(2) The idea of dropping objects which may serve as a guide or 'trail' is so natural and obvious that it is used in 'paper-chases' every day. In the Indian story[93] of Surya Bai, a handful of grains is scattered, the pearls of a necklace are used in the Raksha's Palace, in Grimm (15, Hänsel and Grethel) white pebbles and crumbs of bread are employed. The Kaffir girl drops ashes[94]. In Nennilloe Nennella (Pentamerone, v. 8) the father of the children has pity on them, and makes a trail of ashes. Bran is used on the second journey, but it is eaten by an ass[95].
(4) The children arrive at the house of an ogre, whose wife treats them kindly; the ogre, however, smells them out.
This incident, quite recognisable, is found in Namaqua Folklore (Bleek, Bushman Folk Lore). A Namaqua woman has married an elephant. To her come her two brothers, whom she hides away. 'Then the Elephant, who had been in the veldt, arrived, and smelling something, rubbed against the house.' His wife persuades him that she has slain and cooked a wether, indeed she does cook a wether, to hide the smell of human flesh.
Compare Perrault, 'L'Ogre flairoit droite et à gauche, disant qu'il sentoit la chair fraîche. Il faut, luy dit sa femme, que ce soit ce veau que je viens d'habiller que vous sentez.' But the ogre, like the blind mother of the Elephant in Namaqua, retains his suspicions. In the Zulu tale of Uzembeni (Callaway, p. 49) there is an ogress very hungry and terrible, who has even tried to eat her own daughters. She comes home, where Uzembeni is concealed, and says, 'My children, in my house here today there is a delicious odour!' As Callaway remarks, this 'Fee-fo-fum' incident recurs in Maori myth, when Maui visits Murri-ranga-whenua, and in the legend of Tawhaki, where the ogre is a submarine ogre (Grey's Polynes. Myth. pp. 34, 64). In a more familiar passage the Eumenides utter their fee-fo-fum when they smell out Orestes[96].
In the extreme north-west of America this world-wide notion meets us again, among the Dènè Hareskins (Petitot, Traditions Indiennes du Canada Nord-Ouest, Paris, 1886, p. 171). The stranger comes to strange people, 'un jeune garçon sort d'une maison et dit, Moi, je sens l'odeur humaine ... ce disant, il humait l'air, et reniflait à la manière d'un limier qui est sur une piste.' In the Aberdeenshire Mally Whuppy, we have the old
Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of some earthly one![97]
The idea of cannibalism, which inspires most of these tales, like the Indian stories of Rakshas, is probably derived from the savage state of general hostility and actual anthropophagy (Die Anthropophagie, Überlebsel im Volksglauben.' Andree, Leipzig, 1887). We know that Basutos have reverted to cannibalism in this century; in Labrador and the wilder Ojibbeway districts, Weendigoes, or men returned to cannibalism, are greatly dreaded (Hind's Explorations in Labrador, i. p. 59). There are some very distressing stories in Kohl (Kitchi Gami, p. 355-359). A prejudice against eating kindred flesh, (as against eating Totems or kindred animals and vegetables,) is common among savages. Hence the wilder South American tribes, says Cieza de Leon, bred children they might lawfully eat from wives of alien stock, the father being reckoned not akin to his children, who follow the maternal line. Thus the great prevalence of cannibalism in European Märchen seems a survival from the savage condition. In savage Märchen, where cannibalism is no less common, it needs little explanation; not that all savages are cannibals, but most live on the frontier of starvation, and have even less scruple than Europeans in the ultimate resort.
(5) Arrived at the ogre's house, Hop o' my Thumb deceives the cannibal, and makes him slay his own children.
This is decidedly a milder form of the incident in which the captive either cooks his captor, or makes the captor devour some of his own family. In Zululand (Callaway, pp. 16-18, Uhlakanyana) we find the former agreeable adventure. Uhlakanyana, trapped by the cannibal, gets the cannibal's mother to play with him at boiling each other. The old lady cries out that she is 'being done,' but the artful lad replies, 'When a man has been thoroughly done, he does not keep crying I am already done. He just says nothing when he is already done.... Now you have become silent; that is the reason why I think you are thoroughly done. You will be eaten by your children.' Callaway justly compares the Gaelic Maol a Chliobain, who got the Giant's mother to take her place in the Giant's game-bag,—with consequences (Campbell, i. 255). In Grimm's Hänsel and Grethel Peggy bakes the ogress. The trick recurs in the Kaffir Hlakanyana[98]. There are two ways of doing this trick in popular tales: either the prisoner is in a sack, and induces another person to take his place (as in the Aberdonian Mally Whuppy, and among the Kaffirs); or they play at cooking each other; or, in some other way, the captive induces the captor to enter the pot or oven, and, naturally, keeps him there. This is the device of the German Grethel and the Zulu Uhlakanyana. The former plan, of the game-bag, prevails among the South Siberian peoples of the Turkish race. Tardanak was caught by a seven-headed monster and put in a bag. He made his way out, and induced the monster's children to take his place. The monster, Jalbagan, then cooked his own children. Perrault wisely makes his ogre a little intoxicated, but he did not carry his mistake so far as to eat his children.
The expedient by which Hop o' my Thumb saves his company, and makes the ogre's children perish, differs from the usual devices of the game-bag and the oven. Hop o' my Thumb exchanges the nightcaps of himself and his brothers for the golden crowns of the ogre's daughters. But even this is not original. In the many Märchen which are melted together into the legend of the Minyan House of Athamas, this idea occurs. According to Hyginus, Themisto, wife of Athamas, wished to destroy the children of her rival Ino. She, therefore, to distinguish the children, bade the nurse dress her children in white night-gowns, and Ino's children in black. But this nurse (so ancient is the central idea of East Lynne) was Ino herself in disguise, and she reversed the directions she had received. Themisto, therefore, murdered her own children in the dusk, as the ogre slew his own daughters. M. Deulin quotes a Catalan tale, in which the boys escape from a cupboard, where they place the daughters of the ogress, and they then sleep in the daughters' bed.