Chapter III: Part 3

If we are to get any light on the first home of the tale--and we cannot get very much--it will be necessary to examine its different versions. There is an extraordinary amount of variety in the incidents subordinate to the main idea, and occasionally we find a heroine instead of a hero, a Marquise de Carabas, not a marquis. Perhaps the best plan will be to start with the stories near home, and to pursue puss, if possible, to his distant original tree. First, we all know him in English translations, made as early as 1745, if not earlier, of Perrault's _Maitre Chat, ou Chat botte_, published in 1696-7. Here his motives are simple fun and friendliness. His master, who owns no other property, thinks of killing and skinning puss, but the cat prefers first to make acquaintance with the king, by aid of presents of game from an imaginary Marquis de Carabas; then to pretend his master is drowning and has had his clothes stolen (thereby introducing him to the king in a court suit, borrowed from the monarch himself); next to frighten people into saying that the Marquis is their _seigneur_; and, finally, to secure a property for the Marquis by swallowing an ogre, whom he has induced to assume the disguise of a mouse. This last trick is as old as Hesiod[57], where Zeus persuades his wife to become a fly, and swallows her.

The next neighbour of the French _Puss in Boots_ in the north is found in Sweden[58] and in Norway[59]. In the Swedish, a girl owns the cat. They wander to a castle gate, where the cat bids the girl strip and hide in a tree; he then goes to the castle and says that his royal mistress has been attacked by robbers. The people of the palace attire the girl splendidly, the prince loses his heart to her, the queen-mother lays traps for her in vain. Nothing is so fine in the castle as in the girl's chateau of Cattenburg. The prince insists on seeing that palace, the cat frightens the peasants into saying that all the land they pass is the girl's; finally, the cat reaches a troll's house, with pillars of gold. The cat turns himself into a loaf of bread and holds the troll in talk till the sun rises on him and he bursts, as trolls always do if they see the sun. The girl succeeds to the troll's palace, and nothing is said as to what became of the cat.

Here is even less moral than in _Puss in Boots_, for the Marquis of Carabas, as M. Deulin says, merely lets the cat do all the tricks, whereas the Swedish girl is his active accomplice. The change of the cat into bread (which can talk), and the bursting of the ogre at dawn, are very ancient ideas, whether they have been tacked later on to the _conte_ or not. In _Lord Peter_ the heroine gives place to a hero, while the cat drives deer to the palace, saying that they come from Lord Peter. The cat, we are not told how, dresses Lord Peter in splendid attire, kills a troll for him, and then, as in Madame d'Aulnoy's _White Cat_, has its head cut off and becomes a princess. Behold how fancies jump! All the ogre's wealth had been the princess's, before the ogre changed her into a cat, and took her lands. Thus George Cruikshank's moral conclusion is anticipated, while puss acts as a match-maker indeed, but acts for herself. This form of the legend, if not immoral, has no moral, and has been mixed up either with Madame d'Aulnoy's _Chatte Blanche_, or with the popular traditions from which she borrowed.

Moving south, but still keeping near France, we find _Puss in Boots_ in Italy. The tale is told by Straparola[60]. A youngest son owns nothing but a cat which, by presents of game, wins the favour of a king of Bohemia. The drowning trick is then played, and the king gives the cat's master his daughter, with plenty of money. On the bride's journey to her new home, the cat frightens the peasants into saying all the land belongs to his master, for whom he secures the castle of a knight dead without heirs.

Here, once more, there is no moral.

In a popular version from Sicily[61], a fox takes the cat's place, _from motives of gratitude_, because the man found it robbing and did not kill it. The fox then plays the usual trick with the game, and another familiar trick, that of leaving a few coins in a borrowed bushel measure to give the impression that his master does not _count_, but measures out his money. The trick of frightening the peasants follows, and finally, an ogress who owns a castle is thrown down a well by the fox. Then comes in the new feature: the _man is ungrateful and kills the fox_; nevertheless he lives happy ever after.

Now, at last, we have reached the moral. A beggar on horseback will forget his first friend: _a man will be less grateful than a beast_.

This moral declares itself, with a difference (for the ingrate is coerced into decent behaviour), in a popular French version, taken down from oral recitation[62].

Here, then, even among the peasantry of Perrault's own country, and as near France as Sicily, too, we have _Puss in Boots_ with a moral: that of human ingratitude contrasted with the gratitude of a beast. May we conclude, then, that _Puss in Boots_ was originally invented as a kind of parable by which this moral might be inculcated? And, if we may draw that conclusion, where is this particular moral most likely to have been invented, and enforced in an apologue?

As to the first of these two questions, it may be observed that the story with the moral, and with a fox in place of a cat, is found among the Avars, a Mongolian people of Mussulman faith, on the northern slopes of the Caucasus. Here the man is ungrateful, but the fox, as in Sicily, coerces him, in this case by threatening to let out the story of his rise in life[63]. In Russia, too, a fox takes the cat's _role_, and the part of the ogre is entrusted to the Serpent Uhlan, a supernatural snake, who is burned to ashes[64].

It is now plain that the tale with the moral, whether that was the original motive or not, is more common than the tale without the moral. We find the moral among French, Italians, Avars, Russians; among people of Mahommedan, Greek, and Catholic religion. Now M. Emmanuel Cosquin is inclined to believe that the moral--the ingratitude of man contrasted with the gratitude of beasts,--is Buddhistic. If that be so, then India is undeniably the original cradle of _Puss in Boots_. But M. Cosquin has been unable to find any _Puss in Boots_ in India; at least he knew none in 1876, when he wrote on the subject in _Le Francais_ (June 29, 1876). Nor did the learned Benfey, with all his prodigious erudition, know an Indian _Puss in Boots_[65]. Therefore the proof of this theory, that Buddhistic India may be the real cat's cradle, is incomplete; nor does it become more probable when we actually do discover _Puss in Boots_ in India. For in the Indian _Puss in Boots_, just as in Perrault's, _there is no moral at all_, and the notion of gratitude, on either the man's side or the beast's, is not even suggested.

There could scarcely be a more disappointing discovery than this for the school of Benfey which derives our fairy tales from Buddhism and India. First, the tale which we are discussing certainly did not find a place in the _Pantschatantra_, the _Hitopadesa_, or any other of the early Indian literary collections of _Maerchen_ which were translated into so many Western languages. Next, the story does not present itself, for long, to European students of living Indian folklore. Finally, when puss _is_ found in India, where the moral element (if it was the original element, and if its origin was in Buddhist fancy) should be particularly well preserved, there is not any moral whatever.

The Indian _Puss in Boots_ is called _The Match-making Jackal_, and was published, seven years after M. Cosquin had failed to find it, in the Rev. Lal Behari Day's _Folk Tales of Bengal_ (Macmillan). Mr. Day, of the Hooghly College, is a native gentleman well acquainted with European folklore. Some of the stories in his collection were told by a Bengali Christian woman, two by an old Brahman, three by an old barber, two by a servant of Mr. Day's, and the rest by another old Brahman. Unluckily, the editor does not say which tales he got from each contributor. It might therefore be argued that _The Match-making Jackal_ was perhaps told by the Christian woman, and that she adapted it from _Puss in Boots_, which she might have heard told by Christians. Mr. Day will be able to settle this question; but it must be plain to any reader of _The Match-making Jackal_ that the story, as reported, is too essentially Hindoo to have been 'adapted' in one generation. It is not impossible that a literary Scandinavian might have introduced the typically Norse touches into the Norse _Puss in Boots_, but no illiterate woman of Bengal could have made Perrault's puss such a thoroughly Oriental jackal as the beast in the story we are about to relate.

There was once a poor weaver whose ancestors had been wealthy men. The weaver was all alone in the world, but a neighbouring jackal, 'remembering the grandeur of the weaver's forefathers, had compassion on him.' This was pure sentiment on the jackal's part; his life had not been spared, as in some European versions, by the weaver. There was no gratitude in the case. 'I'll try to marry you,' said the jackal, off-hand, 'to the daughter of the king of this country.' The weaver said, 'Yes, when the sun rises in the west.' But the jackal had his plan. He trotted off to the palace, many miles away, and on the road he plucked quantities of the leaves of the betel plant. Then he lay down at the entrance of the tank where the princess bathed twice a day, and began ostentatiously chewing betel-leaves. 'Why,' said the princess, 'what a rich land this jackal must have come from. Here he is chewing betel, a luxury that thousands of men and women among us cannot afford.' The princess asked the jackal whence he came, and he said he was the native of a wealthy country. 'As for our king, his palace is like the heaven of Indra; your palace here is a miserable hovel compared to it.' So the princess told the queen, who at once, and most naturally, asked the jackal if his king were a bachelor. 'Certainly,' said the jackal, 'he has rejected princesses from all parts.' So the queen said _she_ had a pretty daughter, still _zu haben_, and the jackal promised to try to persuade his master to think of the princess. The jackal returned on his confidential mission, telling the weaver to follow his instructions closely. He went back to court, and suggested that his master should come in a private manner, not in state, as his retinue would eat up the substance of his future father-in-law. He returned and made the weaver borrow a decent suit of clothes from the washermen. Then he made interest with the king of the jackals, the paddy-birds, and the crows, each of whom lent a contingent of a thousand beasts or birds of their species. When they had all arrived within two miles of the palace, the jackal bade them yell and cry, which they did so furiously that the king supposed an innumerable company of people were attending his son-in-law. He therefore implored the jackal to ask his master to come quite alone. 'My master will come alone in undress,' said the jackal; 'send a horse for him.' This was done, and the jackal explained that his master arrived in mean clothes that he might not abash the king by his glory and splendour. The weaver held his tongue as commanded, but at night his talk was of looms and beams, and the princess detected him. The jackal explained that his philanthropic prince was establishing a colony of weavers, and that his mind ran a good deal on this benevolent project.

Here the _Puss in Boots_ character of the tale disappears. The weaver and the princess go home, but the jackal does _not_ cajole anyone out of a castle and lands. He has made the match, and there he leaves it. The princess, however, has fortunately a magical method of making gold, by virtue of which she builds the weaver a splendid palace, and 'hospitals were established for diseased, sick, and infirm animals,' a very Indian touch. The king visits his daughter, is astonished at her wealth, and the jackal says, 'Did I not tell you so?'

Here, as we said, there is no moral, or if any moral, it is the gratitude of man, as displayed in founding hospitals for beasts, not, as M. Cosquin says, 'l'idee toute bouddhique de l'ingratitude de l'homme opposee a la bonte native de l'animal.' Plainly, if any moral was really intended, it was a satire on people who seek great marriages, just as in the story of _The Rat's Wedding_, the moral is a censure on bargain-hunters.

The failure of the only Indian _Puss in Boots_ we know to establish a theory of an Indian origin, does not, of course, prove a negative. We can only say that puss certainly did not come from India to Europe by the ordinary literary vehicles, and that, when he is found in India, he does not preach what is called the essentially Buddhist doctrine of the ingratitude of man and the gratitude of beasts.

There remains, however, an Eastern form of the tale, an African version, which is of morality all compact. This is the Swahili version from Zanzibar, and it is printed as _Sultan Darai_, in Dr. Steere's _Swahili Tales, as told by Natives of Zanzibar_ (Bell and Daldy, London, 1870). If a tale first arose where it is now found to exist with most moral, with most didactic purpose, then _Puss in Boots_ is either Arab or Negro, or a piece in which Negroes and Arabs have collaborated. For nowhere is the _conte_ so purposeful as among the Swahilis, who are by definition 'men of mixed Negro and Arab origin.' There may be Central African elements in the Swahili tales, for most of them have 'sung parts,' almost unintelligible even to the singers. 'I suppose,' says Dr. Steere, 'they have been brought down from the interior by the slaves, and perhaps corrupted by them as they gradually forgot their own language.' Thus Central Africa may have contributed to the Swahili stories, but the Swahili _Puss in Boots_, as it at present exists, has been deeply modified by Mussulman ideas.

_Sultan Darai_, the Swahili _Puss in Boots_, really contains two tales. The first is about a wicked step-mother; the second begins when the hero, losing his wife and other kinsfolk, takes to vicious courses, and becomes so poor that he passes his time scratching for grains of millet on the common dustheap. While thus scratching he finds a piece of money, with which he buys a gazelle. The gazelle has pity on him, and startles him by saying so: 'Almighty God is able to do all things, to make me to speak, and others more than I.' The story comes, therefore, through narrators who marvel, as in the fairy world nobody does marvel, at the miracle of a speaking beast.

The gazelle, intent on helping the man, finds a splendid diamond, which he takes to the sultan, just as puss took the game, as 'a present from Sultan Darai.' The sultan is much pleased; the gazelle proposes that he shall give his daughter to Sultan Darai, and then comes the old trick of pretending the master has been stripped by robbers, 'even to his loin-cloth.' The gazelle carries fine raiment to his master, and, as in the French popular and traditional form, bids him speak as little as may be. The marriage is celebrated, and the gazelle goes off, and kills a great seven-headed snake, which, as in Russia, is the owner of a rich house. The snake, as he travels, is accompanied (as in the Kaffir story of _Five Heads_) by a storm of wind, like that which used to shake the 'medicine lodges' of the North American Indians, puzzling the missionaries. The snake, like the ogre in all _Hop o' My Thumb_ tales, smells out the gazelle, but is defeated by that victorious animal. The gazelle brings home his master, Sultan Darai, and the Princess to the snake's house, where they live in great wealth and comfort.

Now comes in the moral: the gazelle falls sick, Sultan Darai refuses to see it, orders coarse food to be offered it; treats his poor benefactor, in short, with all the arrogant contempt of an ungrateful beggar suddenly enriched. As the ill-used cat says in the _Pentamerone_--

De riche appauvri Dieu te gard'
Et de croquant passe richard!

Finally the gazelle dies of sorrow, and Sultan Darai dreams that he is scratching on his old dustheap. He wakens and finds himself there, as naked and wretched as ever, while his wife is wafted to her father's house at home.

The moral is obvious, and the story is told in a very touching manner, moreover all the world takes the side of the gazelle, and it is _mourned with a public funeral_.

Here, then, in Zanzibar we have decidedly the most serious and purposeful form of _Puss in Boots_. It is worth noting that the animal hero is _not_ the Rabbit who is the usual hero in Zanzibar as he is in Uncle Remus's tales. It is also worth noticing that a certain tribe of Southern Arabians do, as a matter of fact, honour all dead gazelles with seven days of public mourning. 'Ibn al-Moghawir,' says Prof. Robertson-Smith, in _Kinship in Early Arabia_ (p. 195), 'speaks of a South Arab tribe called Beni Harith or Acarib, among whom if a dead gazelle was found, it was solemnly buried, and the whole tribe mourned for it seven days.... The gazelle supplies a name to a clan of the Azd, the Zabyan.' Prof. Robertson-Smith adds (p. 204), 'And so when we find a whole clan mourning over a dead gazelle, we can hardly but conclude that when this habit was first formed, they thought that they were of the gazelle-stock' or Totem kindred.

It is quite possible that all these things are mere coincidences. Certainly we shall not argue, because the most moral form of _Puss in Boots_ gives us a gazelle in place of a cat, and because a certain Arab clan mourns gazelles, while the gazelle hero is found in the story of a half-Arab race, that, therefore, the Swahili gazelle story is the original form of _Puss in Boots_, and that from Arabia the tale has been carried into Russia, Scandinavia, Italy, India, and France, often leaving its moral behind it, and always exchanging its gazelle for some other beast-hero.

This kind of reasoning is only too common, when the object is to show that India was the birthplace of any widely diffused popular fiction. In India, people argue, this or that tale has a moral. Among Celts and Kamschatkans it has _no_ moral. But certain stories did undeniably come from India in literary works, like the stories of Sindibad. Therefore this or that story also came from India, dropping its moral on the way. Did we like this sort of syllogism, we might boldly assert that _Puss in_ _Boots_ was originally a heroic myth of an Arab tribe with a gazelle for Totem. But we like not this kind of syllogism. The purpose of this study of _Puss in Boots_ is to show that, even when a tale has probably been invented but once, in one place, and has thence spread over a great part of the world, the difficulty of finding the original centre is perhaps insuperable. At any time a fresh discovery may be made. Puss _may_ turn up in some hitherto unread manuscript of an old missionary among Mexicans or Peruvians[66].

[Footnote 52: George Cruikshank had also turned _Hop o' My Thumb_ and _Cinderella_ into temperance tracts. See Cruikshank's _Fairy Library_, G. Bell and Sons.]

[Footnote 53: The French version is in M. Charles Deulin's _Contes du Roi Gambrinus_. The German (Grimm, 64) omits the story of the exchanges, but ends like _Jean Gogue_. The Zulu is in Dr. Callaway's _Inzinganekwane_, pp. 38-40.]

[Footnote 54: _Wide-awake Stories._ A collection of tales told by little children, between sunset and sunrise, in the Punjaub and Kashmir. Steel and Temple, London, 1884, p. 26.]

[Footnote 55: Andree, _Die Anthropophagie_, 'Ueberlebsel im Volksglauben.' Leipzig, 1887.]

[Footnote 56: _Causeries du Lundi_, December 29, 1851.]

[Footnote 57: _Schol. ad. Theog._ 885.]

[Footnote 58: Thorpe's _Palace with Pillars of Gold_.]

[Footnote 59: Dasent's _Lord Peter_.]

[Footnote 60: _Piacevoli Notti_, xi. 1, Venice, 1562. Crane's _Italian Popular Tales_, p. 348.]

[Footnote 61: Pitre, No. 188; Crane, p. 127. Gonzenbach, 65, _Conte Piro_. In Gonzenbach, the man does not kill the fox, which pretends to be dead, and is bilked of its promised reward, a grand funeral.]

[Footnote 62: Lou Compaire Gatet, 'Father Cat,' _Revue des Langues Romanes_, iii. 396. See Deulin, _Contes de Ma Mere L'Oye_, p. 205.]

[Footnote 63: _Boukoutchi Khan_, translated into German by Schiefner. _Memoires de l'Academie de St. Petersbourg_, 1873. With Dr. Koehler's Notes.]

[Footnote 64: Gubernatis. _Zoological Mythology_, ii. 136. Quoting Afanassieff, iv. 11. Compare a similar snake in Swahili.]

[Footnote 65: _Pantschatantra_, i. 222.]

[Footnote 66: The work of M. Cosquin's referred to throughout is his valuable _Contes de Lorraine_, Paris, 1886. A crowd of _Puss in Boots_ stories are referred to by Dr. Koehler in Gonzenbach's _Sicilianische Maerchen_, ii. 243 (Leipzig, 1870). They are Finnish, Bulgarian, Russian, and South Siberian. The Swahili and Hindu versions appear to have been unknown, in 1870, to Dr. Koehler. In 1883, Mr. Ralston, who takes the Buddhist side, did not know the Indian version (_Nineteenth Century_, Jan. 1883).]

LES FEES.

_Toads and Diamonds._

The origin of this little story is so manifestly moral, that there is little need to discuss it. A good younger sister behaves kindly to a poor old woman, who, being a fairy, turns all her words into flowers and diamonds. The wicked elder sister treats the fairy with despite: _her_ words become toads and serpents, and the younger marries a king's son.

The preference shown to the youngest child is discussed in the note on Cinderella. M. Deulin asks whether _Toads and Pearls_ is connected with the legend of Latona (Leto) and the peasants whom she changed into frogs, for refusing to allow her to drink[67]. Latona really wished to bathe her children, and the two narratives have probably no connection, though rudeness is punished in both. Nor is there a closer connection with the tales in which tears (like the tears of Wainamoinen in the _Kalewala_) change into pearls. It is an obvious criticism that the elder girl should have met the fairy first; she was not likely to behave so rudely when she knew that politeness would be rewarded. The natural order of events occurs in Grimm's _Golden Goose_ (64), where the eldest and the second son refuse to let the old man taste their cake and wine. Here, as in a tale brought by M. Deulin from French Flanders, the polite youngest son, by virtue of a Golden Goose, makes a very serious princess laugh, and wins her for his wife. Turning on a similar moral conception Grimm's _Mother Holle_ (24) is infinitely better than _Les Fees_. The younger daughter drops her shuttle down a well; she is sent after it, and reaches a land where apples speak and say, 'Shake us, we are all ripe.' She does all she is asked to do, and makes Mother Holle's feather-bed so well that the feathers (snow-flakes) fly about the world. She goes home covered with golden wages, and her elder sister follows her, but not her example. She insults the apples, is lazy at Mother Holle's, and is sent home covered with pitch. Grimm gives many variants. Mlle. L'Heritier amplifies the tale in her _Bigarrures_ (1696). The story begins to be more exciting, when it is combined, as commonly happens, with that of the substituted bride. It is odd enough that the Kaffirs have the incident of the good and bad girl, the bad girl laughs at the trees, as in Grimm's she mocks the apples (Theal, _Kaffir Folklore_, p. 49). This tale (in which there is no miracle of uttering toads or pearls) diverges into that of the _Snake Husband_, a rude _Beauty and the Beast_. The Zulus again have the story of the substituted bride ('Ukcombekcantsini,' Callaway's _Nursery Tales of the Zulus_, Natal, 1868). The idea recurs in Theal's Kaffir Collection (p. 136); in both cases the substituted bride is a beast. In Scotland the story of the _Black Bull o' Norroway_ contains the incident of the substituted bride. The Kaffirs, in _The Wonderful Horns_, have a large part of that story, but without the substituted bride, who, in Europe, occasionally attaches herself as a sequel to _Toads and Diamonds_. This is illustrated especially in Grimm's _Three Dwarfs in the Wood_ (13), where the good girl's speech is made literally golden. The bad girl, who speaks toads, marries the king's son who loves the good girl. Fragments of verse, in which the good girl tries to warn her husband, resemble those in the _Black Bull o' Norroway_. The tale is complicated by the metamorphosis of the true bride (no great change her lover would say) into 'a little duck.' She regains her shape when a sword is swung over her. The bad girl is tortured like Regulus. This is _Bushy-bride_ in Dasent's _Tales from the Norse_.

There seems to be no reason why the adventure of the good and bad sisters should merge in the formula of the substituted bride, more than in the adventure of the princess accused of bearing bestial children, or in any other. Probably Perrault felt this, and, having made his moral point, was content to do without the sequel.

_Les Fees_ is interesting then, first, as an example of a moral idea illustrated in tales even in South Africa, and, secondly (in its longer and more usual form), as an example of the manner in which any story may glide into any other. All the incidents of popular tales, like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, may be shaken into a practically limitless number of combinations.

[Footnote 67: Antoninus Liberalis, xxxv.]

CENDRILLON.

_Cinderella._

The story of Cinderella (_Cendrillon_, _Cucendron_, _Cendreusette_, _Sainte Rosette_) is one of the most curious in the history of _Maerchen_. Here we can distinctly see how the taste and judgment of Perrault altered an old and barbarous detail, and there, perhaps, we find the remains of a very ancient custom.

There are two points in _Cinderella_, and her cousin _Peau d'Ane_, particularly worth notice. First, there is the process by which the agency of a _Fairy Godmother_ has been substituted for that of a _friendly beast_, usually a connection by blood-kindred of the hero or heroine. Secondly, there is the favouritism shown, in many versions, to the _youngest child_, and the custom which allots to this child a place by the hearth or in the cinders (_Cucendron_).

Taking the first incident, the appearance in Perrault of a Fairy Godmother in place of a _friendly beast_, we may remark that this kind of change is always characteristic of the promotion of a story. Just as Indian 'aboriginal' tribes cashier their beast-ancestors ('Totems') in favour of a human ancestor of a similar name, when they rise in civilisation, so the _roles_ which are filled by beasts in savage _Maerchen_ come to be assigned to men and women in the _contes_ of more cultivated people[68]. In Cinderella, however, the friendly beast holds its own more or less in nearly all European versions, except in those actually derived from Perrault. In every shape of the story known to us, the beast is a _domesticated animal_. Thus it will not be surprising if no native version is found in America, where animals, except dogs, were scarcely domesticated at all before the arrival of Europeans.

In examining the incident of the friendly and protecting beast, it may be well to begin with a remote and barbarous version, that of the Kaffirs. Here, as in other cases, we may find one situation in a familiar story divorced from those which, as a general rule, are in its company. Theorists may argue either that the Kaffirs borrowed from Europeans one or two incidents out of a popular form of _Cinderella_, or that they happen to make use of an opinion common to most early peoples, the belief, namely, in the superhuman powers of friendly beast-protectors. As to borrowing, Europeans and Kaffirs have been in contact, though not very closely, for two hundred years. No one, however, would explain the Kaffir custom of daubing the body with white clay, in the initiatory rites, as derived from the similar practice of the ancient Greeks[69]. Among the neighbouring Zulus, Dr. Callaway found that _Maerchen_ were the special property of the most conservative class,--the old women. 'It is not common to meet with a man who is willing to speak of them in any other way than as something which he has some dim recollection of having heard his grandmother relate[70].' Whether the traditional lore of savage grandmothers is likely to have been borrowed from Dutch or English settlers is a question that may be left to the reader.

The tale in which the friendly beast of European folklore occurs among the Kaffirs is _The Wonderful Horns_[71]. As among the Santals (an 'aboriginal' hilltribe of India) we have a hero, not a heroine. 'There was once a boy whose mother that bore him was dead, and who was ill-treated by his other mothers,' the Kaffirs being polygamous. He rode off on an ox given him by his father. The ox fought a bull and won. Food was supplied out of his right horn, and the 'leavings' (as in the _Black Bull o'Norroway_) were put into the left horn. In another fight the ox was killed, but his horns continued to be a magical source of supplies. A new mantle and handsome ornaments came out of them, and by virtue of this fairy splendour he won and wedded a very beautiful girl.

Here, it may be said, there is nothing of _Cendrillon_, except that rich garments, miraculously furnished, help to make a marriage; and that the person thus aided was the victim of a stepmother. No doubt this is not much, but we might sum up _Cendrillon_ thus. The victim of a stepmother makes a great marriage by dint of goodly garments supernaturally provided.

In _Cendrillon_ the _recognition_ (anagnorisis) makes a great part of the interest. There is no anagnorisis in the Kaffir legend, which is very short, being either truncated or undeveloped.

Let us now turn to the Santals, a remote and shy non-Aryan hill-tribe of India. Here we find the anagnorisis, but in a form not only disappointing but almost cynical[72].

In the Santal story we have the cruel Stepmother, the hero,--not a heroine, but a boy,--the protecting and friendly Cow, the attempt to kill the Cow, the Flight, the great good-fortune of the hero, the Princess who falls in love with a lock of his hair, which is to play the part of Cinderella's glass slipper in the anagnorisis, and, finally, a cynically devised accident, by which the beauty of the hair is destroyed, and the hero's chance of pleasing the princess perishes. It will be noticed that the use of a lock of hair floating down a river, to be fallen in love with and help the _denouement_, is found, first, in the Egyptian _conte_ of the _Two Brothers_, written down in the reign of Ramses II., fourteen hundred years before our era.

In that story, too, the hero has a friendly cow, which warns him when he is in danger of being murdered. But the Egyptian story has no other connection with _Cendrillon_[73]. The device of a floating lock of hair is not uncommon in Bengali _Maerchen_.

From the Santals let us turn to another race, not so remote, but still non-Aryan, the Finns[74]. That the Santals borrow _Maerchen_ from their Hinduised aboriginal neighbours is not certain, but is perfectly possible and even probable. Though some theorists have denied that races borrow nursery tales from each other, it is certain that Loennrot, writing to Schiefner in 1855, mentions a Finnish fisher who, meeting Russian and Swedish fishers, 'swopped stories' with them when stormy weather made it impossible to put to sea[75]. No doubt similar borrowings have always been going on when the peasantry on the frontiers met their neighbours, and where Kaffirs have taken Hottentot wives, or Sidonians have carried off Greek children as captives, in fact, all through the national and tribal meetings of the world[76].

_The Wonderful Birch_ (Emmy Schreck, ix.) is a form of _Cinderella_ from Russian Carelia. The story has a singularly dramatic and original opening. A man and his wife had but one daughter, and one Sheep. The Sheep wandered away, the woman sought him in the woods, and she met a witchwife. The witchwife turned the woman into the semblance of the Sheep, and herself took the semblance of the woman. She went to the woman's house, where the husband thought he was welcoming his own wife and the sheep that was lost. The new and strange stepmother demanded the death of the Sheep, which was the real mother of the heroine. Warned by the Sheep, a black sheep, the daughter did not taste of her flesh, but gathered and buried the bones and fragments. Thence grew a beautiful birch tree. The man and the witchwife went to court, the witchwife leaving the girl to accomplish impossible tasks. The voice of the dead mother from the grave below the birch bade the girl break a twig from the tree, and therewith accomplish the tasks. Then out of the earth came beautiful raiment (as in _Peau d'Ane_), and the girl dressed, and went to court. The Prince falls in love with her, and detects her by means of her ring, which takes the part of the slipper. Then comes in the frequent formula of a false bride substituted by the witchwife, a number of trials, and the punishment of the witch.

Here, then, the friendly beast is but the Mother surviving in two shapes, first as a sheep, then as a tree, exactly the idea of the ancient Egyptian story of the _Two Brothers_, where Bitiou first becomes a bull, and then a persea tree[77]. In Finnish the Cinderella plot is fully developed. A similar tale, still with the beast in place of the Fairy Godmother, is quoted by Mr. Ralston from the Servian (_Vuk Karajich_, No. 32). Three maidens were spinning near a cleft in the ground, when an old man warned them not to let their spindles fall into the cleft, or their mother would be changed into a cow. Mara's spindle fell in, and the mother instantly shared the fate of Io. Mara tended the cow that had been her mother lovingly, but the father married again, and the new wife drove Mara to dwell among the cinders (_pepel_), hence she was called _Pepelluga_, cinderwench[78]. The cruel Servian stepmother had the cow slain, but not before it had warned Mara to eat none of the kindred flesh[79], and to bury the bones in the ashes of the hearth. From these bones sprang two white doves, which supplied Mara with splendid raiment, and, finally, won for her the hand of the prince, after the usual incidents of the lost slipper, the attempt to substitute the stepmother's ugly daughter, and the warning of the fowls, 'Ki erike, the right maiden is under the trough.'

In a modern Greek variant (Hahn, ii.), the Mother (not in vaccine form) is eaten by her daughters, except the youngest, who refuses the hideous meal. The dead woman magically aids the youngest from her tomb, and the rest follows as usual, the slipper playing its accustomed part.

In Gaelic a persecuted stepdaughter is aided by a Ram. The Ram is killed, his bones are buried by his _protegee_, he comes to life again, but is lame, for his bones were not all collected, and he plays the part of Fairy Godmother[80].

Turning from the Gaelic to the Lowland Scotch, we find _Rashin Coatie_ as a name under which either _Peau d'Ane_ or _Cendrillon_ may be narrated. We discovered Cendrillon as _Rashin Coatie_, in Morayshire[81]. Here a Queen does not become a _cow_, indeed, but dies, and leaves to her daughter a _Red Calf_, which aids her, till it is slain by a cruel stepmother.

The dead calfy said

_Tak me up, bane by bane
And pit me aneth yon grey stane,_

and whatever you want, come and seek it frae me, and I will
give you it.

The usual adventures of Cinderella ensue, the birds denouncing the False Bride, whose foot is pinched to make it fit the 'beautiful satin slipper' of the heroine.

In most of these versions the heroine is aided by a beast, and even when that beast is dead, it continues helpful, in one case actually coming to life again, like the ox in the South African _Maerchen_[82].

In all these thoroughly popular and traditional tales, the supernatural machinery varies much from that of Perrault, who found _Peau d'Ane_ 'difficile a croire.' But, in all the wilder tales, the machinery is exactly what we note in the myths and actual beliefs of the lower races. _They_ do not shrink from the conception of a mother who becomes a cow (like Io), nor of a cow (as in the case of Heitsi Eibib among the Hottentots), who becomes the mother of human progeny. It is not unlikely that the Scotch mother, in _Rashin Coatie_, who bequeathes to her daughter a wonder-working calf (a cow in Sicily, Pitre, 41), is a modification of an idea like that of the cannibal Servian variant[83]. Then the _Mouton_ of Madame d'Aulnoy seems like a courtly survival of the Celtic _Sharp Grey Sheep_ mixed with the _donnee_ of _Beauty and the Beast_[84]. The notion of helpful animals makes all the 'Manitou' element in Red Indian religion, and is common in Australia. The helpful calf, or sheep, bequeathed by the dying mother, reminds one of the equally helpful, but golden Ram, which aids Phrixus and Helle against their stepmother, after the death or deposition of their mother Nephele. This Ram also could speak,--

alla kai auden
andromeen proeeke kakon teras[85].

This recalls not only the Celtic _Sharp Grey Sheep_, but also Madame d'Aulnoy and her princess, 'je vous avoue que je ne suis pas accoutumee a vivre avec les moutons qui parlent.'

The older rural and popular forms of _Cinderella_, then, are full of machinery not only supernatural, but supernatural in a wild way: women become beasts, mothers are devoured by daughters (a thing that even Zulu fancy boggles at), life of beast or man is a separable thing, capable of continuing in lower forms. Thus we may conjecture that the ass's skin worn by _Peau d'Ane_ was originally the hide of a beast helpful to her, even connected, maybe, with her dead mother, and that the ass, like the cow, the calf, the sheep, and the doves of _Maerchen_, befriended her, and clothed her in wondrous raiment.

For all these antique marvels Perrault, or the comparatively civilised tradition which Perrault followed, substituted, in _Peau d'Ane_, as in _Cendrillon_, the Christian conception of a Fairy Godmother. This substitute for more ancient and less _speciosa miracula_ is confined to Perrault's tales, and occurs nowhere in purely traditional _Maerchen_. In these as in the widely diffused ballad of the _Re-arisen Mother_--

'Twas late in the night and the bairns grat,
The Mother below the mouls heard that,--

the idea of a Mother's love surviving her death inspires the legend, and, despite savage details, produces a touching effect (Ralston, _Nineteenth Century_, Nov. 1879, p. 839).

Another notable point in _Cinderella_ is the preference shown, as usual, to the youngest child. Cinderella, to be sure, is a stepchild, and therefore interesting; but it is no great stretch of conjecture to infer that she may have originally been only the youngest child of the house. The nickname which connects her with the fireside and the ashes is also given, in one form or another, to the youngest son (Sir George Dasent, for some reason, calls him 'Boots') in Scandinavian tales. Cinderella, like the youngest son, is taunted with sitting in the ashes of the hearth. This notion declares itself in the names Cucendron, Aschenpuettel, Ventafochs, Pepelluga, Cernushka[86], all of them titles implying blackness, chiefly from contact with cinders. It has frequently been suggested that the success of the youngest child in fairy tales is a trace of the ideas which prevailed when _Juengsten-Recht_, 'Junior-Right' or Borough English, was a prevalent custom of inheritance[87]. The invisible Bridegroom, of the Zulu _Maerchen_, is in hiding under a snake's skin, because he was the youngest, and his jealous brethren meant to kill him, for he would be the heir. It was therefore the purpose of his brethren to slay the young child in the traditional Zulu way, that is, to avoid the shedding of 'kindred blood' by putting a clod of earth in his mouth. Bishop Callaway gives the parallel Hawaian case of Waikelenuiaiku. The Polynesian case of Hatupati is also adduced. In Grimm's _Golden Bird_ the jealousy is provoked, not by the legal rights of the youngest, but by his skill and luck. The idea of fraternal jealousy, with the 'nice opening for a young man,' which it discovered (like Joseph's brethren) in a pit, occurs in Peruvian myth as reported by Cieza de Leon (_Chronicles of the Yncas_, Second Part). The diffusion of _Juengsten-Recht_, or _Mainete_, the inheritance by the youngest, has been found by Mr. Elton among Ugrians, in Hungary, in Slavonic communities, in Central Asia, on the confines of China, in the mountains of Arracan, in Friesland, in Germany, in Celtic countries. In Scandinavia Liebrecht adduces the Edda, '_der juengste Sohn Jarl's der erste Koenig ist_.' Albericus Trium Fontium mentions Prester John, 'qui cum fratrum suorum minimus esset, omnibus praepositus est.' In Hesiod we meet _droit de juveignerie_, as he makes Zeus the _youngest_ of the Cronidae, while Homer, making Zeus the eldest, is all for primogeniture (Elton, _Origins of English History_, ch. viii. Liebrecht, _Zur Volkskunde_).

The authorities quoted raise a presumption that _Juengsten-Recht_, an old and widely diffused law, might have left a trace on myth and _Maerchen_. If _Juengsten-Recht_ were yielding place to primogeniture, if the elders were using their natural influence to secure advantages, then the youngest child, still heir by waning custom, would doubtless suffer a good deal of persecution. It may have been in this condition of affairs that the myths of the brilliant triumph of the rightful but despised heir, Cinderella, or Boots, were developed.

On the other hand, it is obvious that the necessities of fiction demand examples of _failure_ in the adventures, to heighten the effect of the final success. Now the failures might have begun with the youngest, and the eldest might be the successful hero. But that would have reversed the natural law by which the eldest goes first out into danger. Moreover, the nursery audience of a _conte de nourrice_ is not prejudiced in favour of the Big but of the Little Brother.

These simple facts of everyday life, rather than some ancient custom of inheritance, may be the cause of the favouritism always shown to the youngest son or daughter. (Compare Ralston, _Russian Folk Tales_, p. 81. The idea of jealousy of the youngest brother, mixed up with a miscellaneous assortment of _motifs_ of folk tales, occurs in _Katha-sarit-sagara_, ch. xxxix.)

Against the notion that the successful youngest son or daughter of the _contes_ is a descendant of the youngest child who is heir by _droit de juveignerie_, it has been urged that the hero, if the heir, would 'not start from the dust-bin and the coal-hole.' But if his heirship were slipping from him, as has been suggested, the ashes of the hearth are just what he _would_ start from. The 'coal-hole,' of course, is a modern innovation. The hearth is the recognised legal position of the youngest child in Gavel-kind. 'Et la mesuage seit autreci entre eux departi, mes le ASTRE demorra al pune (ou al punee)[88].' In short, 'the Hearth-place shall belong to the youngest,' and as far as forty feet round it. After that the eldest has the first choice, and the others in succession according to age. The Custumal of Kent of the thirteenth century is the authority.

These rules of inheritance show, at least (and perhaps at most), a curious coincidence between the tales which describe the youngest child as always busy with the hearth, and the custom which bequeaths the hearth (_astre_) to the youngest child. To _prove_ anything it would be desirable to show that this rule of Gavel-kind once prevailed in all the countries where the name of the heroine corresponds in meaning to _Cendrillon_.

The attention of mythologists has long been fixed on the _slipper_ of Cinderella. There seems no great mystery in the Prince's proposal to marry the woman who could wear the tiny _mule_. It corresponds to the advantages which, when the hero is a man, attend him who can bend the bow, lift the stone, draw the sword, or the like. In a woman's case it is beauty, in a man's strength, that is to be tested. Whether the slipper were of _verre_ or of _vair_ is a matter of no moment. The slipper is of red satin in Madame d'Aulnoy's _Finette Cendron_, and of satin in _Rashin Coatie_. The Egyptian king, in Strabo and AElian, merely concluded that the loser of the slipper must be a pretty woman, because she certainly had a pretty foot. The test of fitting the owner recurs in _Peau d'Ane_, where a ring, not a slipper, is the object, as in the Finnish _Wonderful Birch tree_.

M. de Gubernatis takes a different view of Cinderella's slipper. The Dawn, it appears, in the Rig Veda is said to leave no footsteps behind her (_apad_). This naturally identifies her with Cinderella, who not only leaves footsteps, probably, but one of her slippers. M. de Gubernatis reasons that _apad_ 'may mean, not only she who has no feet, but also she who has no footsteps ... or again, she who has no slippers, the aurora having, as it appears, lost them.... The legend of the lost slipper ... seems to me to repose entirely upon the double meaning of the word _apad_, _i.e._ who has no foot, or what is the measure of the foot, which may be either the footstep or the slipper....' (_Zoolog. Myth._ i. 31). M. de Gubernatis adds that 'Cinderella, when she loses the slipper, is overtaken by the prince bridegroom.' The point of the whole story lies in this, of course, that she is _not_ overtaken. Had she been overtaken, there would have been no need for the trial with the slipper (_op. cit._ i. 161). M. de Gubernatis, in this passage, makes the overtaking of Cinderella serve his purpose as proof; on p. 31 he derives part of his proof from the statement (correct this time) that Cinderella is _not_ overtaken, 'because a chariot bears her away.' Another argument is that the dusky Cinderella is only brilliantly clad 'in the Prince's ball-room, or in church, in candle-light, and near the Prince,--the aurora is beautiful only when the sun is near.' Is the sun the candle-light, and is the Prince also the sun? If a lady is only _belle a la chandelle_, what has the Dawn to do with that?

M. Andre Lefevre calls M. de Gubernatis's theory _quelque peu aventureuse_ (_Les Contes de Charles Perrault_, p. lxxiv), and this cannot be thought a severe criticism. If we supposed the story to have arisen out of an epithet of Dawn, in Sanskrit, the other incidents of the tale, and their combination into a fairly definite plot, and the wide diffusion of that plot among peoples whose ancestors assuredly never spoke Sanskrit, would all need explanation.

In Perrault's _Cinderella_, we have not the adventure of the False or Substituted Bride, which usually swells out this and many other _contes_, and which, indeed, is apparently brought in by popular _conteurs_, whenever the tale is a little short. Thus it frequently winds up the story which Perrault gives so briefly as _Les Fees_. Among the Zulus[89], the Birds of the Thorn country warn the bridegroom that he has the wrong girl,--she is a beast (_mbulu_) in Zululand. The birds give the warning in _Rashin Coatie_[90], and birds take the same part in Swedish, Russian, German, but a dog plays the _role_ in Breton (Reinhold Koehler, _op. cit._ p. 373). In a song of Fauriel's _Chansons Romaiques_ the birds warn the girl that she is riding with a corpse. Birds give the warning in Gaelic (Campbell, No. 14).

Perrault did more than suppress the formula of the False Bride. By an artistic use of his Fairy Godmother he gave Cinderella her excellent reason for leaving the ball, not because _cupit ipsa videri_, but in obedience to the fairy dame. He made Cinderella forgive her stepsisters, and get them good marriages, in place of punishing them, as even Psyche does so treacherously in Apuleius, and as the wild justice of folk tales usually determines their doom. An Italian Cinderella breaks her stepmother's neck with the lid of a chest. But Cendrillon 'douce et bonne au debut reste jusqu'a la fin douce et bonne' (Deulin, _Contes de Ma Mere l'Oye_, p. 286). These are examples of Perrault's refined way of treating the old tales. But in his own country there survives a version of _Cendrillon_ in which a _Blue Bull_, not a Fairy Godmother, helps the heroine. From the ear of the Bull, as from his horn in Kaffir lore, the heroine draws her supplies. She is Jaquette de Bois, and reminds us of Katie Wooden cloak. Her mother is dead, but the Bull is not said to have been the mother in bestial form. (Sebillot, _Contes Pop. de la Haute Bretagne_, Charpentier, Paris, 1880, p. 15). In these versions the formula of _Cendrillon_ shifts into that of _The Black Bull o' Norroway_.

[Footnote 68: H. H. Risley, _Asiatic Quarterly_, Number III. 'Primitive Marriage in Bengal.']

[Footnote 69: Demosth. _De Corona_, 313, Harpocration, apomattein. Theal, _Kaffir Folk Lore_, p. 22.]

[Footnote 70: _Izinganekwane_, p. 1.]

[Footnote 71: Theal, p. 158.]

[Footnote 72: _Indian Evangelical Review_, Oct. 1886. The collector is Mr. A. Campbell.]

[Footnote 73: Maspero, _Contes Egyptiens_, p. 4.]

[Footnote 74: _Finnische Maerchen_, uebersetzt von Emmy Schreck. Weimar, 1887.]

[Footnote 75: Gustav Meyer, _op. cit._ p. xix.]

[Footnote 76: Theal, _op. cit._ p. 3.]

[Footnote 77: Compare the revived Ox. Callaway, _Zulu Nursery Tales_, p. 230; The _Edda_, Mallet, p. 436; _South African Folk Lore Journal_, March, 1880; Aschenpuettel (The Dove and the Hazel tree), Grimm, 21.]

[Footnote 78: In the Catalan version _Ventafochs_, fire-lighter, Italian _Cenerentola_. Deulin _Contes de Ma Mere l'Oye_, pp. 265, 266. In Emmy Schreck the Finnish girl is _Aschenbroedel_, and foul with ashes.]

[Footnote 79: Exophagy.]

[Footnote 80: This is the _Mouton_ of Madame D'Aulnoy, but _he_ is a prodigiously courtly creature, and becomes the _Beast_ who half dies for love and is revived by a kiss. 'Un joli Mouton, brebis doux, bien caressant, ne laisse pas de plaire, surtout quand on scait qu'il est roi, et que la metamorphose doit finir.' But the heroine came too late, and the gallant _Mouton_ expired.]

[Footnote 81: _Revue Celtique_, vol. iii. p. 365.]

[Footnote 82: In the Scandinavian _Katie Wooden cloak_ the buried bull does all for Katie that the Ram, or Cow, or Calf, or Fairy Godmother does for the other Cinderellas.]

[Footnote 83: Herr Koehler quotes M. Luzel's _Chat Noir_, a Breton tale, in which a stepmother kills a cow that befriends Yvonne. Within the dead cow were found two golden slippers. Then comes in the formula of the False Bride (_Rev. Celtique_, 1870, p. 373).]

[Footnote 84: Among the Basutos this happens in 'The Murder of Maciloniane.' Casalis, p. 309: 'The bird was the heart of Maciloniane.']

[Footnote 85: Apoll. Rhod. i. 256. The story of Athamas is an ingenious medley of _Maerchen_, including, as will be shown, part of _Hop o' my Thumb_.]

[Footnote 86: Gubernatis, _Zoolog. Myth._ ii. 5.]

[Footnote 87: A Zulu tale in Callaway, pp. 64, 65, is proof that this was once the Zulu custom.]

[Footnote 88: Elton, _op. cit._ p. 190.]

[Footnote 89: Callaway, p. 121.]

[Footnote 90: _Revue Celtique_, Jan., Nov. 1878, p. 366.]

RIQUET A LA HOUPPE.

_Riquet of the Tuft._