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GEIMM'S HOUSEHOLD TALES.
WITH THE AUTHOK'S NOTES
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TRANSLATED FROM THE GER31AN AND EDITED BY
MAEGAEET HUNT,
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WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
ANDKEW LANG, M.A,
IN TWO VOLUMES.— Vol. L
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LONDON: GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
1884.
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LONDON : FEINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAUFOBD STBEET AND OHABINO CBOeS.
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^ PREFACE.
There would seem to be very little need of a preface to any book possessing the great advantage of an Introduction from tlie pen of Mr. Andrew Lang, especially when it is a book which has always been so jDopular in this country that it has fully proved its right to the name originally bestowed on it.
The reader may, however, like to know something of its history as told by one of its authors in the preface to the 2nd edition, which was published in 1819. The first edition was in two volumes, the first of which ap- peared in 1812. The brothers Grimm were thirteen years in collecting the stories in this volume. They were all picked up little by little from the lips of people living in Hesse and Hanau, the districts best known to the authors. The second volume was finished much more quickly : it was ready in 1814. Chance favoured them, friends helped them, but their best friend of all was the wife of a cow-herd living in the village of Niederzwehrn, near Cassel, a woman of about fifty, with intelligent and agreeable but somewhat resolute features, large, bright penetrating eyes, and a perfect genius for story- telling. " Her memory," Grimm tells us, " kept a firm hold of all sagas. She herself knew that this gift was not granted to every one, and that there were many who could remember nothing connectedly. She told her stories thoughtfully, accurately, and with wonderful vividness, and evidently had a delight in doing it. First, she related them from be- ginning to end, and then, if required, repeated them more slovdy, so that after some practice it was perfectly easy to write from her dictation." '
a 2
it PKEFACE.
This is how the Brothers Grimm did write them ; much that she said was taken down by them word by word and its fidelity is unmistakable. They bear empnatic witness to her ardent desire for accuracy. " Any one who holds that tradition is so easily falsified and carelessly preserved, that it is impossible for it to last for any length of time, ought to have heard how close she always kept to the story, and how zealous she was for its accuracy. When repeating it she never altered smy part, and if she made a mistake always corrected it herself immediately."
A large proportion of the stories in these volumes comes from Hesse, which, as we are told, being a mountainous country lying far away from the great main roads, and with a population closely occupied in husbandry, is, of all German nations, that which amid all Time's changes has kept most fixedly to characteristic habits and customs.
The principle on which the Brothers Grimm worked shall be given in their own words : " Our first aim in col- lecting these stories has b&en exactness and truth. We have added nothing of our own, have embellished no incident or feature of the story, but have given its sub- stance just as we ourselves received it. It will, of course, be understood that the mode of telling and carrying out of particular details is principally due to us, but we have striven to retain everything that we knew to be charac- teristic, that in this respect also we might leave the collec- tion the many-sidedness of nature. For the rest, every one engaged on a work of this kind will know that this cannot be looked on as a careless or indifferent method of collection, but that, on the contrary, a care and skill which can only be gained by time are required to distinguish the version of the story which is simpler, purer and yet more complete in itself, from the falsified one. Whenever we found that varying stories completed each other, and that no contradictory parts had to be cut out before they could be Joined together, we have given them as one, but when they diff'ered, we have given the preference to that which was the belter, and have kept the other for the notes.' The authors express great regiet that in po many cases they have been obliged to give the (stories in High-German, which, though it has gained in clearness, has " lost in
PREFACE. V
flavour, and no longer has such a firm hold of the kernel of the thing signified." Whenever it was possible they have retained the patois of the district where they heard the story, and their two volumes contain stories in ten different dialects.
There have been several English translations of the Household Tales, and yet this is, I believe, the first which has aimed at presenting them precisely as given by the Brothers Grimm. They wrote down every story exactly as they heard it, and if some of its details chanced to be somewhat coarse, or if sacred persons were occa- sionally introduced with a daring familiarity, which to us seems almost to amount to profanity, they did not soften or omit these passages, for with them fidelity to tradition was a duty which admitted of no compromise — they were not providing amusement for children, but storing up material for students of folk-lore. English translators have, as is not unnatural, hitherto had children most in their minds, and have thought it well to change the devil of the German stories into a less offensive ogre or black dwarf, and so on. In this translation I have endeavoured to give the stories as they are in the German original, and though I have slightly softened one or two passages, have always respected the principle which was paramount with the brothers Grimm themselves. The notes too are now translated for the first time. I have been in some difficulty about the spelling of proper names, but have tried to adhere to that form of each name for which the authors themselves showed the most preference. They adopt several, and their spelling frequently differs from that which is commonly received, and yet they are such high authorities that it seems presumptuous to alter what they thought right.
CONTENTS OF VOL. I.
1. The Feog-King, oe Ieon Heney .
2. Cat and Mouse in Paetneeship
3. OuE Lady's Chtld.
4. The Stoey of the Youth who went foeth to
•^TiAT Fear was.
5. The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids
6. Faithful John ....
7. The Good Baegain
8. The Wondeeful Musician
9. The Twelve Brothees .
10. The Pack of Kagamuffins .•
11. Beothee and Sister
12. Eapunzel .
13. The Three Little Men in the Wood
14. The Three Spinnees
15. Hansel and Geethel .
16. The Theee Snake-Leaves
17. The White Snake.
18. The Steaw, the Coal, and the Bean
19. The Fisherman and his Wife
20. The Valiant Little Tailor .
21. Cinderella . ...
22. The Riddle
--23. The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage
24. Mother Holle ....
25. The Seven Ravens . , .
26. Little Red-Cap ....
27. The Bremen Town-Musicians
28. The Singing Bone.
29. The Devil with the Three Golden Haies
30. The Louse and the Flea
31. The Girl without Hands •
32. Clever Hans ....
33. The Three Languages .
34. Clever Elsie ....
35. The Tailor in Heaven.
36. The Wishing-Table, the Gold-Ass, and the
THE Sack .....
37. Thumbling .....
38. The Wedding of Mrs. Fox ,
PAGE 1
4
" 7
learn
Cudgel in
Vlll
CONTENTS.
39. The Elves .
40. The Kobber Bridegeoom
41. Herr Korbes.
42. The Godfather
43. Frau Trude .
44. Godfather Death.
45. Thumbling as Journeyman
46. Fitcher's Bird
47. The Juniper-Tree
48. Old Sultan .
49. The Six Swans .
50. Little Briar-Kose
51. fundevogel .
52. King Thrushbeard
53. Little Snow- White
54. The Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn
55. Rumpelstiltskin .
56. Sweetheart Roland
57. The Golden Bird .
58. The Dog and the Sparrow
59. Frederick and Catherine
60. The Two Brothers
61. The Little Peasant
62. The Queen Bee .
63. The Three Feathers
64. The Golden Goose
65. Allerleirauh
66. The Hare's Bride
67. The Twelve Huntsmen
68. The Thief and his Master
69. jorinda and joringel .
70. The Three Sons of Fortune
71. How Six Men got on in the World
72. The Wolf and the Man
73. The Wolf and the Fox
74. Gossip Wolf and the Fox ,
75. The Fox and the Cat .
76. The Pink ....
77. Clever Grethel .
78. The Old Man and his Grandson
79. The Water-Nix .
80. The Death of the Little Hen
81. Brother Lustig .
82. Gambling Hansel .
83. Hans in Luck
84. Hans Married
85. The Gold-Children
86. The Fox and the Geese Notes
INTEODUCTIOK
HOUSEHOLD TALES;
THEIR OEIGIN, DIFFUSION, AND RELATIONS TO THE HIGHER MYTHS.
By ANDREW LANG.
ARGUMENT.
Problems suggested by the study of Household Tales.— The stories consist ot few incidents, in many combinations —The tales are widely distributed.— The incidents are often monstrous and in- credible.—The incidents recur in Greek and Indian epics, and in Lives of the Saints.— How are we to explain the Origin of House- hold Tales, their Diffusion, their Relations to Epic Myths^— Theories of the Diffusion of Tales.— Caution necessary in Examin- ing Tales— Example : "The Wolf and Kids:" explanation of Sir George Cox.— His Theory of the Diffusion of Household Tales.— Common heritage of Aryan Race.— His Theory of the Ori^n of the Tales from mental habits and linguistic ecc-ntricities of early man. — Man was " animi&tic," vastly concerned about Phenomena of day and year, and he was oblivious of the meaning of proverbial and popular expressions.— Household Tales are chiefly myths of day, night, summer winter, dawn, dew, sun, moon, wind, etc. This theory criticised. — Scantiness of Evidence for early man's poetic interest in Nature, and forgetfulness of meaning of language. Sir George Cox's early men really savages. — Comtemporary savages have not mental and linguistic habits ascribed to the early men. — Difference between Sir George Cox's and Mr. Max Miiller's con- ception of mythopoeie men. — The evidence of Anthropological science negkcted. — Criticism of theory of "Polyonymy" and " Oblivion." — Use of these processes in Sir George Cox's system. — Illustrated by Myth of Jason.— Condemnations of the "Solar" method quoted. — ^The criterioa of Mr. Max Miiller criticised. — The story of " Frosch-Konig " as interpreted by Messrs. Cox and Muller. — Sir George Cox's theory that the animals in fairy tales are derived from linguistic confusions criticised. — Relations of Mdrchen to myths examined. — Theory that Marchen are detritus of myths. — Converse theory that myths are a younger form of Mdrchen. — A Theory of the Origin of Household Tales stated.— The monstrous incidents are survivals from savagery. — The Myths are Mdrchen elaborated. — European Mdrchen hold a mean position between savage tales and heroic myths. — Origin of this theory. — Nature of evidence for savage Marchen and for savage ideas.— Defence of trustworthiness of this evidence when careftilly handled. — State- ment of chief savage ideas. — They reappear in savage and in civilised Tales. — Examples given. — The Myth of Jason criticised according to this Theory. — Summary. — Conclusion. — Notes.
INTEODUCTION.
By Andrew Lang.
Till shortly before the time of the Brothers Grimm the stories which they gathered (^Kinder- und JSaus- mdrcheri) had been either neglected by men of learning or treated as mere curiosities. Many collections had been made in Sanskrit, Arabic, Italian, French, but they were made for literary, not scientific purposes. The volumes of the Brothers Grimm following on several other scientifi.c collections, and the notes of the Grimms (now for the first time reproduced in English), showed that popular tales deserved scientific study. The book of the Grimms has been succeeded by researches made among all Aryan peoples. We have tales from the Norse, French, Breton, Gaelic, Welsh, Spanish, Scotch, Eomaic, Finnish, Italian, in fact, the topic of Household Tales is almost ob- scured by the abundance of material. Now the least careful reader of these collections must notice certain facts which constitute the problem of this branch of mythology.
In the first place the incidents, plots, and characters of the tales are, in every Aryan country, almost identical. Everywhere we find the legends of the ill-treated, but ultimately successful younger daughter ; of the triumph- ant youngest son ; of the false bride substituted for the true ; of the giant's wife or daughter who elopes with the adventurer, and of the giant's pursuit ; everywhere there is the story about the wife who is forced by some
XU INTRODUCTION.
mysterious cause, to leave her husband, or of the husband driven from his wife, a story which sometimes ends in the reunion of the pair. The coincidences of this kind are very numerous, and it soon becomes plain that most Aryan Household Tales are the common possession of the peoples which speak an Aryan language. It is also manifest that the tales consist of but few incidents, grouped together in a kaleidoscopic variety of arrange- ments.
In the second place, it is remarked that the incidents of household tales are of a monstrous, irrational, and unna- tural character, answering to nothing in our experience. All animate and inanimate nature is on an intellectual level with man. Not only do beasts, birds, and fishes talk, but they actually intermarry, or propose to inter- marry, with human beings.
Queens are accused of giving births to puppies and the charge is believed. Men and women are changed into beasts. Inanimate objects, drops of blood, drops of spittle, trees, rocks, are capable of speech. Cannibals are as common in the role of the villain as solicitors and baronets are in modem novels. Everything yields to the spell of magical rhymes or incantations. People descend to a very unchristian Hades, or home of the dead. Familiar as these features of the Household Tale have been to us all from childhood, they do excite wonder when we reflect on the wide prevalence of ideas so monstrous and crazy.
Thirdly, the student of mdrcJien soon notices that many of the Household Tales have their counterparts in the higher mythologies of the ancient civilised races, in mediaeval romance and saintly legend. The adventure of stealing the giant's daughter, and of the flight, occurs in the myth of Jason and Medea, where the giant becomes a wizard king. The tale of the substituted bride appears
HOUSEHOLD TALES. XIU
in the romance of Berthe aux grans pies. The successful younger son was known to the Scythians. Peau d'Ane became a saint of the Irish Church, and the " supplanted bride " developed into St. Tryphine. The smith who made hell too hot for him is Sisyphus in Greek. The bride mysteriously severed from her lord in fairy tales, is Urvasi in the Eig Veda. Thus it is clear that there is some connection, however it is to be explained, between Aryan household tales and the higher Aryan mythology. The same plots and incidents are common to both myth and mdrchen.
These three sets of obvious facts introduce us to the three-fold problem of " storyology," of the science of nursery tales.
The first discovery — that these tales among the most widely severed Aryan peoples are the same in plot and incident —leads us to inquire into the cause of this com- munity of fable. How are we to explain the Diffusion of Household Tales ?
The second feature we observed, namely, the crazy " irrational," monstrous character of the incidents leads us to ask, how did such incidents ever come to be invented, and almost exclusively selected for the purpose of popular fiction ? What, in fact, is the Origin of Household Tales ?
The third observation we made on the resemblances between household tales and Greek and Vedic myths, and mediasval romances, compels us to examine into the dela- tions hettveen march en and the higher mythologies.
Taking these three topics in their order, we must first look at what can be said as to the diffusion of Household Tales, Why do people so far apart, so long severed by space, and so widely different in language as Russians and Celtic Highlanders, for example, possess the same household stories ? There are three, or perhaps we should say four, possible explanations. There is the theory of conscious
KIV INTRODUCTION.
borrowing. The Celts, it might be averred, read Eussian folk tales and acclimatised them. The French took their ideas from the modern Greeks. This hypothesis, thus nakedly stated, may be at once dismissed. The peasant class, which is the guardian of the ancient store of legends, reads little, and travels scarcely at all. Allied to the theory of borrowing, but not manifestly absurd, is the theory of slow transmission. We may be as convinced as Sir George Cox {Aryan Mythology, vol. i. 109), that the Aryan peoples did not borrow consciouslj^ from each other. We may agree with Mr. Max Miiller that " nursery tales are generally the last things to be borrowed by one nation from another" {CJiips, ii. 216). But we cannot deny that " in the dark backward and abysm of Time," in the unrecorded wanderings of Man, Household Tales may have drifted from race to race. In the shadowy distance of primitive commerce, amber and jade and slaves were carried half across the world by the old trade-routes and sacred ways. It is said that oriental jade is found in Swiss lake-dwellings, and that an African trade cowry has been discovered deep in a Cornish barrow. Folk tales might well be scattered abroad in the same manner by merchantmen gossiping over their Khan fires, by Sidonian mariners chatting in the sounding loggia of an Homeric house, by the slave dragged from his home and passed from owner to owner across Africa or Europe, by the wife who, according to primitive law, had to be choi*en from an alien clan. Time past is very long, land has lain where the sea roars now ; we know not how the ancestors of existing races may have met and mixed before Memphis was founded, or Babylon. Thus the hypothesis of the transmission of Household Tales cannot absolutely be set aside as in every case without possible foundation.
Before examining theories of the Diffusion and Origin of Household Tales, and of their relations to the higher
HOUSEHOLD TALES. XV
mythologies, something must be said about the materials we possess. A strict criticism of the collections of tales offered to the inquirer, a strict avoidance of theory founded on hasty analogies is needful. We must try to dis- tinguish as far as possible what is ancient and essential, from what is relatively modern and accidental in each tale. We must set apart scientific and exact collections from merely literary collections in which the traditional element is dressed up for the sake of amusement. Grimms' collection of Household Tales or Marchen is among the earliest of those which were made for scientific purposes. Sanskrit stories, Arab and Egyptian stories, Italian stories, French stories, had been gathered long before into the garners of Somadeva, The Thousand and One Nights^ Straparola, the Queen of Navarre, Perrault, and others. But to bring together popular narratives merely to divert the reader is an aim which permits the collector to alter and adorn his materials almost as much as he pleases. Consequently the old compilations we have named, however delightful as literature, must be used with great caution for purposes of comparative science. Modern touches, as will be seen, occur freely even in such collections as the Grimms'. Science accepts these narratives (when it can get them unadulterated) as among the oldest productions of the human fancy, as living evidence to the character of the early imaginative faculty. But we must be quite certain that we do not interpret late additions to the tales, as if these incidents were of the primitive essence. An example of this error may be taken from Grimms' Legend (No. 5), " The Wolf and the Kids." Here a wolf deceives seven little kids, and eats them all except the youngest, who hides (like the hero of one of M. Fortune du Boisgobey's novels) " in the clock-case." The bereaved old she-goat comes home ; finds that only the youngest kid survives,
XVI INTRODUCTION.
and goes in quest of the wolf. The wolf is found asleep : the old goat cuts him open, and out frisk all the little kids. They then fill the wolf's stomach with stones, and sew up the orifice they had made. When the wolf awakens he is thirsty, and goes to drink, but the heavy stones make him lose his balance, he falls into the well, and is drowned.
Here the essential idea is probably nothing more than the fashioning of a comic story of a weak beast's victory over a strong beast. Similar stories are frequent among the Negroes and Bushmen (see Block's Beynard the Fox in South Africa, and Uncle Bemus), among the Ked Indians,* and, generally, among uncivilised peoples.
A story in some ways like that of the '* Wolf and the Kids," is common among the negroes of Georgia. In a Kaffir tale (Theal) the arts of the wolf are attributed to a cannibal. Apparently the tale (as the negroes tell it) is of African origin, and is not borrowed from the whites. Old Mrs. Sow had five little pigs, whom she warned against the machinations of Brer Wolf. Old Mrs. Sow died, and each little pig built a house for itself. The youngest pig built the strongest house. Brer Wolf, by a series of stratagems, which may be compared to those in Grimms' Mdrchen, entrapped and devoured the four elder pigs. The youngest pig was the wisest, and would not let Brer Wolf come in by the door. He had to enter by way of the chimney, fell into a great fire the youngest pig had lighted, and was burnt to death. Here we have only to note the cunning of the wolf, and his final defeat by the youngest of the pig family, who, as in almost all household tales, is wiser and more successful than his elder brethren. In the same way Grimms' youngest kid was the kid that escaped from the wolf.
* In his Originedes Romans,lInei, the learned Bishop of Avranches, (1630-1720), mentions ihe Iroquois Tales of Beavers, Kacoons, and Wojves.
HOUSEHOLD TALES. XVll
The incident on which the revenge turns, the swallow- ing of the victims and their escape alive, though missing in the negro version, is of almost universal occurrence.
It is found in Australia, in Greece it has made its way into the legend of Cronus, in Brittany into the legend of Gargantua. Callaway's collection gives us Zulu ex- amples : in America it is familiar to the Indians of the Korth, and to those of British Guiana. Grimm gives some German variants in his note; Bleek's Bushman Folklore contains several examples of the incident. The Mintiras of Malay have introduced the conception of swallowing and disgorging alive into a myth, which explains the movements of sun, moon, and stars. (Tylor's Primitive Culture, i. 338, 356).
In the tale of the Wolf and the Seven Kids, then, the essence is found in the tricks whereby the wolf deceives his victims ; in the victory of the goat, in the disgorging of the kids alive, and the punishment of the wolf (as of Cronus in Hesiod) by the stone which he is obliged to admit into his system. In these events there is nothing allegorical or mystical, no reference to sunrise or storms. The crude ideas and incidents are of world-wide ranee, and suit the fancy of the most backward barbarians. But what is clearly modern in Grimm's tale is the introduction of the clock-case. That, obviously, cannot be older than the common use of tall clocks. If, then, we interpret the tale by regarding the clock-case as its essential feature, surely we mistake a late and civilised accident for the essence of an ancient and barbarous legend. Sir G. W. Cox lays much stress (Aryan Mytho- logy, i. 358) on the affair of the clock-case. '' The wolf," he says, " is here the Night, or the Darkness, which tries to swallow up the seven days of the week, and actually swallows six. The seventh, the youngest, escapes by hiding herself in the clock-case ; in other words, the week
VOL. I. 6
XVlll INTRODUCTION.
is not quite run out, and, before it comes to an end, the mother of the goats unrips the wolfs stomach, and places stones in it in place of the little goats who come trooping out, as the days of the week begin again to run their course."
This explanation rests on the one obviously modem feature of the story. If the explanation is correct, the state of mind in which Night could be conceived of as a wolf, and as capable of being slit open, loaded with stones, and sewn up again, must have lasted and remained intelligible, till the quite recent invention of clock-cases. The clock-case was then intelligently introduced into the legend. This seems hard to believe, though Mr. Tylor writes (^Primitive Culture, i. 341) thus, " We can hardly doubt there is a quaint touch of sun-myth in a tale which took its present shape since the invention of clocks."
Surely a clock-case might seem (^as to M. Boisgobey's hero, and to the lady freemason in the old story, it did seem) a good hiding-place, even to a mind not occupied at all with the sun. What makes the whole interpreta- tion the more dubious is, that while with Sir George Cox the Wolf is the Night, with M. Husson (in the similar tale of the swallowing of Red Riding Hood) the Wolf is the Sun. And this is proved by the peculiar brilliance of the wolf's fur, a brilliance recognised by Sir G. Cox when he wants the sun to be a wolf.
On the whole, then, the student of mdrchen must avoid two common errors. He must not regard modern interpo- lations as part of the mythical essence of a story. He must not hurry to explain every incident as a reference to the natural phenomena of Dawn, Sunset, Wind, Storm, and the like. The points which are so commonly interpreted thus, are sometimes modern interpolations ; more frequently they are relics of ancient customs of which the mythologist never heard, or survivals from an archaic mental condition
HOUSEHOLD TALES. XIX
into which he has never inquired. Besides, as Mr. Tylor has pointed out, explanations of the elemental sort, all about storm and dawn, are so easy to find that every guesser can apply them at will to every mdrchen. In these inquiries we must never forget that " rash inferences which, on the strength of mere resemblances, derive episodes of myth from episodes of nature, must be regarded with utter distrust, for the student who has no more stringent criterion than this for his myths of sun, and sky, and dawn, will find them wherever it pleases him to seek them" (^Primitive Culture, i. 319). This sort of student, indeed, finds his myths of sun, and sky, and dawn all through the Grimms' Collection.
We have now set forth the nature of the problems which meet the inquirer into Household Tales, and we have tried to illustrate the necessity of a critical method, and the danger of being carried away by faint or fancied resem- blances and analogies. Our next step is to examine the theory of the diffusion and origin of Household Tales set forth by Sir George Cox in his Mythology of the Aryan Nations (1870). This theory was suggested by, and, to a certain extent, corresponds with the mythological philo- sophy of Mr. Max Miiller, as published in Oxford Essays (1856), and more recently in Selected Essays (1881). There are, however, differences of detail and perhaps of principle in the systems of these two scholars. As to the diffusion of identical folk tales among peoples of Aryan speech. Sir George Cox (dismissing theories of borrowing or adaptation) writes :
" The real evidence points only to that fountain of mythical language from which have flowed all the streams of Aryan epic poetry, streams so varied in their character yet agreeing so closely in their elements. The sub- stantial identity of stories told in Italy, Norway and India can but prove that the treasure-house of mythology
h 2
XX INTRODUCTION.
was more abundantly filled before the dispersion of the Aryan tribes than we had taken it to be." Sir George proceeds to remark on resemblances between German and Hindoo tales, which shew " the extent to which the folk- lore of the Aryans was developed while they still lived as a single people " {Mythol. Aryan, i. 145). Thus Sir George Cox accounts, on the whole, for the majority of the resemblances among Aryan household tales, by the theory that these tales are the common inheritance of the Aryan race, such narratives the Aryans possessed " while they still lived as a single people." The difficulties in which this theory lands the inquirer will afterwards be set forth. Here it may be observed that people who are not Aryans none the less possess the stories.
So much for the Diffusion of Aryan Household Tales. They are widely scattered (the theory goes), because the single people which possessed them in its common seat has itself been scattered widely, from Ceylon to Iceland.
Next, what is Sir George Cox's hypothesis as to the Origin of Household Tales ? We have seen how he supposes they were diffused. "We have still to ask how such crazy legends were originally evolved. Why are all things animate and inanimate on a level with man in the tales ; why do beasts and trees speak ; why are canni- balism, metamorphosis, magic, descents into Hades, and many other impossible incidents so common ? What, in short, is the Origin of Household Tales ?
Here it is not easy to be brief, as we have to give a summary of Sir George Cox's theory of the intellectual human past, from which he supposes these tales to have been evolved. In the beginning of things, or as near the beginning as he can go. Sir George finds men cha- racterised by " the selfishness and violence, the cruelty and slavishness of savages." Yet these cruel and violent savages had the most exquisitely poetical, tender, and
^ HOUSEHOLD TALES. XXI
sympathetic way of regarding the external world (MyiJiol. Ar. i. 39), "Deep is the tenderness with which they describe the deaths of the sun-stricken dew, the brief career of the short-lived sun, and the agony of the Earth-mother mourning for her summer child." Not only did early man cherish these passionate sympathies with the fortunes of the sun and the dew, but he cherished them almost to the exclusion of emotions perhaps more obvious and natural as we modems hold. Man did not get used to the dawn ; he was always afraid that the sun had sunk to rise no more, "years might pass, or ages, before his rising again would establish even the weakest analogy." Early man was apparently much more difficult to satisfy with analogies than modern mythologists are. After the sun had set and risen with his accustomed regularity, " perhaps for ages," " man would mourn for his death as for the loss of one who might never return."
While man was thus morbidly anxious for the welfare r,f the sun, and tearfully concerned about the misfortunes of the dew, he had, as we have seen, the moral qualities of the j^avage. He had also the intellectual confusion, the perplexed philosophy of the contemporary savage. Mr. Tylor, Mr. Im Thurn, Mr. Herbert Spencer, and most scientific writers on the subject, have observed that savages draw no hard and fast line between them- selves and the animal or even the inanimate world. To the mind of the savage all things organic or inorganic appear to live and to be capable of conscious movement and even of speech. All the world is made in the savage's own image. Sir George Cox's early man wa& in this savage intellectual condition, " He had life, and therefore all things else must have life also. The sun, the moon, the stars, the ground on wliich he trod, the clouds, storms, and lightnings were all living beings : could he help thinking that, like himself, they were conscious beings also ? "
XXU INTRODUCTION.
As man thouglit of all tilings as living, so he spoke of them all as living. He could not get over the idea that any day living clouds might spring lip and choke the living snn, while he had the most unaffected sympathy with the living dawn and the living dew. " In these spontaneous utterances of thoughts awakened by outward phenomena, we have the source of the myths which must be regarded as primary " (Myth. Ar. i. 42). In all this period, "there was no bound or limit to the images, suggested by the sun in his ever varying aspects." Man, apparently, was almost absorbed in his interest in the sun, and in speculations about the dew, the cloud, the dawn.
We now approach another influence on mythology, the influence of language. While man was in the conditions of mind already described by Sir George Cox, he would use " a thousand phrases to describe the actions of the bene- ficent or consuming sun, of the gentle or awful night, of the plaj'-ful or furious wind, and every word or phrase became the germ of a new story, as soon as the mind lost its hold on the original force of the name." Now the mind was always losing its hold on the original force of the name, and the result would be a constant metamorphosis of the remark made about a natural phenomenon, into a myth about something denoted by a term which had ceased to possess any meaning. These myths, caused by forgetfulness of the meaning of words (as we understand our author), were of the secondary class, and a third class came into exist- ence through folk-etymologies, as they are called, popular guesses at the derivations of words. We have now briefly stated Sir George Cox's theory of the origins of myths, and of the mental condition and habits through which myths were evolved. But how does this theory explain the origin of Household Tales ?
This question ought to lead us to our third problem, what are the relations of Household Tales to the higher
HOUSj^^OLD TALES^I ^^^^^
mythologies? But it U^y suffice to ^^^ ^^'^^ *^^* ^^ Sir George Cox's opinj^j^ most o^ ^^® Household Tales are, in origin, myths of the p.^^^omena of day and night. They are versions of the myths about the dark Night-powers stealing the golden treasure of Day ; about Dawn loving the Dew ; about the Birth and Death of the Sun ; about the fortune of the Clouds, and so forth. Briefly, to illustrate the theory, we have a primary myth when early man says the (living) sun (Kephalos) loves the (living) dew (Prokris), and slays her by his arrows (that is, his rays).
We have a secondary myth where it is forgotten that Kephalos only meant the sun, and Prokris only meant the dew, and when Kephalos is taken for a shepherd swain, and Prokris for a pretty nymph. Lastly, we have a tertiary myth when Apollo Lycaeus (whose name meant Apollo of the Light) is supposed — by a folk-etymology — to be Apollo the Wolf, and is said to have been born from a were-wolf.* n
Household Tales are these myths in the making, or these myths filtered down through the memories and lips of uncounted generations (Myth. Ar.^ 165). It is on these principles that Sir George seeks to explain the irrational and unnatural element so powerful in folk tales.
We must now briefly criticise Sir George's system as a whole. Next we must see how the system is applied by him, and, lastly, we must approach the theory which we propose to substitute for that set forth in Mythology of the Aryan Peoples.
The point most open to criticism in Sir George Cox's statement of his views, and in the similar views of Husson, De Gubernatis, and many other mythologists. is the very inadequate evidence. The framers of Primary Myths, in Sir George Cox's system are (apparently) savages.
* In these examples Sir G. Cox's theories are only accepted for the sake of arffument and illustration.
XXIV
IIJTEODUCTIO^.
Of savages they lia\^g, the moral tualities and the intel- lectual habits. " The ^y^romineXV*' characteristics of that early time were the selfishness, the violence, the cruelty and harshness of savages." So much for morality. As for intellect, of the several objects which met his eye, says our author, mythopoeic man had no positive knowledge, whether of their origin, their nature, or their proper- ties. But he had life, and therefore all things else must have life also. This mental stage " Animism," " personalism," or whatever we may call it, is also charac- teristic of savages. Now when we come in our turn to advance a theory of the origin of Household Tales, many points in these tales will be deduced from the cruelty and from the " Animism " of men like the framers of Sir George Cox's " Primary Myths." But Sir George's evidence for the savage estate of early myth-making man is mainly derived from the study of language.* This study has led him to views of the barbarism of the myth- makers with which we are glad to agree, yet he dissents here from his own chief authority, Mr. Max Miiller. In the third chapter of the first volume of Mijihology of the Aryan JRaces, the chapter which contains evidence for the intellectual condition of early humanity. Sir George Cox quotes scarcely any testimony except that of Mr. Max Miiller.
The most important result of the whole examination, as conducted by Sir George Cox, is that mythopoeic man, knowing nothing of the conditions of his own life or of any other, " invested " all things on the earth or in the
* When The Mythology of the Aryan Nations was written, philo- logists were inclined to believe that their analysis of laniiuage was the true, perhaps the only key, to knowledge of what men had been in the pre-historic past. It is now generally recognised (though some scliolars hold out against the opinion) that the sciences of Anthrop- ology and Arclise()lo;:y also throw much light on the human past, which lias left no literaiy documents. Compare Schrader's Sj^rack- Vergleichung und Vrgeschichte. (jJena, 1883.)
HOUSEHOLD TALES. XXV
heavens with the same vague idea of existence. But while Sir George Cox makes this " Animism " — this invest- ing of all things with life — the natural result of man's thought, Mr. Max Miiller ascribes the habit to the reflex action on thought of man's language. Man found himself, according to Mr. Miiller (Selected Essays, i. 360), speaking of all objects in words which had " a termination expressive of gender, and this naturally produced in the mind the corresponding idea of sex," and, as a consequence, people gave " something of an individual, active, sexual, and at last personal character " to the objects of which they spoke. Mr. Miiller is aware that the " sexual character of words reflects only the quality of the child's mind," but none the less he attributes the " animism " of mythopoeic man to the reflex influence of man's language, whereas Sir George Cox attributes it to the direct influence of man's thought. Thus Sir George deserts the authority from V^^hich he derives his evidence, and it is not here alone that he differs from Mr. Miiller. Sir George's framers of " primary myths " are savages, morally and intellectually ; Mr. Miiller's mythopoeic men, on the other hand, are practically civilised. Man, in Mr. Muller's " mythopoeic age," had the modern form of the Family, had domesticated animals, was familiar with the use of the plough, was a dweller in cities, a constructor of roads, he was acquainted with the use of iron as well as of the earlier metals. {^Selected Essays, vol. i. " Comparative Mythology."*) There is thus no escaping frojn the con- clusion that, though Mr. Miiller's evidence is nearly the sole basis of Sir George Cox's theories, yet from that evidence Sir George draws inferences almost the reverse of those attained by Mr. Miiller. Yet starting from the same
* Mr. Miiller has stated this proposition, but a note in Selected Essays proves that he now admits the uncertainty of the early use of lion.
XXVI INTRODUCTION.
evidence, and from different inferences, tlie two authors arrive at much the same conclusion in the long run.
We have complained of the inadequate evidence for Sir George Cox's sj^'stem. It is, as we have seen, derived from Mr. Max Miiller's analysis of the facts of language. But there is another sort of evidence which was germane to Sir George's purpose, and which he has almost absolutely neglected. That evidence is drawn from the study of the manners and customs of men, and is collected and arranged by the science of Anthropology. The materials of that science are found in the whole of human records, in history, in books of travel, in law, customs, superstition. A summary of the results so far attained by anthropology and ethnology is to be studied by English readers in Mr. Tj^or's Primitive Culture and Early History of Man. These works deal with the evolution of human institutions of every kind from their earliest extant forms found among savages. We are thus enabled, by the science of students like Mr. Tylor, to understand what the ideas and institutions of savages are, and how far they survive, more or less modified, in civilisation. Now Sir George Cox's makers of primary myths were in the savage state of culture, or, as he himself puts it, " The examination of our language carries us back to a condition of thought not many degrees higher than that of tribes which we regai d as sunk in hopeless barbarism " (Myth. Ar. i. 35). But his description of the intellectual and moral condition of the primary myth-makers (Myth. Ar. i. 39-41) shows that really Sir George's mythopoeic men were in no higher degree of " culture " than Eed Indians and Maoris. As this is tbe case, it would surely have been well to investigate what history has to say about the mental habits of savages. As the makers of primary myths were savages, it would have been scientific to ask, " How do contemporary savages, and how did the savages of history,
HOUSEHOLD TALES. XXVll
regard the world in which they find themselves, and of what character are their myths ? " Sir George Cox, however, leaves on one side and practically unnoticed all evidence except philological evidence as to the general habits of men in the same intellectual condition as his own makers of primary myths. Herein lies, we think, the original error of his system.
Instead of examining the natural history of savages to Bee how men like his primary myth-makers regard the universe, Sir George Cox describes the prevalence among mythopoeic men of what we must regard as a purely fanciful mental attitude. Sir George's myth-makers, as we have seen, lived in a tremulous and passionate sympathy with nature, and with the fortunes of the day and the year, of the dawn and the dew. " Perhaps for ages they could not believe that the sun would rise again in the morning." From every stage in the sun's progress the myth-makers derived thrilling excitement. They threw themselves with their whole souls into the love affairs and distresses of the dew. They mourned for the setting sun, " as for the loss of one who might never return."
Now does Sir George give any evidence, drawn from the natural history of man, for all this sentimental, yet sincere, primitive excitement about the processes of nature. None, or next to none. We do find summer- feasts and winter-fasts, rituals of regret and rejoicing for the coming and departing of summer among many races. Here and there (as in the Popol Vuh, an enigmatic, Quichua record) we see traces of anxious interest in the sun. Again, all savage races have nature-myths explan- atory of the motions of the heavenly bodies — a rude sort of science. But as to this all absorbing, all-pervading tender and poetic habit of primitive sympathy with natural phenomena, we find no proof of it anywhere. Savages,
XXVlll INTRODUCTION.
like civilised people, are mucli more interested in making love, making war, making fun, and providing dinner, than in the phenomena of nature.* But in Sir George Cox's system of mythology the enormous majority of myths and of household tales are simply the reflections of the supposed absorbing and passionate early sympathy of savages with the processes of nature. For the exist- ence to the necessary extent of that sympathy we find no evidence. In all ages men must have been more concerned about earthly gold and mortal young women than about the " dawn gold " or " the dawn maiden," yet in myths where gold or girls occur, Sir George sees the treasures of the light, or the radiant maiden of the mom. This is natural, while he is convinced that the makers of primary myths were so intensely absorbed in sympathy with clouds, and dew, and sunshine. But we ask again for sufficient evidence that these sentiments existed in a degree capable of exercising an exclusive influence on myths.
Turning from the theory of the primary to that of the secondary myths, we again note the absence of convincing testimony, or indeed of any valid testimony at all.
Primary myths arose, Sir George says, from thought ; secondary myths from language. They came into exist- once because " a thousand phrases would be used to describe the action of the beneficent or consuming sun," and so forth, " and every word or phrase became the germ of a new story, as soon as the mind lost its hold on the original force of the name " (jSIyth. Ar. i. 42). This application of dozens of names and phrases to the same object is called Polyonymij by Mr. Max Miiller, aud the converse use of one name for a vast variety of
* Inferences drawn from the Vedas are not to the point, as the Vedas contain the elaborate hymns of an advanced society, not (ex- cept by way of survival) the ideas of early myth-makers.
HOUSEHOLD TALES. XXIX
objects (which become " homonyms ") he calls Synonymy. It is Mr. Miiller's opinion that, in the mythopoeic age, people might call the sun (let us say) by some fifty names expressive of different qualities (this is polyonymy), while some of these names would be applic- able to other objects also. These other objects would then be homonyms of the sun, would be called by the same names as the sun was called by. (This is synonymy). The meaning of all these names would be lost in perhaps three generations, but the names and the phrases in which the names occurred would survive after their significance was lost. It is clear that if ever such a state of languasre prevailed, the endless consequent misunderstandings might well blossom into myths. For example, the grand- father (in the mythopoeic age) observes the rush of the ascending sun, and calls him " the lion." The father, being accustomed to the old man's poetic way, understands his meaning perfectly well, and the family style the sun " the lion," as they also, ex hypothesis call him by forty-nine other names, most of which they moreover apply to other objects, say to the tide, the wind, the clouds. But the grandson finds this kind of talk hopelessly puzzling (and no wonder), and he, forgetting the original meanings, comes to believe that the sun is a lion, and the night (perhaps) a wolf, and so he tells stories about the night- wolf, the sun-lion, and so on. (Here the examples are our own, but the theory is Mr. Miiller's. Selected Essays^ i. 376- 378.)
No marvel if myths arose in an age when people spoke in this fashion, and when the grandson retained the grandsire's phrase, though he had helplessly forgotten the grandsire's meaning. Mr. Miiller protests against degrading our ancestors into *' mere idiots," but if they escaped becoming hopeless imbeciles during this " mytho- poeic age " it is highly to their credit.
XXX INTRODUCTION.
But where is the evidence for Polyonymy, Synonymy and rapid oblivion, the three factors in secondary myth- making ? As far as we have been able to discover, we are offered no convincing evidence at all. Mr. Miiller gives cases of polyonymy and synonymy from the Veda (^Selected Essays, i. 377).* But (1.) The Vedic age is, ex hyjpothed, long subsequent to the mythopoeic age. (2.) The necessary and indispensable process of forgetfulness of the meaning of phrases does not occur in the age of the Veda. People in the Veda call the earth wide, broad, great (polyony- my). They also apply the term " broad " to a river, sky, and dawn. But did their grandchildren on this account mistake the Earth for the Dawn, or the Sky for the Earth ? Thus Mr. Miiller is apparently unable to give examples of his causes of myth from the age in which myths proceeded from these causes, and when he does produce examples of the causes, they result in no myths. Where he finds the effects he does not demonstrate the existence of the causes ; when he has evidence for the existence of the causes, he shews no effects. (Selected Essays, i. 377, 378). When Mr. Miiller does attempt to adduce a term which originally was a mere name, and later became a proper name, and so indicated a person, the process can be accounted for by another explanation. (Selected Essays, i. 378), *' Zevs being originally a name for the sky, like the Sanskrit Dyaus, became gradually a proper name." But if the sky was in the mind of the makers of primary myths, Qt, person inevitably and from the first (as we think, in agreement with Sir George Cox), then the name of the sky was from the first a proper name. When all things were persons (as they are to the minds of savages and primary my th,-makers) all names may be regarded as proper names.
* Kuhn also brings forward the Vedic lanojuage as proof of the existence of polyonymy and synonymy. Ueher EntwicMungsstufen der Mythenhildung, p. 1.
HOUSEHOLD TALES. XXXI
It is the ascertained condition of the savage intellect (as stated by Sir George Cox and by anthropologists) which invests all things with personal character. Forgetfulness of meaning of words is not the cause. The processes of jpolyonymij^ synonymy^ and oblivion are superfluous as means of accounting for the personal aspect of all things in mythology. They are also (as far as we have been able to discover) processes for which no good evidence is produced.
Sir George Cox has borrowed Folyonymy and its effects from Mr. Miiller, though he gives no evidence to prove that it was ever a large factor in mythology. At first the processes of polyonymy and oblivion seem superfluous in Sir George's system, because he has already (in the intellectual condition of his primary myth-makers) sufScient myth-making power. While his early men regarded all things as living and personal, they would account for all natural processes on that hypo- thesis, and the explanations thus given would be nature- myths of the class current among savages. For example, if Sir George's early men thought (as they did) that the sim was alive, they might well marvel at the regularity of his movements ; why did he not run about the sky at random as a brute runs about the woods ? Why did he go, like a driven beast, in a regular round ? To answer this question the New Zealanders and North American Indians have evolved a story that Maui or Tcha-ka-betch once set traps for the sun, caught him, beat him, and made him move for the future with orderly propriety. This is 4n unde- niable nature-myth, and savage^ mythology, lik^ that of Greece and of the Yeda, is full of similar mythic explana- tions of natural phenomena. To explain such myths no "pTooessQS of jpolyony my, synonymy, and oblivion are needed. Why then are those processes required in the system of Sir George Cox ? For this reason ; he is not content with the
XXXll INTRODUCTION.
myths whicn declare themselves to be nature-myths. He wishes to prove that epic and romantic legends, which say nothing about sun, moon, stars, and wind, are nature- myths in disguise. Here the processes of polyonymy and oblivion become useful.
For example, we have the myth which tells how Jason sought the golden fleece in an eastern land, how he won the treasure and the daughter of its owner, how he returned home, deserted Medea, wedded Glauce, and died. Now nothing is openly said in this legend about natural phenomena, except that the Colchian Royal House belongs to the solar race as the royal family did in India and Peru, and as the Totem tribe or gens of suns (Natchez and Aurelii) did in North America and in Rome. How, then, can the Jason legend be explained on a nature- myth ? By the aid of Polyonymy, thus : The sun had countless names. The names for sun, and dawn, and cloud, lost (in Sir George's opinion) their original sense, and became names of heroes, ladies, gods and goddesses. The original sense of the names was half remembered and half forgotten. Athene is " the dawn goddess " (Myth. Ar. ii. 119). Phrixus, the child of Nephele, is the son of the cloud. Helle, the drowned girl of the fable, is "the bright clear air illumined by the rays of the sun." When we are told that she was drowned, no more was originally meant than that " before the dawn can come the evening light must die out utterly " (Ar. Myth. ii. 273). Here let us pause and reflect. In the myth, Phrixus and Helle, children of Nephele, escaped being sacrificed by flying away on a winged ram with a golden fleece. Helle fell off and was drowned. How does Sir George Cox explain all this ? Nephele is the cloud, so far all is plain sailing. The cloud has two children, one " the frigid Phrixus ; " the other, " the bright clear air illuminated by the rays of the sun ;" or again, " the evening
HOUSEHOLD TALES. XXXlll
light." Early men, we are to suppose, said that the cloud produced cold, and also bore the warm evening air. Why- do the warm air and the cold air go off together eastward on a golden flying ram ? This we do not see that Sir George explains, but the fleece of the ram (after that animal has been slain) becomes the treasure of the light, which is sought in the east by Jason. But who is Jason ? His name " must be classed with the many others, Jasion, Janus, lolaos, laso, belonging to the same root " {Myth. Ar. i. 150, note 1), And what is the root? Well (ii. 81) lamus, from the same root, means " the violet child ; " he was found among violets. Now \ov (violet) applies to the violet coloured sunset clouds, and ids also means a spear, and " represents the far-darting rays of the sun." " The word as applied to colour is traced by Prof. Max Miiller to the root ^, as denoting a crying hue, that is, a loud colour."* Thus, whether we take ids to mean a spear, or violet, or what you please, Jason's name connects him with the sun. The brain reels in the attempt to make sense of the cold air and the hot air, children of the cloud, going eastward, on a ram covered with the treasures of the light, and when we come to the warm air dying, and the light being stripped (in the east) from the ram, and being sought for by a man whose name more or less means violet, and who comes from the west, and when all this is only the beginning of the tale, we are absolutely perplexed. Who ever told such tales ? Yes, we say, if ever men were deep in the perplexing processes of polyonymy, synonymy and oblivion, if ever the grandfather used countless allegorical phrases, which the grandchild piously retained, while he quite forgot their sense, then, iadeed, this kind of muddled and senseless nature-myth may have been evolved. But we have vainly asked for evidence of tlie
* The " violet shrinking meanly " of Miss Bunion's poem, has a " loud," or " crying " colour I
VOL. I. C
XXXIV INTRODUCTION.
existence and actiYity of polyonymy, synonymy, and oblivion. The first and last of the three factors are useful, however, to Sir George Cox, when he tries to show that myths which do not give themselves out for nature-myths are nature-myths in disguise after all. But we have observed no evidence (except the opinion of some philo- logists) for the theory on which the Avhole demonstration depends. Again, M. Decharme, with just as much reason, makes Phrixus "the demon of thunder," and Helle, "a goddess of lightning ! " This kind of philosophy is too facile. To opinions like those which Sir George Cox has advanced with so much earnestness, and in such a captivating style of eloquence, it has always been objected that there is an improbable monotony in the theory which resolves most of old romance into a series of remarks about the weather. This objection has not been made by uncritical writers only. M. Meyer com- plains, almost petulantly, of that *' eternal lay-figure," the sun in all his mythological disguises. (Romania.) No historical hero, no custom, no belief, M. Meyer vows, is out of danger from the solar mythologists.
Mr. Tylor again writes (Primitive Culture^ i. 319), "No legend, no allegory, no nursery rhyme is safe from the hormeneutics of a thorough- going mythologic theorist. Should he, for instance, demand as his property the nursery ' Song of Sixpence,' his claim would be easily established : obviously the four-and-twenty blackbirds are the four-and-twenty hours, and the pie that holds them is the underlying earth covered with the over-arching sky : how true a touch of nature is it that ' when the pie is opened,' that is, when day breaks, ' the birds begin to sing,' the King is the Sun, and his ' counting out his money,' is pouring out the sunshine, the golden shower of Danae ; the Queen is the Moon, and her transparent honey the moonlight. The maid is the " rosy-fingered "
HOUSEHOLD TALES. XXXV
Dawn, who rises before the Sun, her master, and ' hangs out the clothes' (the clouds) across the sky ; the particular blackbird who so tragically ends the tale by * snipping off her nose,' is the hour of sunrise. The time-honoured rhyme really wants but one thing to prove it a sun-myth, that one thing being a proof by some argument more valid than analogy." Mr. Tylor easily shows that his- torical persons may be disposed of no less readily than the characters of Nursery Rhymes as solar-myths. Analogy is usually the one argument advanced for this scheme, and the analogies (as will be shown) are often so faint as to be practically non-existent. What " false analogies " can be made to prove, Mr. Max Miiller has demonstrated (Selected Essays, ii. p. 449). Mr. Miiller has also gently censured (Selected Essays, i. 564, 565) the ready way in which M. Husson shows that Eed Hiding Hood was the Dawn : "It would be a bold assertion to say that the story of Red Eiding Hood was really a metamorphosis of an ancient story of the rosy-fingered Eos, or the Vedic Ushas with her red horses." In Mr. Miiller's opinion *' there is but one safe path to follow in these researches into the origin of words or stories. ... In addition to the coincidences in characteristic events, we have the evidence of language. Names are stubborn things," and more to the same purpose. Here we touch one of the differences between Sir George Cox and Mr. Max Miiller. Mr. Miiller, like Sir George Cox, is of opinion that all the stories of princesses imprisoned, and delivered by young bright heroes, " can be traced back to mythological tradition about the S]3ring being released from the bonds of winter." _ But in each case Mr. Miiller asks for names of characters in the story, names capable of being analysed into some equivalent for powers of nature, sun, wind, night, or what not. Now, we have elsewhere tried to show that, in mythological interpreta*
c 2
XXXVl INTEODUCTION. .
tion, scarcely any reliance can be placed on analysis of the names of the characters.* It seems more than pro- bable that in most cases the stories are older than the names. Again, the custom of giving to real persons names derived from forces and phenomena of nature is widely prevalent in early society. Men and women are styled "cloud," "sun," "wind," and so forth. These names, then, even when they can be traced in myths, offer no surer ground for a theory than the analysis of such names as Jones and Thompson would do in a novel. Having to name the characters in his tale, the early story-teller might naturally give such personal titles as were common in his own tribe, such terms as " Wind," " Cloud " " Sun," and so forth. Thirdly, the best philo- logists differ widely from each other as to the roots from which the names spring, and as to the sense of the names. But feeble as is the method which relies on analysis of mythical names, it is at all events less casual than the method which is satisfied with mere " coincidence in cha- racteristic events." The simple argument of many mytho- logists may be stated thus. " The dawn is a maiden, therefore all maidens in myths are the dawn." " The sun is golden, therefore all gold in myths must be solar." These opinions are derived, in the long run, from the belief that the savage primary myth-makers were so much pre- occupied with thje daily phenomena of nature, and again from belief in the action of polyonymy and oblivion. We have attempted to show that there is no evidence given to prove either that early man was in passionate, ceaseless anxiety about nature, • or that " polj-onymy " and oblivion ever existed in such strength as to produce the required effects on myths. As a rule, a real nature- myth avows itself for what it is, and attempts to give a reason (unscientific of course) for this or that fact, or
* Eraser's Magazine. MifMlogical Pliilosophy of Mr. Max Muller,
HOUSEHOLD TALES. XXXVll
assumed fact, in nature. Such tales though wild, and based on misconception, are intelligible and coherent. We have already seen how far from coherent or intelli- gible is Sir George Cox's explanation of part of the Jason legend as nature-myth.
We promised that, after criticising Sir George Cox's theory of the Origin of Myths and Household Tales, we would examine his method of interpreting individual stories. Let us see how Mr. Miiller, followed by Sir George, handles a tale with which we are all familiar. In Grimm's FroscJi Konig (vol. i. Tale i.), a frog (who in Grimm turns out to be a disguised prince) is betrothed to a princess. *' How came such a story," asks Mr. Max Miiller, " ever to be invented ? Human beings were, we may hope, at all times sufficiently enlightened to know that a marriage between a frog and the daughter of a Queen was absurd. . . . We may ascribe to our ancestors any amount of childlike simplicity, but we must take care not to degrade them to the rank of mere idiots."
Mr. Miiller thus explains the frog who would a-wooing go. As our ancestors were not mere idiots, the frog story must have had a meaning which would now seem rational. In old times (Mr. Miiller says) the sun had many names. " It can be shown that ' frog ' was an ancient name for the sun." But though it can be shown, Mr. Muller never shows it. He observes " this feminine Bheki (frog) must at one time have been used as a name for the sun." But though he himself asks for " chapter and verse from the Veda," he gives us no verse and no chapter for his assertions {Chips, ii. 201, 247). His theory is that tales were told of the sun, under his frog name, that people for- got that the frog meant the sun, and that they ended by possessing an irrational tale about the frog going a-wooing.
The Frog-sun* whose existence is established on this
* See note, ad fin, and "Cupid and Psyche" in the author's Custom and Myth.*
XXXVlll INTRODUCTION.
scanty testimony, is a great favonrite with Sir George Cox, and occurs no fewer than seven times in his Mythology of the Aryan Peoi^les. Kay, this frog is made to explain the presence of many of the wonderful talking animals in Myth and Household Tale. " The frog ■ prince or princess is only one of the thousand personifica- tions of names denoting originally the phenomena of day and night. As carrying the morning light from the east to the west the sun is the Bull bearing Europe from the jDurple land (Phoinikia), and the same changes which converted the Seven Shiners into the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, or the ' Seven Sages ' (of Greece ? ), or the Seven Champions of Christendom, or the Seven Bears, transformed the sun into a wolf, a bear, a lion, a swan." {Ar. Myth. i. 105.)
Here we have the old use of analogies. Because of a theory (probably incorrect) that the Seven Bears of Indian stellar myth were originally seven shiners, all sorts of people in sets of seven twinkle off as " shiners " also, stellar or solar shiners. In the same way the theory of the sun-frog (without chapter or verse as it is) proves that all animals in Household Tales are the sun.
As the appearance of beasts with human qualities and accomplishments is one of the most remarkable features of Household Tales, we may look at another statement of Sir George Cox's views on this subject. Metamorphosis of men into animals and of animals into men is as common in Household Tales as a sprained ankle is in modern novels. Sir George Dasent {Popular .Tales, p. cxix) pointed out that the belief in such metamorphoses "is primeval, and the traditions of every race tell of such transformations." Sir George Cox takes one of Sir George Dasent's numerous examples, and remarks "if this be an illustration, it accounts for all such transforma-
HOUSEHOLD TALES. XXXIX
tions, but it does so in a way whicli is completely subversive of any hypothesis of nature-worship. Such myths may all he traced to mere forgeifulness of the original meaning of words" As proof, Sir George Cox adduces the well worn " seven shiners," and the supposed confusion between X€vk6<;^ shining, and Xvko^, a wolf, " so named from the glossiness of his ' coat,' " as if wolves had coats so peculiarly glossy. By these examples alone (omitting the frog-sun) Sir George Cox contests the plain straight- forward theory of Sir George Dasent, that men every- where naturally believe in metamorphosis and lykanthropy. Sir George Cox wishes to trace lykanthropy to a confusion between Xv'ko?, and \€vk6<s. On this point Sir Alfred Lyall, after long observation of Indian beliefs, says, " To those who live in a country where wicked people and witches are constantly taking the form of wild beasts, the explanation of lykanthropy by a confusion between Leukos and Lukos seems wanton." (Fortnightly Beview.)
Wantonly or not. Sir George Cox traces "all such myths to mere forgetfulness of the original meaning of words." For this prodigiously sweeping generalisation no evidence except evidence like that of the supposed frog-sun and " seven shiners " and Leukos and Luhos is afforded. {Ar. Myth. i. 140-141, note 1.) " Bears, wolves, foxes, ducks, swans, eagles, ants, all these are names under w^hich the old mythical language spoke of the clouds, or the wind, or of the light which conquers the darkness." Here again we have, by way of supporting evidence, the " seven shiners," and " the wolf in the stories of Phoibos Lykeios." As the belief in metamor- phosis, and in beasts which are rational and loquacious, is world wide, and is the natural result of the ideas of "primary myth-makers," or savages, Sir George Cox's theory, that such notions are all to be traced to forgetful- ness of the meaning of words denoting natural phenomena.
Xl INTEODUCTION.
is too narrow, and is too devoid of evidence. Another explanation will presently be offered.
We may now leave Sir George's theories of the diffusion and origin of Household Tales. They are widely diffused, he thinks, because the race which originally evolved them is also scattered far and wide, and has carried them everywhere in its wanderings. The stories originated, again, in man's early habit of imaginatively endowing all things with life, in his almost exclusive preoccupation with the changes of the day and the year, and in " polyonymy," and forgetfulness of the meaning of language. The third problem, as we saw, is to explain the relations between Household Tales and the higher mythologies. Are children's m'drchen the detritus^ the last worn relics of the higher myths, as these reached the peasant class, and passed through the fancy of nurses and grandmothers? Or do the Household Tales rather represent the oldest forms of the Eomantic myths, and are the heroic legends of Greece, India, Finland, Scandi- navia, Wales, merely the old nursery stories elaborated and adorned by the arts of minstrels and priests ? On the former hypothesis, mdrchen are a detritus; on the latter mdrchen are rather the surviving shapes of the original germs of myths. On this topic Sir George Cox, as far as we have ascertained his meaning, appears to hold Avhat is perhaps the most probable opinion, that in certain cases the Household Tale is the decaying remnant of the half-forgotten myths, while in other cases it rather represents the original ndif form out of which the higher myth has been elaborated {Ar. Myth. i. 123). Possibly we have not succeeded here in apprehending the learned author's sense. As a rule, however, writers on these Rubjects believe in the former hypothesis, namely, that Household Tales are the detritus of the higher myths ; are the old heroic coins defaced and battered by long
HOUSEHOLD TALES. xli
service. Thus, about the time when the Grimms were 1 collecting their stories, Scott wrote (in a note to the Lady off the Lake), " The mythology of one period would appear to \ pass into the romance of the next, and that into the ' nursery tales of subsequent ages." Mr. Max Miiller expresses the same idea (^CMps, xi. 243), " The gods of ancient mythology were changed into the demigods and heroes of ancient epic poetry, and these demigods again became at a later age the priucipal characters in our nursery tales." The opposite of this theory might be ex- pressed thus, " Stories originally told about the characters of savage tales were finally attracted into the legends of the gods of ancient mythology, or were attributed to demigods and heroes." The reasons for preferring this view (the converse of Mr. Miiller's) will presently be ex- plained. In the meantime Mr. Midler's hypothesis " has great allies " in Scott ; and in Von Hahn, who holds that myths are imaginative descriptions of the greater elementary powers and changes of nature ; that the Saga or heroic epic localises the myths in real places, and attributes the adventures to supposed ancestral heroes, and, finally, " that the MdrcJien, or Household Tale is the last and youngest form of the saga " (GriecMsche Mdrchen^ p. 5).
Starting from this x^oint, namely, from the doubt as to whether mdrclien are the youngest (Von Hahn. Max Miiller), or rather, as we shall attempt to show, the oldest extant form of the higher myths, we will endeavour to explain our theory of the whole subject. That theory must first be stated as briefly and clearly as possible.
With regard (1) to the Origin of the peculiar and irra- tional features of myth and mdrchen we believe them to be derived and inherited from the savage state of man, from the savage conditions of life, and the savage way of re- gardiiig the world. (2) As to the Diffusion of the tales, we
xlii INTEODUCTION.
think it impossible at present to determine how far they may have been transmitted from people to people, and wafted from place to place, in the obscure and immeasur- able past of human antiquity, or how far they may be due to identity of human fancy everywhere. (3) As to the relations between Household Tales and Greek or other civilised myths, we prefer the following theory, which leaves room for many exceptions. The essence both of mdrchen and myths is a number of impossible and very peculiar incidents. These incidents are due to the natural qualities of the savage imagination. Again, the incidents are combined into various romantic arrange- ments, each of these arrangements being a mdrchen. The m'drclien were originally told, among untutored peoples, about anonymous heroes, — a boy, a girl, a lion, a bear, — such were the leading characters of the earliest tales. As tribes became settled, these old stories were localised, the adventures (originally anonymous) were attributed to real or imaginary named persons or gods, and were finally adorned by the fancy of poets like the early singers of Greece. Thus, while a savage race has its mdrchen (in which the characters are usually beasts or anonymous persons), the civilised race (or the race in a state of higher barbarism) has the same tale, developed and elaborated into a localised myth, with heroes rejoicing in such noble names as Perseus, Odysseus, Jason, Leminkainen, or Maui. But while the progressive classes in civilised countries are acquainted with the named heroes, and the elaborate forms of the legends, the com- paratively stationary and uneducated classes of shepherds, husbandmen, wood-men, and fishers, retain a version but little advanced fi-om the old savage story. They have not purified away the old ferocious and irrational elements of the tale, or at most they have substituted for the nameless heroes, characters derived from history or from
HOUSEHOLD TALES. xliii
Christian records. Thus the Household Tales of the European peasantry occupy a mean position between the savage story, as we find it among African tribes, and the elaborate myth which, according to our theorj^ poets and priests have evolved out of the original savage data. To sum up the theory thus briefly stated :
1. The origin of the irrational element in myth and tale is to be found in the qualities of the uncivilised imagination.
2. The process of Diffusion remains uncertain. Much may be due to the identity everywhere of early fancy : something to transmission.'
3. Household Tales occupy a middle place between the stories of savages and the myths of early civilisations.
There are probably marchen, however, especially among the tales of modem Greece, which are really the detritus, or worn and battered relics of the old mytho- logies.
Nothing is easier than to advance new theories. The difficulty begins when we try to support them by argu- ment and evidence. It may be as well to show how the system which we have just explained occurred to the mind of the writer. It was first suggested, years ago, by the study of savage mdrchen. If Bushmen and Samoyeds, and Zulus, and Maoris, and Eskimo, and Odjibwas, and Basutos have household tales essentially identical with European mdrchen, how, we asked, is this to be explained ? Mr. Max Miiller and Sir G. W. Cox had scouted the idea of borrowing. Then, was it to be supposed that all the races with Household Tales had once shared the capacious "cradle of the Aryan Race?" That seemed hard to demonstrate.* To account for the identity of savage and
* This appears, however, to be the theory by which Sir George Cox would prefer to account for the diffusion of myths possessed by the Aryan race among the Indians of Labrador (cf. Hind's Explorations in Labrador),
^
xliv INTRODUCTION.
Indo-European mdrchen^ there remained the process of slow filtration and transmission on one hand, and the similarity of the workings of the human mind (especially in its earlier stages) on the other hand. But Mr. Max Miiller had already discredited the hypothesis that mdrchen " might have been invented more than once" {Chips, ii. 233). " It has been said," writes Mr. Miiller, " that there is something so natural in most of the tales, that they might well have been invented more than once. This is a sneaking argument, but has nevertheless a certain weight. It does not apply, however, to our fairy tales. They surely cannot be called ' natural.' They are full of the most unnatura] conceptions. . ." Among these unna- tural conceptions, Mr. Miiller noted the instance of a frog wooing a maiden ; and he went on, as we have already seen, to explain such ideas on the hypothesis that they resulted from " a disease of language," from forgetfulness of the meaning of words. Now some little anthropological study had shown us that the ideas (so frequent in House- hold Tales), which Mr. Miiller calls unnatural, were exactly the ideas most natural to savages. So common and so natural is the idea of animal kinship and matrimonial alliance with animals to the savage mind^ that stories turning on these data are, of all stories, the most likely to have been invented in several places.* We do not say that they were thus separately invented, but only that the belief on which they turn is, of all beliefs, the most widely diffused. Having once attained this point, we soon discovered that other essential incidents in mdrchen, incidents which seem unnatural to civilised men, are common and accredited parts of the savage concep- tion of the world he lives in. When this was once
* 'Ofioiws TTov av4fxi^av Orjpia koL avQpunrovs, says Porpli}'Ty, speaking of the founders of the old Eeligions; "they mixed up men and beasts indiscriminately." Porph. ap. Euseb. Praejp. ev. iii. 4.
HOUSEHOLD TALES. xlv
ascertained, the rest of our theory followed on the ordinary lines of the evolution of human institutions. To take an example in another province. Savages of a certain degree of culture make hand-turned pots of clay. Civilised races use the wheel. Peasants in remote dis- stricts of civilised countries make hand- turned pots of clay much like those of savages. The savage tale answers to the savage pipkin. The vase from Vallauris answers to the civilised myth. The hand-turned pot from Uist or Barra, answers to the peasant mdrchen ; pot and mdrchen both surviving, with modifications, from the savage state, among the non-progressive class in civiKsed countries.
Such pipkins from the Hebrides (where Mr. Camp- bell collected his Tales) resemble much more the pre- historic and savage pot than they resemble our Vallauris vase, with its classic shape, ornament, and balance. Just in the same way, the West Highland or Eussian mdrchen is much more akin to the Zulu story than to the civilised myth of Greece, which turns on the same ideas. In both the material and the imaginative product, you have the same process of evolution. You have the rude stuff, clay and small flints and shells for the savage pot, savage ideas for the savage tale. You have the refined, selected clay for the civilised vase, the ingeni- ous process of fabrication, the graceful form and ornament. In the realm of imagination these answer to the plastic fancy of old minstrels, and of Homer or Apollonius Ehodius, refining and modifying the rude stuff of savage legend. Finally, among the non-progressive crofters of the Hebrides you have (in manufacture) the rude clay, the artless fagon, the ornament incised with the nails ; and you have, in the imaginative province, tales almost as wild as the working of Bushman or Zulu imagination. (Campbell's Tales of the West Highlands).
Here then is an example, and dozens might be given of
xlvi INTRODUCTION.
the process of evolution, which is the mainspring of our system. Another example may be taken from the realm of magic. All over the world savages practise spells, divinations, superstitious rites ; they maim images to hurt the person whom the image resembles ; they call up the dead ; they track the foot- prints of ghosts in ashes ; they tie " witch-knots ; " they use incantations ; they put sharp objects in the dust where a man has trodden that the man may be lamed. Precisely the same usages survive every- where in the peasant class, and are studied by amateurs of folk-lore. But among the progressive classes of civilisa- tion those practices do not occur at all ; or if they do occur, it is by way of revival and recrudescence. On the other hand, the magical ideas are found much elaborated, in the old myths of civilisation, in the sagas of Medea and Circe, of Odin and Loki. Probably it will now be admitted that we have established the existence of the process of evolution on which our theory depends. It is a vera causa, a verifiable working process. If more ex- amples are demanded, they may be found in any ethno- logical museum. In General Pitt Eivers's anthropological collection, the development may be traced. Given stone, clay, the tube, or blow-pipe, and the throwing-stick, and you advance along the whole line of weapons and pro- jectiles, reaching the boomerang, the bow, the stone-headed arrow, the metal arrow-head, the dagger, the spear, the sword, and, finally, the rifle and bayonet. The force which works in the evolution of manufactured objects works also in the transmutation of custom into law, of belief into tale, and of tale into myth, with constant minute modi- fication, and purification, degradation, and survival.
If we have established the character of our theory, as one of a nature acknowledged and accepted by science, we have still to give evidence for our facts. The main purpose of our earlier pages was to show that the
HOUSEHOLD TALES. xlvii
popular mythological theory of Sir G. W. Cox, had either no evidence, or scanty evidence, or evidence capable of a more correct interpretation than it receives from its friends. The evidence for our own theory will be closely scrutinised :*^let us examine its nature and extent. First, Have savages Household Tales, and do they cor- respond with those of the Aryan race ?
The questions raised by the similarity between Aryan folk-tales on the one hand, and African folk-tales on the other, have not yet been seriously considered by mytho- logists.* When Mr. Max Midler wrote (0/i^>s, ii. 211) on Dr. Callaway's Zulu Mdrchen, he had only the first part of the collection before him. As the learned writer observed, much more material was required ; we wanted more Zulu tales, and other tales from members of the same great South African race, for purposes of com- parison. We still need, for comparative purposes, much larger collections of savage instances than we possess. But these collections are amassed slowly, and it has seemed well, for our present end, to make use of the materials at hand. If comparatively scanty in quantity, they are very remarkable in character. From Africa we have " 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. (Triibner, London, 1868.) We have also Dr. Bleek's
* Dr. Reinhold Kohler informs the author that he has written nothing on the Mdrcheri of savages. Felix Liebrecht has used a few Zulu and Maori examples in Zur Volkskimde (Heilbroun, 1879). Some remarks on these topics, disavowing the theory that any one single source of myth can be discovered, will be found in Mr. Max Miiller's preface to Mr. Gill's Myths and Songs of the South Pacific. Mr. Ralston (Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1879) says that " the popular tales which are best known to us possess but few counterparts in genuine savage folk-lore," though he admits that some incidents are common both to European and uncivilised Mdrchen. We trust to shew, how- ever, that the common incidents, and even plots, are unexpectedly numerous.
Xlviii INTRODUCTION.
Bushman Folk-lore (Triibner, 1875), and his Reynard the Fox in Afiica, and Steere's Sivahili Tales. Madagascar is represented by the collections of the Rev. James Sibree, published in the Folk Lore Record (1883). Some Basuto tales are given by Casalis (Xes Bassoiitos, ou 23 ans de sejour au Slid de VAfrique, 1860). Some Ananzi stories from West Africa are printed in Sir George Dasent's Tales from the Norse (1859). From the Kaffirs we derive Theal's Kaffir Folk-l&re (Sonnenschein, London, n.d.). Mr. Gill has given us some South Sea examples in his Myths and Songs from the South Pacific. (London, 1876.*) The Folk Lore Society of South Africa, in a little j)eriodical now extinct, gave other African examples. Jiilg's Kal- .miickische Mdrchen are Indian in origin. Schoolcraft and his associates collected North American Indian examples in Algic Researches. Samoyed Mdrchen have been pub- lished by Castren (Fthnologisclie Vorlesimgen, St. Peters- burg, 1857) ; and examples of Mdrchen^ magnified and elaborated, occur in Japanese mythology (^Transactions of Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. x.); in New Zealand Myths (Taylor's New Zealand) : and in the accounts of Melanesian and Andaman myth, by Mr. Codrington and other writers, in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute. While Mr. Mitford has given us Tales of Old Japan, Prof. Hartt has collected the Mdrchen of the Indians on the Amazon. Rink has published those of the Eskimo ; and scattered examples are to be found in Bancroft's large compilation on the Native Races of the Pacific, and in the old Relations of the Jesuit fathers and other missionaries. Thus there are gleanings which may be provisionally used as samples of a large harvest of savage children's tales. The facts already in our possession are important enough to demand attention, particularly as the savage tales (in Africa especially) * Turner's Samoa (1884) also contains some South Sea Mdrchen.
HOUSEHOLD TALES. xlix
correspond, as will be shewn, so closely with the European and Aryan examples.
Here then, in the volumes named, we have a gleaning at least, from the harvest of savage Mdrchen. The names of most of the collectors will be to anthropologists, if not to all etymologists, a guarantee of their accuracy. Here, too, it may be observed, that a race so non-Aryan as the ancient Egj^ptians possessed Household Tales identical (in " unnatural " incident, and to a great extent in plot) with our own (Maspero, Conies Egi/ptiens).
It will be shown later that the ideas, stock incidents and even several of the plots of savage and other non- Aryan Household Tales are identical with the ideas, incidents, and plots of Aryan Mdrchen. It will also be shown that in the savage Mdrchen, the ideas and incidents are the inevitable result of the mental habits and beliefs of savages. The inference will be that the similar features in European tales are also derived from the savage conditions of the intellect. By " savages " we here mean all races from the Australians and Bushmen to such American tribes as the Algonquins, and such people as the Maoris. In this great multitude of stocks there are found many shades of nascent civilisation, many degrees of *' culture." But the races to whom we refer are all so far savage, that they display the characteristic feature of the savage intellect.
Before taking another step, we must settle the question of evidence as to savage ideas. We have ourselves criti- cised severely the evidence offered by certain mythologists, without, however denying that they may possess more than they offer. It is natural and necessary that we, in turn, should be asked for trustworthy testimony. How do we know anything about the ideas of savages ? How can we pretend to understand anything about the nature of the savage imagination ? The philological school of mytholo-
yoL. I. d
1 INTRODUCTION.
gists, about whose scanty show of proof we have complained, are conscientiously desirous that our evidence should be full and trustworthy. Now, according to Mr. Max Miiller, the materials which we possess for the study of savage races " are often extremely untrustworthy " (India and wTiat it can Teach us). This remark, or its equivalent, is constantly repeated, when any attempt is made to study the natural history of man. M. Eeville, on the other hand, declares with truth that our evidence is chiefly embarrassing by the very wealth of documents. (Les religions des Peuples non Civilises). We naturally side with M. Eeville.
Consider for a moment what our evidence as to the life and ideas of savages is ; our evidence, in the first jDlace, from the lips of civilised eyewitnesses. It begins with the Bible, which is rich in accounts of early religious ideas, animal worship, stone worship, ritual, taboos on articles of food ; marriage customs and the like. Then we have Herodotus, with his descriptions of savage manners, myths, and customs. Next come all the innu- merable Greek and Roman geographers, and many of the historians and general writers, Aristotle, Strabo, Pliny, Plutarch, Ptolemy, and dozens of others. For the New World, for Asia, for Africa, we ha;Ve the accounts of voyagers, merchants, missionaries, from the Arab travel- lers in the East to Marco Polo, to Sahagun, to Bernal Diaz, to Garcilasso de la Vega, to Hawkins, to all the Spanish travellers, and the Portuguese, to Hakluyt's men ; we have the Jesuits, with their Belations Edifiantes ; we have evangelists of every Christian church and sect ; we have travellers of every grade of learning and ignorance, from shipwrecked beech-combers to Nordenskiold and Mosele3% Now from Leviticus to the Cruise of the Challenger, from Herodotus to Mariner, nay, from the Rig- Veda to Fison and Howitt, we possess a series of independent documents
HOUSEHOLD TALES. ll
on savage customs and belief, whether found among actual savages or left as survivals in civilisation. These documents all coincide 6n certain points, and establish, we venture to say, with evidence that would satisfy any jury, the ancient existence of certain extraordinary savage customs, myths, ideas, and rites of worship. These ideas and rites are still held and practised by savages, and seem natural to their state of mind. Thus the coin- cident testimony of a cloud of witnesses, through three, thousand years, establishes the existence of certain savage beliefs and rites, in every quarter of the globe. Doubt- less in each instance the evidence must be carefully scrutinised. In matters of religion, missionaries may be witnesses biassed in various ways, they may want to make out that the savage has no religion at all, or that he is a primitive methodist.* The scientific explorer may have a sceptical bias : the shipwrecked mariner who passes years with a savage tribe, may be sceptical or orthodox, or may have his report tinged by the questions put to him on his return to civilisation. Again, savages take pleasure in lipaxing their catechists, and once more, the questions put by the European may suggest answers appropriate but wholly false. Therefore in examining the reports as to savage character, we must deal cautiously with the evidence. If our witness be as candid, logical, and fair as Dr. Bleek, Mr. Codrington, Mr. Orpen, Mr. Gill, Egede, Dr. Eink, Dobrizhoffer, or a score of other learned missionaries and explorers, we may yield him some con- fidence. If he be tinged and biassed more or less by scientific theories, philological or anthropological, let us allow somewhat for the bias ; ]3i'obably we must allow still
* Compare the monotheism of Mr. Ridley's Kamilaroi (Kamilaroi and other Australian Languages, p. 135), with Mr. Howitt's remarks {Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 254;. Mr. Howitt thinks that the Mission- aries have connected the idea of a God with the Austrahan Trinity of mere demons, Brewin, Bullamdut, and Baukan.
d 2
lii INTRODUCTION.
more in our own case. If the witness be nnleamed, we have, at least, the probability that ho is not transplanting to Otaheite or to Queensland ideas and customs which he has read about in Herodotus or Strabo, or theories of Miiller or McLennan.* Lastly, if all evidence from all quarters and all ages, evidence learned and unlearned, ancient, mediaeval, and modern agrees in certain points, and if many of the witnesses express surprise at the occurrence of customs and notions, which our reading shows to be almost universal, then let the undesigned coincidence itself stand for confirmation. To our mind this kind of treatment of evidence is not unscientific. It is permitted to investigators, like Darwin and Romanes. Mr. Max Miiller, however, is so far from being satisfied with the method ( as we have stated it) that he draws a line between what will content the scholar, and what tho ethnologist will put up with. Mr. Miiller's criticism deserves quotation in full (^Nineteenth, Century, Jan. 1882) : " Comparative mythology is chiefly studied by two classes — by scholars and by anthropologists. Now the true scholar who knows the intricacies of a few languages, who is aware of the traps he has to avoid in exploring their history, who in fact has burnt his fingers again and again when dealing with Greek, and Latin, and Sanskrit, shrinks by a kind of instinct from materials which crumble away as soon as critical scholarship attempts to impart to them a certain cohesion and polish. These materials are often supplied by travellers ignorant of the language, by missionaries strongly biassed in one direction or the other, or by natives who hardly under-
* " Illiterate men, i,2:norant of the writings of each other, bring the same reports fr<»m various quarters of the globe." So tlie author of the Origin of Rank (Prof. Millar, of Glasgow) wrote in the last cen- tury. This argument from undesigned coincidence, or recurrence, must be faced by people who deny the adequateness of anthropological evidence.
HOUSEHOLD TALES. liii
stood the questions they were asked to answer. A very useful collection was made some time ago by Mr. Tylor to show the untrust worthiness of the accounts of most trav- ellers and missionaries, when they give us their impres- sions of the languages, religions, and traditions of races among whom they lived for a longer or shorter time. The same people who by one missionary are said to worship either one or man}' gods, are declared by another to have no idea and no name of a Divine Being. But, what is stranger still, even the same person sometimes makes two equally confident assertions which flatly con- tradict each other." Several examples of these inconsis- tencies are quoted.
Any reader of this passage might naturally suppose that Mr. Tylor thought our materials for the study of savage religions, language, and traditions quite untrust- worthy. If Mr. T^^lor really thought thus, we might abandon any attempt to explain mythology and customs by the study of savages. But as Mr. Tylor has devoted several chapters of Primitive Culture to examining the savage origins of mythology and religion, he apparently does not think our evidence so very hopeless after all. The passage in Mr. Tjdor's work to which Mr. Miiller refers is (probably). Primitive Culture, i. 418, 419. Mr. Tylor there remarks, " It is not unusual for the very writer who declares in general terms the absence of reli- gious j)henomena among some savage people, himself to give evidence that shows his expressions to be misleading." But, far from dismissing the whole topic as one on which no anthropological reports can be trusted, Mr. Tylor goes on to shew that the inconsistencies of evidence have chiefly arisen from want of a definition of religion. The mission- ary says, " the savage has no religion," meaning nothing like what the missionary understands by religion. He then proceeds to describe practices which, in the eyes of
liv , INTRODUCTION.
the anthropologist, are religious enough. Mr. Tylor then discounts reports which are hasty, or made in ignorance, and finds that there is still left that enormous body of testimony on which he bases his theory of savage philosophies, religions, and mythologies. Mr. Tylor, to be brief, judges evidence by the tests we have already proposed. The inquirer " is bound to use his best judgment as to the trustworthiness of all the authors he quotes . . . but it is over and above these measures ot precautions that the test of recurrence comes in." By " recurrence " Mr. Tylor means what we have called " undesigned coincidence." Thus, " if two independent visitors to different countries, say a mediaeval Mahomme- dan in Tartary, and a modern Englishman in Dahome, or a Jesuit missionary in Brazil, and a Wesleyan in the Fijian Islands, agree in describing some analogousart or rite or myth among the people they have visited, it becomes difficult or impossible to set down such correspondence to accident or wilful fraud " (Primitive Culture, i. 9.)
Such, then, are our tests of reported evidence. Both the quantity and the quality of the testimony seem to justify an anthropological examination of the origin of myths and mdrchen. As to the savage ideas from which we believe these mdrchen to spring we have yet stronger evidence.*
We have the evidence of institutions. It may be hard to understand what a savage thinks, but it is comparatively easy to know what he does. Now the whole of savage existence, roughly speaking, is based on and swayed by two great institutions. The first is the division of society into a number of clans or stocks. The marriage laws of
* Mr. Ealstoii (Nineteenth Century, Nov. 1879) seems to think that the historical interpreters of mdrchen wish to resolve all incidents into traces of actual customs. But traces of customs are few, compared with survivals of ideas, or states of opinion, or " wild beliefs " of which Mr. RalstoQ (p. 852, loc. cit.) himself contributes an example.
HOUSEHOLD TALES. Iv
savages depend on the conception that these stocks descend from certain plants, animals, or inorganic objects. As a rule no man and woman believed to be connected by- descent and blood kinship with the same animal, plant, stone, natural phenomenon, or what not, can intermarry. This law is sanctioned by severe, sometimes by capital, punishment. Now about the evidence for this institution there can be no mistake. It has been observed by tra- vellers in North and South America, in Australia, Samoa, India, Arabia, in Northern Asia, and in West and South Africa. The observations were obviously made without collusion or intention to support a scientific theory, for the scientific importance of the institution was not perceived till about 1870.*
The second institution of savage life, from which the nature of savage ideas maybe deduced, is the belief in magic and in " medicine-men." Everywhere we find Australians, Maoris, Eskimo, old Irish, Fuegians, Brazilians, Samoyeds, Iroquois, and the rest, showing faith in certain jugglers or wizards of their own tribe. They believe that these men can turn themselves or their neighbours into animal shapes ; f that they can go down into the abodes of the dead ; that they can move inanimate objects by incan- tations ; that they can converse with spirits, and magically cure or inflict diseases. This belief declares itself in the in- stitutions of untutored races; the sorcerer has a considerable share in what may be called political and priestly power.
* The first writer who collected examples of these facts was Mr. McLennan. (' The Worship of Plants and Animals,' Fortnightly Re- view, 1869).
t Mr. Kalston writes (' Beauty and the Beast,' Nineteenth Century, Dec. 1878), " The weie-wolf stands alone." But a reference to the article on Lykanthropy {Encydop. Britann.) will shew that sorcerers are believed to be capable of transforming either themselves or their neighbours into all manner of animals. The wolf is only the beast most commonly selected for purposes of transformation in Europe. Lions, tigers, crocodiles, birds, are quite as frequent in other parts of the world.
Ivi INTRODUCTION.
We have now unfolded the character of onr evidence. It is based, first on the testimony of innumerable reports corroborated by recurrence or coincidence; next on the testimony of institutions.
If this evidence seems inadequate, what have we to fall back upon ? Merely the conjectures of philologists ; we must follow the star of etymological guesses after which our fathers, the old antiquaries, went wandering. It may be said, with truth, that modern philology has a method far more scientific and patient than the random practice of old etymology. Granted, but a glance at the various philological interpretations, for example, of Greek myth- ical names, will shew that philologists still differ on most mythical points where difference is possible. When applied to the interpretation of the past of human thought and human history, philology is a most uncertain guide. Thus, Schrader observes (SprachvergleicJiung und Urgeschichte^ p. 431), that comparative philology has as yet contributed very little certain knowledge to the study of mythology. In the region of history, as he shews, the best philologists contradict each other and themselves, as to the metals possessed by the early Aryans. Yet philology is the science which claims possession of " the only method that can lead to scientific results," results which differ with the views of each individual scholar.
We are now able to prove, from the social and political /institutions of savages, their belief in human descent fron. animals, in kinship with animals, in powers of meta- morphosis, in the efficacy of incantations, and in the possibility of communion with the dead. Savages also believe in the possibility of " personal intercourse between man and animal, " the savage man's idea of the nature of those lower animals is very different from the civilised man's" (Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 467 ; ii. 230). Mr. \ Tylor gives many curious obf/Crvances, as proofs of the
HOUSEHOLD TALES. IVll
• existence of these wild conceptions. We may add that savages believe the human soul passes into animal shapes at death, and that women may bear animal children.
Similar views prevail about inanimate nature. " To the savage all nature seems animated, all things are persons." We have already seen that Sir George Cox assumed this state of thought in the makers of his " primary " myths. " To the Indian all objects animate and inanimate seem exactly of the same nature, except that they differ in the accident of bodily form." (Im Thurn, Indians of Guiana, p. 350).
Other savage ideas may be briefly explained. Among savages many harmless and necessary acts are " taboo'd * or forbidden for some mystic or ceremonial reason.
Again, the youngest child in polygamous families is apt to be the favourite and heir. Animals of miraculous power are supposed to protect men and women. Canni- balism is not unknown in practice, and, as savages seldom eat members of their own tribe, alien tribes are regarded as cannibals. Further, various simple moral ideas are inculcated in savage tales. We may now offer a shoit list of savage ideas, and compare each idea with an incident in a savage and in a civilised Household Tale.* '
1. Savage Idea. Belief in kinship, ivith Animals
Savage Tale. European Tale.
Woman marries an elephant Man weds girl whose brothers are Woman marries a whale. ravens.
Woman gives birth to crows Queen accused of bearing puppies Man marries a beaven or cats.
Girl wooed by frog. Girl marries a frog.
Girl marries serpent. Girl marries a tick.
Man marries a frog.
* The authorities for the existence of these ideas, customs, and beliefs, with references for the tales based on the beliefs and customs, will bo found at the end of this Introduction.,
Iviii
INTKODUCTION.
2. Savage Idea. Belief in Metamorphosis
Savage Tale.
Hero becomes Insect. Hero becomes Bird. Hero becomes Mouse, ( J iris become Birds.
3. Savage Idea.
A. Inanimate objects obey incanta- tions, and speali.
Savage Tale.
Hero uses incantations with suc- cess.
B. Inanimate objects may speak. Savage Tale. Drops of spittle speak.
4. Savage Idea.
Animals help favoured Men and Women.
Savage Tale,
Hero is helped by Ox. Heroes helped by Wolf.
5. Savage Idea. Cannibals are a constant danger.
Savage Tale.
Hero and Heroine are captured by
Cannibals. Hero or Heroine flees from home to
avoid being eaten.
6. Savage Idea.
The belief in possible descents into Hades, a place guarded by strange beasts, and where living men must not eat.
Savage Tale.
Descent by a Melanesian. His adventures. Descent by an Odjibwa. His adventures.
European Tale,
Hero becomes Worm. Heroes become Bu-ds. Hero becomes Roebuck. Girls become Birds.
European Tale,
Hero uses incantations with suc- cess.
European Tale, Drops of spittle speak.
"European Tale,
Heroine is helped by Bull. Heroine is helped by Sheep. Hero is helped by various Beasts.
European Tale,
Hero and Heroine are captured by
Cannibals. Hero or Heroine flees from home to
avoid being eaten.
European Tale.
Descent of Psyche. Her similar adventures.
HOUSEHOLD TALES.
iix
7. Savage Custom.
Husband and wife are furbidden to see each other, or to name each other's names.
Savage Tale.
^Yife disappears (but not apparently because of infringement of taboo).
"VVife disappears after infringement of taboo.
European Tale,
Husband or wife disappear when seen, or when the name is named. (These acts being pro- hibited by savage custom.)
8. Savage Custom.
The youngest son in the Polygamous family is the heir.
Savage Tale.
King's youngest son, as heir, is en- vied and ill-treated by his brothers.
9. Savage Idea. A.
Human strength, or soul, resides in this or that part of the body, anti the strength of one man may be acquired by another who secures this part. ,
Savage Tale.
Certain Giants take out their hearts when they sleep, and are over- come by men who secure the hearts.
Savage Idea. B. Souls of dead enter animal forms.
Savage Tale. Dead Boy becomes a Bird.
European Tale.
Youngest son or daughter succeeds where the elders fail, and is be- trayed by jealousy of the elders.
European Tale.
The Giant who has no heart in his body.
The man whose life or force de- pends on a lock of hair, and is lost when the hair is lost.
European Tale. Dead Boy becomes a Bird.
The lists now furnislied exhibit several of the leadino-
o
and most " unnatural " ideas in European Household Tales, It has been shown that these ideas are also found in savage Household Tales. It has further been demon- strated that the notions on which these incidents are
IX INTRODLCTION.
based are as natural to, and as common among, savages as they seem " unnatural" to the modern civilised student of Aryan dialects. The conclusion appears to follow inevitably, that the incidents of ravage stories are derived from the beliefs and ideas of savages, while the identical incidents in civilised tales are an inheritance, a survival from a past of savagery. If we are not to believe this, we must first reject the evidence ofiered as untrustworthy, and next explain the phenomena as the result of forget- fulness of the meaning of words, and of other linguistic processes for which, as we have shewn, the evidence is neither copious, nor unimpeachable, nor to the point.
fAt the beginning of this essay we remarked that Household Tales consist of but few incidents, in an immense variety of combinations. To the incidents ? already enumerated, we may add such as spring from a few simple moral conceptions. Thus, among savages as in Europe, the duty of good temper and courtesy is illustrated by the tale of the good girl, or boy, who y succeeded in enterprises where the bad girl or boy failed as a punishment of churlishness or disobedience. Again, in savage as well as civilised tales, curiosity in forbidden matters is punished, as in all the stories of opening a taboo'd door, or tampering with matters taboo' d. Once more the impossibility of avoiding Fate is demonstrated in such tales as " The Sleeping Eeauty," the unborn child who is exposed to make of no effect an evil prophecy, and so forth. Again, the folly of hasty words is set forth in stories of the type of Jeptha's foolish vow. By help of such simple moral conceptions as these, and of super- natural incidents which appear natural to the savage, the web of Household Tales is woven.
There remain, however, features in Household Tales, Bavage or civilised, which we do not even pretend to explain. Why does the biipplanted bride, whose place
HOUSEHOLD TALES. 1x1
is taken by a false bride, appear so often ? What super- stition is at the bottom of the incident of the lover ^vho forgets his beloved after he has been kissed by his mother or his hound? Why does the incident of the deserted girl, who hides in a tree, and whose beautiful face is seen reflected in a well beneath, occur so frequently in countries as far apart as Scotland and Madagascar? These are among the real difficulties of the subject. A2:ain, while most of the incidents of Household Tales are, as we have seen, easily accounted for, the tissue of plot into which they are woven is by no means so readily explained.
We may now examine, as briefly as possible, a famous myth of the classical world, and point out its component parts and stock ideas, which are scattered through the Household Tales of the civilised and barbarous races. For our present purpose the myth of Jason is as well suited as any other.*
If our system be correct, the Jason myth is a heroic legend, with a plot composed of incidents now localised, and with characters now named, but the events were originally told as happening in no particular place, and the characters were originally mere " somebodies." The Jason myth starts from the familiar situation common in Household Tales. A Boeotian king (Athamas) has a wife, Nephele, and two children, a boy and a girl, named Phrixus (or Phryxus) and Helle. But Athamas takes a a new wife or mistress, Ino, and she conspires against her step-children. By intrigues, which it is needless to explain, Ino procures a decree that Phrixus and Helle shall be sacrificed to Zeus, this feature being a survival from the ag-e of human sacrifice in Greece. As Phrixus stood at the altar, Nephele brought forward a golden ram which could speak. Phrixus and Helle mounted on the
* See " A Far Travelled Tale " in the author's Custom and Myth.
Ixii INTRODUCTION.
ram ; the beast flew eastwards ; Helle fell off, and was drowned in the Hellespont; Phrixiis reached Colchis, sacrificed the ram, dedicated the golden fleece in a temple, and became the eponymous, or name-giving hero of Phrygia (ApoUodorus, 1. ix. 1). The Scholiast, on Iliad vii. 86, quotes the story, with some unimportant variations from Philostephanus. He says that the ram met Phrixus and revealed to him the plot against his life. The Scholiast on Ajpoll. Wiod. 1. 256, gives Hecataeus as authority for the ram's power of conversation. Apollonius writes,
aXXa Kat avZrjv avhpoixiiqv irpoerjKe KaKov repa?.
The classical writers were puzzled by the talkative ram, but to students of Household Tales the surprise would be if the ram did not speak. According to De Gubernatis, the ram is the cloud or the sun, or a mixture ; " the sun in the cloud butts with its rays until it opens the stable and its horns come out." And so forth.
We may now compare Household Tales which contain unlocalised versions of the early incidents in the Jason myth. The idea of the earlier incidents is that children, oppressed or threatened at home, escape by aid of an animal, or otherwise, and begin a series of adventures. The peculiar wrong from which the children escape, in the classic and heroic myth, is human sacrifice. In the Household Tales, on the other hand, they usually run away to escape being eaten. As human sacrifice is generally a survival of cannibalism, and is often found clinging to religion after cannibalism has died out of custom, it is only natural that the religious rite should be found in the classic myth, the savage custom in savage tales, and in the household stories which we regard as survivals of savagery. In the following Household Tales, the children flee from home like Phrixus and Helle, to escape
HOUSEHOLD TALES. Ixiii
being eaten, sometimes by a step-mother, sometimes by a mother, while in the most civilised version they only run away from a step-mother's ill-treatment.
Our first example is from Samojedische Mdrclien (Castren. p. 164). Here the childless wife intends to devour the daughters of her rival, whom she has slain. The daughters escape, and when they reach the sea, they are carried across not by a golden ram, but by a beaver. The Epirote version of the story is given by Von Hahn (^Gr. Mar. i. 65). A man brings home a pigeon for dinner, the cat eats it ; the wife, to con- ceal the loss of the pigeon, cooks one of her own breasts ; the husband relishes the food, and proposes to kill his own two children and eat them. Exactly as the ram warned Phrixus, according to Philostephanus, so the dog warns the boy hero of the Epirote mdrclien, and he and his sister make their escape. The tale then shades off into one of the mdrclien of escape by magical devices, which are the most widely diffused of all stories. But these incidents recur later in the Jason legend. Turning from the Samoyeds and the Epirotes to Africa, we find the moh/ (escape of brother and sister) in a Kaffir tale, " Story of the Bird that made Milk." Here the children flee into the desert to avoid the anger of their father, who had " hung them on a tree that projected over a river." The children escape in a magical manner, and intermarry with animals (Theal's Kaffir Folk Lore^ p. 36). Finally, among the Kaffirs, we find a combination of the form of the stories as they occur in Grimm (ii. 15). Grimm's version opens thus, " Little brother took his little sister by the hand and said, ' Since our mother died our step- mother beats us every day . . . come, we will go forth into the wide world.' " The Kaffir tale (Demane and Demazana) tells how a brother and sister who were twins and orphans were obliged on account of ill-usage to run
Ixiv INTRODUCTION". "
away from. their relatives. Like Hansel and Grethel they fall into the hands of cannibals, and escape by a ruse. Ip their flight they are carried over the water, neither by a ram nor a beaver, but by a white duck.
Here, then, we see how widely diffused are the early ideas and incidents of the Jason cycle. We see, too, tha^ they are consistent with the theory of a savage origin, ii cannibalism be a savage practice, and if belief in talking and protective animals be a savage belief.
The Ja>on myth proceeds from the incidents of the
flight of the children, and enters a new cycle of ideas and
events. We come to incidents which may be arranged
thus:
^^ 1. The attempt to evade prophecy. (Compare Zulu
"Tales, p. 41).
2. The arrival of the true heir.
3. Endeavour to get rid of the heir by setting him upon a difficult or impossible adventure. (Callaway's Zulu TaleSy p. 170).
4. The hero starts on the adventure, accompanied by friends possessed of miraculous powers. (Compare Kale- wala).
In the Jason Legend the true heir is Jason himself. His uncle, Pelias, the usurper of his kingdom, has been warned by prophecy to guard against a one-shoe'd man. Jason has lost one shoe crossing the river. His uncle, to get rid of him, sends him to seek, in far away Colchis, the golden fleece of the talking ram. He sets forth in a boat with a talking figure-head, and accompanied by heroes of supernatural strength, and with magical powers of seeing, hearing, and flying.
All these inventions are natural, and require no com- ment. The companions of the hero, " Quick Sight," '• Fine Ear " and the rest, are well known in European House- hold Tales, where their places are occasionally taken by
HOUSEHOLD TALES. Ixv
gifted beasts. The incident of the expedition, the com- panions, and the quest in general, recurs in the Kalewala, the national poem of the Finns. When Jason with his company arrive in Colchis, we enter on a set of incidents perhaps more widely diflused than any others in the whole of folk-lore. Briefly speaking, the situation is this : an adventurer comes to the home of a powerful and malevolent being. He either is the brother of the wife of this being, or he becomes the lover of his daughter. In the latter case, the daughter helps the adventurer to accomplish the impossible tasks set him by her father. Afterwards the pair escape, throwing behind them, in their flight, various objects which detain the pursuer. When the adventurer is the brother of the wife of the malevolent being, the story usually introduces the " fee fo, fum " formula, — the husband smells the flesh of the stranger. In this variant, tasks are not usually set to the brother as they are to the lover. The incidents of the flight are much the same everywhere, even when, as in the Japanese and Lithuanian myths a brother is fleeing from the demon-ghost of his sister in Hades, or when, as in the Samoyed tale, two sisters are evading the pursuit of a cannibal step-mother. The fugitives always throw small objects behind them, such as a comb, which magically turns into a forest, and so forth.
We have already alluded to the wide diffusion of these incidents, which recur, in an epic and humanised form, in the Jason myth. By way of tracing the incidents from their least civilised to their Greek shape, we may begin with the Nama version. It is a pretty general rule that in the myths of the lower races, animals fill the roles which, in civilised story, are taken by human beings. In Bleek's Hottentot Fables and Tales, p. 60, the inci- dents turn on the visit of brothers to a sister, not on the coming of an adventurous lover. The sister has
VOL. I. ^
Ixvi INTRODUCTION.
married, not a wizard king, nor even a giant, but an elephant. The woman hides her brothers, the elephant " smells something." In the night, the woman escapes, with all the elephant's herds except three kine, which she instructs to low as loud as if they were whole flocks. These beasts then act like the " talking spittle," in Gaelic and Zulu, and like the chattering dolls in the Eussian tale. The woman bids a rock open, she and her brothers enter, and when the elephant comes the rock closes on him, like the " Rocks Wandering," or clashing rocks, in the Odj^ssey, and he is killed. In the Eskimo Tale (Rink, 7) two brothers visit a sister married to a cannibal, but she has become a cannibal too. A tale much more like the Hottentot story of the Nama woman is the Eskimo " Two Girls " (Rink 8). One of the girls married, not an elephant, but a whale. To visit her, her two brothers built a boat of magical speed. In their company the woman fled from the whale. But instead of leaving magical objects, or obediently lowing animals behind her, she merely tied the rope by which the whale usually fast- ened her round a stone. The whale discovered her absence, pursued her, and was detained by various articles which she threw at him. Finally she and her brothers escaped, and the whale was transformed into a piece of whale-bone. In the Samoyed story (Castren. 11) the pursuit of the cannibal is delayed by a comb which the girl throws behind her, and which becomes " a thick wood ; " other objects tossed behind become rivers and mountains. The same kind of feats are performed during the flight, in a story from Madagascar {Folk-lore Becord, Aug. 1883), a story which, in most minute and curious detail of plot, resembles the Scotch " Nicht, Nocht, Nothing," the Russian " Tsar Morskoi," and the Gaelic " Battle of the Birds." In Japan, as among the Samoyeds, the hero (when followed by the Loathly Lady of Hades) throws down his comb,
HOUSEHOLD TALES. Ixvii
and it turns into bamboo sprouts, which naturally check her in her approach (Tra7is. Asiat. Soc. of Japan, vol. x. p. 36). The Zulu versions will be found in Callaway, pp. 51, 90, 145. In the Eussian Tale (Ealston, p. 120), we find that the adventurer is not the brother of the wife of an animal, but the lover of the daughter of the Water King. By her aid he accomplishes the hard tasks set him, and he escapes with her, not by throwing objects behind, but by her magical gift of shape-shifting. The story takes the same form in the old Indian collection of Somadeva (cf. Kohler, Orient und Occident, ii. pp. 107- 114. Ealston, pp. 132, 133). The father of the maiden in the Indian version is both animal and giant, a Eakshasa, who can fly about as a crane. In Grimm (51) the girl and her lover flee, by the aid of talking drops of blood, from a cruel witch step-mother. The best German parallel to the incidents of the adventurer's success in love, success in performing the hard tasks, and flight with the girl, is Grimm's " Two Kings' Children " (110). The Scotch version is defective in the details of the flio-ht. ( NicJit, NougJit, Nothing^ collected by the present writer, and published, with notes by Dr. Kohler, in Bevue Celtique, vol. iii. 3, 4.)
It is scarcely necessary to show how the incidents which we have been tracing are used in the epic of Jason. He himself is the adventurer ; the powerful and malevolent being is the Colchian King ^etes, the daughter of the king, who falls in love with the adventurer, is Medea. Hard tasks, as usual, are set the hero ; just as in the Kalewala, Ilmarinen is compelled to plough the adder-close with a plough of gold, to bridle the wolf and the bear of Hades, and to catch the pike that swims in the waters of forgetfulness. The hard tasks in the Highlands and in So'ith Africa may be compared. (Campbell, ii. 328 ; Cctllaway, 470). Instead of sowing dragons' teeth, the
Ixviii INTRODUCTION.
Zulu boy lias to " fetch the liver of an Ingogo," a fabulous monster. When the tasks have been accomplished, the adventurer and the king's daughter, Jason and Medea, flee, as usual, from the wrath of the king, being aided (again as usual) by the magic of the king's daughter. And what did the king's daughter throw behind her in her flight, to delay her father's pursuit ? Nothing less than the mangled remains of her own brothers. Other versions are given : that of ApoUonius Ehodius (iv. 476, cf. Scholia) contains a curious account of a savage expiatory rite performed by Jason. But Grote (ed. 1869, i. 232) says, "So revolting a story as that of the cutting up of the little boy cannot have been imagined in later times." Perhaps, however, the tale, though as old as Pherecydes, is derived from a Folk-etymology of the place called Tomi (rijxviji). While the wizard king mourned over the cast-away fragments of his boy, the adventurer and the king's daughter made their escape. The remainder of the Jason legend is chiefly Greek, though some of the wilder incidents (as Medea's chaldron) have their parallels in South Africa. ^ We have now examined a specimen of the epic legends of Greece. We have shown that it is an arrangement, with local and semi-historical features, of a number of incidents, common in both savage and European HoiTsehold Tales. Some moments in the process of the arrangement, for example, the localising of the scene in Colchis, and the attachment of the conclusion to the fortunes of the Corin- thian House, are discussed by Grote (i. 244). Grote tries to show that the poetic elaboration and arrangement were finished between 600 and 500 B.C. Whatever the date may have been, we think it probable that the incidents of the Jason legend, as preserved in mdrchen^ are much older than the legend in its epic Greek form. We have also shown that the incidents for the most part occur in the tales of savages, and we believe that they are the natural
HOUSEHOLD TALES. Ixix
expressions of the savage imagination. We have not thought it necessary to explain (with Sir George Cox) the mutilation of the son of ^etes as a myth of sunset (Ar. Myth, i. 153) " a vivid image of the young sun^ as torn to pieces among the vapours that surround him, while the light, falling in isolated patches on ^ the sea, seems to set bounds to the encroaching darkness." Is the "encroaching darkness" iEetes? But ^etes, in myth, was the son of the Sun, while Sir George Cox recognises him as " the breath or motion of the air." * Well, Jason was (apparently) the Sun, and Apsyrtus is the young Sun, and Medea is the Dawn, and Helle is the evening Air, and Phryxus is the cold Air, and the fleece is the Sunlight, and ^etes is the breath of the air, and the child of the Sun, and why they all behave as they do in the legend is a puzzle which we cannot pretend to unravel.
Did space permit, we might offer analyses of other myths. The Odyssey we have dealt with in the introduc- tion to our prose translation (Butcher and Lang ed. 1883). The myths of Perseus and of Urvasi and Pururavas may be treated in a similar way.f As to the relations between the higher myths and Mdrchen, civilised or savage, there is this to be said : where the Mdrchen is diffused among many distinct races, while the epic use of the same theme is found only among one or two cultivated peoples, it is
* While ^etes is the " hrcath or motion of the air " with Sir George Cox in the opinion of Mr. Brown (The Myth of Kirke), Metes is Lunus, and forms with Circe " an androgynous Moon, i.e., the ascrip- tion of both male and female potentialities to the lunar power. Medea is the Moon, too, with Mr. Brown, while Sir George Cox writes, "Medeia herself appears in benignant guise in the legend of the Goose-o-irl at the Well (the Dawn-maiden with her snow-white clouds^') (^r. Myth,i. 429). Wliere incidents maybe explained by fanciful guesses at the etymology of words, every scholar has an equal ri'^ht to his own interpretations. Each may see the moon, where another finds the sun, or the wind, or the cloud. But the conflicting guesses destroy «ich otlier. , , ^ ^
t See " Cupid, Psyche, and the Sun-Frog " in the author s Custom and Myth.
Ixx INTRODUCTION.
probable that the Mdrchen is older than the cultivated epic. Again, when the popular tale retains references to the feats of medicine men, to cannibalism, to metamorpho- sis, and to kinship with beasts, all of which are suppressed or smoothed down in the epic form of the story, these omissions strengthen the belief that the epic is later than the tale, and has passed through the refining atmosphere of a higher civilisation.
As to the origin of the wild incidents in Household Tales, let any one ask himself this question : Is there any- thing in the frequent appearance of cannibals, in kinship with animals, in magic, in abominable cruelty, that would seem unnatural to a savage ? Certainly not ; all these . things are familiar in his world. Do all these things occur on almost every page of Grimm ? Certainly they do. Have they been natural and familiar incidents to the educated German mind during the historic age ? No one will venture to say so. These notions, then, have survived in peasant tales from the time when the ancestors of the Germans were like Zulus or Maoris or Australians.
Finally, as to the diffusion of similar incidents in count ries widely severed, that may be, perhaps, ascribed to the identical beliefs of early man all over the world. But the diffusion of^lots is much more hard to explain, nor do we venture to explain it, except by the chances of trans- mission in the long past of human existence. As to the " roots " or " radicals " of stories, the reader who has followed us will probably say, with Mr. Farrer (^Primitive Manners, p. 257), " We should look, not in the clouds, but upon the earth ; not in the various aspects of nature, but in the daily occurrences and surroundings," he might have added, in the current opinions and ideas, ** of savage life."
HOUSEHOLD TALES Ixxi
NOTES.
These notes are intended to corroborate by reference to authorities the statements on pp. 51-53.
I. — Belief in Kinship with Animals.
Marsden, Sumatra, p. 292 ; Brookes's Sarawak, i. 64 ; Australia : Fison and Hewitt's Kamilaroi and Kurnai, p. 109 ; Grey's Travels, ii. 225; Lang's Australian Aborigines, p, 10; Laws based on these opinions, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, passim, Grey, ii. 226. Ashanti: Bowditch's Mission, p. 180, 18L Aleuts and Koniagas of the North- West Pacific Coast. Barrett Lenuard, pp. 54, 57 ; Dale's Alaska, pp. 421, 422. Bancroft, iii. 104, quoting Bargoa, iii. 74. Lafitau, Moeurs des Sauvageb, 467. For Peru, Garcilasso de la Vega.
Basutos. Casalis, p. 21L North Asia: Dalton, Trans. Eth. Soc. vi. 36. Latham, Descript. Ethn. i, 364. Strahlenberg on the Yakuts. Osages of North America. Schoolcraft, iv. 221. Catlin, Letters, ii. 128. Charlevoix, iii. 353 ; Schoolcraft, iv. 225, iv. 86, iii. 268. Kohl. p. 148, 4/i'«ca, Bechuanas, Livingstone Travels, p. 13. India, Dalton, Ethnol. of Bengal, p. 63, p. 166, p. 189, p. 255. Melanesia, Codrington's Journal. Anthrop. Inst. p. 305.
" Whilst Tawaki was of human form, his brethren were sharks ; there were mixed marriages among them." (Taylor, New Zealand, p. 136). For further information on this belief and its survivals in civilised races, see McLennan's Worsliip of Plants and Animals ('Fortnightly Review,' 1869), and article Family (A. L.) in Ency- clopaedia Britannica, also Early History of the Family {Contemp. Rev. 1883).
I. Examples of Belief in Kinship with Animals found in Household Tales.
Savage Tales. Girl wooed by a Frog {Zulu). Callaway, pp. 211, 237, 241, 248.
G rl marries a Pigeon (Zidu). Callaway, p. 71 (cf. note on fre- quency of this idea).
Girl marries an Elephant (Hottentot). Bleek, p. 61.
Girl marries a Bird (Calnuck). Jiilg, No. 7.
Girls marry Eagles and Whales {Eskimo), Rink, 8, 9.
Man marries a Beaver (Kohl).
Ixxii INTRODUCTION.
European Tales.
Girl marries Pumpkin (WallacMan). (Schott, 23.) Girl marries Goat {Russian). Afanasief, vi. 50 (Ap, Ealston). Girl marries Frog (German). Grimm, 1 (some of the Tsimsheean Indians of British Columbia believe that they are descended from a frog). Girl marries Bear (Norse). Dasent (" East o' the Sun, West o' the .
Moon").
Man marries Frog (Russian). Afanasief, ii. 23. Ap. Ealston.
Girl marries Frog (Scotch). Chambers.
Man marries a Frog (Max Miiller, Chips, ii.)
Other examples might be given to any extent.
II. Belief in Metamorphosis into Animal, or into Inanimate
Object.
Examples of the belief in metamorpnosis are almost too common to
need citation. . ,. xt- ux
In the Introduction to his Translations of the Arabian Nights, Mr. Lane says he found this belief in full force in Egypt, and he naturally derives the frequency of metamorphosis in Arab stories from the belief which he found at work among the people. As examples we may select Tales of Old Japan (Mitford, passim), in Honduras (where, as usual, sorcerers possess this power), Bancroft, i. 740. Lapland, Reqnard (ap. Pinkerton, i. 471). Bushmen, Bleek (Brief Account, &c., pp 1.5, 40). Among the Abipones, Dobrizhofifer, Engl. Trans, i. 63. Africa, Livingstone (Travels, p. 642). Mayas of Central America, Bancroft, ii. 797. Thlinkeets (Dale's Alasha, p. 423). Moquis, Schoolcraft, iv. 80. Aztecs, Sahagun, v. 13. Khonds. Campbell's Narrative, p. 45. The Hos, and others, non-Aryan tribas of India. Dalton, p. 200. Madagascar, Folk-Lore Journal, Oct. 1883.
It appears superfluous to give examples of metamorphosis from House- hold Tales. In the stories of red men (Schoolcraft), black men (Tlieal, Callaway, Bleek), yellow men (Julg), and white men, people are meta- morphosed or transform their neighbours into birds, beasts, vegetables, and stones. HI. Savage Belief that Inanimate Objects obey Incantations.
This is proved by all the accounts of sorcerers, pow-wows, medicine- men piays, and what not, in North and South America, Melanesia, New Zealand, Africa, Siberia, and so forth. The idea had a strong hold as is well known, on the imagination of the Greeks and Konians In savage tales (Tavlor's New Zealand, p. 156 ; Schoolcraft's AMc Researches), Blt^ek, Callaway, Theal (Kaffir Folk Tales, jp. 80), all difficulties yield when the hero or heroine chants a snatch of verse. Rocks open, streams dry up, supernatural beings appear, and so on. It is needless to quote instances from civilised folk tales, from the Scotch Rashin Coatie, to Grimm's " Little Snow-white " (53), and the Russian Vasilissa, all the characters are obeyed by inanimate objects when they repeat some lines of verse. The subordinate idea t^at
HOUSEHOLD TALES. Ixxiii
inanimate objects may speak is illustrated by the talking spittle. (Zulu, Gaelic, Callaway, 64. Campbell, Battle of Birds).
IV. Savage Idea that Animals supernaturally aid Persons they
Favour.
Evidence for this belief will be found in the notes under I. If animals are akin to men, it is only to be expected that they will assist tlieir relations. A curious example of a kangaroo giving advice to a human kinsman of his own in a dream, is printed by Mr. Fison in the Journal Anthrop. Inst, Nov. 1883. In Australia, Sir George Grey says that the animal with which a native claims kinship is his " friend " or " protector " (Grey, Travels, ii. 323). An odd American example is given by Long (Voyages, p. 86). In America each native not only believed iti the beast which was akin to his clan, but selected a special animal as his own manitou, or friendly spiritual power in a material form. An instance is quoted in which the manitou (a duck), of an Ojibway Indian, helped a crew of Ojibways to escape from their enemies. Each Ojibway prayed to the beast, which was his manitou, or animal patron saint (Dormau, Origin of Primitive Superstitions, p. 271). Among the Eskimo not only are protecting animals common, but magicians send a sort of magical animal (the Finnish Saivo) to do their bidding. (Rink, p. 53.) The tornak, or familiar spirit and helper of the Eskimo is usually in animal shape. In traditions of civilised and semi-civilise 1 nations, Aztecs, Eomans, and others, the animal, woodpecker, wolf, cow, or what not, which leads wandering hosts to their destined homes, is a kind of manitou or, perhaps, a Tribal Totem.
In Household Tales friendly animals occur very frequently. An excellent example is given in the Mabinogion, where salmon, deer, and ravens help the heroes. Huns and Grethel (Grimm, 15), are aided bv a white duck, as in Cupid and Psyche, ants help the hero (The Wiite Snake, Grimm, 17). Birds are equally serviceable to the hero in the Scotch Nicht, Nocht, Nothing. A sava/e example from the Eskimo occurs in Rink (1), a wolf (amaroTi) befriends the hero. The "Bird that made Milk" (Theal 1) is an African example. Mice and fr j^s are friendly and helpful in the ' Story of Five Heads ' (Theal, p. VI). Among the Zulus " Ubabuze is lielped by a Mouse " (Calla- way, p. 97). Beavers and sturgeons assist the girl in the Samoyed legend (Castren. 2). In Russian, Emilian the Fool is aided by a friendly pike (Ralston, p. 205); and every one knows how the little fish saved Munu from the Flood in the Indian legend. More examples are piobibly superfluous, they may be found by opening any collection of Household Tales at random.
5. Savage Belief. Danger from Cannibals.
It would be pedantic to off"er " chapter and verse " for the prevalence of cannibalism in savage countries. Mr. Tylor's article Cannibalism, in the Encydopxdia Britannica, may be consulted by any scholars who think our testimony on this point untrustworthy. It only
Ixxiv INTEODUCTION.
remains to note that cannibalism is the most frequent form of peril in German and Modern Greek, and English and Indian, as in Zulu, Hottentot, Eskimo, and Samoyed Household Tales. The appearance of cannibalism in the stories of savages is perfectly natural. Why it should occur so frequently in European tales (unless it be a survival) it were difficult to explain. The ferocious cruelty of the punish- ments inflicted on evil-doers in the European tales need not date further back than the middle ages, which were vindictive enough in their penalties.
6. The Savage Conception of Hades.
It is a place guarded by strange beasts. No living man may enter there and return to the upper world if he has tasted the food of Hell. The best known Household Tale on this topic is Cupid and Psyche in Apuleius. Psyche's adventures in Hades fully agree with Ojibway, Melanesian, Japanese, Maugaian, Maori, Etruscan, and Finnisli descriptions of the homes of the departed {Kalewala. Canto XVI. Taylor's New Zealand, p. 233. Codrington, ' Kelie:ious Ideas of the Melanesians,' Journal Anthrop.-Inst., x. iii. Gill, Myths of South Pacific, p. 102. Kohl (Ojibways), p. 211. It is to a pagan Hades of the sort indicated in these references that people in Marchen go, when in quest of " the Deil.")
q. Savage Customs. Restrictions on Meetings between Husband
AND Wife.
Among the strange taboos, or mystic prohibitions of harmless things common to savage races, none are more frequent than taboos on the intercourse of husband and wife. Sometimes they may not meet by daylight, sometimes the wife may not name the husband. The old Spartan rule which made a bridegroom visit his wife only by stealth, was probably a survival from these taboos. As specimens of the rules we may take Astley's Voyages, ii. 240. Wives in Futa never permit their husbands to see them unveiled for three years after marriage. Amongst the Yorubas, "conventional modesty forbids a woman to speak to her husband, or even to see him if it can be avoided." (Bowen, Central Africa, p. 303). Of the Iroquois, Lafitau says, "lis n'osent aller dans les cabanes particulieres oil habitent leurs epouses que durant I'obscurite' de la nuit " (Lafitau, i. 576). The Circassian women have a similar scruple " till they have borne a child " (Lubbock, O. C. 1875, p. 75). Similar examples are reported from Fiji. In the Bulgarian ballad (Dozon, p. 172), the woman tells her daughter that she must not speak to her bridegroom for nine whole months. In Zululand, as is well known, the name of the husband, and words like the name of the husband are tabooed to the women.
By way of saving space, Mr. Ralston's article on ' Beauty and the Beast,' 'Cinderella' (Nineteenth Century, Dec. 1878), may be referred to for examples in tales of husbands and wives mysteriously punished for seeing each other when they should not have done so. Instances
I
HOUSEHOLD TALES. IxXV
of punishment for mentioning the name are found in Professor Rhys's article on Welsh tales in Cymmrodorion (iv. 2). The most famous example of the tale is the disappearance of the Vedic Urvasi, after she has seen her husband naked. To see him naked was prohibited as " against the custom of women " (Brahmana of Yajur Veda. Max Miiller, Selected Essays, i. 408). Now Mr. Midler explains this legend as originally a story of " the chaste Dawn hiding her face when she had seen her husband." But no attention is j^aid in this interpreta- tion to the actual mentioTi of " the custom of women." We have shewn that customs of this kind are not unusual. The Milesian women for example, had a sacred custom of never using the names of their husbands (Herodotus, i. 147). Obviously usages like these might readily produce tales which enforced the usage by the sanction of a punishment. This explanation of the common class of Household Tales referred to, seems at least as plausible as any theory about the "chaste dawn," and the like (Cox, ii. 402).
8. The Custom of Jijngsten Recht, or P reference of the Youngest Son, who is usually th^ Heir.
This old custom (Borough English) is of the widest diffusion in the world. Compare Elton, Origins of English History^ and Liebrecht, Zur Volkskimde, p. 431. A Zulu example occurs (Callaway, pp. 64- 65, Notes), and in this example we have a natural explanation of the common incident in Folk Tales, the jealousy of tie elder brothers, who betray their successful younger brother (Compare Ralston, Bussinn Tales, pp. 74-81). It is needless to suppose, with Mr. Ralston, that these tales " came west in Christian times " from a polygamous eastern country. The custom of Jilngsten Recht points to the probable existence of polygamy, with the natural preference for the youngest wife's son, all over Europe long before Christianity.
9. The Separable Soul.
The idea of the separable soul or strength occurs in the ancient Egyptian Story of Two Brothers, (Maspero. Contes Egyptiens) in the Samoyed tale of men who lay aside their hearts, in the legend of the golden hairs, in which was the strength of Minos, in The Giant with no Heart in his Body, in the tale of Koschkei the Deathless (Ralston), and in numberless other Household Tales. The other idea, that the soul of the drad may enter a bird or a flower, is common in Grimm's Collec- ti:>n. For example, of the savage beliefs on which these incidents of folk-lore are founded, it must suflSce to refer to the collections of in- stances made by Mr. Tylor, Primitive Culture, i. 430; i. 309, 438; i. 436, 475 ; ii. 9, 147, 153, 192, 232. See especially ii. 153, where our explanation of the " separable heart " and life is put forward to inter- pret the Household tale. Among the Eskimos a soul may be taken out, cleaned, and repaired, or the entrails taken out, a process called angmainek (Rink, Eskimo, p. 60).
The evidence here advanced has been limited by our space, but it is perhaps enough to indicate that most of the wild incidents, common to savage and civilised tales and myths, are based on beliefs us natural to savages, as monstrous in the eyes of civilised races.
GEIMM'S GEEMAN HOUSEHOLD TALES.
1.— THE FROG-KINa, OR lEON HENBY.
EKEATA.
Introduction.
Page xxxviii., line 18, for " all " read " several." line 22, for " all " rmd " some."
rolled straigut into xne wtiier. iu« j^xug, » u.cnAg,noci. followed it with her eyes, bnt it vanished, and the well was deep, so deep that the bottom could not be seen. On this she began to cry, and cried louder and louder, and could not be comforted. And as she thus lamented, some one said to her, " What ails thee. King's daughter ? Thou weepest so that even a stone would show pity." She looted round to the side from whence the voice came, and saw a frog stretching forth its thick, ugly head from the water. " Ah ! old water-splasher, is it thou ? " said she ; " I am weeping for my golden ball, which has fallen into the well."
" Be quiet, and do not weep," answered the frog, " I can help thee, but what wilt thou give me if I bring thy
(»*vV0L. I. B
GEIMM'S GEEMAN HOUSEHOLD TALES.
1.— THE FROG-KINa, OR IRON HENRY.
In old times when wishing still helped one, there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, which has seen so much, was astonished whenever it shone in her face. Close by the King's castle lay a great dark forest, and under an old lime-tree in the forest was a well, and when the day was very warm, the King's child went out into the forest and sat down by the side of the cool fountain, and when she was dull she took a golden ball, and threw it up on high and caught it, and this ball was her favourite plaything.
Now it so happened that on one occasion the princess's golden ball did not fall into the little hand which she was holding up for it, but on to the ground beyond, and rolled straight into the water. The King's daughter followed it wdth her eyes, but it vanished, and the well was deep, so deep that the bottom could not be seen. On this she began to cry, and cried louder and louder, and could not be comforted. And as she thus lamented, some one said to her, " What ails thee. King's daughter? Thou weepest so that even a stone would show pity." She looked round to the side from whence the voice came, and saw a frog stretching forth its thick, ugly head from the water. " Ah ! old Avater-splasher, is it thou ? " said she ; " I am weeping for my golden ball, which has fallen into the well."
" Be quiet, and do not weep," answered the frog, " I can help thee, but what wilt thou give me if I bring thy
^»vVOL. I. B
2 GRIMM's household tales. [Tale 1.
plaything up again?" "Whatever thou wilt have, dear frog," said she — " my clothes, my pearls and jewels, and even the golden crown which I am wearing."
The frog answered, " I do not care for thy clothes, thy pearls and jewels, or thy golden crown, but if thou wilt love me and let me be thy companion and play-fellow, and sit by thee at thy little table, and eat off thy little golden plate, and diink out of thy little cup, and sleep in thy little bed — if thou Tvilt promise me this I will go down 1>elow, and bring thee thy golden ball up again."
" Oh, 5^es," said she, " 1 promise thee all thou wishest, if thou wilt but bring me my ball back again." She, however, thought, "How the silly frog does talk! He lives in the water with the other frogs and croaks, and can be no companion to any human being ! "
But the frog when he had received this promise, put his head into the water and sank down, and in a short time came swimming up again with the ball in his mouth, and threw it on the grass. The King's daughter was delighted to see her pretty plaything once more, and picked it up, and ran away with it. " Wait, wait," said the frog, " Take me with thee. I can't run as thou canst." But what did it avail him to scream his croak, croak, after her, as loudly as he could? 8he did not listen to it, but ran home and soon forgot the jDOor frog, who was forced to go back into his well again.
The next day when she had seated herself at table with the King and all the courtiers, and was eating from her little golden plate, something came creeping splish splash, splish splash, up the marble staircase, and when it had got to the top, it knocked at the door and cried, " Princess, youngest princess, open the door forme." She ran to see who was outside, but when she opened the door, there sat the frog in front of it. Then she slammed the door to, in great haste, sat down to dinner again, and was quite frightened. 'J'he King saw plainly that her heart was beating violently, and said, " My child, what art thou so afraid of? Is there perchance a giant outside who wants to carry thee away ? " " Ah, no," replied she, " it is no giant, but a disgusting frog."
" What does the frog want with thee ? " " Ah, dear
Tale 1.] THE FROG-KING, OR IKON HENRY. 3
father, yesterday when I was in the forest sitting by the well, playing, my golden hall fell into the water. And because I cried so the frog brought it out again for me, and because he insisted so on it, I promised him he should be my companion, but I never thought he would be able to come out of his water ! And now he is outside there, and wants to come in to me."
In the meantime it knocked a second time, and cried,
*' Princess ! youno:est princess ! Open il^e door for me !
Dost thou not know what thou saidst to me Ye-teiday by the cool waters of the fountain? Princess, youngest princess ! Open the door for me ! "
Then said the King, " That which thou hast promised must thou perform. Go and let him in." She went and opened the door, and the frog hopped in and followed her, step by step, to her chair. There he sat still and cried, " Lift me up beside thee." She delayed, until at last the King commanded her to do it. When the frog was once on the chair he wanted to be on the table, and when he was on the table he said, " Now, push thy little golden plate nearer to me that we may eat together." She did this, but it was easy to see that she did not do it willingly. The frog enjoyed what he ate, but almost every mouth- ful she took choked her. At length he said, " I have eaten and am satisfied ; now I am tired, carry me into thy little room and make thy little silken bed ready, and we will both lie down and go to sleep."
The King's daughter began to cry, for she was afraid of the cold frog which she did not like to touch, and which was now to sleep in her pretty, clean little bed. But the King grew angry and said, " He who helped thee wlien thou wert in truuble ought not afterwards to be despised by thee." So she took hold of the frog with two fingers, carried him upstairs, and put him in a corner. But when she was in bed he crept to her and said, " I am tired, I want to sleep as well as thou, lift me up or I will tell thy father." Then she was terribly angry, and took him up and tlirew him with all her might against the wall. " Kow, thou wilt be quiet, odious frog," said she. But
B 2
4 GRIMM'S household tales. [Tale 2.
when lie fell down lie was no frog but a king's son with beautiful kind eyes. He by her father's will was now her dear companion and husband. Then he told her how he had been bewitched by a wicked witch, and how no one could have delivered him from the well but herself, and that to-morrow they would go together into his kingdom. Then they went to sleep, and next morning when the sun awoke them, a carriage came driving up with eight white horses, which had white ostrich feathers on their heads, and were harnessed with golden chains, and behind stood the young King's servant, faithful Henry. Faithful Henry had been so unhappy when his master was changed into a frog, that he had caused three iron bands to be laid round his heart, lest it should burst with grief and sadness. The carriage was to conduct the young King into his kingdom. Faithful Henry helped them both in, and placed himself behind again, and was full of joy because of this deliverance. And when they had driven a part of the way, the King's son heard a cracking behind him as if something had broken. So he turned round and cried, " Henry, the carriage is breaking."
" No, master, it is not the carriage. It is a band from my heart, which was put there in my great pain when you were a frog and imprisoned in the well." Again and once again while they were on their way something cracked, and each time the King's son thought the carriage was breaking ; but it was only the bands which were springing from the heart of faithful Henry because his master was set free and was happy.
2.— CAT AND MOUSE IN PAETNERSHIP.
A CERTAIN cat had made the acquaintance of a mouse, and had said so much to her about the great love and friendship she felt for her, that at length the mouse agreed that they should live and keep house together. " But we must make a provision for winter, or else we shall suffer from hunger," said the cat, " and you, little mouse^ cannot
Tale 2.] CAT AND MOUSE IN PARTNERSHIP. 5
venture everywhere, or you will be caught in a trap some day." The good advice was followed, and a joot of fat wag bought, but they did not know where to put it. At length, after much consideration, the cat said, " I know no place where it will be better stored up than in the church, for no one dares take anything away from there. We will set it beneath the altar, and not touch it until we are really in need of it." So the pot was placed in safety, but it was not long before the cat had a great longing for it, and said to the mouse, " I want to tell you something, little mouse; my cousin has brought a little son into the world, and has asked me to be godmother ; he is white with brown spots, and I am to hold him at the christening. Let me go out to-day, and you look after the house by yourself." " Yes, yes," answered the mouse, " by all means go, and if you get anything very good, think of me, I should like a drop of sweet red christening wine too." All this, however, was untrue ; the cat bad no cousin, and had not been asked to be godmother. She went straight to the church, stole to the pot of fat, began to lick at it, and licked the top of the fat off. Then she took a walk upon the roofs of the town, looked out for opportunities, and then stretched herself in the sun, and licked her lips whenever she thought of the pot of fat, and not until it was evening did she return home. " Well, here you are a^ain," said the mouse, ** no doubt you have had a merry da3^" " All went off well," answered the cat. " What name did they give the child ? " " Top off ! " said the cat quite coolly. " Top off ! " cried the mouse, " that is a very odd and uncommon name, is it a usual one in your family ? " " What does it sig- nify," said the cat, " it is not worse than Crumb-stealer; as your god-children are called."
Before long the cat was seized by another fit of longing. She said to the mouse, " You must do me a favour, and once more manage the house for a day alone. I am again asked to be godmother, and, as the child has a white ring round its neck, I cannot refuse." The good mouse consented, but the cat crept behind the town walls to the church, and devoured half the pot of fat. " Nothing ever seems so good as what one keeps to oneself," said she, and was quite satisfied with her day's work. When she went
6 GKIMM's household tales. [Tale 2.
home tlie mouse inquired, " And what was this child christened ? " " Half-done," answered the cat. " Half done ! What are you saying ? I never heard the name in my life, I'll wager anything it is not in the calendar ! "
The cat's mouth soon began to water for some more licking. "All good things go in threes," said she, "I am asked to stand godmother again. The child is quite black, only it has white paws, but with that exception, it has not a single white hair on its whole body ; this only happens once every few years, you will let me go, won't you ? " " Top-otf ! Half-done ! " answered the mouse, " they are such odd names, they make me very thoughtful." " You sit at home," said the cat, " in your dark-grey fur coat and long tail, and are filled with fancies, that's because you do not go out in the daytime." During the cat's absence the mouse cleaned the house, and put it in order, but the greedy cat entirely emptied the pot of fat. " When everything is eaten up one has some peace," said she to herself, and well filled and fat she did not return liome tiil night. The mouse at once asked what name had been given to the third child. " It will not please you more than the others," said the cat. " He is called All- gone." " All-gone," cried the mouse, " that is the most suspicious name of all! I have never seen it in print. x\ll-gone ; what can that mean ? " and she shook her head, curled herself up, and lay down to sleep.
From this time forth no one invited the cat to be god- mother, but when the winter had come and there was no longer anything to be found outside, the mouse thought of their provision, and said, " Come, cat, we will go to our pot of fat which we have stored up for ourselves — we shall enjoy that." " Yes," answered the cat, " you will enjoy it as much as you would enjoy sticking that dainty tongue of yours out of the window." They set out on their way, but when they arrived, the pot of fat certainly was still in its place, but it was empty. " Alas ! " said the mouse, "• now I see what has happened, now it comes to light ! You a true friend! You have devoured all when you were standing godmother. First top off, then half done, then — " " Will you hold your tongue," cried the cat, " one word more, and I will eat you too." " All gone " was already
Tale 3.] OUR LADY's CHILD. 7
on the poor mouse's lips ; scarcely had she spoten it before the cat sprang on her, seized her, and swallowed her down. Verily, that is the way of the world.
3.— OUR LADY'S CHILD.
Hard by a great forest dwelt a wood-ciitter with his wife, who had an only child, a little girl of three years old. They were, however, so poor that they no longer had daily bread, and did not know how to get food for her. One morning the wood-cutter went out sorrowfully to his work in the forest, and while he was cutting wood, suddenly there stood before him a tall and beautiful woman with a crown of shining stars on her head, who s^id to him, " I am the Virgin Mary, mother of the child Jesus. Thou art poor and needy, bring thy child to me, I will take her with me and be her mother, and care for her." The wood-cutter obeyed, brought his child, and gave her to the Virgin Mary, who took her up to heaven with her. There the child fared well, ate sugar-cakes, and drank sweet milk, and her clothes were of gold, and the little angels played with her. And when she was fourteen years of age, the Virgin Mary called her one day and said, " Dear child, I am about to make a long journe}^, so take into thy keeping the kej^s of the thirteen doors of heaven. Twelve of these thou mayest open, and behold the glory which is within them, but the thirteenth, to which this little key belongs, is forbidden thee. Beware of opening it, or thou wilt bring misery on thyself." The girl promised to be obedient, and when the Virgin Mary was gone, she began to examine the dwellings of the kingdom of heaven. Each day she opened one of them, until she had made the round of the twelve. In each of them sat one of the Apostles in the midst of a great light, and she rejoiced in all the magnificence and splendour, and the little angels who always accompanied her rejoiced with her. Then the forbidden door alone remained, and she felt a great desire to know what could be hidden
8 GEIMM's household tales. [Tale 3.
behind it, and said to the angels, " I will not quite open it, and I will not go inside it, but I will unlock it so that we can just see a little through the opening." " Oh, no," said the little angels, " that would be a sin. The Virgin Mary has forbidden it, and it might easily cause thy unhappiness." Then she was silent, but the desire in her heart was not stilled, but gnawed there and tormented her, and let her have no rest. And once when the angels had all gone out, she thought, " Now I am quite alone, and I could peep in. If I do it, no one will ever know." She nought out the key, and when she had got it in her hand, she put it in the lock, and when she had put ii in, she turned it round as well. Then the door sprang open, and she saw there the Trinity sitting in fire and splendour. She stayed there awhile, and looked at everything in amazement ; then she touched the light a little with her finger, and her finger became quite golden. Immediately a great fear fell on her. She shut the door violently, and ran away. Her terror too would not quit her, let her do what she might, and her heart beat continually and would not be still ; the gold too stayed on her finger, and would not go away, let her rub it and wash it never so much.
It was not long before the Virgin Mary came back from her journey. She called the girl before her, and asked to have the keys of heaven back. When the maiden gave her the bunch, the Virgin looked into her eyes and said, " Hast thou not opened the thirteenth door also ? " " No," she replied. Then she laid her hand on the girl's heart, and felt how it beat and beat, and saw right well that she had disobeyed her order and had opened the door. Then she said once again, " Art thou certain that thou hast not done it ? " " Yes," said the girl, for the second time. Then she perceived the finger which had become golden from touching the fire of heaven, and saw well that the child had sinned, and said for the third time, " Hast thou not done it?" "No," said the girl for the third time. Then said the Virgin Mary, " Thou hast not obeyed me, and besides that thou hast lied, thou art no longer worthy to be in heaven."
Then the girl fell into a deep sleep, and when she
Tale 3.] OUR LADy's CHILD. 9
awol^e she lay on the earth below, and in the midst of a wilderness. She wanted to cry out, but she could bring forth no sound. She sprang up and wanted to run away, but whithersoever she turned herself, she was continually held back by thick hedges of thorns through which she could not break. In the desert, in which she was im- prisoned, there stood au old hollow tree, and this had to be her dwelling-place. Into this she crept when night came, and here she slept. Here, too, she found a shelter from storm and rain, but it was a miserable life, and bitterly did she weep when she remembered how happy she had been in heaven, and how the angels had played with her. Eoots and wild berries were her only food, and for these she sought as far as she could go. In the autumn she picked up the iallen nuts and leaves, and carried them into the hole. The nuts were her food in winter, and when snow and ice came, she crept amongst the leaves like a poor little animal that she might not freeze. Before long her clothes were all torn, and one bit of them after another fell off her. As soon, however, as the sun shone warm again, she went out and sat in front of the tree, and her long hair covered her on all sides like a mantle. Thus she sat year after year, and felt the pain and misery of the world. One day, when the trees were once more clothed in fresh green, the King of the country was hunting in the forest, and followed a roe, and as it had fled into the thicket which shut in this bit of the forest, he got off his horse, tore the bushes asunder, and cut himself a path with his sword. When he had at last forced his way through, he saw a wonderfully beautiful maiden sitting under the tree ; and she sat there and was entirely covei ed with her golden hair down to her very feet. He stood still and looked at her full of surprise, then he spoke to her and said, " Who art thou ? Why art thou sitting here in the wilderness ? " But she gave no answer, for she could not open her mouth. The King continual, " Wilt thou go with me to my castle ? " Then she just nodded her head a little. The King took her in his arms, carried her to his horse, and rode home with her, and when he reached the royal castle he caused her to be dressed in beautiful garments, and gave her all things in abundance. Although she could
10 GRIMM'S HOUSEHOLD TALES. [Tale 3.
not speak, she was still so beautiful and charming tlmt he beojan to love her with all his heart, and it was no "long before he married her.
After a year or so had passed, the Queen brought a son into the world. Thereupon the Virgin Mary appeared to her in the night when she lay in her bed alone, and said, "If thou wilt tell the truth and confess that thou didst unlock the forbidden door, I will open thy mouth and give thee back thy speech, but if thou perse verest in thy sin, and deniest obstinately, I will take thy new born child away wdth me." Then the Queen was permitted to answer, but she remained hard, and said, " No, I did not open the forbidden door ; " and the Virgin Mary took the new-born child from her arms, and vanished with it. Next morning, when the child was not to be found, it was whispered among the people that the Queen was a man-eater, and had killed her own child. She heard all this and could say nothing to the contrary, but the King would not believe it, for he loved her so much.
When a year had gone by the Queen again bore a son, and in the night the Virgin Mary again came to her, and said, " If thou wilt confess that thou openedst the forbidden door, I w^ill give thee thy child back and untie thy tongue ; but if thou continuest in sin and deniest it, I will take away with me this new child also." Then the Queen again said, " No,' I did not open the forbidden door ; " and the Virgin took the child out of her arms, and aw^ay with her to heaven. Next morning, when this child also had disappeared, the people declared quite loudly that the Queen had devoured it, and the King's councillors demanded that she should be brought to justice. The King, however, loved her so dearly that he would not believe it, and commanded the councillors under pain of death not to say any more about it.
The following year the Queen gave birth to a beautiful little daughter, and for the third time the Virgin Mary appeared to her in the night and said, " Follow me." She took the Queen by the hand and led her to heaven, and showed her there her two eldest children, who smiled at her, and were playing with the ball of the world. When the Queen rejoiced thereat, the Virgin Mary said, " Is thy
Tale 4.] THE STORY OF THE YOUTH, ETC. 11
hearty not yet softened? If thou wilt own that thou openedst the, forbidden door, I will give thee back thy two little sons." But for the third time the Queen answered, " No, I did not open the forbidden door." Then the Virgin let her sink down to earth once more, and took from her likewise her third child.
Next morning, when the loss was reported abroad, all the people cried loudly, " The Queen is a man-eater ! She must be judged," and the King was no longer able to restrain his councillors. Thereupon a trial was held, and as she could not answer, and defend herself, she was con- demned to be burnt alive. The wood was got together, and when she was fast bound to the stake, and the fire began to burn round about her, the hard ice of pride melted, her heart was moved by repentance, and she thought, " If I could but confess before my death that I opened the door." Then her voice came back to her, and she cried out loudly, " Yes, Mary, I did it ; " and straight- way rain fell from the sky and extinguished the flames of fire, and a light broke forth above her, and the Virgin Mary descended with the two little sons by her side, and the new-born daughter in her arms. She spoke kindly to her, and said, " He who repents his sin and acknowledges it, is forgiven." Then she gave her the three children, untied her tongue, and granted her happiness for her whole life.
4.— THE STOEY OF THE YOUTH WHO WENT FOETH TO LEAEN WHAT FEAE WAS.
A CERTAIN father had two sons, the elder of whom was sharp and sensible, and could do everything, but the younger was stupid and could neither learn nor under- stand anything, and when people saw him they said, " There's a fellow who will give his father some trouble ! " ^^ hen anything had to be done, it was always the elder who was forced to do it ; but if his father bade him fetch anything when it w as late, or in the night-time, and the way led through the churchyard, or any other dismal
1 2 GRIMM's household tales. [Tale 4.
place, lie answered, " Oh, no, father, I'll not go there, it makes me shudder ! " for he was afraid. Or when stories were told by the fire at night which made tlie flesh creep, the listeners often said, " Oh, it makes us shudder ! " The 3^ounger sat in a corner and listened with the rest of them, and could not imagine what they could mean. " They are always saying, 'It makes me shudder, it makes me shudder ! ' It does not make me shudder," thought he. " That, too, must be an art of which I understand nothing ! "
Now it came to pass that his father said to him one day, " Hearken to me, thou fellow in the corner there, thou art growing tall and strong, and thou too must learn something by which thou canst earn thy living. Look how thy brother works, but thou dost not even earn thy salt." " Well, father," he replied, " I am quite willing to learn something — indeed, if it could but be managed, I should like to learn how to shudder. I don't understand that at all yet." The elder brother smiled when he heard that, and thought to himself, " Good God, what a block- head that brother of mine is ! He will never be good for anything as long as he lives ! He who wants to be a sickle must bend himself betimes.''
The father sighed, and answered him, " Thou shalt soon learn what it is to shudder, but thou wilt not earn thy living by that."
Soon after this the sexton came to the house on a visit, and the father bewailed his trouble, and told him how his younger son was so backward in every respect that he knew nothing and learnt nothing. " Just think," said he, " when I asked him how he was going to earn his bread, he actually wanted to learn to shudder." " If that be all," replied the sexton, " he can learn that with me. Send him to me, and I will soon polish him." The father was glad to do it, for he thought, " It will train the boy a little." The sexton therefore took him into his house, and he had to ring the bell. After a day or two, the sexton awoke him at midnight, and bade him arise and go up into the church tower and ring the bell. " Thou shalt soon learn what shuddering is," thought he, and secretly went there before him ; and when the boy was at the top of
Tale 4.] THE STOEY OF THE YOUTH, ETC. 13
the tower and turned ronnd, and was just going to take hold of the bell rope, he saw a white figure standing on the stairs opposite to the sounding hole. " Who is there ? " cried he, but the figure made no reply, and did not move or stir. " Give an answer," cried the boy, " or take thy self (iff, thou hast no business here at night."
The sexton, however, remained standing motionless that the boy might think he was a ghost. The boy cried a second time, " What dost thou want here? — speak if thou art an honest fellow, or I will throw thee down the steps ! " The sexton thought, " he can't intend to be as bad as his words," uttered no sound and stood as if he were made of stone. Then the boy called to him for the third time, and as that was also to no purpose, he ran against him and pushed the ghost down the stairs, so that it fell down ten steps and remained lying there in a corner. Thereupon he rang the bell, went home, and without saying a word went to bed, and fell asleep. The sexton's wife waited a long time for her husband, but he did not come back. At length she became uneasy, and Hvakened the boy, and asked, " Dost thou not know where my husband is ? He Avent up the tow^er before thou didst." " No, I don't know," replied the boy, " but some one was standing by the sounding hole on the other side of the steps, and as he would neither give an answer nor go away, I took him for a scoundrel, and threw him downstairs, just go there and you will see if it was he, I should be sorry if it were." The woman ran away and found her husband, who was lying moaning in the corner, and had broken his leg.
She carried him down, and then with loud screams she hastened to the boy's father. " Your boy," cried she," has been the cause of a great misfortune ! He has thrown my husband down the steps and made him break his leg. Take the good-for-nothing fellow away from our house." The father was terrified, and ran thither and scolded the boy. " What wicked tricks are these ? " said he, " the devil must have put this into thy head." " Father," he replied, " do listen to me. I am quite innocent. He was standing there by night like one who is intending to do some evil. I did not know who it was, and I entreated him three times either to speak or to go away." " Ah,"
14 GRTMM's household tales. [Tale 4.
said the father, " I have nothing but unhappiness with thee. Go out of my sight. I will see thee no more."
"Yes, father, right willingl}^ wait only until it is day. Then will I go forth and learn how* to shudder, and then 1 shall, at any rate, understand one art which will support me." " Learn what thou wilt," sjDake the father, " it is all the same to me. Here are fifty thalers for thee. Take these and go into the w^ide w-orld, and tell no one from Avhence thou comest, and wdio is thy father, for I have reason to be ashamed of thee." " Yes, father, it shall be as 3^ou wall. If you desire nothing more than that, I can easily keep it in mind."
■ When day dawned, therefore, the boy put his fifty thalers into his pocket, and w^ent forth on the great high- way, and continually said to himself, " If I could but shudder ! If I could but shudder ! " Then a man approached who heard this conversation w^hich the youth was holding with himself, and when they had walked a little farther to where they could see the gallows, the man said to him, " Ilook, there is the tree where seven men have married the ropemaker's daughter, and are now learnino- how to flv. Sit down below it, and wait till night comes, and thou wilt soon learn how to shudder." *' if that is all that is wanted," answered the youth, " it is easily done ; but if I learn how to shudder as quickly as that, thou shalt have my fifty thalers. Just come back to me early in the morning." Then the youth went to the gallows, sat down below it, and w^aited till even- ing came. And as he was cold, he lighted himself a fire, but at midnight the wind blew so sharply that in spite of his fire, he could not get w^arm. And as the wind knocked the hanged men against each other, and they moved back- wards and forwards, he thought to himself, " Thou shiverest below b}^ the fire, but how those up above must freeze and suffer ! " And as he felt pity for them, he raised the ladder, and climbed up, unbound one of them after the other, and brought down all seven. Then he stirred the fire, blew it, and set them all round it to warm themselves. But they sat there and did not stir, and the fire caught their clothes, bo he said, " Take care, or I will hang you up again." The dead men," however, did not
Tale 4.] THE STORY OF THE YOUTH, ETC. 15
hear, but were quite silent, and let their rags go on burn- ing. On this he grew angry, and said, " If you will not take care, I cannot help you, I will not be burnt with you," and he hung them up again each in his turn. Then he sat down by his fire and fell asleep, and next morning the man came to him and wanted to have the fifty thalers, and said, " Well, dost thou know how to shudder ? " " No," answered he, " how was I to get to know ? Those fellows up there did not open their mouths, and were so stupid that they let the few old rags which they had on their bodies get burnt." Then the man saw that he would not carry away the fifty thalers that day, and went away sas'ing, " One of this kind has never come in my way before."
The youth likewise went his way, and once more began to mutter to himself, " Ah, if I could but shudder ! Ah, if I could but shudder ! " A waggoner who was striding behind him heard that and asked, " Who art thou? " " I don't know," answered the youth. Then the waggoner asked, " From whence comest thdti ? " "I know not." " Who is thy father ? " " That I may not tell thee." " What is it that thou art always muttering between thy teeth ? " " Ah," replied the youth, " I do so wish I could shudder, but no one can teach me how to do it." " Give up thy foolish chatter," said the waggoner. " Come, go with me, I will see about a place for thee." The youth went wiih the waggoner, and in the evening they arrived at an inn where they wished to pass the night. Then at the entrance of the room the youth again said quite loudly, " If I could but shudder ! If I could but shudder ! " The host who heard that, laughed and said, " If that is your desire, there ought to be a good opportunity for you here." " Ah, be silent," said the hostess, " so many inquisitive persons have already lost their lives, it would be a pity and a shame if such beautiful eyes as these should never see the daylight again."
But the youth said, " However difficult it may be, I will learn it, and for this purpose indeed have I journeyed forth." He let the host have no rest, until the latter told him, that not far from thence stood a haunted castle where any one could very easily learn what shuddering
16 GKIMM's household tales. [Tale 4.
was, if he would but watch in it for three nights. The King had promised that he who would venture should have his daughter to wife, and she was the most beautiful maiden the sun shone on. Great treasures likewise lav in the castle, which were guarded by evil spirits, and these treasures would then be freed, and would make a poor man rich enough. Already many men had gone into the castle, but as yet none had come out again. Then the youth went next morning to the King, and said that if he were allowed he would watch three nights in the enchanted castle. The King looked at him, and as the youth pleased him, he said, "Thou mayest ask for three things to take into the castle with thee, but they must be things without life." Then he answered, " Then I ask for a fire, a turning lathe, and a cutting-board with the knife." The King had these things carried into the castle for him during the day. When night was drawing near, the youth went up and made himself a bright fire in one of the rooms, placed the cutting-board and knife beside it, and seated himself by the turniug-lathe. " Ah, if 1 could but shudder ! " said he, " but I shall not learn it here either." Towards midnight he was about to poke his fire, and as he was blowing it, something cried suddenly from one corner, " Au, niiau ! how cold we are ! " " You simple- tons ! " cried he, " what are you crying about ? If you are cold, come and take a seat by the fire and warm your- selves." And when he had said that, two great black cats came with one tremendous leap and sat down on each side of him, and looked savagely at him with their fiery eyes. After a short time, when they had warmed themselves, they said, " Comrade, shall we have a game at cards ? " " Why not ? " he replied, " but just show me your paws." Then they stretched out their claws. " Oh," said he, " what long nails you have ! Wait, I must first cut them a little for you." Thereupon he seized them by the throats, put them on the cutting-board and screwed their feet fast. " I. have looked at your fingers," said he, " and my fancy for card-playing has gone," and he struck them dead and threw them out into the water. But when he had made away with these two, and was about to sit down again by his fire, out from every hole and corner
Tale 4.] THE STORY OF THE YOUTH, ETC. 17
came black cats and black dogs with red-hot chains, and more and more of them came until he could no longer stir, and they yelled horribly, and got on his fire, pulled it to pieces, and wanted to put it out. He watched them for a while quietly, but at last when they were going too far, he seized his cutting-knife, and cried, " Away with ye, vermin," and began to cut them down. Part of them ran away, the others he killed, and threw out into the fish-pond. When he came back he blew up the embers of his fire again and warmed himself. And as he thus sat, his eyes would keep open no longer, and he felt a desire to sleep. Then he looked round and saw a great bed in the corner. " That is the very thing for me," said he, and got into it. When he was just going to shut his eyes, however, the bed began to move of its own accord, and went over the whole of the castle. " That's right," said he, " but go faster." Then the bed rolled on as if six horses were harnessed to it, up and down, over thres- holds and steps, but suddenly hop, hop, it turned over upside down, and lay on him like a mountain. But he threw quilts and pillows up in the air, got out and said, "Now any one who likes, may drive," and lay down by his fire, and slept till it was day. In the morning the King came, and when he saw him lying there on the ground, he thought the spirits had killed him and he was dead. Then said he, " After all it is a pity, — he is a hand- some man." The youth heard it, got up, and said, "It has not come to that yet." Then the King was astonished, but very glad, and asked how he had fared. "Very well indeed," answered he ; " one night is over, the two others will get over likewise." Then he went to the innkeeper, who opened his eyes very wide, and said, " I never expected to see thee alive again ! Hast thou learnt how to shudder yet ? " " No," said he, " it is all in vain. If some one would but tell me ! "
The second night he again went up into the old castle, sat down by the fire, and once more began his old song' " If I could but shudder ! " When midnight came, an uproar and noise of tumbling about was heard ; at first it was low, but it grew louder and louder. Then it was quiet for awhile, and at length with a loud scream, half
VOL. I. Q
18 GPJMM'S household tales. [Tale 4.
a man came down the chimney and fell before him. " Hollo ! " cried he, " aiiother half "belongs to this. This is too little ! " Then the uproar began again, there was a roaring and howling, and the other half fell down likewise. " Wait," said he, " I will just blow np the fire a little for thee." When he had done that and looked round again, the two pieces were joined together, and a frightful man was sitting in his place. " That is no part of our bargain," said the youth, " the bench is mine." The man w^anted to push him aw-ay ; the youth, how^ever, would not allow that, but thrust him off with all his strength, and seated himself again in his own place. Then still more men fell down, one after the other ; they brought nine dead men's legs and two skulls, and set them up and played at nine-pins with them. The youth also wanted to play and said, " Hark you, can 1 join you ? " " Yes, if thou hast any money." "Money enough," replied he, "but your balls are not quite round." Then he took the skulls and put them in the lathe and turned them till they were round. " There, now, they will roll better ! " said he. " Hurrah ! now it goes merrily ! " He played wdth them and lost some of his money,*but w^hen it struck twelve, everj^thing vanished from his sight. He lay down and quietly fell asleep. Next morning the King came to enquire after him. " How has it fared with thee this time ? " asked he. " I have been playing at nine-pins," he answered, " and have lost a couple of farthings." " Hast thou not shuddered then ? " " Eh, what ? " said he, " I have^ made merry. If I did but know what it was to shudder ! "
The third night he sat down again on his bench and said quite sadly, " If I could but shudder." When it grew late, six tall men came in and brought a coffin. Then said he, "Ha, ha, that is certainly my little cousin, who only died a few days ago," and he beckoned with his finger, and cried, " Come, little cousin, come." They placed the coftin on the ground, but he went to it and took the lid off, and a dead man lay therein. He felt his face, but it was cold as ice. " Stop," said he, " I will w^arm thee a little," and w^ent to the fire and warmed his hand and laid it on the dead man's face, but he remained cold. Then he took him out, and sat down by the fire and laid him on
Tale 4.] THE STORY OF THE YOUTH, ETC. 19
his breast and rubbed his arms that the blood mio^ht circulate again. As this also did no good, he thought' to himself, "When two people lie in bed together, they warm each other," and carried him to the bed, covered him over and lay down by him. After a short time the dead man became warm too, and began to move. Then f-aid the youth, " See, little cousin, have I not warmed thee ? " The dead man, however, got up and cried, " Kow will T strangle thee."
^ " What ! " said he, " is that the way thou thankest me ? Thou shalt at once go into thy coffin again," and he took him up, threw him into it, and shut the lid. Then came the six men and carried him away again. " I cannot manage to shudder," said he. " I shall never learn it here as long as I live."
Then a man entered who was taller than all others, and looked terrible. He was old, however, and had a 'ions; white beard. " Thou wretch," cried he, " thou shalt soon learn what it is to shudder, for thou shalt die." " Not so fast," replied the youth. " If I am to die, I shall have to have a say m it." " I will soon seize thee," said the fiend. " boftly, softly, do not talk so big. I am as strong as thou art, and perhaps even stronger." " We shall see," said the old man. " If thou art stronger, I will let thee go —come, we will try." Then he led him by dark passages to a smith's forge, took an axe, and with one blow struck an anvil into the ground. " I can do that better still," said the youth, and went to the other anvil. The old man placed himself near and wanted to look on, and his white beard hung down. Then the youth seized the axe, split the anvil with one blow, and struck the old man's beard m with it. " Now I have thee," said the youth. " Now It IS thou who wilt have to die." Then he seized an iron bar and beat the old man till he moaned and entreated him to stop, and he would give him great riches. The youth drew out the axe and let him go. The old man led him back into the castle, and in a cellar showed him three chests full of gold. " Of these," said he, " one part is for the poor, the other is for the king, the third is thine." In the meantime it struck twelve, and the spirit disap- peared ; the youth, therefore, was left in darkness. " I shall
c 2
20 GEIMM's household tales. [Tale 5.
still be able to find my way out," said he, and felt about, found the way into the room, and slept there by his fire. Next morning the King came and said, "Now thou mast have learnt what shuddering is ? " " No," he answered ; " what can it be ? My dead cousin was here, and a bearded man came and showed me a great deal of money down below, but no one told me what it was to shudder." " I'hen," said the King, " thou hast delivered the castle, and shalt marry my daughter." " That is all very well," said he, " but still I do not know what it is to shudder ! " Then the gold was brought up and the wedding cele- brated; but howsoever much the young King loved his wife, and however happy be was, he still said always, "If I could but shudder — if I could but shudder." And at last she was angry at this. Her waiting-maid said, " I will find a cure for him ; he shall soon learn what it is to shudder." She went out to the stream which flowed through the garden, and had a whole bucketful of gud- geons brought to her. At night when the young King was sleeping, his wife was to draw the clothes off him and empty the bucketful of cold water with the gudgeons in it over him, so that the little fishes would sprawl about him. When this was done, he woke up and cried, " Oh, what makes me shudder so ? — what makes me shudder so, dear wife ? Ah ! now I know what it is to shudder ! "
5.— THE WOLF AND THE SEVEN LITTLE KIDS.
Thkre was once on a time an old goat who had seven little kids, and loved them with all the love of a mother for her children. One day she wanted to go into the forest and fetch some food. So she called all seven to her and said, " Dear children, I have to go into the forest, be on your guard against. the wolf; if he come in, he will devour you all — skin, hair, and all. The wretch often disguises himself, but you will know him at once by his rough voice and his black feet." The kids said, " Dear mother, we will take good care of ourselves ; you may go away
Tale 5.] THE WOLF AND THE SEVEN LITTLE KIDS. 21
without any anxiety." Then the old one bleated, and went on her way with an easy mind.
It was not long before some one knocked at the house - door and cried, "Open the door, dear children; your mother is here, and has brought something back with her for each of you." But the little kids knew that it was the wolf, by the rough voice ; " We will not open the door," cried they, " thou art not our mother. She has a soft, pleasant voice, but thy voice is rough ; thou art the wolf I " Then the wolf went away to a shopkeeper and bought himself a great lump of chalk, ate this and made his voice soft with it. Then he came back, knocked at the door of the house, and cried, " Open the door, dear children, jour mother is here and has brought something back with her for each of you." But the wolf had laid his black paws against the window, and the chiklren saw them and cried, " We will not open the door, our mother has not black feet like thee : thou art the wolf! " Then the wolf ran to a baker and said, " I have hurt my feet, rub some dough over them for me." And when the baker had rubbed his feet over, he ran to the miller and said, " Strew some white meal over my feet for me." The miller thought to himself, " The wolf wants to deceive some one," and refused ; but the wolf said, " If thou wilt not do it, I will devour thee." Then the miller was afraid, and made his paws white for him. Truly men are like that.
So now the wretch went for the third time to the house- door, knocked at it and said, " Open the door for me, children, your dear little mother has come home, and has brought every one of you something back from the forest with her." The little kids cried, " First show us thy paws that we may know if thou art our dear little mother." Then he put his paws in through the window, and when the kids saw that they were white, they believed that all he said was true, and opened the door. But who should come in but the wolf! They were terrified and wanted to hide themselves. One sprang under the table, the second into the bed, the third into the stove, the fourth into the kitchen, the fifth into the cupboard, the sixth under the washing-bowl, and the seventh into the clock- case. But the wolf found them all, and used no great
22 GRIMM'S HOUSEHOLD TALES. [Tale 5.
ceremony ; one after the other he swallowed them down his throat. The youngest in the clock-case was the only one he did not find. When the wolf had satisfied his appetite he took himself off, laid himself down nnder a tree in the green meadow outside, and began to sleep. Soon after- Avards the old goat came home again from the forest. Ah ! what a sight she saw there ! The house-door stood wide open. The table, chairs, and benches w^ere thrown down, the washing-bowl lay broken to pieces, and the quilts and pillows were pulled off the bed. She sought her children, but they were nowhere to be found. She called them one after another by name, but no one answered. At last, when she came to the youngest, a soft voice cried, " Dear mother, I am in the clock-case." She took the kid out, and it told her that the wolf had come and had eaten all the others. Then you may imagine how she wept over her j)Oor children.
At length in her grief she went out, and the youngest kid ran with her. When they came to the meadow, there lay the wolf by the tree and snored so loud that the branches shook. She looked at him on every side and saw that something was moving and struggling in his gorged body. " Ah, heavens," said she, " is it possible that my j)Oor children whom he has swallowed down for his supper, can be still alive?" Then the kid had to run home and fetch scissors, and a needle and thread, and the goat cut open the monster's stomach, and hardly had she made one cut, than one little kid thrust its head out, and when she had cut farther, all six sprang out one after another, and were all still alive, and had suffered no injury whatever, for in his greediness the monster had swallowed them down whole. What rejoicing there was ! Then they embraced their dear mother, and jumped like a tailor at his wedding. The mother, however, said, " Now go and look for some bigj stones, and we will fill the wicked beast's stomach with! them Avhile he is still asleep." Then the seven kidsj dragged the stones thither with all speed, and put as many] of them into his stomach as they could get in ; and the! mother sewed him up again in the greatest haste, so thatj he was not aware of anything and never once stirred.
When the wolf at length had had his sleep out, he gotj
Tale 6.] FAITHFUL JOHN. 23
on his legs, and as the stones in his stomach made him very- thirsty, he wanted to go to a well to drink. But when he began to walk and to move about, the stones in his stomach knocked against each other and rattled. Then cried he,
" Whnt rumbles and tumbles Ai^ainst my poor bones V I tlioui^iit 'twas six kids, But it's naught but big stones."
And when he got to the well and stooped over the water f>nd was just about to drink, the heavy stones made him fall in and there was no help, but he had to drown miserably. When the seven kids saw that, they came running to the spot and cried aloud, "The wolf is dead! The wolf is dead ! " and danced for joy round about the Avell with their mother.
6.-FAITHFUL JOHN.
There was once on a time an old king who was ill, and thought t<^ himself, " I am lying on what must be my death-bed." Then said he, " Tell Faithful John to come to me." Faithful John was his favourite servant, and was so called, because he had for his whole life long been so true to him. When therefore he came beside the bed, the King said to him, " Most faithful John, I feel my end approaching, and have no anxiety except about my son. He is still of tender age, and cannot alwaj^s know how to guide himself. If thou dost not promise me to teach him everything that he ought to know, and to be his foster- father, I eannot close my eyes in peace." Then answered Faithful John, " 1 will not forsake him, and will serve him with fidelity, even if it should cost me my life." On this, the old King said, "Kow I die in comfort and peace." Then he added, '' After my death, thou ^halt show him the whole castle : all the chambei's, halls, and vaults, and all the treasures which lie therein, but the last chamber in the long gallery, in which s the picture of the princ3ss of the
24 GRIMM'S HOUSEHOLD TALES. [Tale 6.
Golden Dwelling, slialt thou not show. If he sees that picture, he will fall violently in love with her, and will drop down in a swoon, and go through great danger foi her sake, therefore thou must preserve him from that." x\nd when Faithful John had once more given his promise to the old King about this, the King said no more, but laid his head on his pillow, and died.
When the old King had been carried to his grave, Faithful John told the young King all that he had promised his father on his deathbed, and said, " This will I assured^ perform, and will be faithful to thee as I have been faithful to him, even if it should cost me my life." When the mourning was over, Faithful John said to him, " It is now time that thou shouldst see thine inheritance. I will show thee thy father's palace." Then he took him about everywhere, up and down, and let him see all the riches, and the magnificent apartments, onl}^ there was one room which he did not open, that in which hung the dangerous picture. The picture was, however, so placed that when the door was opened you looked straight on it, and it was so admirably painted that it seemed to breathe and live, and there was nothing more charming or more beautiful in the whole world. The young king however plainly remarked that Faithful John always walked past this one door, and said, " Why dost thou never open this one for me ? " " There is something within it," he replied, "which would terrify thee." But the King answered, " I have seen all tlie palace, and I will know what is in this room also," and he went and tried to break open the door by force. Then Faithful John held him back and said, " I promised thy father before his death that thou shouldst not see that which is in this chamber, it might bring the greatest misfortune on thee and on me." " Ah, no," replied the young King, " if I do not go in, it will be my certain destruction. I should have no rest day or night until I had seen it with my own eyes. I shall not leave the place now until thou hast unlocked the door."
Then Faithful John saw that there was no help for it now, and with a heavy heart and many sighs, sought out the key from the great bunch. When he had opened the door, he went in first, and thought by standing before
Tale 6.] * FAITHFUL JOHN. 25
him he could hide the portrait so that the King should not see it in front of him, but what availed that ? The King stood on tip-toe and saw it over his shoulder. And when he saw the portrait of the maiden, which was so magnificent and shone with gold and precious stones, he fell fainting on the ground. Faithful John took him up, carried him to his bed, and sorrowfully thought, " The misfortune has befallen us, Lord God, what will be the end of it ? " Then he strengthened him with wine, until he came to himself again. The first words the King said were, *' Ah, the beautiful portrait! whose is it?" " That is the princess of the Golden Dwelling," answered Faithful John. Then the King continued, " My love for her is so great, that if all the leaves on all the trees were tongues, they could not declare it. I will give my life to win her. Thou art my most Faithful John, thou must help me."
The faithful servant considered within himself for a long time how to set about the matter, for it was difficult even to obtain a sight of the King's daughter. At length he thought of a way, and said to the King, " Everything which she has about her is of gold — tables, chairs, dishes, glasses, bowls, and household furniture. Among thy treasures are five tons of gold ; let one of the goldsmiths of the kingdom work thetse up into all manner of vessels and utensils, into all kinds of birds, wild beasts and strange animals, such as may please her, and we will go there with them and try our luck."
The King ordered all the goldsmiths to be brought to him, and they had to work night and day until at last the most splendid things were prepared. When everything was stowed on board a ship, Faithful John put on the dress of a merchant, and the King was forced to do the same in order to make himself quite unrecognizable. Then they sailed across the sea, and sailed on until they came to the town wherein dwelt the princess of the Golden Dwelling.
Faithful John bade the King stay behind on the ship, and wait for him. " Perhaps I shall bring the princess with me," said he, " therefore see that everything is in order ; have the golden vessels set out and the whole ship decorated." Then he gathered together in his apron all kinds of gold things, went on shore and walked straight
26 Grimm's household tales. [tale 6.
to the royal palace. When he entered the courtyard of the palace, a beautiful ojirl was standing there by the well with two golden buckets in ber hand, drawing water with them. And when she was just turning round to carry away the sparkling water she saw the stranger, and asked who he was. So he answered, " I am a merchant," and opened his apron, and let her look in. Then she cried, " Oh, what beautiful gold things ! " and put her pails down and looked at the golden wares one after the other. Then said the girl, " The princess must see these, she has such great pleasure in golden things, that she will buy all you have." She took him by the hand and led him upstairs, for she was the waiting-maid. When the King's daughter saw the wares, she was quire delighted and said, " They are so beautifully worked, that I will buy them all of thee." But Faithful John said, " I am only the servant of a rich merchant. The things I have here are not to be compared with those my master has in his ship. They are the most beautiful and valuable things that have ever been made in gold." She wanted to have everything brought to her there, but he said, " There are so many of them that it would take a great many days to do that, and so many rooms would be required to exhibit them, that your house is not big enough." Then her curiosity and longing were still more excited, until at last she said, " Conduct me to the ship, I will go there myself, and - behold the treasures of thy master."
On this Faithful John was quite delighted, and led her , to the ship, and when the King saw her, he perceived that her beauty was even greater than the picture had repre- sented it to be, and thought no other than that his heart would burst in twain. Then she got into the ship, and theiB King led her within. Faithful John, however, remained^ behind with the pilot, and ordered the ship to be pushed off, saying, " Set all sail, till it fly like a bird in air." Within, however, the King showed her the golden vessels, every one j of them, also the wild beasts and strange animals. Manyj hours went by whilst she was seeing everything, and inj her delight she did not observe that the ship was sailing away. After she had looked at the last, she thanked thej merchant and wanted to go home, but when she came tol
Tale 6.] FAITHFUL JOHN. 27
the side of the ship, she saw that it was on the deep sea far from land, and hurrying onwards with all sail set. "Ah," cried she in her alarm, " I am betiayed ! I am cariied away and have fallen into the power of a merchant — 1 would die rather ! " The King, however, seized her hand, and said, " I am not a merchant. I am a king, and of no meaner origin than thou art, and if I have carried thee away with subtlety, that has come to pass becciuse of my exceeding great love for thee. The lirst time that I looked on thy portrait, I feil fainting to the ground." When the princess of the Golden Dwelling heard that, she was comforted, and her heart was inclined unto him, so that she willingly consented to be his wife.
It happened, however, while they were sailing on- wards over the deep sea, that Faithful John, who was sitting on the fore part of the vessel, making music, tsaw three ravens in the air, which came flying towards them. On this he stopped playing and listened to what they were saying to each other, for that he well understood. One cried, " Oh, there he is carrying home the princess of the Golden Dwelling." "Yes," replied the second, "but he has not got her yet." Said the third, " But he has got her, she is sitting beside him in the ship." Then the first began again, and cried, " What good will that do him? When they reach land a chestnut horse will leap forward to meet him, and the prince will want to mount it, but if he does that, it