Chapter XIX: The Medusa-Witch in Märchen

{95}

The stories analysed in the first three chapters are abundant evidence that the form assumed by the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head in modern _märchen_ is that of a sojourn in a witch’s dwelling, resulting in death or petrifaction by enchantment, followed by rescue and the annihilation of the witch. This incident is not confined, any more than the others with which we have dealt, to tales of the Perseus cycle--that is, to tales wherein one or more of the other three principal incidents of the Perseus _märchen_ occur. In company with the incident of the Life-token it is frequently found in stories belonging to the type of _The Two Sisters who envied their Cadette_.[95.1] From many of such stories, however, the Life-token appears to have dropped. The Greek _märchen_ of _The Tzitzinæna_ is an example. There, as in the _Arabian Nights_, a king overhears three maidens boasting what they could do if they could only marry the royal confectioner, the royal cook, and the king himself respectively. The boast of the youngest sister is that she would bear her lord three children--Sun, Moon, and Star. The king gratifies their desires, to the annoyance of his mother, who plays the part of the envious sisters in {96} Galland’s tale. She so arranges matters that when the children (two fair boys and a girl) are born they are thrown into the sea; and after the third abortion, as the king is led to believe, the unfortunate queen is shut up in a foul and noisome prison. The children are found by a solitary monk, and brought up until they are old enough to shift for themselves. He then gives them money and sends them into the world. They settle in the town; and there the eldest buys from a Jew a mysterious casket which contains a green, winged horse. The midwife who had been charged with the destruction of the children now discovers them still living; and in order to put an end to them, she excites in the maiden a desire to possess the golden apple watched in a certain garden by forty dragons. With his enchanted horse the eldest brother obtains for her not only the golden apple, but also, on a second journey, a golden bough on which all the birds of the world gather to sing. He is then sent for the Tzitzinæna to explain what the birds say. On arriving at the Tzitzinæna’s house the horse directs him to call it. The creature replies, “Marble”; and the youth is petrified to the knees. The calls are exchanged until he becomes marble to the girdle. He then remembers that on bidding himself and his brother and sister farewell the monk had given him some hairs from his beard, with directions to burn one of them when in need. He burns one accordingly; and the monk appears, and calls the Tzitzinæna, compelling it to bring a bottle of water of immortality and sprinkle the youth and his steed. By the power of this water they are loosed from the spell. But they have not been the Tzitzinæna’s only victims. In obedience to the monk it delivers them all, and among them the hero’s brother, who had been lost. {97} The Tzitzinæna, thus captured, like the Talking Bird, is the means of revealing the truth to the king and restoring to him his wife and children.[97.1] The story is obviously imperfect, whole episodes, like the loss of one of the brothers, being referred to but not detailed. Hence there can be little doubt that it once contained the Life-token. It is doubtless a waif from the coffee-houses of the Levant stranded on Hellenic shores. In a variant from Epirus the errands are to obtain the Flying Horse of the Plain and the Beauty of the Land. The latter had turned many men into stone; but she goes with the hero, becomes his wife, and contrives the solution of the plot, as in the typical tale.[97.2]

In the former of these two cases the transformation is effected by the witch’s word; in the latter we are left in doubt. A German tale from the Odenwald brings us nearer to Galland’s version in this respect. There, as in the Greek stories, a king, to his mother’s disgust, marries beneath him, with the usual catastrophe. The children are two girls and a boy. A branch of the Tree with Golden Fruits is the object of desire. The hero takes it; but on his way back he hears some one calling him, and turning to reply he is changed into a pillar of salt. This fate also befalls the elder sister on seeking the Talking Bird in the same garden where the Tree grew. The younger, fetching the Leaping Water, resists the temptation, and by sprinkling the water on the two pillars recovers her brother and sister.[97.3] A Swabian tale belonging to the same cycle presents the task as the disenchantment of a castle in the {98} forest by fetching thence a certain blackbird in a cage. This could only be done between eleven and twelve at noon. The first of the princes having entered the castle allows the precious hour to pass while he is listening to the lovely music that resounds through the ensorcelled chambers. Noon strikes, the doors close, and he is caught fast in the trap. The second prince fares no better; but their sister finds the bird and hastens out before the fatal hour, thus undoing the spell and restoring to their proper human form a lion, a bear, and a number of apes which inhabited the building.[98.1]

The villain of a Catalonian variant is no less a personage than the Devil himself, to whom the heroine had been given by her father. A king found her in the Devil’s den, and stole her away, to marry her. It is the Devil who arranges the catastrophe by means of forged letters to and from her husband when she gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl. The secondary villain is a witch bribed by “the ladies of the people” to excite the maiden’s longing, first, for a tree bearing leaves of all colours, next, for water of all colours, and lastly, for a bird with plumes of all colours, which sings all songs. These are to be found in the garden of the Castle of Go-and-not-return. The maiden’s brother, by the help of the wise Solomon, who dwells in a castle on the way, succeeds in the quest of the first two; but disregarding the counsels which have been given him, he takes the wrong bird on his third journey and remains enchanted at the gate, until rescued by his sister. The bird, here also, once captured, becomes the means of retrieving the happiness of the family.[98.2]

The Kabyle tale of _The Children and the Bat_ makes the {99} villain out of the heroine’s barren fellow-wife. The children are seven sons and a daughter. They are carried by the envious woman into the forest one after another as they are born. An old woman induces the maiden to ask her brothers to get a bat; and an old man directs the brothers one after another to a certain date-palm on the sea-shore. “What wild beast comes here?” asks the bat from the top of the tree. “Go to sleep, old head,” answers the lad. The bat changes the adventurer’s gun into a bit of wood, and renders the adventurer himself “microscopic.” When she has thus lost all her brothers the maiden goes to seek the bat. She does not answer the creature, but waits until it is asleep. Then she climbs the tree, seizes the bat, and compels it to restore her brothers, promising in return to clothe it in silver and gold. The bat conducts the band of children back to their father, saves them from partaking of the poison offered to them by their stepmother, and reunites them to their parents. The stepmother is bound to a horse’s tail and dragged to death, while the bat is returned to its tree and clad in silver and gold.[99.1] A version from Mirzapur comprises the Supernatural Birth. The children are three in number, two lovely boys and a girl, born of the king’s favourite wife, in consequence of eating three fruits given by a fakir. Their mother’s fellow-wives play the usual treacherous part at their birth. When, years after, the wicked queens find out that the children are still alive and dwelling in a miraculous palace, the gift of the friendly fakir, they send to persuade the maiden (it is always the woman) to ask for a nightingale that dwelt in a certain jungle, could sing a thousand notes, and could talk like a man. The fakir warns the elder brother not to {100} answer when the bird cries out to him, else he will be turned into stone. The youth succeeds; and as in the other variants, the evil devised by the wicked queens recoils on their own heads, for it is by means of the bird that the truth is brought to light and punishment inflicted.[100.1]

A Lesbian tale looks like an ill-remembered variant of the Perseus group. A king, we are told, who had thirty-nine sons, longed for a daughter. A son, however, was born, and at the same time his favourite mare foaled, and the colt was allotted to the boy. When he was sixteen the brothers all set out together to seek their fortune. The youth, while his brothers slept, conquered forty dragons which had come to draw water at a spring where they were reposing. The next night he slays a seven-headed beast at another fountain, and cuts out its tongues. The following day the band of brethren separated, and the youngest pursued his way alone. A sorceress advises him how to pass a monster whom he will meet in the way, and warns him that he will reach the castle of another witch, who will offer him all sorts of fruits, of which he may partake with safety, but he must beware of drinking the wine she will present, otherwise she will petrify him. Instead, he is to give it to his dog, and he will see it instantly changed to marble. The witch, however, will have power to recall the animal to life. The youth follows her directions, and finds his brothers already turned to statues in the witch’s palace. He compels her to restore them as well as his dog, and having put her to death leads his brothers back to their father.[100.2]

We may reasonably suspect that the Life-token has originally been part of all these variants, as in Galland’s {101} tale. It is needless to follow the instances where it still remains an integral portion of the narrative. Another point is worthy of notice. In most cases the object of search is a bird. So in a tale told by the Armenian immigrants of the Land beyond the Forest a king’s three sons set out to obtain a wonderful nightingale, the only thing wanting to complete the beauty of a church that he has built. The eldest son, however, settles down comfortably as the husband of a king’s daughter, and shirks the quest. The second is found by a gigantic Moor stretched at rest in a grassy glade of the forest, and asked: “What do you want here?” On his replying, “Nothing,” the Moor spits upon him and turns him to stone. The youngest son, returning successful with the nightingale, comes to the same spot, and is confronted by the Moor with the same question. He asks in turn, What are all these many stones he sees around him? The Moor answers that they were men whom his spittle had turned into stone, and threatens him with the same fate. Thereupon the nightingale began to sing, and the Moor fell down upon the ground, a heap of ashes. The stones promptly became men once more, the king’s second son among them. It is sad to relate that in the sequel, in spite of this deliverance, the second son joined his elder brother in betraying the youngest, and leaving him to perish in the depths of a fountain, while they hurried home with the prize. Fortunately the youth found his way out, vindicated his claims, married the fairy to whom the nightingale belonged, forgave his brothers, and they all lived happy ever after.[101.1]

In the romance of _Hatim Taï_ the enchantment is caused by failing to kill the bird, and dissolved by its death. The {102} renowned Kaiumarath, when hunting, found a diamond weighing three hundred miskals. To preserve it in safety he founded the bath of Bagdad, where he placed the stone in the body of a caged parrot. On the chair within the hall was laid a bow with arrows. Every visitor was allowed to shoot three arrows at the parrot, and if he hit it right through the head he would break the enchantment; otherwise he would become a marble statue. The mysterious mansion was uninhabited save by those statues; and the foregoing information was conveyed by an inscription over the door. Hatim failed twice, and became stone to his middle. Persevering, however, he put his trust in God, took aim, and shutting his eyes let fly the third arrow. It pierced the parrot’s brain, when the whole enchantment disappeared amid thunder, lightning, and whirlwinds. All the marble statues started into life, and falling at Hatim’s feet, vowed to serve him. He took the diamond, which was the object of his search, and thus accomplished the last of his seven adventures.[102.1]

The search is not always for a bird. The hero of a Gipsy tale from Transylvania undertakes to deliver the daughter of a good _urme_ from a wicked _urme_ who has carried her off. In the wicked _urme’s_ service he has to perform a number of tasks: among them to find a ring which has been dropped into a fountain and hang it up below a round mirror in the large hall. The water in the fountain is boiling hot; but he plunges without harm, having previously bathed in the milk of the _urme’s_ cow. The real danger was a voice that sounded in his ear as he hung up the ring: “Thou art a handsome youth, a handsome youth. Only look in the glass!” Had he complied {103} with this flattering suggestion he would have been turned into stone. He resisted it, however, to encounter the still more flattering offer from the _urme_ to wed him. It was necessary before doing this that he should cut her up and throw the pieces into a Medean kettle, whence she would issue the most beautiful woman on earth, and they would then live happy and contented together. But he had already seen too much of this lady to trust himself with her; so having obeyed her instructions to cut her up, he threw the pieces into the boiling fountain instead of the kettle, thus destroying her and the enchanted castle with her. The maiden whom he came to free drew from her head some hairs, and letting them fly in the wind, she sang:

“Ye who have been changed to stone, Beast or human creature’s son, Hither, hither, every one!”

At once all the stones which had been men and beasts, but had had the misfortune to look in the magical mirror, returned to their proper forms and danced around the maiden for joy. It remained to obviate the only other danger. The _urme_ had left a son, a dragon who was to have wedded the maiden. He was luckily absent; but before he went away his mother had cut his hair and thrown the pieces among the stones. These they gathered up and burnt. The maiden then prevailed on her deliverer to come home with her and be her husband. They therefore all returned to the good _urme_ in the speediest manner by swallowing the ashes of the dragon’s hair and wishing themselves at their destination.[103.1]

This of course is the ordinary bride-quest of fairy tales. {104} The destined lady is in the power of a magician, who may be her father or merely her master. The hero, usually by her help, performs various tasks, which end in his winning her and destroying, or foiling, the magician. The transformation by the magician of his captives is not, perhaps, a very common incident in the plot. More frequently they are slain and their heads adorn in truly savage fashion the palisades of his dwelling. In a story from the neighbourhood of Bologna, they are turned into statues of salt.[104.1] Elsewhere, as in a Breton tale, they are changed into trees.[104.2]

The incident of the Medusa-witch in the foregoing stories, while in some cases it approaches more closely to the classical saga, lacks the special development gained in the modern Perseus-_märchen_. Tales, however, are not wanting in European tradition where the incident in that form appears divorced from the other incidents of the complete _märchen_. The Portuguese tale of _The Tower of Ill Luck_ is an example. A boy sets forth on adventures accompanied by a horse and a lion, and arrives at the Tower of Ill Luck whence no one ever returns. An old woman within tells him to put his animals in the stable, and gives him a fine hair to tie them up with by rolling it round their necks. When he has done this she challenges him to wrestle. Finding himself overpowered he calls his beasts. But the hag cries out: “Be thickened, thin hair, into a strong coil, binding your horse and lion!” Immediately the hair becomes a thick iron chain which effectually prevents the animals from rescuing their master; and he is at length killed. The same result attends the second brother’s venture. The third is too clever. He cuts up the hair {105} into little bits and throws them into the sea. Hence, when he calls, his animals are free to help him. He compels the witch to give him a salve to anoint his brothers’ bodies and a scent for them to smell. The salve and the scent revive them; and they feel no compunction in burying the hag alive.[105.1] A story obtained in the Orkney Islands gives the three animals as a hound, a hawk, and a horse. The lad finds a castle, blows the horn, and the door opens. He walks in, but meeting with no one, he sits down by the fire and eats a good supper, which is already prepared. At midnight in comes the Dräglin’ Hogney. “He sat down over against the young man and glowered at him. Then said the Dräglin’ Hogney: ‘Does yer horse kick ony?’ ‘Ou ay,’ said the young man. ‘There’s a hair to fling ower him.’ The young man flung it over his horse. ‘Does yer hound bite ony?’ ‘Ou ay,’ said the young man. ‘There’s a hair to fling ower him.’ Again, ‘Does yer hawk pick ony?’ ‘Ay, ay,’ said the young man. ‘There’s a hair to fling ower him.’ With that the Dräglin’ Hogney _whiecked_ (whisked) frae the tae side to the tither, till he fell upon the young man and killed him.” His next brother fares no better. But the third brother throws the hairs on the fire. “What’s that crackin’?” asks the Dräglin’ Hogney each time as he hears the hair in the fire. “It’s the craps o’ the green wud come yer waysay,” replies the lad. When by the help of his animals he has slain the Dräglin’ Hogney he “ransacks the castle, finds the enchanter’s wand, disenchants his two brothers, their horses, hawks and hounds, divides the spoil, sends for their father, and, in the old wind-up of a Scotch fairy tale, they live happy, and dee happy, and never drink {106} out of a dry cappy.”[106.1] A Slavonic story in which the two elder brothers, serving at a certain castle and warned against entering the forest, successively persist in doing so, seems to belong to this type. Both youths are petrified, with their dogs, but are rescued by their youngest brother.[106.2]

In Buddhist literature the story takes a much more civilised shape. The Bodisat is the eldest of three brothers, sons of Brahmadatta, king of Benares. The mother of the two elder was dead; and the mother of the youngest having plotted to secure the succession for her son, the two elder, by their father’s counsel, withdrew from the city. Their brother, however, joined them, being unwilling to be left behind. In the course of their wanderings they came into the Himalayas. While resting one day the Bodisat sent the youngest down to a pool near at hand for water. “Now that pool had been delivered over to a certain water-sprite by Vessavana, who said to him: ‘With the exception of such as know what is truly godlike, all that go down into this pool are yours to devour. Over those that do not enter the waters, you have no power granted to you.’ And thenceforth the water-sprite used to ask all who went down into the water what was truly godlike, devouring every one who did not know.” He put the question to Prince Sun, the Bodisat’s younger brother, who replied: “The sun and moon.” “_You_ don’t know,” said the monster, and pulled him down into the depths of the water. Prince Moon, the Bodisat’s elder brother, being sent after the first, makes the equally foolish answer: “The four quarters of heaven,” and {107} is likewise imprisoned in the water-sprite’s abode. The Bodisat himself then suspecting the truth, girt with his sword and armed with his bow, tracked his brothers’ footsteps to the water and waited beside the pool. Finding that he did not enter it the demon appeared in the shape of a forester to the Bodisat and inquired why he did not bathe. But the Bodisat recognised him and charged him with seizing his brothers. The demon explained that he had done so because they did not know what was godlike. Subsequently the Bodisat declares that they only are godlike “who shrink from sin, the white-souled, tranquil votaries of Good.” The demon, pleased with this, offers to give up one of his brothers; and the Bodisat chooses the younger. When taken to task for this choice by the ogre, he justifies it on the ground that it was on this boy’s account that they had sought refuge in the forest, and that not a soul would believe him if he were to give out that the child had been devoured by a demon. The water-sprite admits his wisdom; and “in token of his pleasure and approval he brought forth the two brothers and gave them both to the” Bodisat. Then the latter undertook the demon’s conversion, which happily effected, he continued to dwell at that spot under the reformed monster’s protection, until one day he read in the stars (a primitive but accurate kind of court journal) that his father was dead. “Then taking the water-sprite with him, he returned to Benares and took possession of the kingdom, making Prince Moon his viceroy, and Prince Sun his generalissimo. For the water-sprite he made a home in a pleasant spot and took measures to ensure his being provided with the choicest garlands, flowers and food,” so that he was under no temptation to return to his evil courses. The Bodisat {108} “himself ruled in righteousness until he passed away to fare according to his deeds.”[108.1]

It is abundantly clear that the European tales I have cited cannot have been derived from this highly moral _Játaka_, in which nobody is punished, but on the contrary things are made comfortable all round--even for the demon. The story must have been found in a more savage form, and fashioned by the early teachers--perhaps by Gautama himself--into an apologue that would have done no dishonour to a Christian apostle.

To examine every kind of enchantment current in _märchen_ would be an endless task. In the classical story, as well as in a large number of modern _märchen_, petrification is the result of the evil spell. This is softened in the _Játaka_, and in some other tales, to mere imprisonment; while metamorphosis into trees or into brute forms is the result in other cases. Petrifaction, or change into stones or rocks, is a fate whereto not merely human beings are liable at the hands of supernatural powers: with the hero his horse and other animals undergo this misfortune. In a totally different cycle of stories--that of _The Magical Steed_--petrifaction is occasionally practised on the horse only. It is then done as a means of preservation for use when wanted. In the intervals between the hero’s tasks his enchanted pony vanishes, sometimes of its own accord, sometimes also by the hero’s appointment. “Now,” said the pony in an Irish tale cited in a previous chapter, “strike a blow with your rod of druidism upon me, and make of me a rock of stone, and whatever time at all you are in need of me, you have nothing to do but strike another {109} blow on me, and I am up as I was before.”[109.1] Everything in the world is according to savage belief subject to the mysterious energies of the wizard. In the remains of prehistoric superstition imbedded in the Irish folktales we get a truer view of Druidism than that conveyed to us by classical writers, who interpreted the religion of the Celts by their own more advanced polytheism. The Druids were in fact shamans, innocent, as I have already pointed out, of any systematic philosophy.

Lastly, we may notice one of the most interesting “properties” possessed by the Medusa-witch, namely, the hair she gives the hero to bind his dogs withal. It appears in many of the tales, though it is not always used in the same way. A Russian story, whether strictly belonging to the Perseus cycle I am not able to say, relates that “Ivan Dévich (Ivan the servant-maid’s son) meets a Baba Yaga, who plucks one of her hairs, gives it to him, and says: ‘Tie three knots and then blow.’ He does so, and both he and his horse turn into stone. The Baba Yaga places them in her mortar, pounds them to bits, and buries their remains under a stone. A little later comes Ivan Dévich’s comrade, Prince Ivan. Him also the Yaga attempts to destroy, but he feigns ignorance, and persuades her to show him how to tie knots and to blow. The result is that she becomes petrified herself. Prince Ivan puts her in her own mortar, and proceeds to pound her therein, until she tells him where the fragments of his comrade are, and what he must do to restore them to life.”[109.2]

In the glorious _mabinogi_ of _Kulhwch and Olwen_ the hair {110} is put to its more ordinary use. Among the tasks laid upon Kulhwch as a condition precedent to his marriage with Olwen, the fair daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr, is that of procuring a leash made from the beard of Dillus Varvawc, the son of Eurei, for Drudwyn, the cub of Greid, the son of Eri. No other leash in the world would hold the cub; and for this purpose it was to be plucked with wooden tweezers while Dillus Varvawc was yet alive, otherwise it would be brittle. The episode of the quest of this leash furnishes an explanation of a snatch of song, probably an old popular rhyme, imbedded in the tale and attributed to King Arthur.[110.1] Here it is the supernatural strength of the hair which constitutes its value, as in the stories already passed in review in this and earlier chapters. So too Kerza, in a Slavonic tale, takes a hair from the long white beard of a dwarf magician and therewith binds the magician’s wicked wife, who has taken the form of a wooden pillar the better to carry out her evil ends, and binds her so effectually that she is thenceforth unable to resume her proper shape, or to use her magical powers.[110.2]

A different example of the power of a hair is found in the _Arabian Nights_, where the king’s daughter in defence of the Second Calendar draws a hair from her head, and waving it in the air mutters over it for a while, until it becomes a trenchant sword-blade, with which to cut in twain the Ifrit.[110.3] The Princess Labám in a Hindu tale pulls out a hair from her head and gives it to the hero. Her father has imposed on him the task of dividing a thick tree-trunk with a waxen hatchet. “To-morrow,” she said, {111} “when no one is near you, you must say to the tree-trunk, ‘The Princess Labám commands you to let yourself be cut in two by this hair.’ Then stretch the hair down the edge of the wax hatchet’s blade.” And we are told that “the minute the hair that was stretched down the edge of the hatchet blade touched the tree-trunk, it split into two pieces.”[111.1] A similar quality is that of the hair of the Giant of the Mountain, as related on the island of Zante. By its means, on touching the mountain it opens and admits the Giant into his own kingdom.[111.2]

The hair, of course, in all these tales, though severed from the person of the magician, is still in invisible union with him, and is the depositary of his undivided might. Its relation to its original owner is made clear in another story from Zante where the king’s son finds two hairs from the three-headed snake he is destined to subdue. At the proper moment he binds them on his hands, and they draw him direct to the sea-shore over-against an island on which the monster has made his lair. The youth crosses the water, slays and flays the dragon, and brings its hide and horns to the Lady of Earth and Sea, thus completing his tasks and winning her as his bride: an unhappy match, for the masterful dame ends by calling the waters upon the land and drowning every human creature, while she hovers aloft in the air looking on. She then, by sowing stones, creates a new race of men, whom she rules, mistress of the whole world, from her hereditary throne.[111.3]