Note on Chapter XXXIX.
In a Norwegian tale, called “The Widow’s Son,” page 295 of Thorpe’s Yule-Tide Stories, will be found an incident closely resembling the pursuit of Śṛingabhuja by Dhúmaśikha. The widow’s son has, contrary to the orders of a Troll, in whose house he found himself, entered several chambers, in one of which he found a thorn-whip, in another a huge stone, and a water-bottle. In the third he found a boiling copper kettle, with which he scalded his finger, but the Troll cured it with a pot of ointment. In the fourth room he found a black horse in a stall, with a trough of burning embers at its head, and a basket of hay at its tail. The youth thought this cruel, so he changed their position. The horse, to reward him, informed him that the Troll on his return would certainly kill him, and then continued, “Lay the saddle on me, put on the armour, and take the whip of thorn, the stone, and the water-flask and the pot of ointment, and then we will set out.” When the youth mounted the horse, it set off at a rapid rate. After riding some time, the horse said—“I think I hear a noise; look round, can you see anything?” “A great many are coming after us, certainly a score at least,” answered the youth. “Ah! that is the Troll,” said the horse, “he is coming with all his companions.” They travelled for a time until their pursuers were gaining on them. “Throw now the thorn whip over your shoulder,” said the horse,—“but throw it far away from me.” The youth did so, and at the same moment there sprang up a large thick wood of briars. The youth now rode on a long way, while the Troll had to go home to fetch something wherewith to hew a road through the wood. After some time the horse again said, “Look back, can you see anything now?” “Yes, a whole multitude of people” said the youth, “like a church congregation.” “That is the Troll, now he has got more with him, throw out now the large stone, but throw it far from me.” When the youth had done what the horse desired, there arose a large stone mountain behind them. So the Troll was obliged to go home after something with which to bore through the mountain; and while he was thus employed, the youth rode on a considerable way. But now the horse bade him again look back; he then saw a multitude like a whole army, they were so bright, that they glittered in the sun. “Well that is the Troll with all his friends,” said the horse. “Now throw the water-bottle behind you, but take good care to spill none on me.” The youth did so, but notwithstanding his caution he happened to spill a drop on the horse’s loins. Immediately there arose a vast lake, and the spilling of a few drops caused the horse to stand far out in the water; nevertheless he at last swam to the shore. When the Trolls came to the water, they lay down to drink it all up, and they gulped and gulped it down till they burst. (Folk-lore demons experience great difficulty in crossing water.) “Now we are quit of them,” said the horse.
In Laura von Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen, Vol. II, p. 57, we find a similar incident. In the story of Fata Morgana, a prince, who carries off a bottle filled with her perspiration, but imprudently wakes her by kissing her, is pursued by her with two lions. He throws three pomegranates behind him: the first produces a river of blood, the second a thorny mountain, the third a volcano. This he does by the advice of his horse, who is really Fata Morgana’s brother transformed by magic: see also Vol. I, p. 343; cp. also the 79th tale in Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen (sixteenth edition in one volume) Die Wassernixe.
In Orient und Occident, Vol. II, p. 113, Dr. Reinhold Köhler, in his remarks on the West Highland Stories collected by J. F. Campbell, compares the story of Agniśikha with the second story in Campbell’s collection, entitled: “The Battle of the Birds.” In this a king’s son wishes to marry the youngest daughter of a giant. The giant sets him three tasks to do; to clean out a stable, to thatch it with feathers, and to fetch eggs from a magpie’s nest in the top of a tree more than five hundred feet high. All these tasks he accomplishes by the help of the young lady herself. In the last task she makes a ladder of her fingers for him to ascend the tree by, but in so doing she loses her little finger. The giant requires the prince to choose his wife from among three sisters similarly dressed. He recognizes her by the loss of the little finger. When bed-time came, the giant’s daughter told the prince that they must fly, or the giant would kill him. They mounted on the gray filly in the stable. But before starting the daughter cut an apple into nine shares; she put two at the head of the bed, two at the foot, two at the door of the kitchen, two at the house-door, and one outside the house. The giant awoke and called “Are you asleep?” several times, and the shares answered “No.” At last he went and found the bed empty and cold, and pursued the fugitive couple. At the break of day the giant’s daughter felt her father’s breath burning her back. She told the prince to put his hand in the horse’s ear, and fling what he found behind him. He found a sprig of sloe, flung it behind him, and produced a wood twenty miles long. The giant had to go back for his axe and wood-knife. In the middle of the day the prince finds in the ear of the filly a piece of gray stone. This produces twenty miles of gray rock behind them. The giant has to go back for his lever and mattock. The next thing, that the prince finds and flings behind him, is a bladder of water. This produces a fresh-water loch twenty miles broad. In it the giant is happily drowned. The rest of the story has no bearing upon the tale of Śṛingabhuja. Köhler compares a story in William Carleton’s stories of the Irish peasantry. Here there is a sprig, a pebble and a drop of water producing a wood, a rock and a lake. He compares also a Norwegian story, Ashbjörnsen, No. 46, and some Swedish stories collected by Hylten Cavallius and G. Stephens. The three tasks are very different in the different forms of the tale. The ladder of fingers is only found in the Celtic form.
It is only in the Gaelic and Irish forms that the objects thrown behind to check pursuit are found in the ear of the horse.
In the latter form of the story of the Mermaid, Thorpe’s Yule-Tide Stories, p. 205, we have the pursuit with much the same incidents as in our text. See also Ralston’s remarks on the story in our text at pp. 132 and 143 of his Russian Folk-Tales. Cp. also Veckenstedt’s Wendische Sagen, p. 216. An Indian parallel will be found in Miss Frere’s Old Deccan Days, pp. 62 and 63. A Modern Greek one in Bernhard Schmidt’s Griechische Märchen, pp. 76–79.
Cp. also for the tasks the story of Bisara in Kaden’s Unter den Olivenbäumen, and that of Die schöne Fiorita. Herr Kaden aptly compares the story of Jason and Medea. Another excellent parallel is furnished by the story of Schneeweiss-Feuerroth in the same collection, where we have the pursuit much as in our text.
The pursuit and the tasks are found in the tale called La Montagne Noire, on p. 448 of Melusine, a periodical which appeared in the year 1878, and in Branca-flor, No. XIV in Coelho’s Contos Populares Portuguezes, and in Gaal’s Märchen der Magyaren, p. 60. The tasks are found in the Pentamerone of Basile, Vol. I, p. 226, and in Vol. II, p. 186; in Gaal, Märchen der Magyaren, p. 182, (the title of the tale is Die dankbaren Thiere; some grateful ants are found at page 339;) in Grössler’s Sagen aus der Grafschaft Mansfeld, pp. 60 and 61; in Waldau’s Böhmische Märchen, pp. 18, 142, 262; in Kuhn’s Westfälische Märchen, Vol. II. p. 249, frogs, ants, and wasps help the hero. Cp. for the pursuit Liebrecht’s translation of the Pentamerone of Basile, Vol. I, pp. 74–76 and 160.
[1] Compare the lichi in the XVth of Miss Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, and the páyasa in the XVIth Sarga of the Rámáyaṇa. See also Sicilianische Märchen, page 269, and Bernhard Schmidt’s Griechische Märchen, pp. 104, 117 and 120. The beginning of this tale belongs to Mr. Baring-Gould’s Gold-child root. Another parallel is to be found in Kaden’s Unter den Olivenbäumen, p. 168. See also Sagas from the Far East, p. 268; Birlinger, Aus Schwaben, p. 105. See Volsunga Saga in Hagen’s Helden-Sagen, Vol. III, pp. 8 and 9.
[2] Kshetra here means “a holy field” or sacred spot.
[3] This part of the story reminds one of the Clerk’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
[4] See Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 80 where numerous parallels are adduced. Cp. also Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen, Vol. I, p. 199.
[5] Compare the story of “The Golden Lion” in Laura von Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen, Vol. II, p. 76, where the lady places a white cloth round her waist. See Dr. Köhler’s note on the passage. Compare also the hint which Messeria gives to her lover in the Mermaid, Thorpe’s Yule Tide Stories, p. 198, and the behaviour of Singorra on page 214. See also “The Hasty Word,” Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 368, and The “Water King and Vasilissa the Wise”, p. 128; Veckenstedt’s Wendische Märchen, pp. 256 and 258, and Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 408 and Wirt Sikes’s British Goblins, p. 39. The washing of the hero by a cheṭí is quite Homeric, (Odyssey XIX, 386.) In a Welsh story (Professor Rhys, Welsh Tales, p. 8) a young man discovers his lady-love by the way in which her sandals are tied. There are only two to choose from, and he seems to have depended solely upon his own observation.
[6] A khárí = about 3 bushels.
[7] Compare the way in which Psyche separated the seeds in the Golden Ass of Apuleius, Lib. VI. cap X, and the tasks in Grimm’s Märchen, Nos. 62, 186, and 193. A similar incident is found in a Danish Tale, Swend’s Exploits, p. 353 of Thorpe’s Yule-Tide Stories. Before the king will allow Swend to marry the princess, he gives him a task exactly resembling the one in our text. He is told to separate seven barrels of wheat and seven barrels of rye, which are lying in one heap. The ants do it for him, because he had on a former occasion crumbled his bread for them. See also the story of the beautiful Cardia, Gonzenbach’s Sicilianische Märchen, p. 188. The hero has first to eat a cellar full of beans; this he accomplishes by means of the king of the ravens, his brother-in-law. He next disposes of a multitude of corpses by means of another brother-in-law, the king of the wild beasts; he then stuffs a large number of mattresses with feathers by the help of a third brother-in-law, the king of the birds. See also Miss Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, Tale XXII, and the note at the end of this chapter. So in No. 83 of the Sicilianische Märchen the ants help Carnfedda because he once crumbled his bread for them.
[8] i. e. Śiva.
[9] A forest in Kurukshetra sacred to Indra and burnt by Agni the god of fire with the help of Arjuna and Kṛishṇa.
Ἕκτορ, ἀτὰρ σύ μόι ἐσσι πατὴρ καὶ πότνια μήτηρ
ἠδὲ κασίγνητος, σὺ δέ μοι θαλερὸς παρακοίτης.
[11] I. e., like an arrow in speed.
[12] For this part of the story see Sicilianische Märchen, No 14, with Dr. Köhler’s note.
[13] In Ovid’s Metamorphoses VIII, 855, the dominus asks Mestra, who has been transformed into a fisherman, if she has seen herself pass that way.
[14] Compare the story of “die kluge Else,” the 34th in Grimm’s Kinder- und Hausmärchen, where the heroine has a doubt about her own identity and goes home to ask her husband, and No. 59 in the same collection. Cp. also Campbell’s Tales from the West Highlands, Vol. II, p. 375, where one man is persuaded that he is dead, another that he is not himself, another that he is dressed when he is naked. See also the numerous parallels given in Ralston’s Russian Folk-Tales, p. 54., Liebrecht (Zur Volkskunde, p. 128) mentions a story in which a woman persuades her husband, that he is dead. See also Bartsch’s Sagen, Märchen, und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg, Vol. I, p. 508. In Prym and Socin’s Syrische Märchen, No. LXII, page 250, the flea believes himself to be dead, and tells every one so.
[15] Cp. Hagen’s Helden-Sagen, Vol. II, p. 167, where Ake makes his wife Wolfriana intoxicated with the object of discovering her secret.
[16] Reading avadishyáma. I find that this is the reading of a MS. in the Sanskrit College.