, that the husband should address
the babe thus: “From limb by limb thou art produced; and of the heart
thou art born. Thou indeed art the self (_atman_) called son; so live
a hundred autumns.” In the {219} same words he addresses the boy every
time he himself returns from a journey, embracing his head and kissing
him thrice.[219.1]
Traces of the notion that a child is neither more nor less than the
reappearance of an ancestor are found almost all over the world. It
seems to be a general opinion among the Negroes of the western coasts
of Africa that the ghostly self of a dead man enters the body of a
newborn babe belonging to the same family. In Guinea, and among the
Wanika, the resemblance, physical or mental, borne by a child to its
father is attributed to this cause. The Yorubas inquire of their
family god which of the deceased ancestors has returned, in order to
name the child accordingly; and they greet its birth with the words
“Thou art come!” as if addressing some one who has returned.[219.2] On
the Gold Coast, parents who have lost several children sometimes cast
into the bush the body of the infant who has last died. They believe
the next born to be the same child returned; and if it have any
congenital deformity or defect, that is attributed to injuries
received from wild beasts or other evil influences in the
jungle.[219.3] Caution, however, is required {220} in dealing with
some of these cases, for the subtlety of savage metaphysics is
marvellous. An acute observer points out that among the Tshi-speaking
peoples of the Gold Coast and the Ewe-speaking tribes of the Slave
Coast, a distinction is drawn between the ghostly self that continues
the man’s existence after death in the spirit-world, and his _kra_ or
_ñoli_, which is capable of being born again in a new human body. In
the eastern Ewe districts and in Dahome the soul is, by either an
inconsistency or a subtlety, believed to remain in the land of the
dead and to animate some new child of the family at one and the same
time; but it never animates an embryo in a strange family.[220.1] Not
very different seems to be the opinion of the Khonds of Orissa.
Anthropologists have often quoted Macpherson’s description of the
divination for determining a child’s name. The priest drops grains of
rice into a cup of water, naming with each grain a deceased ancestor.
From the movements of the seed in the fluid, and from observations
made on the infant’s person, he pronounces which of the progenitors
has reappeared in it; and the babe is usually named accordingly. Khond
psychology endows every one with four souls. Out of such a company
there is no difficulty in arranging that one of them shall be attached
to some tribe and perpetually born again into it. This, in fact, is
what is believed to happen.[220.2]
In New Zealand the priest, after certain ceremonies, first recited to
the child the following stave:
{221}
“Wait till I pronounce your name.
What is your name?
Listen to your name,
This is your name----”
Then followed strings of ancestral names, until the babe sneezed. The
name being uttered at the moment of the sneeze was the one
chosen.[221.1] We are not expressly told that the object of this rite
was to identify the child with one of his forefathers. But, as Dr.
Tylor remarks, we may always suspect it in such a case; and the verses
seem to point to some such purpose. It was difficult to distinguish
between gods and ancestors among the Maori,[221.2] as, in truth, it
often is, if we may not use a stronger expression, among savage
peoples. The worship of the kindred inhabitants of Samoa was
totemistic. During the mother’s labour, first the family god of the
father, and then that of the mother was invoked. The god being invoked
at the instant of birth was looked upon as the child’s special _aitu_
(Maori, _atua_) or god; and during infancy the child was called and
actually named “_merda_ of Tongo” or “of Satiā,” or whatever other
deity it might be.[221.3] This would seem to go a step beyond the
Maori creed, and to indicate that at one time the child was identified
with the totem-god. In the island of Aurora, New Hebrides, where the
people are Melanesians, women often speak of a child as the _nunu_, or
echo, of some dead person. Dr. Codrington says: “It is not a notion of
metempsychosis, as if the soul of the dead person returned in the
newborn child; but it is thought that there is so close a connection
that the infant takes the place of the {222} deceased.”[222.1] We may
set this explanation beside the statement quoted by Dr. Tylor from
Charlevoix that “some North American Indians were observed to set the
child in place of the last owner of its name, so that a man would
treat as his grandfather a child who might have been his
grandson.”[222.2] Whatever may be the fact as regards the Melanesians,
it is certain that North American tribes, like the Mengwe and the
Thlinkits, believed in the new birth of the dead. Among the latter, if
a pregnant woman dreamed of a dead man, it was said that the ghost had
taken up its abode in her body; and if a newborn child had the least
resemblance to a deceased relative, the latter was believed to have
returned, and the child was called by his name.[222.3] Even in Norway,
if a pregnant woman dream of one who is dead, the child must be named
after him. If the dream be of a man, and a girl be born, the man’s
name must be feminised, and _vice versâ_. If she dream of more than
one person, the names of all must be given.[222.4] The last practice
perhaps resulted from the uncertainty as to which of the dead who
appeared was to be identified with the coming stranger. Returning to
America, we find that the Tacullies and Sicamies, tribes allied to the
Thlinkits, inquire of the dead if they will return to life or not. The
shaman inspects the naked breast of the body, and if satisfied on the
point he blows the soul into the air, that it may seek a new body or
puts his hands on the head of one of the mourners, thereby conveying
the spirit into him, to be embodied in his next offspring. The
relation thus favoured, we are {223} told, added the name of the
deceased to his own.[223.1] It is said that the Dakotas believed that
their medicine-men and women ran their career four times in human
shape.[223.2] In the Amazons Valley the Ticunas, and yet further to
the south the Bakaïrí and their allied tribes, name a child from one
of its forefathers. In Southern India the same practice is followed by
the Yenadies;[223.3] and, indeed, it may be said, whatever be its
motive, to be a common practice in many parts of the globe. An
Esthonian babe is baptized by the name of one of its
grandfathers.[223.4] In the Romagna it is usual to give the names of
grandfathers, uncles and other relatives, to children, but not the
names of relatives who are living, lest their death be accelerated--a
vague reminiscence probably of the real reason.[223.5] Elsewhere in
Italy the superstition that a baby is a dead relative returned {224}
appears to be extant.[224.1] Among the Andaman islanders, “if a woman
who has lost a baby be about to become a mother, the name borne by the
deceased is bestowed on the fœtus, in the expectation that it will
prove to be the same child born again. Should the infant at birth
prove to be of the same sex as the one who had died, the identity
would be considered sufficiently established.”[224.2] The same belief
was current among the people of Old Calabar.[224.3] Huron philosophy
posited the existence of two souls in a man. One was changed into a
turtle-dove, or went to the village of souls. The other remained
attached to the body, never to leave it “unless some one gave birth to
it again.” The Hurons, moreover, as we have seen, buried in the road
their little children who died, in order that they might secretly
enter into the wombs of passing women, and be born again.[224.4] As to
the beliefs of the Eskimo there seems a little question. As to their
practice of naming children after deceased persons (either relatives
or intimate friends) there is no doubt. Dr. Tylor cites from Crantz
the assertion that a helpless widow would seek to persuade some father
that the soul of a dead child of his had passed into a living child of
hers, or _vice versâ_, thus gaining to herself a new relative and
protector. Dr. Rink, on the other hand, considers that the deceased
person whose name a child {225} bore was only looked upon as a kind of
guardian spirit. His statement, however, that the child when grown up
was bound to brave the influences that had caused his namesake’s
death--for instance, if the namesake had perished at sea, his
successor had all the greater inducement to become a skilful
kayaker--points to identity; and so do the stories I have cited from
Rink’s collection in previous pages.[225.1] It may be suggested that
the discrepancy is to be accounted for by the gradual change in Eskimo
ideas under contact with civilised travellers and missionaries.
We have now reviewed a large number of _märchen_ wherein the hero or
heroine is said to have suffered by death and new birth
transfiguration into a variety of forms, both brute and human. We
have, moreover, found the same plot in sagas in both hemispheres. And,
advancing to savage theory and its correlative customs, I hope I have
made it plain that stories of metamorphosis, whether _märchen_ or
sagas, have been founded upon the belief that at death men are not
annihilated, but pass into fresh forms, sometimes appearing as plants
and trees, sometimes as animals of the lower creation, and sometimes
as men and women born again into their own kindred or among strangers.
This is a creed held so widely that--though subject, perhaps, to
varying stress, according to the degree and direction of the evolving
civilisation, or, possibly yet more, to the different capacities and
opportunities of travellers who report the characteristics of savage
life and thought often far removed from their own--it may yet be
regarded as practically universal. I have not attempted to distinguish
{226} between Transformation and Transmigration. When a man, either
without passing through death and birth, or passing through death
only, changes into a wolf or an ant, it is no more than
Transformation. But if the metamorphosis be effected by death and
growth into a tree, or a fresh birth from brute or human mother, it is
obvious that there is more difficulty in affirming identity between
the new substance and the old. In some cases, if we may trust our
authorities, and if we rightly interpret the tales and ritual and
beliefs they report, the savage sets this difficulty at defiance: the
proofs of identity overcome it. Oftener, it may be, the identity
established is of an inner and more elusive self. For want of a better
word we call this kernel of a man his soul, or spirit, both of which
words connote to us an immaterial object, with none of the attributes
of physical existence. To the savage, however, as to our own
forefathers, and to the _folk_ of all civilised countries still, the
idea of an incorporeal soul is incomprehensible. He may not be able to
see it at all times; he may not be able to handle it when he will: but
this kernel, this inner self, of friend or foe, comes to him in
dreams; he beholds it in the snake or the toad, the insect or the
dove, that haunts the tomb of one who was dear to him, or in the
rose-bush or the lily growing upon the grave; or he fetches it back in
the shape of a white stone to his beloved child, who has sickened at
its absence, and is like to die. Thus it is everywhere in the lower
culture conceived as material, though capable of changing its form and
appearance without losing its identity. And this identity is the real
identity of the man, suffusing and transfusing his entire being. Hence
the dividing line between Transformation and Transmigration {227} is
frequently so thin and faint. Transmigration as popularly understood
(for I am not speaking of the speculations of philosophers, whether
Indian or Greek) is a natural and imperceptible development of
Transformation. As regards the popular Buddhistic belief of ancient
Hindustan I have already shown this from the _Játakas_; and what is
true of that holds good of other popular forms of belief, at all
events where Judaism and its daughter-faiths, Christianity and
Mohammedanism, have not too deeply penetrated.
Some races, as we have seen, divide the soul into two or more
entities, whereof one alone may be capable of re-manifestation. To
discuss the reason for this would lead us away from our subject. It
will be enough to suggest that it is an attempt to escape from the
dilemma imposed by the meeting of two or more lines of speculation as
to the future life. A reconciliation must be attained between the
reasoning which would lead to the belief in a place of the dead
elsewhere than here, and that which inclines to the opinion that the
deceased remains among his friends, or amid his decaying dust, ready
and eager to appear again. The divisibility of the inner self succeeds
in this object; and if we meet with such a device less frequently than
we might expect, it is no doubt because the savage mind, unaccustomed
to consecutive and abstract thought, is slow in realising a
contradiction, and unwilling to solve the difficulty, unless where
circumstances have compelled the attention and the necessary effort.
The study of the belief in the re-incorporation of the soul in a human
body has no direct bearing on the legend of Perseus, but some account
of it was required to {228} complete our view of savage thought upon
the subject of Transformation by means of death and birth--a subject
necessary to be understood in approaching the incident of the
Life-token. To that incident we have next to address ourselves.
[End of vol. I]
LIST OF SOME OF THE WORKS REFERRED TO
Note.--In the notes Roman numerals placed _before_ the name of a
work or author indicate the volume, placed _after_ the name indicate
the book or chapter, cited; Arabic numerals generally indicate the
page or verse.
Allen, Grant, _Attis._ The Attis of Caius Valerius Catullus
Translated into English Verse, with Dissertations on the Myth of
Attis, on the Origin of Tree-Worship, and on the Galliambic Metre by
Grant Allen, B.A. London, 1892.
_Am Urquell._ Am Urquell. Monatsschrift für Volkskunde. Herausgegeben
von Friedrich S. Krauss. 4 vols. Wien, 1890-3. [Still proceeding.]
_Anthropologie._ L’Anthropologie paraissant tous les deux mois sous la
direction de MM. Cartailhac, Hamy, Topinard. 4 vols. Paris, 1890-93.
[Still proceeding.]
_Antiquary._ The Antiquary: a Magazine devoted to the Study of the
Past. 29 vols. London, 1880-94. [Still proceeding.]
_Archivio._ Archivio per lo Studio delle Tradizioni Popolari. Rivista
trimestrale diritta da G. Pitrè e S. Salamone-Marino. 12 vols.
Palermo, 1882-93. [Still proceeding.]
_Arch. Rev._ The Archæological Review. 4 vols. London, 1888-90.
_Asbjörnsen._ Norwegische Volksmärchen, gesammelt von P. Asbjörnsen
und Jörgen Moe. Deutsch von Friederich Bresemann. 2 vols. Berlin,
1847.
Aubrey, _Miscellanies._ Miscellanies upon Various Subjects. By John
Aubrey, F.R.S. London, 1857.
Auning. Ueber den lettischen Drachen-Mythus (Puhkis). Ein Beitrag
zur lettischen Mythologie von Robert Auning. Mitan, 1892.
_Bahar-Danush._ Bahar-Danush; or Garden of Knowledge. An Oriental
Romance. Translated from the Persic of Einiaut Oollah. By Jonathan
Scott. 3 vols. Shrewsbury, 1799.
Bancroft. The Native Races of the Pacific States of North America.
By Hubert Howe Bancroft. 5 vols. London, 1875-6.
Basile. Lo Cunto de li Cunti (Il Pentamerone) di Giambattista
Basile. Testo conforme alla prima stampa del 1634-6 con introduzione e
note di Benedetto Croce. Vol. I. Napoli, 1891. [Only one volume yet
published.]
Bent, _Cyclades._ The Cyclades or Life among the Insular Greeks by
J. Theodore Bent, B.A. London, 1885.
Bérenger-Féraud. Traditions et Réminiscences Populaires de la
Provence (Coutumes, Légendes, Superstitions, etc.). Par
Bérenger-Féraud. Paris, 1886.
Bladé, _Agenais._ Contes Populaires recueillis en Agenais par M.
Jean-François Bladé. Paris, 1874.
---- _Contes Pop. Gasc._ Contes Populaires de la Gascogne, par M.
Jean-François Bladé. 3 vols. Paris, 1886.
_Blätt. f. Pomm. Volksk._ Blätter für Pommersche Volkskunde.
Monatsschrift für Sage und Märchen [etc.]. Herausgegeben von O.
Knoop und Dr. A. Haas. vols. Stettin. 1892--.
Bötticher. Der Baumkultus der Hellenen nach den gottesdienstlichen
Gebräuchen und den überlieferten Bildwerken dargestellt von Carl
Boetticher. Berlin, 1856.
Braga, _Contos._ Theophilo Braga. Contos Tradicionaes do Povo
Portuguez. 2 vols. Porto, N.D.
Brinton, _Amer. Hero-Myths._ American Hero-Myths. A Study in the
Native Religions of the Western Continent. By Daniel G. Brinton, M.D.
Philadelphia, 1882.
Brinton, _Lenâpé._ The Lenâpé and their Legends; with the
complete text and symbols of the Walam Olum, a new translation, and an
inquiry into its authenticity. By Daniel G. Brinton, A.M., M.D.
Philadelphia, 1885.
---- _Myths._ The Myths of the New World. A Treatise on the Symbolism
and Mythology of the Red Race of America by Daniel G. Brinton, A.M.,
M.D. New York, 1868.
Browne, _Vulgar Errors._ Pseudodoxia Epidemica: or Enquiries into
very many received Tenents and commonly presumed Truths. By Thomas
Browne, Doctor of Physick. London, 1646.
_Bull. de F.L._ Bulletin de Folklore Organe de la Société du
Folklore Wallon. 2 vols. London, 1892-3. [Still proceeding.]
Burton, _Gelele._ A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome by Richard F.
Burton. 2 vols. London, 1864.
---- _Nights._ A plain and literal translation of the Arabian Nights
Entertainments, now entituled The Book of the Thousand Nights and a
Night, with introduction, explanatory notes [etc.], by Richard F.
Burton. 10 vols. Privately printed, 1885.
---- _Suppl. Nights._ Supplemental Nights to The Book of the Thousand
Nights and a Night with notes anthropological and explanatory by
Richard F. Burton. 6 vols. Privately printed, 1886-88.
---- _Wanderings._ Wanderings in West Africa from Liverpool to
Fernando Po. By A F.R.G.S. 2 vols. London, 1863.
---- _Wit and Wisd._ Wit and Wisdom from West Africa, compiled by
Richard F. Burton. London, 1865.
Busk, _Sagas from the Far East._ Sagas from the Far East; or Kalmouk
and Mongolian Traditionary Tales. With historical preface and
explanatory notes. By the Author of “Patrañas,” etc. London, 1873.
Callaway, _Rel. Syst._ The Religious System of the Amazulu.
Isinyanga Zokubula; or Divination, as existing among the Amazulu, in
their own words, with a translation into English, and notes. By the
Rev. Canon Callaway, M.D. Natal, 1870.
---- _Tales._ Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus,
in their own words, with a translation into English, and notes. By the
Rev. Canon Callaway, M.D. Vol. I. London, 1868. [Only one vol.
published.]
Campbell. Popular Tales of the West Highlands orally collected with
a translation by J. F. Campbell. 4 vols. Edinburgh, 1860-62.
Campbell, _Santal F.T._ Santal Folk Tales. Translated from the
Santali by A. Campbell. Pokhuria, 1891.
Carnoy. Contes Français recueillis par E. Henry Carnoy. Paris,
1885.
Casalis. Les Bassoutos ou vingt-trois années de séjour et
d’observations au sud de l’Afrique par E. Casalis. Paris, 1859.
Cavallius. Schwedische Volkssagen und Märchen. Nach mündlicher
Ueberlieferung gesammelt und herausgegeben von Gunnar Olof Hyltén
Cavallius und George Stephens. Deutsch von Carl Oberleitner. Wien,
1848.
Chambers, _Pop. Rhymes._ Popular Rhymes of Scotland. Robert
Chambers. London, 1870.
Child. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads edited by Francis
James Child. 8 parts. Boston, N.D. [1882-92, still proceeding.]
Codrington. The Melanesians. Studies in their Anthropology and
Folklore by R. H. Codrington, D.D. Oxford, 1891.
Coelho. Contos Populares Portuguezes colligidos por F. Adolpho
Coelho. Lisbon, 1879.
Comparetti. Novelline Popolari Italiane pubblicate ed illustrate da
Domenico Comparetti. Vol. I. Torino, 1875. [Only one volume yet
published.]
_Compte-Rendu du Congrès._ Congrès International des Traditions
Populaires. Première Session. Paris, 1889. Compte-Rendu des Séances.
Paris, 1891.
_Congress Report._ The International Folklore Congress, 1891. Papers
and Transactions. Edited by Joseph Jacobs and Alfred Nutt. London,
1892.
Cosquin. Emmanuel Cosquin. Contes Populaires de la Lorraine. 2 vols.
Paris, N.D. [Preface dated Août 1886.]
_County F.L., Suffolk._ County Folklore. Printed Extracts. No. 2:
Suffolk. Collected and edited by the Lady Eveline Camilla Gurdon.
London, 1893. [Folklore Society.]
Cox, Miss, _Cinderella._ Cinderella. Three hundred and forty-five
variants of Cinderella, Catskin, and Cap o’ Rushes, abstracted and
tabulated, with a discussion of mediæval analogues, and notes, by
Marian Roalfe Cox. London, 1893.
Crane. Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Frederick Crane, A.M. London,
1885.
Crantz. The History of Greenland: containing a Description of the
Country and its Inhabitants. By David Crantz. Translated from the High
Dutch. 2 vols. London, 1767.
Curtin, _Russians._ Myths and Folktales of the Russians, Western
Slavs and Magyars by Jeremiah Curtin. London, 1890.
_Cymmrodor._ See _Y Cymmrodor_.
Dalton. Descriptive Ethnology of Bengal, by Edward Tuite Dalton,
C.S.I.Col. Calcutta, 1872.
D’Arbois de Jubainville, _Cycle Myth._ Le Cycle Mythologique
Irlandais et la Mythologie Celtique, par H. D’Arbois de Jubainville.
Paris, 1884.
---- _Épopée Celtique._ L’Épopée Celtique en Irlande, par H.
D’Arbois de Jubainville. Vol. I. Paris, 1892. [One volume only yet
published.]
Dasent. Popular Tales from the Norse by Sir George Webbe Dasent,
D.C.L. Edinburgh, 1888.
Davids. See Rhys Davids.
Day. Folktales of Bengal by the Rev. Lal Behari Day. London, 1883.
De Charencey, _Le Fils de la Vierge_. Le Fils de la Vierge par H. de
Charencey. Havre, 1879.
---- _Trad. rel._ Les Traditions relatives au Fils de la Vierge par H.
de Charencey. Paris, 1881.
De Gubernatis. Le Novelline di Santo Stefano raccolte da Angelo de
Gubernatis. Torino, 1869.
---- _Zool. Myth._ Zoological Mythology or The Legends of Animals by
Angelo de Gubernatis. London, 1872.
De Gubernatis, _Trad. Pop._ Le Tradizioni Popolari di S. Stefano di
Calcinaia raccolte da Alessandro de Gubernatis. Roma, 1894. [Includes
a new edition of the _Novelline_.]
De Nino. Usi e Costumi Abruzzesi descritti da Antonio de Nino. 5
vols. Firenze, 1879-91. [The first volume bears only the title _Usi
Abruzzesi_.]
Dennys. The Folklore of China, and its Affinities with that of the
Aryan and Semitic Races. By N. B. Dennys, Ph.D., F.R.G.S. London,
1876.
De Rochemonteix. Quelques Contes Nubiens par Maxence de
Rochemonteix. Cairo, 1888.
Dorman. The Origin of Primitive Superstitions and their Development
into the Worship of Spirits and the Doctrine of Spiritual Agency among
the Aborigines of America. By Rushton M. Dorman. Philadelphia, 1881.
_Early Trav._ Early Travels in Palestine, comprising the narratives of
Arculf, Willibald [etc.]. Edited with notes by Thomas Wright, Esq.,
M.A., F.S.A. London, 1848.
Elliot, _N. W. Prov._ Memoirs on the History, Folklore, and
Distribution of the Races of the North Western Provinces of India;
being an amplified edition of the original Supplemental Glossary of
Indian Terms by the late Sir Henry M. Elliot, K.C.B. Edited, revised,
and rearranged by John Beames, M.R.A.S. 2 vols. London, 1869.
Ellis, _Polyn. Res._ Polynesian Researches, during a residence of
nearly eight years in the Society and Sandwich Islands. By William
Ellis. 4 vols. London, 1831.
---- _Ewe-speaking Peoples._ The Ewe-speaking Peoples of the Slave
Coast of West Africa. Their Religion, Manners, Customs, Laws,
Languages, etc. By A. B. Ellis. London, 1890.
---- _Tshi-speaking Peoples._ The Tshi-speaking Peoples of the Gold
Coast of West Africa. Their Religion, Manners, Customs, Laws,
Language, etc. By A. B. Ellis. London, 1887.
---- _Yoruba._ The Yoruba-speaking Peoples of the Slave Coast of West
Africa. Their Religion, Manners, Customs, Laws, Language, etc. By A.
B. Ellis. London, 1894.
Featherman. Social History of the Races of Mankind. By A.
Featherman. 7 vols., not numbered, but distinguished as follows:--1st
Division: Nigritians. 2nd Division: Papuo- and Malayo-Melanesians. 2nd
Division: Oceano-Melanesians. 3rd Division: Aoneo-Maranonians. 3rd
Division: Chiapo- and Guarano-Maranonians. 4th Division:
Dravido-Turanians, Turco-Tatar-Turanians, Ugrio-Turanians. 5th
Division: Aramæans. London, 1881-91.
Finamore. Tradizioni Popolari Abruzzesi raccolte da Gennaro
Finamore. 2 vols. [Vol. I. in 2 parts, separately paged.] Lanciano,
1882-86.
---- _Trad. Pop. Abr._ Tradizioni Popolari Abruzzesi raccolte da
Gennaro Finamore. Torino, 1894. [A separate work from, but apparently
a continuation of, the above.]
_F.L. Journ._ The Folk-lore Journal. 7 vols. London, 1883-89. [Organ
of the Folklore Society.]
_F.L. Record._ The Folk-lore Record. 5 vols. London, 1878-82. [Organ
of the Folklore Society.]
_Folklore._ Folk-Lore, a Quarterly Review of Myth, Tradition,
Institution, and Custom. 4 vols. London, 1890-93. [Organ of the
Folklore Society, still proceeding.]
Frazer, _Golden Bough._ The Golden Bough A Study in Comparative
Religion by J. G. Frazer, M.A. 2 vols. London, 1890.
Frere. Old Deccan Days; or Hindoo Fairy Legends current in Southern
India. Collected from Oral Tradition by M. Frere. London, 1870.
Friend. Flowers and Flower Lore. By the Rev. Hilderic Friend, F.L.S.
2 vols., paged continuously. London, 1884.
Garnett, _Women._ The Women of Turkey and their Folk-lore by Lucy M.
J. Garnett. 2 vols. London, 1890-91.
Gerv. Tilb. Des Gervasius von Tilbury Otia Imperialia. In einer
Auswahl neu herausgegeben und mit Anmerkungen begleitet von Felix
Liebrecht. Hannover, 1856.
Gibb. The History of the Forty Vezirs or The Story of the Forty
Morns and Eves written in Turkish by Sheykh-Zāda done into English by
E. J. W. Gibb, M.R.A.S. London, 1886.
Giles. Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio. Translated and
annotated by Herbert A. Giles. 2 vols. London, 1880.
Gonzenbach. Sicilianische Märchen. Aus dem Volksmund gesammelt von
Laura Gonzenbach. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1870.
Grimm, _Tales._ Grimm’s Household Tales. With the Author’s Notes
Translated from the German and edited by Margaret Hunt. 2 vols.
London, 1884.
---- _Teut. Myth._ Teutonic Mythology by Jacob Grimm Translated from
the Fourth Edition with Notes and Appendix by James Steven
Stallybrass. 4 vols., paged continuously. London, 1880-88.
Grinnell, _Blackfoot L.T._ Blackfoot Lodge Tales. The Story of a
Prairie People by George Bird Grinnell. London, 1893.
Grundtvig. Dänische Volksmärchen. Nach bisher ungedruckten Quellen
erzählt von Svend Grundtvig. Uebersetzt von Willibald Leo. 2 vols.
Leipzig, 1885.
Guppy. The Solomon Islands and their Natives, By H. B. Guppy, M.B.,
F.G.S. London, 1887.
Hahn, _Tsuni_-ǁ_goam._ Tsuni-ǁgoam the Supreme Being of the
Khoi-Khoi by Theophilus Hahn, Ph.D. London, 1881.
Haltrich. Deutsche Volksmärchen aus dem Sachsenlande in
Siebenbürgen. Gesammelt von Josef Haltrich. Wien, 1885.
Hanway. An Historical Account of the British Trade over the Caspian
Sea: with a Journal of Travels through Russia into Persia and back
again through Russia Germany and Holland. By Jonas Hanway, Merchant. 4
vols. London, 1753.
Hodgetts. Tales and Legends from the Land of the Tzar. A Collection
of Russian Stories. Translated from the original Russian by Edith M.
S. Hodgetts. London, 1890.
Hunter, _Rural Bengal._ The Annals of Rural Bengal. By W. W. Hunter,
C.I.E., LL.D. London, 1883.
Imbriani. La Novellaja Fiorentina Fiabe e Novelline Stenografate in
Firenze dal dettato popolare da Vittorio Imbriani. Ristampa
accresciuta di molte novelle inedite, [etc.,] nelle quale è accolta
integralmente La Novellaja Milanese dello stesso raccoglitore.
Livorno, 1877.
Im Thurn. Among the Indians of Guiana being Sketches chiefly
anthropologic from the Interior of British Guiana by Everard F. im
Thurn, M.A. London, 1883.
_Internat. Archiv._ Internationales Archiv für Ethnographie. 6 vols.
Leiden, 1888-93. [Still proceeding.]
Jacobs, _Celtic F.T._ Celtic Fairy Tales selected and edited by
Joseph Jacobs. London, 1892.
---- _Indian F.T._ Indian Fairy Tales selected and edited by Joseph
Jacobs. London, 1892.
James, _The Long White Mountain._ The Long White Mountain. A Journey
in Manchuria with some Account of the History, People, Administration
and Religion of that Country. By H. E. M. James. London, 1888.
Jeremias, _Izdubar-Nimrod._ Izdubar-Nimrod. Eine altbabylonische
Heldensage. Nach den Keilschriftfragmenten dargestellt von Dr. Alfred
Jeremias. Leipzig, 1891.
Jevons, _Plutarch’s Romane Questions._ Plutarch’s Romane Questions.
Translated A.D. 1603 by Philemon Holland, M.A., Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge. Now again edited by Frank Byron Jevons, M.A. With
Dissertations on Italian Cults [etc.]. London, 1892.
_Journ. Am. F.L._ The Journal of American Folklore. 6 vols. Boston,
1888-93. [Organ of the American Folklore Society, still proceeding.]
_Journ. Anthrop. Inst._ The Journal of the Anthropological Institute
of Great Britain and Ireland. 23 vols. London, 1872-94. [Still
proceeding.]
_Journ. Anthr. Soc._ Journal of the Anthropological Society of London.
8 vols. London, 1863-70.
_Journ. Ethnol. Soc., N.S._ Journal of the Ethnological Society of
London. Published quarterly. 2 vols. London, 1869-70.
_Kathá._ The Kathá-sarit-Ságara or Ocean of the Streams of Story
translated from the original Sanskrit by C. H. Tawney, M.A. 2 vols.
Calcutta, 1880-84.
Kaindl. Die Huzulen. Ihr Leben ihre Sitten und ihre
Volksüberlieferung geschildert von Dr. Raimund Friedrich Kaindl.
Wien, 1894.
_Kalevala._ Kalewala, das National-Epos der Finnen, nach der zweiten
Ausgabe ins Deutsche übertragen von Anton Schiefner. Helsingfors,
1852.
Klunzinger. Upper Egypt: its People and its Products. A Descriptive
Account of the Manners, Customs, Superstitions and Occupations of the
People of the Nile Valley [etc.]. By C. B. Klunzinger, M.D. London,
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ENDNOTES
CHAPTER I NOTES
[3.1]
Ovid, _Metam._, iv. 604; Strabo, x. 5; Pausanias, ii. 16; Lucian,
_Sea-gods_, xiv.
[4.1]
Pausanias, ii. 18; Bent, _The Cyclades_, 2.
[4.2]
Pausanias, ii. 16; Plutarch, _Rivers and Mountains_, xviii., Inachus.
An inscription was discovered not very long ago at Mykene, testifying
to the worship of Perseus there. xxvi. _The Antiquary_, 192, citing an
article by Dr. Tsoundas in the _Ephemeris Archæologike_.
[5.1]
Pausanias, ii. 21, 23.
[5.2]
Vergil, _Æneid_, vii. 371. See also Preller, ii. _Röm. Myth._, 330.
[5.3]
Pausanias, iv. 35.
[5.4]
Josephus, _Wars_, iii. 9; Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, v. 14; ix. 4;
Maundeville, c. 4.
[6.1]
Herod. vi. 53, 54 (I quote Rawlinson’s translation); vii. 61, 150.
[7.1]
Ælian, _De Nat. Anim._, xii. 21; Jeremias, _Izdubar-Nimrod_, passim;
Smith, _Chaldean Account of Genesis_, passim.
[8.1]
Tylor, i. _Prim. Cult._, 306, citing Tzetzes ap. Lycophron’s
_Cassandra_; Diodorus Sic., iv.
[8.2]
Herod. ii. 91, 15. If we may trust Diodorus Siculus (i.), the
Egyptians claimed that Perseus was born in Egypt.
[9.1]
Ælian, _De Nat. Anim._, iii. 28, 37; xiii. 26.
[13.1]
Pitrè, _Nov. Pop. Toscane_, 1.
[14.1]
ii. Von Hahn, 114, 310. For particulars of the story-teller, see _ib._
308.
[17.1]
O’Donovan, i. _Four Masters_, 18, note. The story was taken down by
O’Donovan from the dictation of Shane O’Dugan in 1835.
[19.1]
Grimm, i. _Tales_, 419.
[20.1]
Grimm, i. _Tales_, 420.
[21.1]
Cavallius, 78.
[23.1]
Leskien, 544, 548, citing Antoni Nowosielski, _Lud Ukrainski._
CHAPTER II NOTES
[26.1]
Sébillot, i. _Contes Pop._, 124 (Story No. 18).
[29.1]
i. Cosquin, 60.
[30.1]
Schneller, 186.
[31.1]
Bladé, _Agenais_, 9 (Story No. 2); i. _Contes Pop. Gasc._, 277.
[31.2]
Cavallius, 348.
[33.1]
i. Asbjörnsen, 159 (Story No. 24); Thorpe, _Yuletide Stories_, 300.
[34.1]
i. Grundtvig, 277.
[35.1]
Legrand, 161. The story is taken from _La Grèce Continentale et la
Morée_, by J. A. Buchon (Paris, 1843).
[38.1]
i. Campbell, 71.
[40.1]
Kuhn und Schwartz, 337 (_Märchen_, No. 10).
[41.1]
i. Basile, 113; i. _Pentamerone_, 122.
[41.2]
Comparetti, 199 (Story No. 46).
[42.1]
Comparetti, 126 (Story No. 32); Crane, 30.
[42.2]
De Gubernatis, 41 (Story No. 18).
[43.1]
Auning, 79 (Story No. 132).
[43.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 316 (Story No. 54).
[44.1]
Leskien, 544, 547, citing Erlenvein.
[46.1]
i. _Kathá_, 381.
CHAPTER III NOTES
[48.1]
i. Campbell, 93. Compare the variant told by a woman of the island of
Berneray, _ibid._ 98.
[50.1]
i. _Zeits. f. Volksk._, 230. This tale has a suspicious air. Whether
the reminiscences it contains of classic stories are of purely oral
transmission I cannot determine.
[50.2]
i. Gonzenbach, 269 (Story No. 39).
[50.3]
Grimm, i. _Tales_, 331 (Story No. 85).
[51.1]
ii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 359, from a Flemish collection, then
unpublished, by M. Pol de Mont. This story was obtained at Ypres.
[52.1]
Visentini, 104 (Story No. 19).
[53.1]
Luzel, _Contes Bretons_, 63.
[53.2]
Leskien, 543, citing Bosanski Prijatelj.
[53.3]
Braga, i. _Contos_, 117 (Story No. 48).
[54.1]
Burton, iv. _Suppl. Nights_, 244.
[54.2]
Zingerle, _Kinder- und Hausm. aus Süddeutsch._, 124.
[55.1]
Carnoy, 135 (Story No. 19).
[55.2]
Imbriani, 387.
[56.1]
Chambers, _Pop. Rhymes_, 89.
[57.1]
Zingerle, _Kinder- und Hausm. aus. Süddeutsch._, 260. Cf. _Ibid._,
_Kinder- und Hausm._, 178 (Story No. 35); Grimm, i. _Tales_, 244, 419.
[57.2]
Pröhle, _Kinder- und Volksm._, 20 (Story No. 5).
[58.1]
Auning, 87 (Story No. 133).
[59.1]
Leskien, 542.
[59.2]
Leskien, 389. Stories of the Faithless Sister (sometimes it is the
hero’s mother who plays the traitor’s part) are numerous in the East
of Europe. I have studied some of them in a paper on _The Forbidden
Chamber_, iii. _Folklore Journ._, 214.
[60.1]
Cavallius, 356.
[60.2]
i. Gonzenbach, 272 (Story No. 40).
[61.1]
Notwithstanding they had been eaten! Rivière, 193.
[62.1]
i. Basile, 87; i. _Pentamerone_, 90.
[63.1]
De Gubernatis, 40 (Story No. 17).
[63.2]
vii. Pitrè, 296; i. Gonzenbach, 269 (Story No. 39).
[65.1]
ii. Macdonald, 341.
[65.2]
iii. De Nino, 321 (Story No. 65).
[67.1]
Meier, _Märchen_, 101 (Story No. 29). See also 306.
[67.2]
_Ibid._, 204 (Story, No. 58). The connection ought not to pass
unnoticed between these Swabian tales and four Greek _märchen_
obtained by Von Hahn on the island of Syra and elsewhere. The hero of
one of the tales from Syra is Strong Jack, who overcomes three ogres,
and weds the king’s daughter held in captivity by one of them. Another
ogre fights and kills him, and takes the lady to wife. The hero,
restored by means of the Water of Life, learns that the ogre is to be
slain only by getting possession of his External Soul, and destroying
it. This he succeeds in doing, and thus recovers his wife. ii. Von
Hahn, 14. More obvious is the connection of one of the other tales,
wherein Strong Jack slays an ogre (_drakos_) to whom the king’s
daughter had been given to eat. _Ibid._, 259. I shall have to refer to
this in a future chapter.
[68.1]
Coelho, 120 (Story No. 52).
[69.1]
ii. Cosquin, 56 (Story No. 37).
[70.1]
i. Cosquin, 64 (variant of Story No. 5).
CHAPTER IV NOTES
[74.1]
Leskien, 546; De Gubernatis, ii. _Zool. Myth._, 29. Köhler in his
notes to Gonzenbach (ii. 229) refers to several other stories.
[74.2]
Milenowsky, 1.
[74.3]
Knoop, 204.
[75.1]
ii. Powell and Magnusson, 435. The story is given with some trifling
differences, Maurer, 284.
[75.2]
Rink, 443.
[75.3]
Landes, _Annamites_, 160.
[76.1]
Landes, _op. cit._, 150. Cf. _ibid._, 174.
[76.2]
i. _Kathá_, 565.
[76.3]
_Ibid._, 172, 189.
[77.1]
Knowles, 415.
[77.2]
Stokes, 41. Cf. Steel, 290, and i. Cosquin, 149.
[77.3]
Frere, 250. Mangoes appear also in Sâstrî, _Drav. Nights_, 54;
Sâstrî, _Folklore in South. Ind._, 140; Knowles, 130; Day, 117. In
a variant of the last, the fakir simply tells the king that his
prayers are heard, and his seven queens shall each bear a son. Steele,
98.
[77.4]
Stokes, 91.
[77.5]
Steele, 47.
[78.1]
i. Cosquin, 69, citing Benfey.
[78.2]
Campbell, _Santal F. T._, 25.
[78.3]
i. Radloff, 204.
[78.4]
i. _Folklore_, 49.
[79.1]
Capt. R. C. Temple, in iv. _F.L. Journal_, 282.
[79.2]
Burton, iii. _Suppl. Nights_, 270.
[79.3]
_Ibid._ iv. 298.
[79.4]
Gibb, 163.
[80.1]
iii. _Bahar Danush_, 80.
[80.2]
Rivière, 231, 225.
[80.3]
iv. _Folklore_, 285.
[81.1]
Braga, i. _Contos_, 42. Two instances in Europe where the magical food
is to be eaten by the husband occur in Gipsy tales. In one from
southern Hungary, a woman who wished for a daughter gave her husband
at full moon the egg of a black hen to eat, with the best result. Von
Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._ 314. This is in accordance with a practice
referred to in Chapter VI., _infra._ In the other tale, which is from
Transylvania, the wife goes out at midnight and collects herbs and
bones. She cooks them at home, gives her husband to eat, and
thereupon, becoming pregnant, she bears a son in the form of a kid.
Von Wlislocki, _Märchen_, 119.
[81.2]
i. Finamore, pt. i., 88.
[81.3]
ii. Von Hahn, 33, 197.
[82.1]
i. Von Hahn, 90; Garnett, i. _Women_, 178.
[82.2]
Legrand, 191, xvi.
[82.3]
Prof. Fortier, in ii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 39.
[82.4]
Curtin, _Russians_, 130.
[83.1]
Wratislaw, 133; Ralston, _Songs_, 177.
[83.2]
Day, 1.
[83.3]
Ralston, _Tibetan Tales_, 21.
[84.1]
Day, 187. Cf. a Baluchi tale in Jacobs, _Indian F. T._, 179.
[84.2]
Prato in xii. _Archivio_, 40, citing Minayeff, _Indiiska skazki y
legendy_.
[84.3]
Steere, 381. In an Arab story from Egypt a Mogrebin gives a king, upon
the same bargain, two bonbons, one for himself, the other for his
wife. Three sons are born, of whom the Mogrebin claims the eldest.
Here the Mohammedan influence prevails. Spitta Bey, 1.
[84.4]
Theal, 54.
[85.1]
Swynnerton, _Indian Nights_, 137.
[85.2]
Burton, vii. _Nights_, 320.
[86.1]
i. Finamore, pt. ii., 13.
[86.2]
i. _Archivio_, 524. In a Breton tale a sorceress gives a cake to the
stepmother, which causes the heroine to bring forth a cat. Luzel, iii.
_Contes Pop._ 126. In a variant, the sorceress advises that a black
cat be dished up for the maiden. _Ibid._, 139. In both cases the
cat-offspring being ripped up, a prince emerges.
[87.1]
Krauss, i. _Sagen_, 195.
[87.2]
De Charencey, _Le Fils de la Vierge_, 20, citing Friez and Léger, _La
Bohème historique, pittoresque et littéraire_, 341, 345. I have not
seen this work, and do not know what value is to be attached to the
story; but it has the appearance of being genuine. As to Blanik and
its Sleeping Host, see _The Science of Fairy Tales_, 184, 219, where I
have collected and discussed a number of legends relating to this
mountain, in connection with the Seven Sleepers, King Arthur, etc.
[87.3]
Leskien, 490.
[88.1]
Maspero, 26; ii. _Records of the Past_, 137; De Charencey, _Trad.,
rel._, 11; _Le Page Renouf_ in xi. _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch._, 184. The
scribe, who wrote the MS. we have, flourished under Rameses II. and
his two successors. How many times the story had been written down
before, of course we do not know.
[89.1]
i. Grundtvig, 150.
[89.2]
Dasent, 345.
[90.1]
Landes, _Annam._, 245.
[90.2]
i. Basile, 249; i. _Pentamerone_, 238. The Italian fairies are always
rather μοῖραι than what we understand by fairies.
[90.3]
De Gubernatis, _Trad. Pop._, 187.
[90.4]
iii. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 273.
[91.1]
Quoted by De Charencey, _Le Fils de la Vierge_, 25, from De Puymaigre,
ii. _Les Vieux Auteurs Castillans_, 355.
[92.1]
Landes, _op. cit._, 174.
[92.2]
De Rochemonteix, 18.
[92.3]
Landes, _Tjames_, 9. The Tjames are a mongrel race descended from
aborigines of Annam who intermarried with Malay invaders. See ii.
_L’Anthropologie_, 186.
[93.1]
Schott, 262.
[93.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 36; _Volksdicht._, 245. Cf. _Ibid._,
194, where milk is to be poured into the gourd.
[94.1]
Dragomanov, in xii. _Archivio_, 275, quoting Valjavec.
[94.2]
Capt. R. C. Temple, in iv. _F.L. Journ._, 304.
[94.3]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 213, 336.
[95.1]
De Charencey, _Le Fils de la Vierge_, 26, 27.
[95.2]
Mango, 101.
[96.1]
_Compte Rendu du Congrès_, 47. The personification of holy days is
not uncommon in folktales, especially in the east of Europe.
[97.1]
Rink, 437.
[97.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Bukowinaer_, 72. As to the power of saliva on a bird’s
tongue, see _ibid._, _Volksdicht._, 384.
[98.1]
Callaway, _Tales_, 66, 72. In another variant the blood is drawn from
the woman’s knees, placed in two jars, and becomes a boy and a girl.
Theal, 139. A Blackfoot story ascribes the origin of Kutoyis, or Clot
of Blood, a hero of great prowess, to a clot of buffalo-blood brought
home by a hunter and put in the kettle on the fire. Grinnell,
_Blackfoot L.T._, 30; Maclean, in vi. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 167. The
Rabbit in Siouan mythology makes the Young Rabbit from a clot of
buffalo’s blood. J. Owen Dorsey, in v. _Journ. Am. F.L._, 295. In an
Esthonian _märchen_ a childless queen receives from an old woman an
egg to be brooded in her bosom for three months. At the end of that
time a living female embryo is hatched, which grows to the size of an
unborn child. When that size is reached the queen also gives birth to
a son; and the two are treated as twin brother and sister. Kreutzwald,
341. Stories of children hatched from eggs are by no means infrequent:
Hodgetts, 194; Day, 93; i. _Folklore_, 49 (already cited), for
example. They are perhaps more usual in sacred sagas: see a Fijian
saga, i. _Mem. Anthr. Soc._, 203; and the classical and other legends
mentioned by Liebrecht in a note to _Gerv. Tilb._, 73.
[99.1]
i. Gonzenbach, 177. Versions are given from Sulmona in the Abruzzi,
iii. De Nino, 1; from Pisa, Comparetti, 195; from Rufina in Tuscany,
Pitrè, _Toscane_, 8. The circumstances of the conception differ very
slightly in all these. Two or three years ago the same story was
discovered in the island of Möe, belonging to Denmark. It is stated
to follow Fräulein Gonzenbach’s tale point by point; and M. Feilberg
is bold enough to declare that it had passed from her collection into
the mouths of the Danish folk in that island. iii. _Am Urquell_, 331.
[99.2]
i. Von Hahn, 245.
[100.1]
Imbriani, 397.
[100.2]
i. Gonzenbach, 167.
[100.3]
Braga, i. _Contos_, 104. Cf. iii. De Nino, 263.
[101.1]
Köhler in _The Academy_, 21st March 1891, citing Buber’s edition of
_Midrasch Tanchumar_.
[101.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 360.
[102.1]
i. Basile, 47; i. _Pentamerone_, 43.
CHAPTER V NOTES
[105.1]
Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 351. Owing to this writer’s method of
heaping his authorities together at the end of each section, a
practice as mysterious as any recorded of savages, I have been unable
to discover on what authority this statement is made by him, or what
are the details of the story.
[105.2]
Aubrey, _Miscellanies_, 58.
[106.1]
i. _Leg. Punjâb_, 1; Steele, 247. Cf. Swynnerton, _Rájá Rasálu_,
3, where the rice is omitted.
[106.2]
Elliot, i. _N. W. Prov._, 256, note. Other accounts assert that the
two barleycorns, or cocoa-nuts, were given to Gogá’s mother. Other
examples in iii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 205, 243.
[107.1]
James, _The Long White Mountain_, 31, note, citing a Chinese
chronicle; Charencey, _Le Fils de la Vierge_, 15, citing Köppen, _Die
Religion des Buddha_; _ibid._, 8, citing _Ambassade mémorable à
l’Empereur du Japon_.
[108.1]
Charencey, _Le Fils_, 14, citing Barrow’s _Voyage to China_. Cf.
Maury, _Légendes Pieuses_, part 1, for numerous mediæval examples of
miracles in competition with the Bible.
[108.2]
Rydberg, 156, citing the _Volsungasaga_.
[111.1]
ii. _Silva Gad._, 19, translating a MS. of the sixteenth century in
the British Museum. Stories of dreams of this kind are found
everywhere. Compare, for example, Ragnhild’s dream of her son Harold
Fairhair (i. Morris and Magnússon’s _Heimskringla_, 83) and the
well-known stories of Athelstan’s mother and Cyrus’ mother. So Gorm,
king of Denmark, dreamed of the sons, Knut and Harald, who were to be
born of his wife Thyra, daughter of Ethelred, king of England. Saxo,
319 (Elton’s version, 387). According to a writer quoted by Southey
(iii. _Commonplace Bk._, 753) Joan of Arc’s mother dreamed she gave
birth to a thunderbolt.
[112.1]
iii. Bancroft, 99, apparently quoting Holmberg, _Ethn. Skizz._; Ensign
Niblack, in _Nat. Mus. Rep._, 1888, 379. The allied people, the
Koniagas of the southern shores of Alaska, have a similar tradition
concerning Elkh, the founder of their race. The Thlinkit and Koniagan
traditions seem in fact to be one and the same. Featherman,
_Aoneo-Mar._, 458. The Lenâpe tradition of Nanabozho, as reported by
Lindstrom about 1650, seems to attribute that hero’s birth to his
mother’s drinking out of a creek. Brinton, _Lenâpe_, 131.
[113.1]
Capt. Bourke, in ix. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 590, quoting Mendieta.
[113.2]
Hahn, _Tsuni_-ǁ_goam_, 69, 68.
[113.3]
Busk, _Sagas from the Far East_, 267. Unhappily Miss Busk’s
translations in this work cannot be trusted; but it contains the only
English version of the _Ardshi-Bordshi_ with which I am acquainted. i.
Cosquin, 69. Another version of the story, as told by an illiterate
Buddhist monk of Zain Shaben in north-western Mongolia, is given iii.
_F.L. Journ._, 321.
[114.1]
_Voyage de Siam des Pères Jesuites_, 296. In one of the Magic Songs
of the Finns, Louhiatar swallows iron hail, the siftings of Tuoni’s
mortar, and after thirty summers is disburdened of a progeny which
“become all sorts of sicknesses, a thousand causes of injury.” Hon. J.
Abercromby, in iv. _Folklore_, 40. Probably this too is a cosmological
myth.
[115.1]
iii. _Sacred Books_, 307.
[115.2]
De Charencey, _Le Fils_, 13.
[115.3]
iv. _F.L. Record_, 23.
[115.4]
Liebrecht in a note to _Gerv. Tilb._, 72, quoting d’Herbelot. Cf. De
Charencey, _Le Fils_, 13, where a similar Chinese tale is mentioned.
[116.1]
ii. _Silva Gad._, 1, translating a MS. written in 1780-82, which in
its turn is a transcript of a translation from a Latin life of this
somewhat doubtful saint, printed in the _Acta Sanctorum Hiberniæ_ at
Louvain, 1645. The MS. in question is in the British Museum.
[116.2]
vi. _Rev. Celt._, 179; D’Arbois de Jubainville, _Épopée Celtique_,
16; both translating MSS. of the fourteenth century now in the library
of the Royal Irish Academy at Dublin.
[117.1]
D’Arbois de Jubainville, _Épopée Celtique_, 37, translating _Leabhar
na hUidhre_ (_Book of the Dun Cow_), MS. dating back to about the year
1100. See another translation, ix. _Rev. Celt._, 12. For Balor’s story
as given in modern folklore, see _ante_, p. 15.
[117.2]
ii. _Silva Gad._, 23.
[118.1]
ii. _Silva Gad._, 89, translating _Leabhar na hUidhre_.
[118.2]
Prof. Whitley Stokes, in ii. _Rev. Celt._, 199, translating the
_Leabhar breac_, a MS. written shortly before 1411, now in the Royal
Irish Academy.
[119.1]
Francisco de Avila’s Narrative, translated by Markham, _Rites and
Laws_, 125. It is needless to point out the analogy of part of this
tale to modern folktales like Basile’s tale of Pervonto, cited in the
last chapter.
[120.1]
De Gubernatis, ii. _Zool. Myth._, 331. The ancient nations of the
Mediterranean basin believed that the mouth was the ordinary way of
impregnation for fishes. Herod. ii. 93; Ælian, _Nat. Anim._, ix. 63.
I have found a similar belief among the peasantry of Gloucestershire,
where I am writing, as regards the pea-hen.
[120.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 300.
[121.1]
v. _Sacred Bks._, 187. Unfortunately Mr. West, the translator, has not
given that part of the _Selections_ which relates to Zoroaster’s
life--only a summary of its contents.
[121.2]
viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 601, translating S. H. Marian.
[122.1]
Landes, _Annam._, 12. There is a Japanese tale of a lady who, having
been barren for many years, at length, as the result of much prayer to
the gods, bore five hundred eggs. They were thrown into the water in a
box, but rescued by a fisherman, incubated in an oven, and all happily
hatched. Five hundred heroes were thus produced, whom their mother was
afterwards glad to recognise and receive back. This is the legend of
Bunsio, the goddess of fruitfulness and riches. Ploss, i. _Weib_, 441,
quoting Horst.
[122.2]
Hon. J. Abercromby, in i. _Folklore_, 331.
[122.3]
iv. _F.L. Journ._, 21.
[123.1]
M. Dragomanov in _Compte Rendu du Congrès_, 46.
[124.1]
ii. _Tuti-Nameh_, 85. With these stories may be compared a
Transylvanian Gipsy saga concerning the origin of the Ashani tribe.
Ashani, the eponymous mother of the tribe, was the child of a man to
whom a supernatural being appeared in a dream riding on the man’s own
cow, and commanded him to slay the cow, burn its flesh and let his
wife eat of the ashes. He was then to sleep with her upon the cowhide.
Compliance with this command was followed by Ashani’s birth. Von
Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 184.
[124.2]
ii. Gonzenbach, 165; Crane, 208.
[124.3]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 183. See also his _Volksgl. Zig._, 14.
On the Keshalyi’s hair, see _post_, p. 155.
[125.1]
Dennys, 135, citing the _China Review_.
[125.2]
i. _Leg. Panjâb_, 139, 142.
[125.3]
Liebrecht in a note to _Gerv. Tilb._, 69. Jonas Hanway refers to a
Mohammedan belief that the Virgin Mary conceived Our Lord by the smell
of a rose. i. Hanway, 179. I have not been successful in tracing his
authority.
[125.4]
Arnobius, _Adv. Gentes_, v. 5; Pausanias, vii. 17.
[126.1]
iii. Bancroft, 296, quoting Torquemada; Müller, _Amer. Urrel._, 601.
The account given by Dr. Brinton makes Coatlicue a virgin and the ball
of feathers merely “some white plumes.” _Amer. Hero-Myths_, 77. It
does not appear on what authority this account rests. I feel sure,
however, that it has not been given without reason. The round shield
borne by the god in his usual representations was studded with white
pellets of feathers. Zelia Nuttall, in v. _Internat. Archiv._, 39.
[127.1]
Featherman, _Papuo-Mel._, 43.
[128.1]
_Mabinogion_, 421; i. _Y Llyvyr Coch_, 68. Note the singular
resemblance of the production of Llew Llaw Gyffes to that of the
children in the Zulu and Kaffir tales mentioned on p. 98. Compare also
the Thlinkit cosmogonic saga of the child born from a cockle-shell.
_Rep. Nat. Mus._ (1888), 378.
[128.2]
Im Thurn, 378. Cf. the tradition of the first khan of the Diurbiuts,
a Mongolian tribe. It was revealed to ten men in a dream that of the
tree Urun and the bird of the same name was born a divine son; he
became the khan: iv. _F.L. Journ._, 20. See also a curious tale from
New Guinea on the origin of death: xix. _Journ. Anthrop. Inst._, 465.
[129.1]
_Popol Vuh_, 89.
[130.1]
Landes, _Annam._, 63. See also a curious myth of the aborigines of
Hayti, one of the few descended to us, which represents a male
personage as becoming pregnant by the spittle of another. Having been
cut open, he brought forth a woman, by means of whom the island was
subsequently peopled. Liebrecht, in a note to _Gerv. Tilb._, 71,
quoting indirectly Peter Martyr.
[130.2]
iii. _Sacred Bks._, 396; De Charencey, _Le Fils_, 9.
[130.3]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1449. In a modern Indian _märchen_ from
Salsette the heroine is born in an extraordinary manner. A woman pours
into a mendicant’s hands some rice boiling hot from the caldron,
raising a big blister on his thumb. When his wife breaks the blister a
little girl comes out. Miss Cox, _Cinderella_, 260, abstracting a
story in xx. _Indian Antiquary_, 142.
[131.1]
xix. _Sacred Bks._, 2; Rhys Davids, _Buddhism_, 183. The father and
the mother of Parákrama 1., the restorer of the native kingdom of
Ceylon, dreamed the same night that a beautiful elephant entered her
chamber; and this was interpreted to foretell the birth of a hero.
_Buddhism Primitive and Present in Magadha and in Ceylon_, by Reginald
Stephen Copleston (London, 1892), 378.
[132.1]
Sale, _Koran_, note on ch. xxix., citing Arab authors.
[132.2]
Brinton, _Amer. Hero-Myths_, 90; iii. Bancroft, 271; both citing the
Mexican Codex in the Vatican and the _Codex Telleriano-Remensis_.
[133.1]
Callaway, _Tales_, 335.
[133.2]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 436.
[134.1]
Plutarch, _Names of Rivers and Mountains_, xxiv.
[134.2]
Featherman, _Aoneo-Mar._, 80.
[134.3]
De Charencey, _Le Fils_, 16.
[134.4]
iv. _Sacred Bks._, lxxix.; v. 143 note, 144; xxiii. 195, 226, 307; De
Charencey, _Traditions_, 31, quoting Tavernier; Rev. Dr. Mills, in
_Nineteenth Century_, Jan. 1894, 51.
[134.5]
_Gerv. Tilb._ (Decision i. c. 17), 6, 68.
[135.1]
Browne, _Vulgar Errors_ (l. vii. c. 16), 371.
[135.2]
_Arcana Microcosmi: or, The hid Secrets of Man’s Body discovered_,
etc. By A. R. (London, 1652), 132.
[136.1]
Brinton, _Amer. Hero-Myths_, 47, citing Schoolcraft, who must,
however, be generally accepted with caution.
[136.2]
_Kalevala_, runes xlv. and i. I have already referred to another
legend of the fertilisation of Loujatar, p. 114, note. The Magic Songs
of the Finns are full of these stories. See Hon. J. Abercromby, in iv.
_Folklore_, 35, 37, 47. The Magyars tell of a wind-begotten
supernatural steed. Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Mag._, 10. Sir Walter
Scott refers somewhere to a border ballad of a maiden impregnated by
the night-wind; but I have mislaid the reference.
[136.3]
iii. Bancroft, 175, note. Cf. Dr. A. W. Bell, in i. _Journ. Ethnol.
Soc., N.S._, 250, where “a dewdrop from the Great Spirit” is said to
have fallen upon the maiden’s bosom, entered her blood and caused her
to conceive. This comes to the same thing; but Bancroft’s version
seems more primitive.
[137.1]
De Charencey, _Traditions_, 34, citing the Marquis
d’Hervey-Saint-Denis. According to an Irish tradition, related in
America by a woman from Roscommon, the ass and cow are accounted
sacred, because these animals breathed upon the infant Jesus in the
manger, and thus kept him warm. vi. _Journ. Amer. F.L._, 264.
[138.1]
De Charencey, _Traditions_, 35.
[138.2]
i. Reed, 201.
[139.1]
_Second Voyage du Père Tachard_, 247. Sommonocodon is obviously
Buddha. Both this story and one previously given (on p. 114) have been
filtered through the minds of Jesuit fathers anxious to discover
identifications with Christian teaching.
[139.2]
De Charencey, _Le Fils_, 13.
[142.1]
iii. Radloff, 82.
[143.1]
De Charencey, _Traditions_, 38, quoting Father Giov. Phil. Marini;
Southey, iv. _Commonplace Bk._, 41, quoting Picart.
[143.2]
De Charencey, _Traditions_, 36.
[143.3]
Ellis, i. _Polyn. Res._, 262. Cf. the account of creation in the
Windward Isles, _ibid._, 324.
[143.4]
_Ibid._, 326.
[144.1]
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, xxxvi. 70; Ovid (_Fasti_, vi. 629) and Arnobius
(_Adv. Gen._, v. 18) regard Ocrisia as not quite so innocent.
According to the former, Vulcan it was who was the father. Livy (i.
39) rationalises the tale.
[144.2]
Codrington, 406.
[145.1]
Southey, iv. _Commonplace Bk._, 142; Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 136.
[146.1]
While these sheets were passing through the press, Comte H. de
Charencey, of whose studies I have availed myself in the foregoing
pages, republished the substance of his articles on the Virgin’s Son,
with additions, in a work entitled _Les Folklore dans les deux mondes_
(Paris, Klincksieck, 1894). He seeks there to show that the New World
borrowed many of its legends from the Old, and among them that of the
Supernatural Birth. If I understand him aright, he follows M. Angrand
in attributing Mexican civilisation to an Asiatic origin, and declares
that while traditions of a powerful hero born without a father are
found among the tribes whose culture was drawn from this source, they
are not found among other peoples, like the Mayas and the Peruvians,
whose civilisation is to be ascribed to an easterly provenience. It is
always dangerous to assert a negative. We have already seen (_ante_,
p. 118) that the Peruvians had a tradition of the Supernatural Birth,
although the offspring did not turn out a hero. But Hiawatha was a
hero exactly of the kind referred to; and the foremother of the
Bakaïrí of Central Brazil gave birth to the twin culture-heroes and
parents of the race from swallowing two finger-bones. Von den Steinen,
373. The myth is far too widely spread, and far too deeply rooted in
the savage beliefs of both hemispheres, to be simply accounted for by
borrowing.
CHAPTER VI NOTES
[148.1]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 431, citing Duncker.
[149.1]
xxix. _Sacred Books_, 180; cf. 395.
[149.2]
_Meddygon Myddfai_, 269. Concerning this work see my article on “Old
Welsh Folk-Medicine” in ix. _Y Cymmrodor_, 227. Both MSS. comprised in
the book badly want careful reprinting and proper editing.
[150.1]
_Ibid._, 262, 263; Friend, 115, 124, 581. Rosemary with grains of
mastic was given by physicians in the seventeenth century to cure
barrenness. Ploss, i. _Weib_, 434. A Gipsy charm quoted by Leland from
Dr. von Wlislocki prescribed oats to be given to a mare out of an
apron or gourd, with an incantation expressly bidding her “Eat, fill
thy belly with young!” _Gip. Sorc._, 84.
[150.2]
W. A. Clouston, in Burton, iii. _Suppl. Nights_, 576, quoting _Indian
N. and Q._
[150.3]
i. Risley, 256.
[151.1]
Leland, _Gip. Sorc._, 101.
[151.2]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 439, citing von Wlislocki.
[151.3]
_Ibid._, citing Krauss.
[151.4]
Von Schulenburg, 232.
[151.5]
J. B. Andrews, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 111.
[151.6]
Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 444.
[151.7]
Ploss, i. _Kind_, 30, 32; H. Ling Roth, in xxii. _Journ. Anthr.
Inst._, 209. In the island of Aurora a woman sometimes takes it into
her head “that the origin, or beginning, of one of her children is a
cocoa-nut, or bread-fruit, or something of that kind;” and this gives
rise to a prohibition of the object for food, just as in the case of a
totem. Rev. Dr. Codrington, in xviii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 310; ii.
_Rep. Austr. Ass._, 612. I hardly know how to account for this notion
except by the suggestion that such a woman may have eaten the fruit in
question about the time her pregnancy commenced, and thence have been
led to believe that the pregnancy was in some way due to it. Dr.
Codrington, however, upon inquiry, informs me that he never heard of
any belief of the kind. It is perhaps worth noting as a coincidence,
if nothing more, that on Lepers’ Island the two intermarrying
divisions are called _branches of fruit_, “as if,” says Dr.
Codrington, “all the members hang on the same stalk.” Codrington,
_Melanesians_, 26.
[152.1]
Meier, _Sagen_, 476, 474. It is a saying at Pforzheim: To make a
nut-tree bear, let a pregnant woman pick the first nuts. Grimm, _Teut.
Myth._, 1802.
[153.1]
Dr. Krauss, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 276. In Silesia stones are put on
the trees on Christmas Eve to make them bear the more. Grimm _Teut.
Myth._, 1825.
[154.1]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 431, 432, 434, 445, citing various authorities.
Compare Queen Isolte’s lily, referred to _ante_, page 91. What is the
meaning of the attribution, widely spread in Europe, of children to
trees or vegetables? See, for examples, iv. _Am Urquell_, 224 _et
seqq._; Zingerle, _Sagen_, 110; Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 56. In
England children are said to come out of the parsley-bed.
[154.2]
_Gen._ xxx. 14. _Early Trav._, 434.
[155.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 90.
[155.2]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 439.
[155.3]
Clouston, in Burton, iii. _Suppl. Nights_, 576, citing Pandit Natésa
Sástri in _Indian N. and Q._
[155.4]
Southey, iii. _Commonplace Bk._, 20, 75.
[155.5]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Siebenb. Sachs._, 54.
[156.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 13. Compare the story given in the
last chapter, _ante_ p. 124.
[156.2]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 531; Ploss, i. _Weib_, 432, 440, 441, 443,
431, citing various authorities.
[156.3]
Schröder, 171, citing Hartknoch; Ploss, i. _Weib_, 445.
[157.1]
Sextus Placitus, i. _Sax. Leechd._, 345.
[157.2]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 431, 432, citing Nachtigall and Junk.
[157.3]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Siebenb. Sachs._, 103. In Transylvania hare’s
flesh, especially the testicles, is also esteemed a specific against
impotence and childlessness. _Ibid._, 169.
[157.4]
Leland, _Gip. Sorc._, 101.
[157.5]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 314.
[158.1]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 442.
[158.2]
J. Spinner of Lemberg, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 125.
[158.3]
xxx. _Sacred Bks._, 110.
[159.1]
iii. _Sax. Leechd._, 69.
[159.2]
Theal, 201.
[159.3]
Eug. Polain, in ii. _Bull de F.L._, 82.
[159.4]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 434, 443.
[159.5]
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, x. 85.
[159.6]
Wolf, _Niederl. Sag._, 227; ii. _Bull de F.L._, 82.
[160.1]
ii. Witzschel, 244; Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Siebenb. Sachs._, 152.
[160.2]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 443, citing von Wlislocki in general terms. The
statement is repeated (as usual without giving his authority) by
Leland, _Gip. Sorc._, 101.
[160.3]
Krauss, _Sitte und Brauch_, 531.
[160.4]
Victor Mindeleff, in viii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 32.
[160.5]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 435, citing Sandreczki.
[161.1]
Tuchmann, in vi. _Mélusine_, 109, quoting Rehatsek, _Journ. Anthrop.
Soc. Bombay._
[161.2]
Clouston, in Burton, iii. _Suppl. Nights_, 576 note, quoting Pandit
Natésa Sástri, _Indian N. and Q._
[162.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 66. Wherever this work is cited, it
must be understood, unless otherwise expressed, to deal with the
Gipsies of the Danubian countries, where alone, the author says, they
are unsophisticated.
[162.2]
Von Wlislocki, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 7.
[162.3]
B. W. Schiffer, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 147.
[162.4]
A. F. Dörfler, in iii. _Am Urquell_, 269.
[163.1]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksleb. Mag._, 77. According to the same author, the
afterbirth of a boy or girl placed under the bed will ensure the
procreation of a child of the same sex; but the husband must be
careful which side he gets into bed--on the right for a boy, on the
left for a girl. _Ibid._, 80.
[163.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Zig._, 103.
[164.1]
i. Lane, 393, 394.
[164.2]
Brinton, _Myths_, 253.
[164.3]
v. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 111, translating _Relations des Jesuites_
(1636). In the Banks’ Islands are certain spirits called _Nopitu_. It
is believed that a woman sometimes hears one of them say: “Mother, I
am coming to you,” and feels it entering into her; and it is
afterwards born as an ordinary child. Codrington, 154. This does not
appear to be a case of migration.
[165.1]
iii. _Sax. Leechd._, 66.
[165.2]
Von Wlislocki, _Volksgl. Siebenb. Sachs._, 75, 152.
[165.3]
Schiffer, in iv. _Am Urquell_, 187.
[165.4]
Kohlrusch, 324.
[166.1]
Rev. W. Gregor, in iii. _Folklore_, 68.
[166.2]
i. _Leg. Panj._, 2.
[167.1]
vi. _Mélusine_, 111, quoting _Panjab N. and Q._, and _Indian N. and
Q._
[169.1]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 436, 437, 438, 439, referring to various
authorities. The Kich Negresses about Adaël, west of the White Nile,
in Equatorial Africa, however, think it necessary to wash in liquids
much less innocent than water, unless they want to be sterile. Kara
Kirghiz women spend a night beside a holy well. v. Radloff, 2. The
ceremonies they practise are not mentioned.
[169.2]
Jevons, _Plutarch’s Roman Questions_, ci.; iii. _L’Anthropologie_,
548, 558; _Congress_ (1891) _Report_, 345; Kolbe, 163; Rodd, 94;
Dalton, _passim_; Ploss, i. _Weib_, 445, citing Böder; Winternitz,
_Altind. Hochz._, 47, 101.
[170.1]
Hahn, _Tsuni_-ǁ_goam_, 87.
[170.2]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 443, citing Wuttke. In Hainaut a profusion of fruit
on the nut-trees prognosticates many bastards during the year. Harou,
28.
[170.3]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 446.
[170.4]
Frazer, ii. _Golden Bough_, 238, note, quoting Monier-Williams,
_Religious Life and Thought in India_.
[171.1]
T. J. Hutchinson, in iii. _Trans. Ethnol. Soc., N.S._, 327.
[171.2]
i. Preller, 389; Ovid, _Fasti_, ii. 425.
[171.3]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 435.
[171.4]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 445; Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1794.
[172.1]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1795.
[172.2]
De Charencey, _Le Fils_, 26.
[172.3]
v. Radloff, 2. Among the Southern Slavs the bride is unveiled beneath
an apple-tree and the veil is sometimes hung on the tree. Krauss,
_Sitte und Brauch_, 450.
[173.1]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 437, 439. For other amulets, see _ibid._, 441;
Klunzinger, 399.
[173.2]
Codrington, 184.
[173.3]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 439.
[174.1]
A. H. Kiehl, in vi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 359.
[174.2]
Augustine, _Civ. Dei_, vi. 9; Ploss, i. _Weib_, 435, quoting Thomas
Bartholinus.
[174.3]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 436.
[174.4]
Bérenger-Féraud, 201, quoting Yéménier.
[175.1]
_County F.L., Suffolk_, 124, quoting _Corolla Varia_ by Rev. W.
Hawkins (1634), and deeds of the monastery relating to the property
and the bull. The rite had evidently been mutilated.
[176.1]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 444; Bérenger-Féraud, 200. Other Breton cases are
referred to by Sébillot, i. _Trad. et Sup._, 51.
[176.2]
vi. _Mélusine_, 154, quoting the _Temps_; 258, quoting _Byegones_.
[177.1]
Zingerle, _Sitten_, 26. Ploss, i. _Weib_, 444, reproduces a photograph
of one of these votive figures bought by the author in a
wax-chandler’s shop at Salzburg as recently as 1890.
[177.2]
Featherman, _Nigritians_, 139, quoting Hecquard.
[178.1]
Ploss, i. _Weib_, 442, quoting Riedel.
[178.2]
Winternitz, 23, 75; Schroeder, 123.
[178.3]
Casalis, 265; Tylor, _E. Hist._, 109; M. Delafosse, in iv.
_L’Anthropologie_, 444.
[179.1]
vi. _Mélusine_, 231, quoting Doolittle.
[179.2]
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, x. 51. See also Ælian, _Nat. Anim._, xvii. 15.
As to the power of flowers to imprint themselves by their smell on the
fœtus, see Vasconcellos, 201.
[179.3]
v. _Mélusine_, 248.
[180.1]
Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, viii. 67; Aug. _Civ. Dei_, xxi. 5.
[180.2]
Marsden, 297.
CHAPTER VII NOTES
[184.1]
ii. _Records of the Past_, 137; Maspero, 3.
[186.1]
Haltrich, 1 (Story No. 1). In a Wallachian variant the trees are
apple-trees, the mother is only expelled, and the tremendous _Deus ex
machinâ_ of the Transylvanian story is not brought upon the scene.
Schott, 121 (Story No. 8). This is a later stage in the history of the
tale. See also another variant, Schott, 332.
[187.1]
Kremnitz, 30 (Story No. 3), from Slavici.
[187.2]
iv. Pitrè, 328 (variant of Story No. 36).
[187.3]
Day, 145 (Story No. 9).
[188.1]
Wolf, _Deutsche Hausm._, 390.
[188.2]
Maspero, xvi., quoting Rambaud, _La Russie Épique_.
[189.1]
Luzel, iii. _Contes Pop._, 262.
[189.2]
Wratislaw, 138 (Story No. 23), from Afanasief.
[190.1]
Legrand, 107, from Sakellarios.
[190.2]
i. Von Hahn, 268.
[191.1]
ii. _Pentamerone_, 231 (Story No. 59).
[191.2]
Frere, 79 (Story No. 6).
[191.3]
Stokes, 138 (Story No. 21).
[192.1]
Landes, _Tjames_, 79 (Story No. 10). It is abstracted in Miss Cox’s
_Cinderella_, 299.
[193.1]
A large number of these stories has been abstracted and commented on
by M. Eugène Monseur, i. _Bulletin de F.L._, 89, to whose accurate
and scholarly paper the reader is referred. See also Grimm, ii.
_Tales_, 538; Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, 9; Ellis, _Yoruba_, 134.
[194.1]
i. Child, 118.
[195.1]
Campbell, _Santal F.T._, 52, 106, 102. In a Basuto tale a mother,
irritated by her daughter, commits a deadly assault upon her, and
beats her body to dust. The wind of the desert carries the dust away
to a lake, where a crocodile makes of it a woman to live with him in
the lake. From time to time she comes up to the surface and calls to
her sister, chanting the story of her wrongs. Casalis, 360.
[196.1]
Theal, 138.
[196.2]
Ralston, _Russian F.T._, 10, from Afanasief.
[197.1]
Rink, 450.
[197.2]
Landes, _Tjames_, 77.
[197.3]
ii. Giles, 207. See also _ibid._, 119, 267, 279.
[198.1]
i. Giles, 413.
[198.2]
Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco, 24.
[198.3]
Jacobs, _Celtic F.T._, 82, from xiii. _Celtic Mag._, 69. An Irish form
of this story, manifestly later in its present form, derives the
interlacing trees from stakes of yew passed through the bodies of the
lovers when they were buried. Gaidoz, in iv. _Mélusine_, 12, citing
_Transactions of the Gaelic Soc._, 1808.
[199.1]
W. Spottiswoode, in ii. _Trans. Ethnol. Soc., N.S._, 248. See for
other examples iv. and v. _Mélusine, passim._
[199.2]
Zingerle, _Sagen_, 136.
[200.1]
i. _Blätt. f. Pomm. Volksk._, 17. Other instances are cited there.
Among the peasantry of the Riviera, thorns or nettles growing on a
grave are a sign of the damnation of the dead; if other plants grow,
he is happy; if a mixture, he is in purgatory. J. B. Andrews, in ix.
_Rev. Trad. Pop._, 117.
[200.2]
Featherman, _Tur._, 269; i. Macdonald, 229, citing Krapf.
[200.3]
Hunter, _Rural Bengal_, 210.
[200.4]
ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 75, quoting Argensola, _Histoire de la
Conquête des Isles Moluques_ (Amsterdam, 1706).
[201.1]
Modigliani, 618.
[201.2]
Grimm, _Teut. Myth._, 1811.
[201.3]
viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 279.
[202.1]
Dorman, 293, citing Smith’s _Brazil_; Von den Steinen, 369.
[202.2]
Callaway, in iv. _Journ. Anthr. Soc._, cxxxviii.
[203.1]
Grant Allen, _Attis_, 33, and _passim._ See also Frazer, _Golden
Bough, passim_; Bötticher, 254 _seqq._
[204.1]
Callaway, _Rel. Syst._, 140.
[204.2]
Le Page Renouf, in xvi. _Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch._, 100.
[204.3]
Ellis, _Yoruba_, 133, 134.
[204.4]
Grabowsky, in ii. _Internat. Archiv._, 181, 187.
[205.1]
Modigliani, 292, 277, 290, 293, 479. Is it too much to say that the
Greek custom whereby the nearest relative received the dying breath in
a kiss probably originated in a similar belief?
[205.2]
Guppy, 54.
[205.3]
Featherman, _Aoneo-Mar._, 236.
[205.4]
Bourke, in ix. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 470, quoting Schultze, in
_Smithsonian Report_ for 1867.
[205.5]
Powers, 182; Knight, 109.
[206.1]
Zingerle, _Sagen_, 137. Other examples on the following pages. Breton
examples may be found in Le Braz, 122, 132, 270, 272, 417.
[208.1]
Ovid, _Metam._, xiii. 697.
[209.1]
Southey, ii. _Commonplace Bk._, 435, quoting Ward, i. _Hindoos_, 54.
[209.2]
Gardner, in iv. _F.L. Journ._, 30.
[213.1]
_Mabinogion_, 471. Cf. Prof. Rhys’ exposition of the story, _Hibbert
Lectures_, 543.
[215.1]
D’Arbois de Jubainville, _Cycle Myth._, 47, citing the _Leabhar na
hUidhre_ and two other MSS.
[217.1]
_Ibid._, 312. Finn mac Cumhail too had previously lived as Mongan.
_Ibid._, 337.
[218.1]
Powers, _Tribes of California_, iii. _Contrib. N. Amer. Ethn._, 299.
[218.2]
_The Wooing of Emer_, translated by Prof. Kuno Meyer, i. _Arch. Rev._,
70.
[218.3]
xxv. _Sacred Bks._, 329.
[219.1]
_Grihya-Sûtra_ of Hiranyakesin, xxx. _Sacred Bks._, 211.
_Grihya-Sûtra_ of Âsvalâyana, xxix. _Sacred Bks._, 183. Chinese
ritual, in its insistence on the necessity of personation of the dead
at solemn sacrifices by his grandson, or some one else of the same
surname, points to the same doctrine. See especially The _Lî_-K_î_,
xxvii. _Sacred Bks._, 337; xxviii. 243.
[219.2]
Featherman, _Nigritians_, 447; Tylor, ii. _Prim. Cul._, 4; _Winwood
Reade_, 539; Ploss, i. _Kind_, 259, citing Bastian. Ellis, _Yoruba_,
128, says the inquiry is made of a priest of Ifa, the god of
divination. It is believed by one of the Ewe tribes, neighbours of the
Yoruba, that the lower jaw is the only part of the body which a child
derives from its mother, all the rest being from the ancestral _luwoo_
or _kra_. The father furnishes nothing. _Ibid._ 131 note.
[219.3]
Burton, ii. _Wanderings_, 174.
[220.1]
Ellis, _Tshi-speaking Peoples_, 149; _Ewe-speaking Peoples_, 114;
Burton, ii. _Gelele_, 158; ii. _Wanderings_, 173.
[220.2]
Macpherson, _Memorials_, 72, 92, 134. But see as to the Kols, who
perform a similar ceremony without the same ancestral reference,
Dalton, 295.
[221.1]
Tylor, 184.
[221.2]
_Ibid._, 36.
[221.3]
Turner, _Samoa_, 16, 77, 78; _Polynesia_, 174, 178, 238.
[222.1]
xviii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 311.
[222.2]
Tylor, ii. _Prim. Cul._, 4.
[222.3]
Featherman, _Aoneo-Mar._, 31, 392; iii. Bancroft, 517. See also Tylor,
ii. _Prim. Cul._, 3; Niblack, in _Rep. Nat. Mus._ (1888), 369.
[222.4]
Liebrecht, 311.
[223.1]
iii. Bancroft, 517. Did Bancroft read his authority aright? Tylor,
citing Waitz, states that it was the child who bore not only the name
but the rank of the deceased. I have preferred to cite Bancroft both
because the statement is second-hand, instead of third-hand (I have no
access to the original), and because it tells somewhat less strongly
in favour of the argument.
[223.2]
Bourke, in ix. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 470, quoting Schultze, _Fetichism_
(New York, 1885).
[223.3]
iii. _Trans. Ethnol. Soc., N.S._, 188, 375; Von den Steinen, 334, 434.
[223.4]
Featherman, _Dravidians_, 491.
[223.5]
Placucci, 78, 23. The reason, however, may be derived from the belief
that to bestow the name is to bestow a part of the life of the
original owner of the name, who would thus lose it. The same ambiguity
attaches to a superstition in the province of Posen (Polish Prussia),
where, if a child die and the next year another child be born, it must
not receive the name of the dead child lest it also die. iii. _Zeits.
f. Volksk._, 233. This would seem to amount to complete identity, or
else to some evil influence in the name, or perhaps to a mistake as to
the identity on the part of some malicious spirit who had a spite
against the dead child. At Chemnitz, if the first children take their
parents’ names they die before the parents. Grimm, _Teut. Myth._,
1778. These cases want further inquiry. As to the renewal of family
names by giving them to children, see Tylor, ii. _Prim. Cul._, 4;
Kaindl, 6; Finamore, _Trad. Pop. Abr._, 74.
[224.1]
Pigorini-Beri, 83.
[224.2]
E. H. Man, in xii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 155.
[224.3]
Burton, _Wit and Wisdom_, 376.
[224.4]
_Relations des Jésuites_ (1636), translated by Miss Nora Thomas, v.
_Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 114, 111.
[225.1]
Tylor, ii. _Prim. Cul._, 3; i. Crantz, 161, 200; Rink, 44, 54, 64,
434; vi. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 612. _Ante,_ pp. 75, 196.
ERRATA
[_Copied from volume III in the series_]
p. 57, note 1, for 217 read 178
p. 61, last line but one, for _fisherman_ read _merchant_
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
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Convert footnotes to endnotes. Relabel note markers: append the
original note number to the page number.
Create errata page and copy corrigenda from volume III. Apply errata.
Add errata and endnotes entries to TOC.
[List of Works]
Move the LOW to the end of the main text and adjust the TOC
accordingly.
A few trivial punctuation and italics corrections.
Change “Am Urquell. Am Urquell. _Monatschrift_ für _Volkkunde_” to
_Monatsschrift_ and _Volkskunde_, respectively.
“Blätt. f. Pomm. … _Monatschrift_ für Sage” to _Monatsschrift_.
“Saxo Grammaticus translated by Oliver Elton, B.A. _Londo_ 1894” to
_London_ followed by a comma.
[Chapter IV]
“a duke dressed, like _Mackineely_ in the Irish tale” to _MacKineely_.
[Chapter V]
“This is a _quesion_ of apologetics, not of folklore” to _question_.
[Chapter VI]
“or if taken by a man, they will _enchance_ his potency” to _enhance_.
[Chapter VII]
“Accordingly certain kinds, of fish are not eaten” delete comma.
“was called Tuan, son of Carell He lived not only” add period after
_Carell_.
“bearing on the legend of Perseus, _But_ some account” to _but_.
[Endnotes]
(p. 187, note 2) “iv. _Pitré_, 328 (variant of Story No. 36)” to
_Pitrè_.
[End of text]
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