Chapter XVI: Part I: Hero Tales and Drolls (14)

There can be no doubt of a rather close relationship between the Persian and the Indian stories; nor can there be any doubt, it seems to me, of the relationship of these two with the "Chastity Wager" cycle. The additional details in Somadeva's narrative connect it with European Märchen; e.g., J. F. Campbell, No. 18, and Groome, No. 33.

Our story of the "Golden Lock," as well as the variants, is unquestionably an importation from Europe; but what the immediate source of the tale is, I am unable to say. For the convenience of any, however, who are interested in this group of stories, and care to make a further study of it, I give here a list of the occurrences of the tale in literature and in popular form. In literature, this story in Europe dates from the end of the twelfth century.

Roman de Guillaume de Dole (c. 1200). Ed. by G. Servois for the Soc. des Anc. Textes français. Paris, 1893. Roman de la Violette (13th century). Ed. by Michel. 1834. Roman du Comte de Poitiers (13th century). Ed. by Michel. 1831. Le roi Flore et la belle Jehanne (a 13th century prose story). Published by L. Moland et C. d'Hericault in Nouvelles françaises en prose du xiiie siècle, 1856 : 87-157; also in Monmerqué et Michel, Théâtre français au Moyen Age, 1842 : 417. Miracle de Othon, roy d'Espaigne (a 14th century miracle), in the Miracles de Nostre Dame. Published by G. Paris and U. Robert for the Soc. des Anc. Textes français, 4 : 315-388; and in Monmerqué et Michel, op. cit., p. 431 f. Perceforest, bk. iv, ch. 16, 17 (an episode, where the chastity token is a rose), retold by Bandello, part I, nov. 21 (cf. R. Köhler, in Jahrb. für rom. u. eng. lit., 8 : 51 f.). Boccaccio's Decameron, 2 : 9 (cf. Landau, Die Quellen des Dekameron, 1884 : 135 ff.).

Two important treatments of the story in dramatic form are sixteenth-century Spanish, Lope de Rueda's "Eufemia," where the heroine tricks her maligner by accusing him of having spent many nights with her and of finally having stolen a jewel from under her bed; he denies all knowledge of her (cf. J. L. Klein, Geschichte des Dramas, 9 [1872] : 144-156); and English, Shakespeare's "Cymbeline." For modern dramas and operas dealing with this theme, see G. Servois, op. cit., p. xvi, note 5. In ballad form the story occurs in "The Twa Knights" (Child, 5 : 21 ff., No. 268).

Popular stories belonging to this cycle and containing the wager are the following:--

J. F. Campbell, No. 18. J. W. Wolf, p. 355. Simrock, Deutsche Märchen, No. 51 (1864 ed., p. 235). H. Pröhle, No. 61, p. 179 (cf. also p. xlii). Ausland, 1856 : 1053, for a Roumanian story. F. Miklosisch, Märchen und Lieder der Zigeuner der Bukowina, No. 14. D. G. Bernoni, Fiabe popolari veneziane, No. I. Gonzenbach, No. 7. G. Pitrè, Nos. 73, 75. V. Imbriani, La Novellaja Fiorentina, p. 483.

Other folk-tales somewhat more distantly related are,--

Comparetti, Nos. 36 and 60. Webster, Basque Legends, p. 132. F. Kreutzwald, Estnische Märchen (übersetzt von F. Löwe), 2d Hälfte, No. 6. H. Bergh, Sogur m. m. fraa Valdris og Hallingdal, p. 16.

For the story in general, see the following:--

Landau on the Dekameron, op. cit. A. Rochs, Ueber den Veilchen Roman und die Wanderung der Euriant saga. Halle, 1882. (Reviewed as a worthless piece of work by R. Köhler in Literaturblatt für germ. und rom. Philologie, 1883 : No. 7.) R. Ohle, Shakespeares Cymbeline und seine Romanischen Vorläufer. Berlin, 1890. (This does not discuss the popular versions at all.) H. A. Todd, Guillaume de Dole, in Transactions and Proceedings of the Modern Language Association of America, 2 (1887) : 107 ff. Von der Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer, 3 : LXXXIII. G. Servois, op. cit., Introduction.

For some additional bibliographical items in connection with this cycle, see Köhler, "Literaturblatt," etc., p. 274. To the list above should be added finally, of course, the stories given in more detail earlier in this note.

TALE 31

WHO IS THE NEAREST RELATIVE?

Narrated by Leopoldo Uichanco, a Tagalog of Calamba, Laguna.

"On my life!" exclaimed old Julian one day to his grandson Antonio, who was clinging fast to his elbows and bothering him, as usual, "you will soon become insane with stories. Now, I will tell you a story on this condition: you must answer the question I shall put at the end of the narrative. If you give the correct answer, then I will tell you some more tales; if not, why, you must be unfortunate." Antonio nodded, and said, "Very well!" as he leaned on the table to listen to his grandfather. Then the old man began:--

"There was once a young man who had completed his course of study and was to be ordained a priest. Now, whenever a man was about to be entrusted with the duty of being a minister of God, and Christ's representative on earth, it was the custom to trace his ancestry back as far as possible, to see that there was no bad member on any branch of his family tree. Inquiries were made and information was sought regarding the young man's relatives. Unfortunately his mother's brother was an insurrecto. But the boy wanted very much to become a priest, so he set out for Mount Banahaw to look for his uncle.

"As he was walking along the mountain road, he came across his uncle, but neither knew the other. The uncle had a long bolo in his hand. 'Hold!' shouted the old man as the boy came in sight. 'Hands up!'

"'Mercy!' entreated the young man. 'I am a friend, not an enemy.'

"'What are you doing in this part of the country, then? Have you come to spy?'

"'No,' said the youth. 'I have come in search of my uncle named Paulino, general of the Patriots of Banahaw.'

"'And who are you to seek for him? What is your name?'

"'Federico.'

"The uncle stared at him. 'If that is so,' he said, 'I am the man you are looking for. I am your uncle.' Federico was amazed, but was very glad to have found his uncle so easily. Then the old man took his nephew to the cave where he dwelt with his soldiers.

"Weeks passed by, months elapsed, but Federico never thought of going back to his mother. So one day Federico's father went out to seek for his son, and soon found him and his uncle. The father, too, remained there with the soldiers, and never thought of going back home.

"One day Josefa received news that the bandits of Banahaw had been caught by the government authorities. Among the prisoners were her brother Paulino, her son Federico, and her husband. The captives were to be executed at sunrise without any trial. Josefa hurried to the capitan general, and pleaded with him to release her husband, her son, and her brother. Besides, the woman presented the officer with some gifts. She pleaded so hard, that finally the capitan general was moved with pity. He consented to release one of the prisoners, but one only. Josefa did not know what to do. Whom should she select of the three,--her husband, the other half of her life; her son, the fruit of her love; or her brother, that brother who came from the same womb and sucked the same milk from the same mother? To take one would mean to condemn the other two to death. She wished to save them all, but she was allowed to select only one."

"If you, Antonio, were in her place, whom would you select?" Antonio did not speak for some moments, but with knitted eyebrows looked up to the ceiling and tried to think of the answer.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed the grandfather; "you cannot find the answer in the ceiling! You really do not know, do you? Very well. I will give you until next Tuesday to get your answer. You have one week in which to think it out. Tell me the correct answer before you go to school on that day."

When Tuesday came, Antonio had gotten the answer to his grandfather's puzzle-tale; but the rascally little boy deceived the old man: he had sought the information from his uncle.

"If you were in the place of the woman," asked the playful grandfather with a smile on his face, "whom would you select?" Antonio timidlv said that he would select the brother.

"You are only guessing, aren't you?" said old Julian doubtfully.

"Bah! No, sir!" said the boy. "I can give you a reason for my selection."

"Very well, give your reason, then."

"The woman would be right in selecting her brother"--

"Because"--

"Because, what to a woman is a husband? She can marry again; she can find another."

"That is true," said the old man.

"And what to a woman is her son? Is it not possible to bear another one after she marries again?"

"To be sure," said old Julian.

"But," continued the boy, raising his voice, "is it possible for her to bring into the world another brother? Is it possible? The woman's parents were dead. Therefore she would be right in selecting her brother instead of her husband or her son."

"Exactly so, my boy," returned the satisfied old man, nodding his gray head. "Since you have answered correctly, to-morrow I will tell you another story."

Notes.

This saga-like story is of peculiar literary interest because of its ancient connections. I know of no modern analogues; but there are two very old parallels, as well as two unmistakable references to the identical situation in our story which date from before the Christian era, and also a Persian Märchen that goes back as far as the twelfth century.

Herodotus (III, 119) first tells the story of a Persian woman who chooses rather to save the life of her brother than of her husband and children.

"When all the conspirators against Darius had been seized [i.e., Intaphernes, his children, and his family], and had been put in chains as malefactors condemned to death, the wife of Intaphernes came and stood continually at the palace-gates, weeping and wailing. So Darius after a while, seeing that she never ceased to stand and weep, was touched with pity for her, and bade a messenger go to her and say, 'Lady, King Darius gives thee as a boon the life of one of thy kinsmen; choose which thou wilt of the prisoners.' Then she pondered a while before she answered, 'If the king grants the life of one alone, I make choice of my brother.' Darius, when he heard the reply, was astonished, and sent again, saying, 'Lady, the king bids thee tell him why it is that thou passest by thy husband and thy children, and preferrest to have the life of thy brother spared. He is not so near to thee as thy children, not so dear as thy husband.' She answered, 'O king! if the gods will, I may have another husband and other children when these are gone; but, as my father and mother are no more, it is impossible that I should have another brother. That was my thought when I asked to have my brother spared.' The woman appeared to Darius to have spoken well, and he granted to her the one that she asked and her eldest son, he was so pleased with her. All the rest he put to death."

This story from the Greek historian clearly supplied not merely the thought but also the form of the reference in lines 909-912 of Sophocles' "Antigone." In Campbell's English translation of the Greek play, the passage, which is put into the mouth of the heroine, runs thus:--

"A husband lost might be replaced; a son,
If son were lost to me, might yet be born;
But with both parents hidden in the tomb,
No brother may arise to comfort me."

Chronologically, the next two occurrences of the story are Indian. In the "Ucchanga-jataka" (Fausböll, No. 67, of uncertain date, but possibly going back to the third century B.C.) we are told--

"Three husbandmen were by mistake arrested on a charge of robbery, and imprisoned. The wife of one came to the King of Kosala, in whose realm the event took place, and entreated him to set her husband at liberty. The king asked her what relation each of the three was to her. She answered, 'One is my husband, another my brother, and the third is my son.' The king said, 'I am pleased with you, and I will give you one of the three; which do you choose?' The woman answered, 'Sire, if I live, I can get another husband and another son; but, as my parents are dead, I can never get another brother. So give me my brother, sire.' Pleased with the woman, the king set all three men at liberty."

In the Cambridge translation of this "Jataka," the verse reply of the woman is rendered thus:--

"A son's an easy find; of husbands too
An ample choice throngs public ways. But where
With all my pains another brother find?"

In the "Ramayana," the most celebrated art epic of India, we are told how, in the battle about Lanka, Lakshmana, the favorite brother and inseparable companion of the hero Rama, is to all appearances killed. Rama laments over him in these words: "Anywhere at all I could get a wife, a son, and all other relatives; but I know of no place where I might be able to acquire a brother. The teaching of the Veda is true, that Parjanya rains down everything; but also is the proverb true that he does not rain down brothers." (Ed. Gorresio, 6 : 24, 7-8.) This parallel was pointed out by R. Pischel in "Hermes," 28 (1893) : 465.

The Persian Märchen alluded to above is cited by Th. Nöldeke in "Hermes," 29 : 155.

In this story the wife, when she is given the opportunity to choose which she will save of her three nearest relatives,--i.e., her husband, her son, and her brother, who have been selected to be the food for the man-eating snake that grows from the devil-prince Dahak's shoulder,--says, "I am still a young woman. I can get another husband, and it may happen that I might have another child by him: so that the fire of separation I can quench somewhat with the water of hope, and for the poison of the death of a husband find a cure in the antidote of the survival of a son; but it is not possible, since my father and mother are dead, for me to get another brother; therefore I bestow my love on him [i.e., she chooses the brother]." The Dahak is moved to pity, and spares her the lives of all three.

The riddle form in which our story is cast is possibly an invention of the narrator; but folk-tales ending thus are common (see notes to No. 12). Again, our story fails to state whether or not all three men were pardoned. The implication is that they were not. The localization of the events seems to point either to a long existence of the story in La Laguna province or to exceptional adaptive skill on the part of the narrator.

TALE 32

WITH ONE CENTAVO JUAN MARRIES A PRINCESS.

Narrated by Gregorio Frondoso, a Bicol, who heard the story from another Bicol student. The latter said that the story was traditional among the Bicols, and that he had heard it from his grandfather.

In ancient times, in the age of foolishness and nonsense, there lived a poor gambler. He was all alone in the world: he had no parents, relatives, wife, or children. What little money he had he spent on cards or cock-fighting. Every time he played, he lost. So he would often pass whole days without eating. He would then go around the town begging like a tramp. At last he determined to leave the village to find his fortune.

One day, without a single cent in his pockets, he set out on his journey. As he was lazily wandering along the road, he found a centavo, and picked it up. When he came to the next village, he bought with his coin a small native cake. He ate only a part of the cake; the rest he wrapped in a piece of paper and put in his pocket. Then he took a walk around the village; but, soon becoming tired, he sat down by a little shop to rest. While resting, he fell asleep. As he was lying on the bench asleep, a chicken came along, and, seeing the cake projecting from his pocket, the chicken pecked at it and ate it up. Tickled by the bird's beak, the tramp woke up and immediately seized the poor creature. The owner claimed the chicken; but Juan would not give it up, on the ground that it had eaten his cake. Indeed, he argued so well, that he was allowed to walk away, taking the chicken with him.

Scarcely had he gone a mile when he came to another village. There he took a rest in a barber-shop. He fell asleep again, and soon a dog came in and began to devour his chicken. Awakened by the poor bird's squawking, Juan jumped up and caught the dog still munching its prey. In spite of the barber's protest and his refusal to give up his dog, Juan seized it and carried it away with him. He proceeded on his journey until he came to another village. As he was passing by a small house, he felt thirsty: so he decided to go in and ask for a drink. He tied his dog to the gate and went in. When he came out again, he found his dog lying dead, the iron gate on top of him. Evidently, in its struggles to get loose, the animal had pulled the gate over. Without a word Juan pulled off one of the iron bars from the gate and took it away with him. When the owner shouted after him, Juan said, "The bar belongs to me, for your gate killed my dog."

When Juan came to a wide river, he sat down on the bank to rest. While he was sitting there, he began to play with his iron bar, tossing it up into the air, and catching it as it fell. Once he missed, and the bar fell into the river and was lost. "Now, river," said Juan, "since you have taken my iron bar, you belong to me. You will have to pay for it." So he sat there all day, watching for people to come along and bathe.

It happened by chance that not long after, the princess came to take her bath. When she came out of the water, Juan approached her, and said, "Princess, don't you know that this river is mine? And, since you have touched the water, I have the right to claim you."

"How does it happen that you own this river?" said the astonished princess.

"Well, princess, it would tire you out to hear the story of how I acquired this river; but I insist that you are mine."

Juan persisted so strongly, that at last the princess said that she was willing to leave the matter to her father's decision. On hearing Juan's story, and after having asked him question after question, the king was greatly impressed with his wonderful reasoning and wit; and, as he was unable to offer any refutation for Juan's argument, he willingly married his daughter to Juan.

Notes.

I know of no complete analogues of this droll; but partial variants, both serious and comic, are numerous. In our story a penniless, unscrupulous hero finds a centavo, and by means of sophistical arguments with foolish persons makes more and more profitable exchanges until he wins the hand of a princess. A serious tale of a clever person starting with no greater capital than a dead mouse, and finally succeeding in making a fortune, is the "Cullaka-setthi-jataka," No. 4. This story subsequently made its way into Somadeva's great collection (Tawney, 1 : 33-34), "The Story of the Mouse Merchant" (ch. VI). Here it runs approximately as follows:--

A poor youth, whose mother managed to give him some education in writing and ciphering, was advised by her to go to a certain rich merchant who was in the habit of lending capital to poor men of good family. The youth went; and, just as he entered the house, that rich man was angrily talking to another merchant's son: "You see this dead mouse here upon the floor; even that is a commodity by which a capable man would acquire wealth; but I gave you, you good-for-nothing fellow, many dinars, and, so far from increasing them, you have not even been able to preserve what you got." The poor stranger-youth at once said to the merchant that he would take the dead mouse as capital advanced, and he wrote a receipt for it. He sold the mouse as cat-meat to a certain merchant for two handfuls of gram. Next he made meal of the gram, and, taking his stand by the road, civilly offered food and drink to a band of wood-cutters that came by. Each, out of gratitude, gave him two pieces of wood. This wood he sold, bought more gram with a part of the price, and obtained more wood from the wood-cutters the next day, etc., until he was able in time to buy all their wood for three days. Heavy rains made a dearth of wood, and he sold his stock for a large sum. Then he set up a shop, began to traffic, and became wealthy by his own ability. Now he had a golden mouse made, which he sent to the rich merchant from whom he had gotten his start, and that merchant bestowed the hand of his daughter on the once poor youth.

The comic atmosphere, it will be seen, is altogether absent from this Buddhistic parable.

A slight resemblance to our story may be traced in Bompas, No. XLIX, "The Foolish Sons," where the clever youngest (of six brothers) manages to acquire ten rupees, starting with one anna. He proceeds by "borrowing," and paying interest in advance. The trick used here is the same as that practised on the foolish wife in "Wise Folks" (Grimm, No. 104), where a sharper buys three cows, and leaves one with the seller as a pledge for the price of the three (see Bolte-Polívka, 2 : 440 f.).

Much closer parallels than the preceding, to the incidents of out story, are to be found in a cycle of tales discussed by Bolte-Polívka (2 : 201-202) in connection with "Hans in Luck" (Grimm, No. 83). It will be recalled that in the Grimm story the foolish Hans exchanges successively gold for horse, horse for cow, cow for pig, pig for goose, goose for grindstone, which he is finally glad to get rid of by throwing it into the water. "A counterpart of this story," say Bolte and Polívka, "is the Märchen of the 'profitable exchange,' in which a poor man acquires from another a hen because it has eaten up a pea or millet-seed that belonged to him; for the hen he gets a pig which has killed it; for the pig, a cow; for the cow, a horse. But when he finally levies his claim for damages upon a girl, and places her in a sack, his luck changes: strangers liberate the maiden without the knowledge of her captor, and put in her place a big dog, which falls upon him when he opens the sack." It is to be noted that the cycle as here outlined consists really of two parts,--the "biter biting" and the "biter bit." Cosquin (2 : 209) believes that the last two episodes--the maiden gained by chicanery, and the substitution of an animal for her in the sack--form a separate theme not originally a part of the cumulative motive; and, to prove his belief, he cites a number of Oriental tales containing the former, but lacking the cumulative motive (ibid., 209-212). Cosquin seems to be correct in this; although, on the other hand, he is able to cite only one story (Rivière, p. 95) in which there is not some trace of the "biter-bit" idea. Moreover, even in the animal stories belonging to this group,--and he analyzes Stokes, No. 17, and Rivière, p. 79,--the animal-rogue meets with an unlucky end. The same is true of Steel-Temple, No. 2, "The Rat's Wedding." In another Indian story, however, "The Monkey with the Tom-Tom" (Kingscote, No. XIV, a rather pointless tale), the monkey, whose last exchange is puddings for a tom-tom, is left at the top of a tree lustily beating his drum and enumerating his clever tricks. A very similar story is to be found in Rouse, p. 132, "The Monkey's Bargains." It will thus be seen that Bolte and Polívka's analysis holds for the larger number of human hero tales of this cycle, as well as for the animal tales; but that the first half of the sequence of events, where the hero's good luck is continually on the increase, is also to be found as a separate story,--Kingscote's, Rouse's, and our own.

The Filipino version appears to be old, and I am inclined to think that it is native; that is, if any stories may be called native. Several facts point to the primitiveness of the tale: (1) the local color and realistic touches, slight though they are; (2) the non-emphasis of the comic possibilities of the situations; (3) the somewhat unsystematic arrangement of incidents, the third demand and exchange (iron rod for dead dog) not appearing to be an upward progression; (4) the crudity of invention displayed in this same third exchange (though an iron-picketed fence seems modern). My reasons for thinking our story not imported from the Occident are the differences in beginning, middle, and end between it and the European versions cited by Bolte-Polívka (loc. cit.). The good luck coming to the hero from the exchange of dead animals suggests a distant basic connection between our story and the "Jataka," although it must be admitted that the idea could occur independently to many different peoples.

TALE 33

THE THREE HUMPBACKS.

Narrated by Pacita Cordero, a Tagalog from Pagsanjan, Laguna, who heard the story from her lavandera, or washer-woman.

Pablo was badly treated by his older brothers Pedro and Juan. The coarsest food was given to him. His clothes were ragged. He slept on the floor, while his two brothers had very comfortable beds. In fact, he was deprived of every comfort and pleasure.

In the course of time this unfortunate youth fell in love with a well-to-do girl, and after a four-years engagement they were married. Thus Pablo was separated from his brothers, to their great joy. Pedro and Juan now began spending their money lavishly on trifles. They learned how to gamble. Pablo, however, was now living happily and out of want with his wife. Every morning he went to fish, for his wife owned a large fishery.

One day, as Pablo was just leaving the house at the usual hour to go fishing, he said to his wife, "Wife, if two humpbacks like myself ever come here, do not admit them. As you know, they are my brothers, and they used to treat me very badly." Then he went away. That very afternoon Pedro and Juan came to pay their brother a visit. They begged Marta, Pablo's wife, to give them some food, for they were starving. They had squandered all their money, they said. Marta was so impressed by the wretched appearance of her brothers-in-law, that she admitted them despite her husband's prohibition. She gave them a dinner. When they had finished eating, she said to them, "It is now time for my husband to come home. He may take vengeance on you for your past unkindness to him, if he finds you here, so I'll hide you in two separate trunks. You stay there till to-morrow morning, and I'll let you out when my husband is gone again."

She had scarcely locked the trunks when Pablo entered. He did not find out that his brothers had been there, however. The next morning Pablo went to his work, as usual. Marta had so much to do about the house that day, that she forgot all about Pedro and Juan. The poor boys, deprived of air and food, died inside the trunks. Not until two days later did Marta think of the two humpbacks. She ran and opened the trunks, and found their dead bodies inside. Her next thought was how to dispose of them. At last a plan occurred to her. She called to her neighbor, and asked him to come bury one of her brothers-in-law who had just died in her house. She promised to pay him five pesos when he came back from his work.

The neighbor lifted the heavy body of Pedro, and, putting it on his shoulder, carried it away to a far place. There he dug a hole that was waist deep, put the corpse into it, and covered it up. Then he hastened back to Marta, and said, "Madam, I have buried the dead man in a very deep grave."

"No, you have not," said Marta. "What is that lying over there?" and she pointed to the corpse of Juan.

"That's very strange!" exclaimed the neighbor, scratching his head. "You are very artful," he said to the dead body of Juan. He was very angry with the corpse now, for he had not yet received his pay. So he bore the corpse of Juan to the seashore. He got a banca [89] and dug a very deep grave beneath the water. Then he said to the corpse, "If you can come out of this place, you are the wisest person in the world." He then returned to Marta's house.

On his way back he happened to look behind him, when he saw, to his great surprise, the humpback following him, carrying some fish. The gambler gazed at him; and when he saw that he resembled exactly the corpse that he had just buried, he said, "So you have come out of the grave again, have you, you naughty humpback!" And with these words he killed the humpback that very instant. This humpback was Marta's husband returning home from the fishery.

Thus Marta tried to deceive, but she was the one who was deceived.

The Seven Humpbacks.

Narrated by Teofilo Reyes, a Tagalog from Manila.

Once there lived seven brothers who were all humpbacks, and who looked very much alike. Ugly as these humpbacks were, still there was a lady who fell in love with one of them and married him. This lady, however, though she loved her husband well, was a very stingy woman. Finally the time came when the unmarried humpbacks had to depend on the other one for food. Naturally this arrangement was very displeasing to the wife; and in time her hate grew so intense, that she planned to kill all her brothers-in-law.

One day, when her husband was away on business, she murdered the six brothers. Next she hired a man to come and bury a corpse. She told him of only one corpse, because she wanted to deceive the man. When he had buried one of the bodies, he came back to get paid for his work. The woman, however, before he had time to speak, began to reproach him for not burying the man in the right place. "See here!" she said, showing him the corpse of the second brother, "you did not do your work well. Go and bury the body again. Remember that I will not pay you until you have buried the man so that he stays under the earth."

The man took the second corpse and buried it; but when he returned, there it was again. And so on: he repeated the operation until he thought that he had buried the same corpse six times. But after the sixth, the last humpback, had been buried, the married humpback came home from his work. When the grave-digger saw this other humpback, he immediately seized and killed him, thinking he was the same man he had buried so many times before.

When the wicked woman knew that her very husband had been killed, she died of a broken heart.

Notes.

A Pampango variant (c), which I have only in abstract, is entitled "The Seven Hunchbacked Brothers." It was collected by Wenceslao Vitug of Lubao, Pampanga. It runs thus:--

There were seven hunchbacked brothers that looked just alike. One of them married, and maintained the other six in his house. The wife, however, grew tired of them, and locked them up in the cellar, where they starved to death. In order to save burial-expenses, the woman fooled the grave-digger. When he had buried one man and returned for his money, she had another body lying where the first had lain, and told him that he could not have his money until the man was buried to stay. Thus the poor gravedigger buried all six corpses under the impression that he was working with the same one over and over again. On his way back from burying the sixth, he met the husband riding home on horseback. Thinking him to be the corpse, which he exactly resembled, the grave-digger cried out, "Ah! so this is the way you get ahead of me!" and he struck the living hunchback with his hoe and killed him.

This Pampango variant, although it is a little more specific than the Tagalog, is identical with our second version.

Our two stories and the variant represent a family of tales found scattered all over Europe. They are also connected distantly with one of the stories in the "1001 Nights," and thus with the Orient again. For a discussion of this cycle, see Clouston, "Popular Tales and Fictions," 2 : 332 ff., where are cited and abstracted versions from the Old-English prose form of the "Seven Wise Masters," from the Gesta Romanorum, also the fabliau "Destourmi;" then five other fabliaux from Legrand's and Barbasan's collections, especially the trouvere Dutant's "Les Trois Bossus;" and the second tale of the seventh sage in the "Mishlé Sandabar," the Hebrew version of the book of Sindibad. On pp. 344-357 Clouston gives variants of the related story in which the same corpse is disposed of many times. For further bibliography, see Wilson's Dunlop, 2 : 42, note.

The nearest parallel I know of to our first story is Straparola, 5 : 3, from which it was probably derived.

There were three humpbacked brothers who looked very much alike. The wife of one of them, disobeying the order of her husband, secretly received her two brothers-in-law. When her husband returned unexpectedly, she hid the brothers in the kitchen, in a trough used for scalding pigs. There the two humpbacks smothered before the wife could release them. In order to rid herself of their corpses, she hired a body-carrier to cast one of them into the Tiber; and when he returned for his pay, she informed him that the corpse had come back. After the man had removed the second corpse, he met the humpbacked husband, whom he now likewise cast into the river.

The identity of this story with ours makes a direct connection between the two practically certain. The two stories differ in this respect, however: the Italian has a long introduction telling of the enmity between the hunchback brothers, and of the knavish tricks of Zambo, the oldest, who goes out to seek his fortune, and is finally married in Rome. All this detail is lacking in the Filipino version, as is likewise the statement (found in Straparola) that the wife rejoiced when she learned that she had been rid of her husband as well as of the corpses of her brothers-in-law.

In our other story and the Pampango variant we note some divergences from the preceding tale. Here the one married brother charitably supports his six indigent brothers, whom the wife subsequently murders. In the majority of the European versions the deaths are either accidental or are contrived by the husband and wife together (e.g., Gesta Romanorum; and Von der Hagen, No. 62). While I am inclined to think these two stories of ours imported, they do not appear to be derived immediately from the same source (Straparola). However, the facts that the seven men are brothers and are humpbacks, and that the husband is killed by mistake, make an Occidental source for our second story and for the Pampango variant most probable.

I know of no Oriental analogues to the story as a whole, though the trick of getting a number of corpses buried for one appears in several stories from Cochin-China, Siam, and the Malay Archipelago:--

(1) Landes, No. 180, which I summarize here from Cosquin (2 : 337):

In the course of some adventures more or less grotesque, four monks are killed at one time near an inn. The old woman who keeps this hostelry, fearful of being implicated in a murder, wishes to get rid of the corpses. She hides three of the bodies, and has one buried by a monk who is passing by. She pretends that the dead man is her nephew. The monk, returning to the inn after his task, is stupefied to see the corpse back there again. The old woman tells him not to be astonished, for her nephew loved her so much that he could not bear to leave her; he would have to be buried deeper. The monk carries this corpse away, and on his return has the same experience with the third and fourth corpses. After the last time, he meets, while crossing a bridge, another, live monk resembling those he has interred. "Halloo!" he says, "I have been burying you all day, and now you come back to be buried again!" With that he pushes the fifth monk into the river.

(2) Skeat, I : 36-37, "Father Follow-My-Nose and the Four Priests:"

Father Follow-My-Nose would walk straight, would climb over a house rather than turn aside. One day he had climbed up one side of a Jerai-tree and was preparing to descend, when four yellow-robed priests, lest he should fall, held a cloak for him. But he jumped without warning, and the four cracked their heads together and died. Old Father Follow-My-Nose travelled on till he came to the hut of a crone. The crone went back and got the bodies of the four priests. An opium-eater passed by; and the crone said, "Mr. Opium-Eater, if you'll bury me this yellow-robe here, I'll give you a dollar." The opium-eater agreed, and took the body away to bury it; but when he came back for his money, there was a second body waiting for him. "The fellow must have come to life again," he said; but he took the body and buried it too. After he had buried the fourth in like manner, it was broad daylight, and he was afraid to go collect his money.

(3) A story communicated to me by a Chinese student, Mr. Jut L. Fan of Canton, who says that he saw the tale acted at a popular theatre in Canton in 1913. The story I give is but the synopsis of the play:

In Canton, the capital of Kwong Tung, a mile's walk from the marketplace, stood a prehistoric abbey, away from the busy streets, and deep in the silent woods. In this old monastery an aged abbot ruled over five hundred young monks; but they were far from being like their venerable master. Men and women, rich and poor, for fear of the dread consequences if they should incur the displeasure of the gods, went in great numbers to worship in the ancient buildings, kneeling in long rows before the sacred figures and incense.

These gatherings made it possible for the young monks and the young girls to become intimately acquainted,--so intimate, that sometimes shame and disgrace followed. One young girl who had been seduced, on an appropriate occasion and after great consideration, persuaded seven of the disciples who had been engaged in her ruin to enter her house. Then she invited them into her private chamber. As if by chance, there came a sharp rap on the locked door; so she hid her unusual visitors in a big wardrobe. What this young lady next did might seem unnatural; but, with the help of her servants, she poured boiling oil into the wardrobe, and killed the miscreants.

She next hired a porter to convey one body to the river near by and bury it. This porter was not informed as to the number of corpses he would have to bury; but every time he came back for his pay, there was another body for him. So one after another he dropped the bodies of the young monks into the swift-flowing stream, wondering all the while by what magic the lifeless body managed to return to the original spot.

Just after he had disposed of the seventh, up came the old abbot himself, with dignified mien. "Ah! I see now how you return," said the drudger, and he laid hold of the priest and ended his natural days. The old abbot thus suffered the fate of his seven unworthy disciples.

TALE 34

RESPECT OLD AGE.

Narrated by José Ignacio, a Tagalog from Malabon, Rizal.

Once there lived a poor man who had to support his family, the members of which were a hot-headed wife who predominated over the will of her husband; a small boy of ten; and an old man of eighty, the boy's grandfather. This old man could no longer work, because of his feebleness. He was the cause of many quarrels between the husband and wife, but was loved by their son.

One rainy morning the husband was forced by his wife to send his father away. He called his son, and ordered him to carry a basket full of food and also a blanket. He told the boy that they were to leave the old man in a hut on their farm some distance away. The boy wept, and protested against this harsh treatment of his grandfather, but in vain. He then cut the blanket into two parts. When he was asked to explain his action, he said to his father, "When you grow old, I will leave you in a hut, and give you this half of the blanket." The man was astonished, hurriedly recalled his order concerning his father, and thereafter took good care of him.

The Golden Rule.

Narrated by Cipriano Seráfica, a Pangasinan from Mangaldan, Pangasinan.

A long time ago there lived in a town a couple who had a son. The father of the husband lived with his son and daughter-in-law happily for many years. But when he grew very old, he became very feeble. Every time he ate at the table, he always broke a plate, because his hands trembled so. The old man's awkwardness soon made his son angry, and one day he made a wooden plate for his father to eat out of. The poor old man had to eat all his food from this wooden plate.

When the grandson noticed what his father had done, he took some tools and went down under the house. There he took a piece of board and began to carve it. When his father saw him and said to him, "What are you doing, son?" the boy replied to him, "Father, I am making wooden plates for you and my mother when you are old."

As the son uttered these words, tears gushed from the father's eyes. From that time on, the old man was always allowed to eat at the table with the rest of the family, nor was he made to eat from a wooden plate.

MORAL: Do unto others as you want them to do unto you.

Notes.

A Pampango variant of these stories, entitled "The Old Man, his Son, and his Grandson," and narrated by Eutiquiano Garcia of Mexico, Pampanga, has been printed by H. E. Fansler (p. 100). Mr. Garcia says that he heard the story told by his father at a gathering of a number of old story-tellers at his home during the Christmas vacation in 1908. The tale has every appearance of having long been naturalized in the Islands, if not of being native. It is brief, and may be reprinted here:--

In olden times, when men lived to be two or three hundred years old, there dwelt a very poor family near a big forest. The household had but three members,--a grandfather, a father, and a son. The grandfather was an old man of one hundred and twenty-five years. He was so old, that the help of his housemates was needed to feed him. Many a time, and especially after meals, he related to his son and his grandson his brave deeds while serving in the king's army, the responsible positions he filled after leaving a soldier's life; and he told entertaining stories of hundreds of years gone by. The father was not satisfied with the arrangement, however, and planned to get rid of the old man.

One day he said to his son, "At present I am receiving a peso daily, but half of it is spent to feed your worthless grandfather. We do not get any real benefit from him. To-morrow let us bind him and take him to the woods, and leave him there to die."

"Yes, father," said the boy.

When the morning came, they bound the old man and took him to the forest. On their way back home the boy said to his father, "Wait! I will go back and get the rope."--"What for?" asked his father, raising his voice. "To have it ready when your turn comes," replied the boy, believing that to cast every old man into the forest was the usual custom. "Ah! if that is likely to be the case with me, back we go and get your grandfather again."

This exemplum is known in many countries and in many forms. For the bibliography, see Clouston, "Popular Tales and Fictions," 2 : 372-378; T. F. Crane, "Exempla of Jacques de Vitry" (FLS, 1890 : No. 288 and p. 260); Bolte-Polívka (on Grimm, No. 78), 2 : 135-140. The most complete of these studies is the last, in which are cited German, Latin, Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Greek, Croatian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Polish, Russian, Lettish, Turkish, and Indian versions. Full as Bolte-Polívka's list is, however, an old important Buddhistic variant has been overlooked by them,--the "Takkala-jataka," No. 446. This Indian form of the story, it seems to me, has some close resemblances to our Pampango variant; and I give it here briefly, summarizing from Mr. Rouse's excellent English translation:--

In a certain village of Kasi there lived a man who supported his old father. The father regretted seeing his son toil so hard for him, and against the son's will sent for a woman to be his daughter-in-law. Soon the son began to be pleased with his new wife, who took good care of his father. As time went on, however, she became tired of the old man, and planned to set his son against him. She accused her father-in-law of being not only very untidy, but also fierce and violent, and forever picking quarrels with her, and at last, by constant dinning her complaints in his ear, persuaded her husband to agree to take the old man into a cemetery, kill him, and bury him in a pit. Her small son, a wise lad of seven, overheard the plot, and decided to prevent his father from committing murder. The next day he insisted on accompanying his father and grandfather. When they reached the cemetery, and the father began to dig the pit, the small boy asked what it was for. The father replied,--

"Thy grandsire, son, is very weak and old, Opprest by pain and ailments manifold; Him will I bury in a pit to-day; In such a life I could not wish him stay."

The boy caught the spade from his father's hands, and at no great distance began to dig another pit. His father asked why he dug that pit; and he answered,--

"I too, when thou art aged, father mine, Will treat my father as thou treatest thine; Following the custom of the family, Deep in a pit I too will bury thee."

By repeating a few more stanzas the son convinced his father that he was about to commit a great crime. The father, penitent, seated himself in the cart with his son and the old man, and they returned home. There the husband gave the wicked wife a sound drubbing, bundled her heels over head out of the house, and bade her never darken his doors again. [The rest of the story, which has no connection with ours, tells how the little son by a trick made his mother repent and become a good woman, and brought about a reconciliation between her and his father.]

The chief difference between our Pampango variant and the "Jataka," it will be seen, is in the prominent rôle played by the wife in the latter. She is lacking altogether in the Filipino story. The resemblances are strong, on the other hand. The father plans to kill the grandfather,--a turn seldom found in the Occidental versions,--and, accompanied by his son, he goes out to the forest (in the Indian, cemetery) to despatch the old man. The small boy's thinking (or pretending to think) it a family custom to put old men out of the way is found in both stories. Our Pampango variant appears to me to represent a form even older than the "Jataka," but at the same time a form that is historically connected with that Indian tale.

Of our two main stories,--"Respect Old Age" and "The Golden Rule,"--the second is very likely derived from Europe. Compare it, for instance, with Grimm, No. 78. The "machinery" of the wooden plates establishes the relationship, I believe. This form of the story, however, is not unlike an Oriental Märchen cited by Clouston (op. cit., 2 : 377). It is from a Canarese collection of tales called the "Kathá Manjarí," and runs thus:--

A rich man used to feed his father with congi from an old broken dish. His son saw this, and hid the dish. Afterwards the rich man, having asked his father where it was, beat him [because he could not tell]. The boy exclaimed, "Don't beat grandfather! I hid the dish, because, when I become a man, I may be unable to buy another one for you." When the rich man heard this, he was ashamed, and afterwards treated his father kindly.

The Pangasinanes may have got this story of "The Golden Rule" through the Church, from some priest's sermon.

Our first example, "Respect Old Age," is the only one of the three which turns on the "housse partie" idea. This is the form found in the thirteenth-century French fabliau "La Housse Partie;" and a variant of it is given by Ortensio Lando, an Italian novelist of the sixteenth century (Dunlop, 2 : 206). The only Spanish example I know of is found in the fourteenth-century "El Libro de los Enxemplos" (printed in Bibliotéca de Autores Españoles, vol. 51 [Madrid, 1884]), No. CCLXXII. It runs in the original as follows:--

Patri qualis fueris, tibi filius talis erit. Cual fueres á tu padre que trabajó por tí, El fijo que engendrares tal será á tí.

Cuentan que un viejo dió á un fijo que lo sirvió mucho bien todos sus bienes; mas despues que gelos hobo dado, echólo de la cámara onde dormia é tomóla para él é para su mujer, é fizo facer á su padre el lecho tras la puerta. É de que vino el invierno el viejo habia frio, ca el fijo le habia tornado la buena ropa con que se cobria, é rogó á un su nieto, fijo de su fijo, que rogase á su padre que le diese alguna ropa para se cobrir; é el mozo apenas pudo alcanzar de su padre dos varas de sayal para su abuelo, é quedábanle al fijo otros dos. É el mozo llorando rogó al padre que le diese las otros dos, é tanto lloró, que gelas hobo de dar, é demandóle que para qué las queria, é respondióle: "Quiérolas guardar fasta que tú seas tal commo es agora tu padre, é estonce non te daré mas, así commo tú non quieres dar á tu padre."

Finally may be given another Indian story, No. 16 in the "Antarakathasamgraha" of Rajasekhara (Bolte-Polívka, 2 : 139), which connects the "divided-blanket" motif with the old "Jataka." Rajasekhara flourished about A.D. 900. This story runs thus:--

In Haripura lived a merchant named Sankha, who had four sons. When he became old, he handed over his business and all his wealth to them. But they would no longer obey him; their wives mistreated him; and the old man crept into a corner of the house, wasted by hunger and oppressed with years. Once in the cold time of the year he asked his oldest son, Kumuda, for a cloth to protect him from the night frost. Kumuda spoke this verse:--