A modern novelist has boasted that her books are read ‘from Tobolsk to Tangiers.’ This is a wide circulation, but the widest circulation in the world has probably been achieved by a story whose author, unlike Ouida, will never be known to fame. The tale which we are about to examine is, perhaps, of all myths the most widely diffused, yet there is no ready way of accounting for its extraordinary popularity. Any true ‘nature-myth,’ any myth which accounts for the processes of nature or the aspects of natural phenomena, may conceivably have been invented separately, wherever men in an early state of thought observed the same facts, and attempted to explain them by telling a story. Thus we have seen that the earlier part of the Myth of Cronus is a nature-myth, setting forth the cause of the separation of Heaven and Earth. Star-myths again, are everywhere similar, because men who believed all nature to be animated and personal, accounted for the grouping of constellations in accordance with these crude beliefs. [{87}] Once more, if a story like that of ‘Cupid and Psyche’ be found among the most diverse races, the distribution becomes intelligible if the myth was invented to illustrate or enforce a widely prevalent custom. But in the following story no such explanation is even provisionally acceptable.
The gist of the tale (which has many different ‘openings,’ and conclusions in different places) may be stated thus: A young man is brought to the home of a hostile animal, a giant, cannibal, wizard, or a malevolent king. He is put by his unfriendly host to various severe trials, in which it is hoped that he will perish. In each trial he is assisted by the daughter of his host. After achieving the adventures, he elopes with the girl, and is pursued by her father. The runaway pair throw various common objects behind them, which are changed into magical obstacles and check the pursuit of the father. The myth has various endings, usually happy, in various places. Another form of the narrative is known, in which the visitors to the home of the hostile being are, not wooers of his daughter, but brothers of his wife. [{88}] The incidents of the flight, in this variant, are still of the same character. Finally, when the flight is that of a brother from his sister’s malevolent ghost, in Hades (Japan), or of two sisters from a cannibal mother or step-mother (Zulu and Samoyed), the events of the flight and the magical aids to escape remain little altered. We shall afterwards see that attempts have been made to interpret one of these narratives as a nature-myth; but the attempts seem unsuccessful. We are therefore at a loss to account for the wide diffusion of this tale, unless it has been transmitted slowly from people to people, in the immense unknown prehistoric past of the human race.
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Before comparing the various forms of the myth in its first shape—that which tells of the mortal lover and the giant’s or wizard’s daughter—let us give the Scottish version of the story. This version was written down for me, many years ago, by an aged lady in Morayshire. I published it in the ‘Revue Celtique’; but it is probably new to story-comparers, in its broad Scotch variant.
NICHT NOUGHT NOTHING.
There once lived a king and a queen. They were long married and had no bairns; but at last the queen had a bairn, when the king was away in far countries. The queen would not christen the bairn till the king came back, and she said, ‘We will just call him Nicht Nought Nothing until his father comes home.’ But it was long before he came home, and the boy had grown a nice little laddie. At length the king was on his way back; but he had a big river to cross, and there was a spate, and he could not get over the water. But a giant came up to him, and said, ‘If you will give me Nicht Nought Nothing, I will carry you over the water on my back.’ The king had never heard that his son was called Nicht Nought Nothing, and so he promised him. When the king got home again, he was very happy to see his wife again, and his young son. She told him that she had not given the child any name but Nicht Nought Nothing, until he should come home again himself. The poor king was in a terrible case. He said, ‘What have I done? I promised to give the giant who carried me over the river on his back, Nicht Nought Nothing.’ The king and the queen were sad and sorry, but they said, ‘When the giant comes we will give him the hen-wife’s bairn; he will never know the difference.’ The next day the giant came to claim the king’s promise, and he sent for the hen-wife’s bairn; and the giant went away with the bairn on his back. He travelled till he came to a big stone, and there he sat down to rest. He said,
‘Hidge, Hodge, on my back, what time of day is it?’ The poor little bairn said, ‘It is the time that my mother, the hen-wife, takes up the eggs for the queen’s breakfast.’
The giant was very angry, and dashed the bairn on the stone and killed it.
. . . . .
The same adventure is repeated with the gardener’s son.
. . . . .
Then the giant went back to the king’s house, and said he would destroy them all if they did not give him Nicht Nought Nothing this time. They had to do it; and when he came to the big stone, the giant said, ‘What time of day is it?’ Nicht Nought Nothing said, ‘It is the time that my father the king will be sitting down to supper.’ The giant said, ‘I’ve got the richt ane noo;’ and took Nicht Nought Nothing to his own house and brought him up till he was a man.
The giant had a bonny dochter, and she and the lad grew very fond of each other. The giant said one day to Nicht Nought Nothing, ‘I’ve work for you to-morrow. There is a stable seven miles long and seven miles broad, and it has not been cleaned for seven years, and you must clean it to-morrow, or I will have you for my supper.’
The giant’s dochter went out next morning with the lad’s breakfast, and found him in a terrible state, for aye as he cleaned out a bit, it aye fell in again. The giant’s dochter said she would help him, and she cried a’ the beasts of the field, and a’ the fowls o’ the air, and in a minute they a’ came, and carried awa’ everything that was in the stable and made a’ clean before the giant came home. He said, ‘Shame for the wit that helped you; but I have a worse job for you to-morrow.’ Then he told Nicht Nought Nothing that there was a loch seven miles long, and seven miles deep, and seven miles broad, and he must drain it the next day, or else he would have him for his supper. Nicht Nought Nothing began early next morning and tried to lave the water with his pail, but the loch was never getting any less, and he did no ken what to do; but the giant’s dochter called on all the fish in the sea to come and drink the water, and very soon they drank it dry. When the giant saw the work done he was in a rage, and said, ‘I’ve a worse job for you to-morrow; there is a tree seven miles high, and no branch on it, till you get to the top, and there is a nest, and you must bring down the eggs without breaking one, or else I will have you for my supper.’ At first the giant’s dochter did not know how to help Nicht Nought Nothing; but she cut off first her fingers and then her toes, and made steps of them, and he clomb the tree, and got all the eggs safe till he came to the bottom, and then one was broken. The giant’s dochter advised him to run away, and she would follow him. So he travelled till he came to a king’s palace, and the king and queen took him in and were very kind to him. The giant’s dochter left her father’s house, and he pursued her and was drowned. Then she came to the king’s palace where Nicht Nought Nothing was. And she went up into a tree to watch for him. The gardener’s dochter, going to draw water in the well, saw the shadow of the lady in the water, and thought it was herself, and said, ‘If I’m so bonny, if I’m so brave, do you send me to draw water?’ The gardener’s wife went out, and she said the same thing. Then the gardener went himself, and brought the lady from the tree, and led her in. And he told her that a stranger was to marry the king’s dochter, and showed her the man: and it was Nicht Nought Nothing asleep in a chair. And she saw him, and cried to him, ‘Waken, waken, and speak to me!’ But he would not waken, and syne she cried,
‘I cleaned the stable, I laved the loch, and I clamb the tree,
And all for the love of thee,
And thou wilt not waken and speak to me.’The king and the queen heard this, and came to the bonny young lady, and she said,
‘I canna get Nicht Nought Nothing to speak to me for all that I can do.’
Then were they greatly astonished when she spoke of Nicht Nought Nothing, and asked where he was, and she said, ‘He that sits there in the chair.’ Then they ran to him and kissed him and called him their own dear son, and he wakened, and told them all that the giant’s dochter had done for him, and of all her kindness. Then they took her in their arms and kissed her, and said she should now be their dochter, for their son should marry her.
And they lived happy all their days.
In this variant of the story, which we may use as our text, it is to be noticed that a lacuna exists. The narrative of the flight omits to mention that the runaways threw things behind them which became obstacles in the giant’s way. One of these objects probably turned into a lake, in which the giant was drowned. [{92}] A common incident is the throwing behind of a comb, which changes into a thicket. The formula of leaving obstacles behind occurs in the Indian collection, the ‘Kathasarit sagara’ (vii. xxxix.). The ‘Battle of the Birds,’ in Campbell’s ‘Tales of the West Highlands,’ is a very copious Gaelic variant. Russian parallels are ‘Vasilissa the Wise and the Water King,’ and ‘The King Bear.’ [{93a}] The incident of the flight and the magical obstacles is found in Japanese mythology. [{93b}] The ‘ugly woman of Hades’ is sent to pursue the hero. He casts down his black head-dress, and it is instantly turned into grapes; he fled while she was eating them. Again, ‘he cast down his multitudinous and close-toothed comb, and it instantly turned into bamboo sprouts.’ In the Gaelic version, the pursuer is detained by talkative objects which the pursued leave at home, and this marvel recurs in Zululand, and is found among the Bushmen. The Zulu versions are numerous. [{93c}] Oddly enough, in the last variant, the girl performs no magic feat, but merely throws sesamum on the ground to delay the cannibals, for cannibals are very fond of sesamum. [{93d}]
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Here, then, we have the remarkable details of the flight, in Zulu, Gaelic, Norse, Malagasy, [{93e}] Russian, Italian, Japanese. Of all incidents in the myth, the incidents of the flight are most widely known. But the whole connected series of events—the coming of the wooer; the love of the hostile being’s daughter; the tasks imposed on the wooer; the aid rendered by the daughter; the flight of the pair; the defeat or destruction of the hostile being—all these, or most of these, are extant, in due sequence, among the following races. The Greeks have the tale, the people of Madagascar have it, the Lowland Scotch, the Celts, the Russians, the Italians, the Algonquins, the Finns, and the Samoans have it. Now if the story were confined to the Aryan race, we might account for its diffusion, by supposing it to be the common heritage of the Indo-European peoples, carried everywhere with them in their wanderings. But when the tale is found in Madagascar, North America, Samoa, and among the Finns, while many scattered incidents occur in even more widely severed races, such as Zulus, Bushmen, Japanese, Eskimo, Samoyeds, the Aryan hypothesis becomes inadequate.
To show how closely, all things considered, the Aryan and non-Aryan possessors of the tale agree, let us first examine the myth of Jason.