Of all Perrault's tales Riquet is the least popular. Compared with the stories of Madlle. L'Heritier or of the Comtesse de Murat, even Riquet is short and simple. But it could hardly be told by a nurse, and it would not greatly interest a child. We want to know what became of the plain but lively sister, and she drops out of the narrative unnoticed. The touch of the traditional and popular manner in the story is the love of a woman redeeming the ugliness of a man. In one shape or another, from the Kaffir Bird who made Milk, or Five Heads, to what was probably the original form of Cupid and Psyche, this is the fundamental notion of Beauty and the Beast[91]. But Perrault hints that the miracle was purely 'subjective.' 'Some say that the Princess, reflecting on the perseverance of her lover, and all his good qualities, ceased to see that his body was deformed, and his face ugly.' There is therefore little excuse for examining here the legends of ladies, or lords, who marry a Tick (in Portugal), a Frog (in Scotland and India), a Beaver (in North America), a Pumpkin (in Wallachia), an Iron Stove (in Germany), a Serpent (in Zululand), and so forth. These tales are usually, perhaps, of moral origin, and convey the lesson that no magic can resist kindness. The strange husbands or wives are enchanted into an evil shape, till they meet a lover who will not disdain them. Moral, don't disdain anybody. Some have entertained angels unawares. But this apologue could only have been invented when there was a general belief in powers of enchantment and metamorphosis, a belief always more powerful in proportion to the low culture of the people who entertain it. In the Kaffir tale, where the girl disenchants the Crocodile by licking him (kissing, perhaps, being unfamiliar), the man who comes out of the crocodile skin merely says that the girl's 'power' (her native magical force) is greater than that of 'the enemies of his father's house,' who had enchanted him (Theal, The Bird who made Milk). This idea may and does exist apart from the notion, which so commonly accompanies it, of a taboo, or prohibition on freedom of intercourse between the lover and the lady, either of whom has been disenchanted by the other.
If the original and popular basis of this kind of story was moral, the moral was strangely coloured by the fancy of early men. In Perrault little but the moral, told in a gallant apologue, remains. It may be compared with a Thibetan story, analysed by M. Gaston Paris[92].
[91] Theal's Kaffir Folk Lore, p. 37.
[92] Revue Critique, July, 1874.
Le Petit Poucet.
Hop o' my Thumb.
Perrault's tale of Le Petit Poucet has nothing but the name in common with the legend of Le Petit Poucet (our 'Tom Thumb') on which M. Gaston Paris has written a learned treatise. The Poucet who conducts the Walloon Chaur-Poce, our 'Charles's Wain,' merely resembles Hop o' my Thumb in his tiny stature, and little can be gained by a comparison of two personages so unlike in their adventures (Gaston Paris, Mém. de la Société de Linguistique, i. 4, p. 372).
In Hop o' my Thumb, as Perrault tells it, there are many traces of extreme antiquity.
The incidents are (1) Design of a distressed father and mother to expose their children in a forest. (2) Discovery and frustration of the scheme by the youngest child, whose clue leads him and his brethren home again. (3) The same incident, but the clue (scattered crumbs) spoiled by birds. (4) Arrival of the children at the house of an ogre. They are entertained by his wife, but the ogre discovers them by the smell of human flesh. (5) Hop o' my Thumb shifts the golden crowns of the ogre's children to the heads of his brethren, and the ogre destroys his own family in the dark. (6) Flight of the boys, pursued by the ogre in Seven-Leagued Boots. (7) There is a choice of conclusion. In one (8) Hop o' my Thumb steals the boots of the sleeping ogre, and gets his treasures from the ogre's wife. (9) Hop o' my Thumb steals the boots and by their aid wins court favour. Throughout the tale the skill of an extremely small boy is the subject of admiration.
(1) The opening of the story has nothing supernatural or unusual in it. During the famines which Racine and Vauban deplored, peasants must often have been tempted to 'lose' their children (Sainte-Beuve, Port Royal, vi. 153; Mémoires sur la Vie de Jean Racine. A Genève, M.DCCXLVII, pp. 271-3).