Popular Tales

by Charles Perrault

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 rôle, 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 Français (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 Märchen 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'idée toute bouddhique de l'ingratitude de l'homme opposée à la bonté 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.