Chapter II: Part 2

FATIS
DERVONIBUS
V. S. L. M. M. RVFNVS
SEVERVS.

Just as the Scotch Fairies are euphemistically styled 'The Good Folks,' 'The People of Peace,' the 'Good Ladies,' so it befell the daughter of Faunus. She was styled 'The Good Goddess,' and her real name was tabooed[27].

It was natural that when Christianity reached Gaul, where the native spirits of woods and wells had acquired the name of _Fata_, these minor goddesses should survive the official heathen religion. The temples of the high gods were overthrown, or turned into churches, but who could destroy all the woodland fanes of the Fata, who could uproot the dread of them from the hearts of peasants? Saints and Councils denounced the rural offerings to fountains and the roots of trees, but the secret shame-faced worship lasted deep into the middle ages[28]. It is conjectured by Maury, as by Walckenaer (_Lettres sur les Contes de Fees_; Paris, 1826), that the functions of prophetic Gaulish Maidens and Druidesses were confused with those of the Fairies. Certainly superstitious ideas of many kinds came under the general head of belief in _Fata_, _Faes_, _Fadae_, and the _Fees_ of the forest of Broceliande. The _Fees_ answered, as in the _Sleeping Beauty_, to Greek _Moirai_ or Egyptian _Hathors_[29]. They nursed women in labour: they foretold the fate of children. It is said that when a Breton lady was giving birth to a child, a banquet for the _Fees_ was set in the neighbouring chamber[30]. But, in popular superstition, if not in Perrault's tales, the _Fees_ had many other attributes. They certainly inherited much from the pre-Christian idea of Hades. In the old MS. _Prophesia Thomae de Erseldoun_[31] the subterranean fairy-world is the under-world of pagan belief. In the mediaeval form of Orpheus and Eurydice (_Orfeo and Heurodis_), it is not the King of the Dead, but the king of Fairy that carries off the minstrel's bride. Fairyland, when Orpheus visits it, is like Homer's Hades.

'_And sum thurch the bodi hadde wounde
Wives ther lay on childe bedde
Sum dede and sum awedde._'

In the same way Chaucer calls Pluto 'King of Fayrie,' and speaks of 'Proserpine and all her fayrie,' in the _Merchant's Tale_. Moreover Alison Pearson, when she visited Elfland, found there many of the dead, among them Maitland of Lethington, and one of the Buccleughs. For all this dealing with fairies and the dead was Alison burned (Scott, _Border Minstrelsy_, ii. 137-152).

Because the mediaeval Fairies had fallen heir to much of the pre-Christian theory of Hades, it does not follow, of course, that the Fairies were originally ancestral ghosts. This origin has been claimed for them, however, and it is pointed out that the stone arrow-heads of an earlier race are, when found by peasants, called 'elf-shots,' and attributed to the Fairies. Now the real owners and makers were certainly a race dead and gone, as far as a race can die. But probably the ownership of the arrows by elves is only the first explanation that occurs to the rural fancy. On the other hand, it is candid to note that the Zulu Amatongo, certainly 'ancestral ghosts,' have much in common with Scotch and Irish fairies. 'It appears to be supposed,' says Dr. Callaway, 'that the dead become "good people," as the dead among the Amazulu become Amatongo, and, in the funeral processions of the "good people" which some profess to see, are recognised the forms of those who have lately died, as Umkatshana saw his relatives among the Abapansi,' and as Alison saw Maitland of Lethington and Buccleuch in Elfland. This Umkatshana followed a deer into a hole in the ground, where he found dead men whom he knew[32]. Compare Campbell, _Tales from the West Highlands_, ii. 56, 65, 66, 106, where it is written, 'the Red Book of Clanranald is said not to have been dug up, but found _on_ the moss. It seemed as if the ancestors sent it.'

Those rather gloomy fairies of the nether-world have little but the name in common with the fairies of Herrick, of the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, and of Drayton's _Nymphidia_. The gay and dancing elves have a way, in Greece, of making girls 'dance with the Nereids' till they dance themselves to death. In the same way it is told of Anne Jefferies, of St. Teath in Cornwall (born 1626), that one had seen her 'dancing in the orchard, among the trees, and that she informed him she was then dancing with the Fairies.' She lived to be seventy, in spite of the Fairies and the local magistrates who tried her case (Scott, _B.M._ ii. 156).

Perrault's fairies do not wed mortal men, in this differing from the Indian Apsaras, and the fairies of New Zealand and of Wales. (Taylor's _New Zealand_, p. 143. Compare story of Urvasi and Pururavas, Max Mueller, _Selected Essays_, i. 408. A number of other examples of Fairy loves, including one from America, is given in _Custom and Myth_, pp. 68-86.)

On a general view of the evidence, it appears as if the fashion for fairy tales, in Perrault's time, had made rather free with the old _Fata_ or _Fees_. Perrault sins much less than the Comtesse d'Aulnoy, or the Comtesse de Murat, but even he brings in a _Fatua ex machina_ where popular tradition used other expedients.

As to the Ogres in Perrault, a very few words may suffice. They are simply the survival, in civilised folklore, of the cannibals, _Rakshasas_, _Weendigoes_, and man-eating monsters who are the dread of savage life in Africa, India, and America. Concerning them, their ferocity, and their stupidity, enough will be said in the study of _Le Petit Poucet_. As to the name of Ogre, Walckenaer derives it from _Oigour_, a term for the Hungarian invaders of the ninth century, a Tartar tribe[33]. Hence he concludes that the Ogre-stories are later than the others, though, even if 'Ogre' meant 'Tartar,' only the name is recent, and the Cannibal tales are of extreme antiquity. Littre, on the other hand, derives _ogre_ from _Orcus_, _cum Orco rationem habere_ meaning to risk one's life. Hop o' my Thumb certainly risked his, when he had to do 'cum Orco,' if Orcus be _Ogre_ (_Lettres sur les Contes de Fees_, p. 169-172).

[Footnote 23: Fauno fuit uxor nomine Fatua. Justin, xliii. I. Preller, _R. M._ I. 385.]

[Footnote 24: _Roemische Mythologie_, i. 100. Berlin, 1881.]

[Footnote 25: Preller, _op. cit._ ii. 194, quoting Tertullian, _De An._ 39, and Augustine, _Civitas Dei_, iv. 11.]

[Footnote 26: _Les Fees du Moyen Age_, p. 13. Paris, 1843.]

[Footnote 27: Quam quidam, quod nomine dici prohibitum fuerat, _Bonam Deam_ appellatam volunt. Servius, _AEneid_, viii. 315.]

[Footnote 28: Maury, _Les Fees du Moyen Age_, pp. 15, 16, and his authorities in the _Capitulaires_ and _Life of Saint Eloi_.]

[Footnote 29: Amyot, in his Plutarch, actually renders _Moirai_ by _Fees_ (1567).]

[Footnote 30: Maury, p. 31.]

[Footnote 31: Scott, _Border Minstrelsy_, iii. 381.]

[Footnote 32: _Nursery Tales of the Zulus_, p. 317; _Amatongo_, p. 227.]

[Footnote 33: In popular French versions the Ogre is often called _Le Sarrasin_ to this day (Sebillot in _Melusine_, May 5, 1887).]

NOTES ON THE

SEVERAL TALES BY PERRAULT,

AND THEIR VARIANTS.

LES TROIS SOUHAITS.

_The Three Wishes._

The story of _The Three Wishes_ is very valuable as an illustration of the difficulties which baffle, and perhaps will never cease to baffle, the student of popular Tales and their diffusion. The fundamental idea is that a supernatural being of one sort or another can grant to a mortal the fulfilment of a wish, or wishes, and that the mortal can waste the boon. Now probably this idea might occur to any human mind which entertained the belief in communication between men, and powerful persons of any sort, Gods, Saints, Tree-spirits, fairies, _follets_ or the like. The mere habit of prayer, universally human as it is, contains the germs of the conception. But the notion, as we find it in story, branches out into a vast variety of shapes, and the problem is to determine which of these, or whether any one of these is the original type, and whether the others have been adapted or burlesqued from that first form, and whether these processes have been the result of literary transmission, and literary handling, or of oral traditions and popular fancy. Perhaps a compact statement of some (by no means all) of the shapes of _The Three Wishes_ may here be serviceable.

1. The granters of the Wishes are gods. The gift is accepted in a pious spirit, and the desires are noble, and worthy of the donors.

This tale occurs in Ovid, _Metamorphoses_, viii. 610-724. Baucis and Philemon entertain the gods, who convert their hut into a Temple. They _wish_ (the man is the speaker) to serve the gods in this fane, and that neither may outlive the other:

Nec conjugis umquam
Busta meae videam: neu sim tumulandus ab illa.

Their wishes are fulfilled.

2. In German popular tales, this idea appears, with additions, in _Rich and Poor_ (Grimm 87). Here the virtue of the good is contrasted with the folly of the bad. The Poor man hospitably receives our Lord, and, for his three wishes, chooses eternal happiness, health and daily bread, and a new house. The Rich man rejects our Lord, but getting a second chance, loses his temper, wishes his horse dead, the saddle on his wife's back, and--the saddle off again!

Now popular fancy has been better pleased with the burlesque ideas in the second part of this fable, than with the serious moral; and most of the tales turn on burlesque wishes, leaving the virtuous wishers out of the story. The narrative also shews a Protean power of altering details, the wishes vary, the power who grants the wish is different in different _Maerchen_, the person whose folly wastes the wish may be the husband, or may be the wife.

A very old form of the Wasted Wish, originally no doubt a popular form, won its way into literature in the _Pantschatantra_. The tale has also been annexed by Buddhism, as Buddhism annexed most tales, by the simple process of making Sakya Muni the hero or narrator of the adventures.

The _Pantschatantra_ is a collection of fables in Sanskrit. In its original form, according to Mr. Max Mueller, its date can be fixed, by aid of an ancient Persian translation, as previous to 550 A.D. 'At that time a collection somewhat like the Pa_n_katantra, though much more extensive, must have existed[34].' By various channels the stories of the _Pantschatantra_ reached Persia, Arabia, Greece, and thence were rendered into Latin, and again, were paraphrased in different vernacular languages, by literary people. But when we find, as we do, a story in the _Pantschatantra_ and a similar or analogous story in the Arabic _Book of Sindibad_ (earlier than the tenth century), and again in the Greek _Syntipas_ (eleventh and twelfth century), and again in Latin, or Spanish, or French literature, we cannot, perhaps, always be sure that the tale is derived from India through literary channels. Whoever will compare the _Wish_ story of the _Double-headed Weaver_ in the _Pantschatantra_[35] with _The Three Wishes_ in the _Book of Sindibad_ (Comparetti. _Folk Lore Society_, 1882, p. 147), and again, with Marie de France's twenty-fourth Fable (_Dou Vilain qui prist un folet_), and yet again with Perrault's _Trois Souhaits_, and, lastly, with the popular tales among Grimm's variants, will find many perplexing problems before him[36]. The differences in the details and in the conduct of the story are immense. Did the various authors borrow little but the main conception--the wasted wishes? Are the variations the result of literary caprice and choice? Has the story travelled from India by two channels,--(1) literary, in _Pantschatantra_, and _Syntipas_ with the translations; (2) oral, by word of mouth from people to people? Are the _popular_ versions derived from literature, or from oral tradition? Is the oldest literary version, that of the _Pantschatantra_, more akin to the _original_ version than some of the others which meet us later? Finally, might not the idea of wasted wishes occur independently to minds in different ages and countries, and may not some of the versions be of independent origin, and in no way borrowed from India? Is there, indeed, any reason at all for supposing that so simple a notion was invented, once for all, in India?

It is easy to ask these questions, it is desirable to bear them in mind, so that we may never lose sight of the complexity and difficulty of the topic. But it is practically impossible to answer them once for all.

The nature of the problem may now be illustrated by a few examples. In the story of the _Pantschatantra_, the granter of the wish (there is but one wish) is a tree-dwelling spirit. A very stupid weaver one day broke part of his loom. He went out to cut down a tree near the shore, meaning to fashion it for his purpose, when a spirit, who dwelt in the timber, cried, 'Spare this tree.' The weaver said he must starve if he did not get the wood, when the spirit replied, 'Ask anything else you please.' The barber, being consulted, advised the weaver to wish to be king. The weaver's wife cried, 'No, stay as you are, but ask for two heads, and four hands, to do double work.' He got his wish, but was killed by the villagers, who very naturally supposed him to be a Rakshasa, or ogre. The moral is enunciated by the barber, 'Let no man take woman's counsel.' The poor woman's lack of immoderate ambition might seem laudable to some moralists.

Here the peculiarities are: A tree-ghost grants the wish.

There is only one wish.

It is made on a woman's advice.

It causes the death of the wisher[37].

The story is next found in the various forms of the _Book of Sindibad_, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Arabic, and old Spanish, a book mentioned by all Arabic authors of the tenth century, and of Indian and Buddhistic origin[38]. As told in the various forms of _Sindibad_, the tale of _The Three Wishes_ takes this shape. A man has a friendly spirit (a she-devil in the Spanish _Libro de los Engannos_), who is obliged to desert his company, but leaves him certain formulae, by dint of repeating which he will have Three Wishes granted to him. The tree-spirit has disappeared, the one wish has become three. The man consults with his wife, who suggests that he should desire, not two heads and four hands, but an obscene and disgusting bodily transformation of another sort. He wishes the wish, is horrified by the result, and, on the woman's hint, asks to have all that embarrasses him removed. The granting of the wish leaves him with 'a frightful _minus_ quantity,' and he expends the third wish in getting restored to his pristine and natural condition. The woman explains that she had not counselled him to desire wealth, lest he should weary of her and desert her. This, at least, is the conclusion in the Hebrew version, in the _Parables of Sandabas_ (Deulin, _Contes de Ma Mere L'Oye_, p. 71).

How are we to account for this metamorphosis of the story in the _Pantschatantra_? Is the alteration a piece of Arabian humour? Was there another Indian version corresponding to the shape of the tale in the _Book of Sindibad_? The questions cannot be answered with our present knowledge.

Another change, and a very remarkable one, occurs in the _Fables_ of Marie de France. Of Marie not much is known. In the _Conclusion_ of her Fables, she says--

'Au finement de cest escrit
K'en Romanz ai turne et dit,
Me numerai par remembraunce
Marie ai num, si sui de Fraunce.

* * * * *

Pur amur le cumte Willaume
Le plus vaillant de cest Royaume,
M'entremis de cest livre feire
E de l'Angleiz en Roman treire,
Ysopet apeluns ce livre
Qu'il traveilla et fist escrire;
De Griu en Latin le turna.
Li Rois Henris qui moult l'ama
Le translata puis en Engleiz
E jeo l'ai rime en Franceiz.'

That is to say, King Henry had translated into English a collection of fables and _contes_ attributed to AEsop, and Marie rendered the English into French. Now AEsop certainly did not write the story of _The Three Wishes_. The text before Marie was probably a mere congeries of tales and fables, some of the set usually attributed to AEsop, some from various other sources. The Latin version, the model of the English version, was that assigned to a certain, or uncertain Romulus, whom Marie, in her preface, calls an emperor. Probably he borrowed from Phaedrus, though he boasts that he rendered his fables out of the Greek. M. de Roquefort thinks he did not flourish before the eleventh or twelfth century[39]. Who was _li rois Henris_ who turned the fables into Marie's English text? She lived under our Henry III. Perhaps conjecture may prefer Henry Beauclerk, our Henry I.

In any case Marie manifestly did render the fables, or some of the fables, in _Le dit d'Ysopet_ out of English. The presence of English words in her French seems to raise a strong presumption in favour of the truth of the assertion. One of these English words occurs in her form of _The Three Wishes_ (Fable xxiv), called _Dou Vilain qui prist un Folet_, also _Des Troiz Oremens_, or _Du Vileins et de sa Fame_. A Vilein captured a Folet (fairy or brownie?) who granted him Three Wishes. The _Folet_ resembles the tree-bogle of the _Pantschatantra_. The vilein gave two wishes to his wife. Long they lived without using the wishes. One day, when they had a marrow bone for dinner, and found it difficult to extract the marrow, the wife wished that her husband had--

'tel bec came li plereit
E cum li Huite cox aveit.'

The Huite cox is an English word, woodcock, in disguise. The husband, in a rage, wished his wife a woodcock's beak also, and there they sat, each with a very long bill, and two wishes wasted. There Marie leaves them--

'Deus Oremanz unt ja perduz
Que nus n'en est a bien venuz,'

'with two wishes lost, and no good gained thereby.' Manifestly the third wish was expended in a restoration of human noses to each of them. The moral is that ill befalls them--

'qui trop creient autrui parole.'

We naturally wonder whether this version was borrowed from one or other shape of _Syntipas_. If it was, did the change come in the Latin handling of it, or in the English? Or is it not possible that the version worked on by Marie had a _popular_ origin, whether derived by oral transmission from some popular Indian shape of the story, which had filtered through to the West, or the child of native Teutonic wit? There seems to be no certain criterion in a case like this. Certainly no mediaeval wag was likely to alter, out of modesty, the form of the tale in _Syntipas_ and its derivatives, though Marie would not have rhymed that offensive _conte_ if she had met with it in the English collection. Unluckily one is not acquainted with any version of _The Three Wishes_ among backward and remote races, American or African. If such a version were known (and it may, of course, exist), we might argue that the tale was 'universally human.' There is nothing in it, as told in _Pantschatantra_, to make it seem essentially and peculiarly Indian, and incapable of having been invented elsewhere.

A fourteenth-century version (quoted by M. Deulin from _Fabliaux et Contes_ published by St. Meon, vol. iv. p. 386) amplifies all that is least refined in _Sendabar_ and in _Sindibad_. St. Martin grants the wishes, there are four of them, and nobody is one penny the better. With Philippe de Vigneules (1505-1514, the seventy-eighth of his hundred _Nouvelles_), God grants three wishes to a wedded pair. The woman wishes a new leg for her pot, the man wishes her _le pied au ventre_, and then wishes it back again. M. Deulin found this form in living popular tradition, at Leuze in Hainaut.

The _Souhaits_ of La Fontaine (_Fables_, vii. 6) has this peculiarity, that the giver of the wishes, as in Marie de France and in _Sindibad_, is a Follet or brownie, or familiar spirit, obliged to leave his friends. He offers them three wishes; first, they ask for wealth and are embarrassed by their riches, then for a restoration of their mediocrity, then for wisdom.

'C'est un tresor qui n'embarrasse point.'

La Fontaine's source is obscure; had he known _Syntipas_, he might (or might not) have introduced the story among his _Contes_. Perhaps it was too rude even for that unabashed collection.

As for Perrault, he probably drew from a popular tradition his _Aune de Boudin_. Collin de Plancy (_OEuvres Choisies de Ch. Perrault_, Paris, 1826, 240) gives a curious rustic version. Three brothers dance with the Fairies, who offer them a wish apiece. The eldest, as heir of the paternal property, wants no more, but, as wish he must, asks that their calf may cure the colic of every invalid who seizes it by the tail. (How manifestly Indian in origin is this introduction of the sacred beast whose tail is grasped by the pious Hindoo in his latest hours!) The youngest brother wishes the horns of cow and calf on his brother's head, the second wishes a bull's head on his brother's shoulders, and the Fairies make these wild wishes of none avail.

Manifestly the fundamental idea is capable of infinite transformations, literary or popular: a good example is the play of _Le Bucheron_, by Guichard and Philidor, acted in 1763.

The story has no connection with the three successful wishes by aid of which the devil is defeated in a number of popular tales belonging to a different cycle. All these are inspired, however, by the great god Wunsch, who presides over Wishing Gates.

'Would I could wish my wishes all to rest,
And know to wish the wish that should be best,

says Clough, better inspired than Perrault's _Bucheron_.

[Footnote 34: _Selected Essays_, i. 504.]

[Footnote 35: Benfey, ii. 341.]

[Footnote 36: See _Poesies de Marie de France, Poete Anglo-Normande du xiiie Siecle_, vol. ii. p. 140. Paris, 1820.]

[Footnote 37: Benfey, _Pantschatantra_, ii. 341.]

[Footnote 38: Comparetti, _Book of Sindibad_, p. 3. Benfey, _Pantschatantra_, i. 38.]

[Footnote 39: _Poesies de Marie de France_, vol. ii. p. 53.]

LA BELLE AU BOIS DORMANT.

_The Sleeping Beauty._

The idea of a life which passes ages in a secular sleep is as old as the myth of Endymion. But it would be difficult to name any classical legend which closely corresponds with the story of the Sleeping Beauty. The first incident of importance is connected with the very widely spread belief in the Fates, or Moirai, or Hathors (in Ancient Egypt), or fairies, who come to the bedside of Althaea, or of the Egyptian Queen, or to the christening of the child in _La Belle au Bois Dormant_, and predict the fortunes of the newly born. In an Egyptian papyrus of the Twentieth Dynasty there is a tale, beginning, just like Perrault's, with the grief of a king and queen, who have no child, or at least no son. Instead of going _a toutes les Eaux du monde_, they appeal to the gods, who hear their prayers, and the queen gives birth to a little boy. Beside his cradle the Hathors announce that he shall perish by a crocodile, a serpent, or a dog. The story, in Egyptian, now turns into one of the common myths as to the impossibility of evading Destiny[40]. In Perrault's _Conte_, of course, fairies take the place of the Fates from whom perhaps _Fee_ is derived. When the fairies have met comes in another old incident--one of them, like Discord at the wedding of Peleus, has not been invited, and she prophesies the death of the Princess. This is commuted, by a friendly fay, into a sleep of a hundred years: the sleep to be caused, as the death was to have been, by a prick from a spindle. The efforts of the royal family to evade the doom by proscribing spindles are as futile as usual in these cases. The Princess and all her people fall asleep, and the story enters the cycle of which Brynhild's wooing, in the _Volsung's Saga_, is the heroic type. Brynhild is thus described by the singing wood-peckers,--

'Soft on the fell
A shield-may sleepeth,
The lime-trees' red plague
Playing about her.
The sleep-thorn set Odin
Into that maiden
For her choosing in war
The one he willed not.'

Sigurd is bidden to awaken her, and this he does, rending her mail with his magic sword. But the rest of the tragic story does not correspond with _La Belle au Bois Dormant_. Perrault's tale has its closest companion in Grimm's _Little Briar Rose_ (90), which lacks the conclusion about the wicked mother-in-law. Her conduct, again, recurs in various tales quite unlike _La Belle_ in general plot. The incident of the sleep-thorn, or something analogous, occurs in _Surya Bai_ (_Old Deccan Days_), where a prick from the poisoned nail of a demon acts as the soporific. To carry poison under the nail is one of the devices of the Voudou or Obi man in Hayti. Surya Bai, when wakened and married by a Rajah, is the victim of the jealousy, not of an ogress mother-in-law, but of another wife, and _that_ story glides into a form of the Egyptian tale _The Two Brothers_ (Maspero, i.). The sleep-thorn, or poisoned nail, takes again in Germany the shape of the poisoned comb. _Snow-white_ is wounded therewith by the jealousy of a beautiful step-mother, with a yet fairer step-daughter (Grimm, 53). In mediaeval romances, as in _Perceforest_, an incident is introduced whereby the sleeping maid becomes a mother. Lucina, Themis, and Venus take the part of the Fairies, Fates, or Hathors. In the Neapolitan _Pentamerone_ the incident of the girl becoming a mother in her sleep is repeated. The father (as in _Surya Bai_) is a married man, and the girl, Thalia, suffers from the jealousy of the first wife, as Surya Bai does. The first wife wants to eat Thalia's children, _a diverses sauces_, which greatly resembles Perrault's _sauce Robert_. The children of Thalia are named Sun and Moon, while those of the Sleeping Beauty are L'Aurore et Le Jour. The jealous wife is punished, like the Ogre mother-in-law[41].

While the idea of a long sleep may possibly have been derived from the repose of Nature in winter, it seems useless to try to interpret _La Belle au Bois Dormant_ as a Nature myth throughout. The story, like all _contes_, is a patchwork of incidents, which recur elsewhere in different combinations. Even the names Le Jour and L'Aurore only appear in such late and literary forms as the _Pentamerone_, where they are mixed up with Thalia, clearly a fanciful name for the mother, as fanciful as that of the sleeping Zellandine, who marries the god Mars in _Perceforest_. As an example of the length to which some mythologists will go, may be mentioned M. Andre Lefevre's discovery that Poufle, the dog of the Sleeping Beauty, is the Vedic Sarama in search of the Dawn.

[Footnote 40: Maspero, _Contes Egyptiens_, p. 33.]

[Footnote 41: _Contes de Ma Mere L'Oye_, p. 157.]

LE PETIT CHAPERON ROUGE[42].

_Little Red Riding Hood._

Perrault has not concealed the moral which he thought obvious in this brief narrative. There are wolves--

'_Qui suivent les jeunes Demoiselles
Jusques dans les maisons, jusques dans les Ruelles!_'

Racine, in an early letter, admits that he himself has been one of these wolves.

'Il faut etre regulier avec les Reguliers, comme j'ai ete
loup avec vous, et avec les autres loups, vos comperes.[43]'

But the nurses from whom Perrault or his little boy heard _Le petit Chaperon Rouge_ had probably no such moral ideas as these. They _may_ have hinted at the undesirable practice of loitering when one is sent on an errand, but the punishment is out of all proportion to the offence. As it stands, the tale is merely meant to waken a child's terror and pity, and probably the narrator ends it by making a pounce, in the character of Wolf, _c'est pour te manger_, at the little listener. This was the correct 'business' in our old Scotch nurseries, when we were told _The Cattie sits in the Kiln-Ring Spinning_.

'By cam' a cattie and ate it a' up my loesome,
Loesome Lady!
And sae will I you--worrie, worrie, gnash, gnash,
Said she, said she!'

'The old nurse's imitation of the _gnash_, _gnash_, which she played off upon the youngest urchin lying in her lap, was electric' (Chambers, _Popular Rhymes of Scotland_, 1842, p. 54).

If _Little Red Riding Hood_ ended, in all variants, where it ends in Perrault, we might dismiss it, with the remark that the _machinery_ of the story is derived from 'the times when beasts spoke,' or were believed to be capable of speaking. But it is well known that in the German form, _Little Red Cap_ (Grimm 26), the tale by no means ends with the triumph of the wolf. Little Red Cap and her grandmother are resuscitated, 'the wolf it was that died.' This may either have been the original end, omitted by Perrault because it was too wildly impossible for the nurseries of the time of Louis XIV, or children may have insisted on having the story 'turn out well.' In either case the German _Maerchen_ preserves one of the most widely spread mythical incidents in the world,--the reappearance of living people out of the monster that has devoured them.

In literature, this incident first meets us in the myth of Cronus (Hesiod, _Theog._ 497; Pausanias, x. 24), where Cronus disgorges his swallowed children alive, after gulping up the stone in swaddling bands which he had taken for Zeus, his youngest infant. He had previously dined on a young foal that he was assured his wife had just borne, when, in reality, the child was Poseidon. In this adventure Cronus united the mistake of the ogress mother-in-law, in _La Belle au Bois Dormant_, who ate the kid in place of the Sleeping Beauty's boy, the adventure of the king who hears his wife has borne a beast-child, and the adventure of the Wolf who disgorges his prey alive. The local fancy of Arne in Arcadia had combined all these ideas of _Maerchen_ into one divine myth (Pausan. viii. 8, 2). It would be superfluous to enumerate here all the savage and civilised stories of beings first swallowed and then disgorged alive. A fabulous monster Kwai Hemm is the swallower in Bushman story. The Iqong qongqo takes the _role_ among the Kaffirs. There are some five examples in Callaway's _Zulu Nursery Tales_. _Night_ is the swallower in Melanesia (Codrington, _Journal Anthrop. Inst._ Feb. 1881), while the Sun swallows the stars in a Piute myth. It is quite possible that a savage theory of Night swallowing and restoring Light, or of the Sun swallowing the stars, is the origin of the conception[44]. The Australians tell it in a shape not unlike Grimm's. The Eagle met the Moon and offered him some Kangaroo meat. The Moon ate up the Kangaroo, and then swallowed the Eagle. The wives of the Eagle met the Moon, who asked them the way to a spring. As he stooped to drink, they cut him open with a stone tomahawk, and extracted the Eagle, who came alive again[45]. In Germany it was with a pair of scissors that the Wolf was cut up, and he was then stuffed with stones (as in Grimm 5, _The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids_). The stones kill him in _Little Red Cap_; in the German tale, their weight drags him into the well, where he, like the Australian Moon, wants to drink after his banquet. In Pomerania a ghost takes the Wolf's _role_, the stones are felt to be rather 'heavy' by the ghost, and the child escapes[46].

The whole story has been compared by M. Husson to the adventure of Vartika, whom the Asvins rescue from the throat of a wolf. Little Red Riding Hood thus becomes the Dawn. Vartika is a bird, the Quail, 'i.e. the returning bird. But as a being delivered by the Asvins, the representatives of Day and Night, Vartika can only be the returning Dawn, delivered from the mouth of the wolf, i. e. the dark night[47].'

It is hard to see why the Night, as one of the Asvins, should deliver the Dawn from the Night, as the Wolf. On the identification of the Asvins with this or that aspect of Light and Darkness, Muir may be consulted. 'This allegorical interpretation seems unlikely to be correct, as it is difficult to suppose that the phenomena in question should have been alluded to under such a variety of names and circumstances.' (_Sanskrit Texts_, v. 248. Prof. Goldstuecker thinks the Asvins are themselves the crepuscular mingling of light and dark, which, in the other theory, is the struggle of quail and wolf, _op. cit._ v. 257. M. Bergaigne supposes that the Asvins are deities of dawn, _La Religion Vedique_, ii. 431.)

These considerations lead us far enough from Perrault into 'worlds not realised.' Vartika (who, in these theories, answers to _Le Petit Chaperon Rouge_) has been compared by Mr. Max Mueller, not only to the returning Dawn, but to the returning year, _Vertumnus_. He notes that the Greek word for quail is _ortyx_, that Apollo and Artemis were born in Ortygia, an old name of Delos, and that 'here is a real traditional chain.' But 'it would be a bold assertion to say that the story of _Red Riding Hood_ was really a metamorphosis of an ancient story of the rosy-fingered Eos, or the Vedic Eos with her red horses, and that the two ends, Ushas and Rothkaeppchen, are really held together by an unbroken traditional chain.'

We shall leave the courage of this opinion to M. Husson, merely observing that, as a matter of fact, Dawn is _not_ swallowed by Night. Sunset (which is red) is so swallowed, but then sunset is not 'a young maiden carrying messages,' like Red Riding Hood and Ushas. To be sure, the convenient Wolf is regarded by mythologists as 'a representative of the sun or of the night,' at will. He 'doubles the part,' and 'is the useful Wolf,' as the veteran Blenkinsopp, in _Pendennis_, was called 'The useful Blenkinsopp.'

[Footnote 42: _Contes de Charles Perrault_, Paris, _s. a._ p. lxiv. Perrault's love of refining is not idle in _Le Chaperon Rouge_. In the _popular_ versions, in Brittany and the Nievre, the wolf puts the grandmother in the pot, and her blood in bottles, and makes the unconscious child eat and drink her ancestress! The cock or the robin redbreast warns her in vain, and she is swallowed. (_Melusine_, May 5, 1887.)]

[Footnote 43: A. M. de la Fontaine, a Usez, le ii. Nov. 1661.]

[Footnote 44: Tylor, _Prim. Cult._ i. 338.]

[Footnote 45: Brough Smyth, _Natives of Victoria_, i. p. 432.]

[Footnote 46: Grimm, Note on 5.]

[Footnote 47: Max Mueller's _Selected Essays_, i. 565.]

LA BARBE BLEUE.

_Blue Beard._

The story of Blue Beard, as told by Perrault, is, of all his collection, the most apt to move pity and terror. It has also least of the supernatural. Here are no talking beasts, no fairies, nor ogres. Only the enchanted key is _fee_, or _wakan_ as the Algonkins say, that is, possesses magical properties. In all else the story is a drama of daily and even of contemporary life, for Blue Beard has the gilded coaches and embroidered furniture of the seventeenth century, and his wife's brothers hold commissions in the dragoons and musketeers. The story relies for its interest on the curiosity of the wife (the moral motive), on the vision of the slain women, and on the suspense of waiting while Sister Anne watches from the tower. These simple materials, admirably handled, make up the terrible story of _Blue Beard_.

Attempts have been made to find for _Blue Beard_ an historical foundation. M. Collin de Plancy mentions a theory that the hero was a seigneur of the house of Beaumanoir (_OEuvres Choisies de Ch. Perrault_, p. 40, Paris, 1826). Others have fancied that Blue Beard was a popular version of the deeds of Gilles de Retz, the too celebrated monster of mediaeval history, or of a more or less mythical Breton prince of the sixth century, Cormorus or Comorre, who married Sainte Trophime or Triphime, and killed her, as he had killed his other wives, when she was about to become a mother. She was restored to life by St. Gildas[48]. If there is a trace of the _Blue Beard_ story in the legend of the Saint, it does not follow that the legend is the source of the story. The _Maerchen_ of _Peau d'Ane_ has been absorbed into the legend of Sainte Dipne or Dympne, and the names of saints, like the names of gods and heroes in older faiths, had the power of attracting _Maerchen_ into their cycle.

_Blue Beard_ is essentially popular and traditional. The elements are found in countries where Gilles de Retz and Comorre and Sainte Triphime were never known. The leading idea, of curiosity punished, of the box or door which may not be opened, and of the prohibition infringed with evil results, is of world-wide distribution. In many countries this notion inspires the myths of the origin of Death[49]. In German _Maerchen_ there are several parallels, more or less close, to _Blue Beard_ (Grimm 3, 40, 46). In _Our Lady's Child_ (3) the Virgin entrusts a little girl with keys of thirteen doors, of which she may only open twelve. Behind each door she found an apostle, behind the thirteenth the Trinity, in a glory of flame, like Zeus when he consumed Semele. The girl's finger became golden with the light, as Blue Beard's key was dyed with the blood. The child was banished from heaven, and her later adventures are on the lines of the falsely accused wife, like those of the _Belle au Bois Dormant_, with the Virgin for mother-in-law and with a repentance for a moral conclusion. In the _Robber Bridegroom_ there is a girl betrothed to a woman-slayer; she detects and denounces him, pretending, as in the old English tale, she is describing a dream. 'Like the old tale, my Lord, it is not so, nor 'twas not so; but indeed God forbid that it should be so[50].' Except for the 'larder' of the Robber, and of Mr. Fox in the English variant, these stories do not closely resemble _Blue Beard_. In Grimm's _Fitcher's Bird_ (46) the resemblance is closer. A man, apparently a beggar, carries off the eldest of three sisters to a magnificent house, and leaves her with the keys, an egg, and the prohibition to open a certain door. She opens it, finds a block, an axe, a basin of blood, and the egg falling into the blood refuses to be cleansed. The man slays her, her second sister shares her fate, the third leaves the egg behind when she visits the secret room, and miraculously restores her sisters to life by reuniting their limbs. The same idea occurs in the Kaffir tale of the Ox (Callaway, _Nursery Tales of the Zulus_, p. 230). The rest of the story, with the escape from the monster, has no connection with _Blue Beard_, except that the wretch is put to death. Indeed, it would have been highly inconvenient for Blue Beard's surviving bride if the dead ladies had been resuscitated. Her legal position would have been ambiguous, and she could not have inherited the gold coaches and embroidered furniture. Grimm originally published another German form of _Blue Beard_ (62 in first edition), but withdrew it, being of opinion that it might have been derived from Perrault. The story of the Third Calender in the _Arabian Nights_ (Night 66) has nothing in common with Blue Beard but the prohibition to open a door.

In Italy[51] the Devil is the wooer, the closed door opens on hell: the rest, the adventures of three sisters, resembles Grimm's _Fitcher's Bird_, with a touch of humour. The Devil, seeing the resuscitated girls, is daunted by the idea of facing three wives, and decamps. He had no scruple, it will be seen, about marrying his deceased wife's sister. The Russian like the Oriental stories generally make a man indulge the fatal curiosity, and open the forbidden door. Mr. Ralston quotes from Loewe's _Esthnische Maerchen_ (No. 20) a tale almost too closely like Perrault's. There is a sister, and the goose boy takes the _role_ of rescuer. M. de Gubernatis thinks that the key 'is perhaps the Moon!' (_Zoological Mythology_, 1. 168). In the Gaelic version the heroine is cleansed of blood by a grateful Cat, whose services her sisters had neglected (Campbell, _Tales of West Highlands_, No. 41). In the _Katha Sarit Sagara_ (iii. p. 223) a hero, Saktideva, is forbidden to approach a certain palace terrace. He breaks the taboo, and finds three dead maidens in three pavilions. A horse then kicks him into a lake, and, whereas he had been in the Golden City, hard to win, he finds himself at home in Vardhamana. The affair is but an incident in the medley of incidents, some resembling passages in the Odyssey, which make up the story (compare Ralston's note, _Russian Fairy Tales_, p. 99).

From these brief analyses it will be plain that, in point of art, Perrault's tale has a great advantage over its popular rivals. It is at once more sober and more terrible, and (especially when compared with the confusion of incidents in the _Katha Sarit Sagara_) possesses an epical unity of idea and action.

In spite of this artistic character, Perrault's tale is clearly of popular origin, as the existence of variants in the folklore of other countries demonstrates. But the details are so fluctuating, that we need not hope to find in them memories of ancient myth, nor is it safe to follow M. Andre Lefevre, when he thinks that, in the two avenging brothers, he recognises the Vedic Asvins.

[Footnote 48: The passages in the legend of Sainte Triphime are quoted by M. Deulin, _Contes de Ma Mere l'Oye_, p. 178. See also _Annuaire Hist. et Arch. de Bretagne_, Annee 1862. The Saint has a warning vision of the dead wives, but not in consequence of opening a forbidden door.]

[Footnote 49: A partial collection of these will be found in _La Mythologie_, Lang. Paris 1886. Australians, Ningphos, Greeks (Pandora's box), the Montaguais of Labrador (_Relations de la Nouvelle France_, 1634), the Odahwah Indians (Hind's _Explorations in Labrador_, i. 61, note 2), are examples of races which believe death to have come into the world as the punishment of an infringed prohibition of this sort. The deathly swoon of Psyche, in _The Golden Ass_ of Apuleius, when she has opened the pyx of Proserpine, is another instance.]

[Footnote 50: Compare Mrs. Hunt's note to Grimm, i. 389.]

[Footnote 51: Crane, p. 78.]

LE MAISTRE CHAT, OU LE CHAT BOTTE.

_Puss in Boots._

Everybody knows Puss in Boots. He is, as Nodier says, the Figaro of the nursery, as Hop o' My Thumb is the Ulysses, and Blue Beard the Othello; and thus he is of interest to all children, and to all men who remember their childhood. Ulysses himself did not travel farther than the story of the patron of the Marquis de Carabas has wandered, and few things can be more curious than to follow the Master-Cat in his migrations. For many reasons the history of _Puss in Boots_, though it has been rather neglected, throws a good deal of light on that very dark question, the diffusion of popular tales. As soon as we read it in Perrault, we find that Monsieur Perrault was at a loss for a moral to his narrative. In fact, as he tells it, there is _no_ moral to the Master-Cat. Puss is a perfectly unscrupulous adventurer who, for no reason but the fun of the thing, dubs the miller's son marquis, makes a royal marriage for him, by a series of amusing frauds, and finally enriches him with the spoils of a murdered ogre. In the absence of any moral Perrault has to invent one--which does not apply.

'Aux jeunes gens pour l'ordinaire,
L'industrie et le savoir-faire
Valent mieux que des biens acquis.'

Now the 'young person,' the cat's master, had shown no 'industry' whatever, except in so far as he was a _chevalier d'industrie_, thanks to his cat. These obvious truths pained Mr. George Cruikshank when he tried to illustrate _Puss in Boots_, and found that the romance was quite unfit for the young. 'When I came to look carefully at that story, I felt _compelled_ to rewrite it, and alter the character of it to a certain extent, for, as it stood, the tale was a succession of successful falsehoods--a _clever_ lesson in lying, a system of _imposture_ rewarded by the greatest worldly advantages. A _useful_ lesson, truly, to be impressed upon the minds of children.' So Mr. Cruikshank made the tale didactic, showing how the Marquis de Carabas was the real heir, 'kep' out of his own' by the landgrabbing ogre, and how puss was a gamekeeper metamorphosed into a cat as a punishment for his repining disposition. This performance of Mr. Cruikshank was denounced by Mr. Dickens in _Household Words_ as a 'fraud on the fairies,' and 'the intrusion of a whole hog of unwieldy dimensions into the fairy flower-garden[52].'

The Master-Cat probably never made any child a rogue, but no doubt his conduct was flagrantly immoral. And this brings us to one of the problems of the science of nursery tales. When we find a story told by some peoples _with_ a moral, and by other peoples _without_ a moral, are we to suppose that the tale was originally narrated for the moral's sake, and that the forms in which there is _no_ moral are degenerate and altered versions? For example, the Zulus, the Germans, the French, and the Hindoos have all a nursery tale in which someone, by a series of lucky accidents and exchanges, goes on making good bargains, and rising from poverty to wealth. In French Flanders this is the tale of _Jean Gogue_; in Grimm it is _The Golden Goose_; in Zulu it is part of the adventures of the Hermes of Zulu myth, Uhlakanyana. In two of these the hero possesses some trifling article which is injured, and people give him something better in exchange, till, like Jean Gogue, for example, he marries the king's daughter[53]. Now these tales have no moral. The hero is thought neither better nor worse of because of his series of exchanges. But in modern Hindostan the story _has_ a moral. The rat, whose series of exchanges at last win him a king's daughter, is held up to contempt as a warning to bargain-hunters. He is not happy with his bride, but escapes, leaving his tail, half his hair, and a large piece of his skin behind him, howling with pain, and vowing that 'never, never, never again would he make a bargain[54].' Here then is a tale told with a moral, and _for_ the moral in India, but with no moral in Zululand and France. Are we to suppose that India was the original source of the narrative, that it was a parable invented for the moral's sake, and that it spread, losing its moral (as the rat lost his tail), to Europe and South Africa? Or are we to suppose that originally the narrative was a mere _Schwank_, or popular piece of humour, and that the mild, reflective Hindoo moralised it into a parable or fable? The question may be argued either way; but the school of Benfey and M. Cosquin, holding that almost all our stories were invented in India, should prefer the former alternative.

Now _Puss in Boots_ has this peculiarity, that out of France, or rather out of the region influenced by Perrault's version of the history, a moral usually does inform the legend of the Master-Cat, or master-fox, or master-gazelle, or master-jackal, or master-dog, for each of these animals is the hero in different countries. Possibly, then, the story had originally what it sadly lacks in its best-known shape, a moral; and possibly _Puss in Boots_ was in its primitive shape (like _Toads and Diamonds_) a novel with a purpose. But where was the novel first invented?

We are not likely to discover for certain the cradle of the race of the Master-Cat--the 'cat's cradle' of _Puss in Boots_. But the record of his achievements is so well worth studying, because the possible area from which it may have arisen is comparatively limited.

There are many stories known all the world over, such as the major part of the adventures of _Hop o' My Thumb_, which might have been invented anywhere, and might have been invented by men in a low state of savagery. The central idea in _Hop o' My Thumb_, for example, is the conception of a hero who falls into the hands of cannibals, and by a trick makes the cannibal slay, and sometimes eat, his own kinsfolk, mother, or wife, or child, while the hero escapes. This legend is well known in South Africa, in South Siberia, and in Aberdeenshire; and in Greece it made part of the Minyan legend of Athamas and Ino, murder being substituted for cannibalism. Namaquas, in Southern Africa; Eskimo, in Northern America, and Athenians (as Aeschylus shows in the _Eumenides_, 244), are as familiar as Maoris, or any of us, with the ogre's favourite remark, 'I smell the smell of a mortal man.'

Now it is obvious that these ideas--the trick played by the hero on the cannibal, and the turning of the tables--might occur to the human mind wherever cannibalism was a customary peril: that is, among any low savages. It does not matter whether the cannibal is called a _rakshasa_ in India, or an _ogre_ in France, or a _weendigo_ in Labrador, the notion is the same, and the trick played by the hero is simple and obvious[55]. Therefore _Hop o' My Thumb_ may have been invented anywhere, by any people on a low level of civilisation. But _Puss in Boots_ cannot have been invented by savages of a very backward race or in a really 'primitive' age. The very essence of _Puss in Boots_ is the sudden rise of a man, by aid of a cunning animal, from the depths of poverty to the summit of wealth and rank. Undeniably this rise could only occur where there were great differences of social status, where rank was a recognised institution, and where property had been amassed in considerable quantities by some, while others went bare as lackalls.

These things have been of the very essence of civilisation (the more's the pity), therefore _Puss in Boots_ must have been invented by a more or less civilised mind; it could not have been invented by a man in the condition of the Fuegians or the Digger Indians. Nay, when we consider the stress always and everywhere laid in the story on snobbish pride and on magnificence of attire and equipment, and on retinue, we may conclude that _Puss in Boots_ could hardly have been imagined by men in the middle barbarism; in the state, for example, of Iroquois, or Zulus, or Maoris. Nor are we aware that _Puss in Boots_, in any shape, is found among any of these peoples. Thus the area in which the origin of _Puss in Boots_ has to be looked for is comparatively narrow.

_Puss in Boots_, again, is a story which, in all its wonderfully varying forms, can only, we may assume, have sprung from one single mind. It is extremely difficult to assert with confidence that any plot can only have been invented once for all. Every new successful plot, from _Dr. Jekyl_ to _She_, from _Vice Versa_ to _Dean Maitland_, is at once claimed for half a dozen authors who, unluckily, did not happen to write _She_ or _Dr. Jekyl_. But if there can be any assurance in these matters, we may feel certain that the idea of a story, wherein a young man is brought from poverty to the throne by aid of a match-making and ingenious beast, could only have been invented once for all. In that case _Puss in Boots_ is a story which spread from one centre, and was invented by one man in a fairly civilised society. True, he used certain hereditary and established _formulae_; the notion of a beast that can talk, and surprises nobody (except in the Zanzibar version) by this accomplishment, is a notion derived from the old savage condition of the intellect, in which beasts are on a level with, or superior to, humanity. But we can all use these _formulae_ now that we possess them. Could memory of past literature be wholly wiped out, while civilisation still endured, there would be no talking and friendly beasts in the children's tales of the next generation, unless the children wrote them for themselves. As Sainte-Beuve says, 'On n'inventerait plus aujourd'hui de ces choses, si elles n'avaient ete imaginees des longtemps[56].'