Myths and Dreams

by Edward Clodd

As bearing upon the barbaric belief in the soul leaving the body at pleasure, there is a remarkable group of stories, the central idea of which is the dwelling apart of the soul or heart, as the seat of life, in some secret place, in an egg, or a necklace, or a flower, the good or evil fortunes of the soul involving those of the body. To this group the name of “Punchkin,” the title of one of the older specimens, may conveniently be given. In Miss Frere’s Old Deccan Days it takes the following form.

A Rajah has seven daughters, and his wife dying when they were quite children, he marries the widow of his prime minister. Her cruelty to his children made them run off to a jungle, where seven neighbouring princes, who were out hunting, found them, and each took one of them to wife. After a time they again went hunting, and did not come back. So when the son of the youngest princess, who had also been enchanted away, grew up, he set out in search of his mother and father and uncles, and at last discovered that the seven princes had been turned into stone by the magician Punchkin, who had shut up the princess in a tower because she would not marry him. Recognising her son, she plotted with him to feign agreement to marry Punchkin if he would tell her where the secret of his life was hidden. Overjoyed at her yielding to his wish, the magician told her that it was true that he was not as others.

“Far, far away, hundreds of thousands of miles from this, there lies a desolate country covered with thick jungle. In the midst of the jungle grows a circle of palm-trees, and in the centre of the circle stand six chattees full of water, piled one above another; below the sixth chattee is a small cage which contains a little green parrot; on the life of the parrot depends my life, and if the parrot is killed I must die. But,” he added, “this was not possible, because thousands of genii surround the palm-trees, and kill all who approach the place.”

The princess told her son this, and he set forth on his journey. On the way he rescued some young eagles from a serpent, and the grateful birds carried him until they reached the jungle, where, the genii being overcome with sleep by the heat, the eaglets swooped down. “Down jumped the prince; in an instant he had overthrown the chattees full of water and seized the parrot, which he rolled up in his cloak,” then mounted again into the air and was carried back to Punchkin’s palace. Punchkin was dismayed to see the parrot in the prince’s hands, and asked him to name any price he willed for it, whereupon the prince demanded the restoration of his father and his uncles to life. This was done; then he insisted on Punchkin doing the like to “all whom he had thus imprisoned,” when, at the waving of the magician’s wand, the whole garden became suddenly alive.

“Give me my parrot!” cried Punchkin. Then the boy took hold of the parrot, and tore off one of his wings; and as he did so the magician’s right arm fell off. He then pulled off the parrot’s second wing, and Punchkin’s left arm fell off; then he pulled off the bird’s legs, and down fell the magician’s right leg and left leg. Nothing remained of him save the limbless body and the head; but still he rolled his eyes, and cried, “Give me my parrot!” “Take your parrot, then,” cried the boy, and with that he wrung the bird’s neck, and threw it at the magician, and as he did so, Punchkin’s head twisted round, and, with a fearful groan, he died. Of course, all the rest “lived very happily ever afterwards,” as they do in the plays and the novels.

In the stories of Chundum Rajah, and of Sodewa Bai, the Hindu Cinderella, the heroine’s soul is contained in a string of golden beads. When the Ranee, jealous of her husband’s love for Sodewa Bai, asked her why she always wore the same beads, she replies: “I was born with them round my neck, and the wise men told my father and mother that they contained my soul, and that if any one else wore them I should die.” Whereupon the Ranee instructed her servant to steal the beads from the princess when she slept; then she died, but her body did not decay, and in the end she was restored to life by the recovery of her necklace. In the Bengali tale, Life’s Secret, a Rajah’s favourite wife gives birth miraculously to a boy, whose soul is bound up in a necklace in the stomach of a boal-fish. In both instances the ornaments are stolen, and while they are worn by the thieves, prince and princess alike are lifeless, whilst with the recovery of the beads life returned to each. A not unlike idea occurs in the story, Truth’s Triumph. The children of a village beauty, whom the Rajah had married, are changed into mango trees, to save them from the fury of the jealous Ranee, until the time of danger was past.

In Miss Stokes’ collection of Indian Fairy Tales, we have variants corresponding more closely to Punchkin. In Brave Hirálálbásá, a Rakshas (the common name for demon) is induced to reveal the secret of his life. He says, “Sixteen miles from here is a tree, round it are tigers and bears and other animals, on the top of it is a large flat snake, on the head of which is a bird in a cage, and my soul is in that bird.” By enchantment Hirálálbásá reached the tree and secured the cage. He pulled the bird’s limbs off, and the Rakshas’ arms and legs fell off; then he wrung its neck, and the Rakshas fell dead. And in the tale of The Demon and the King’s Son, from the same collection, the prince falls in love with the monster’s daughter, who is dead during the day and alive in the night. The prince asks what she would do, if whilst she is dead, her father were to be killed? She tells him it is impossible for any one to kill her father, for his life is in a mainá (starling), which is in a nest in a tree on the other side of the sea, and if, she adds, any one in killing the bird spilt the blood on the ground, a hundred demons would be born from it. The prince reached the other side, and taking the mainá, proceeded to kill it, but first wrapt it in his handkerchief, that no blood might be spilt. The demon, who was far away, knew that the bird was caught, and he set out at once to avert his doom. The story ends, like the preceding one, with the dismemberment of the bird, and the consequent death of the demon.

The nearest approach to tales similar to these in the Buddhist Birth-stories, is in one or two isolated cases, when the Karma of a human being is spoken of as immediately transferred to an animal.

In Tales from the Norse the one in most striking correspondence with the Punchkin group is that of The giant who had no heart in his body. The monster turns six princes and their wives into stone, whereupon the seventh and only surviving son, Boots, sets out to avenge their fate. On his journey he saves the lives of a raven, a salmon, and a wolf, and the wolf, having eaten his horse, compensates Boots by carrying him to the giant’s castle, where the lovely princess who is to be his bride is confined. She promises to find out where the giant keeps his heart, and by blandishments and divers arts known to the fair sex both before and since the time of Delilah, she worms out the secret. He tells her that “far, far away in a lake lies an island; on that island stands a church; in that church is a well; in that well swims a duck; in that duck is an egg; and in that egg lies my heart, you darling!” Boots, taking fond farewell of the princess, rides on the wolf’s back to the island. Then the raven he had befriended flies to the steeple and fetches the key of the church; the salmon, in like return for kindness, brings him the egg from the well where the duck had dropped it.

Then the wolf told him to squeeze the egg, and as soon as ever he did so, the giant screamed out. “Squeeze it again,” said the wolf; and when the prince did so, the giant screamed still more piteously, and begged and prayed so prettily to be spared, saying he would do all that the prince wished if he would only not squeeze his heart in two. “Tell him if he will restore to life again your six brothers and their brides, you will spare his life,” said the wolf. Yes, the giant was ready to do that, and he turned the six brothers into kings’ sons again, and their brides into kings’ daughters. “Now squeeze the egg in two,” said the wolf. With questionable morality, doing evil that good might come, Boots squeezed the egg to pieces, and the giant burst at once.