Asbjörnsen’s New Series gives a variant in which a Troll who has seized a princess tells her that he and all his companions will burst, as did the heartless giant, when there passes above them “the grain of sand that lies under the ninth tongue in the ninth head” of a certain dragon. The grain of sand is found and passed over them, when the Troll and all his brood are destroyed. In the Gaelic stories, for which we are indebted to the skill of an early worker in this field, the late Mr. J. F. Campbell, that of the Young King of Easaidh Ruadh locates the secret thus: “There is a great flagstone underneath the threshold. There is a wether under the flagstone. There is a duck in the wether’s belly, and an egg in the duck, in the egg is my soul.” In the Sea-Maiden there is a “great beast with three heads, which cannot be killed until an egg is broken which is in the mouth of a trout, which springs out of a crow, which flies out of a hind, which lives on an island in the middle of the loch.”
In his valuable collection of Russian Folk-Tales, which is enriched by comparative notes, Mr. Ralston supplies some interesting variants of Punchkin. Koshchei, called “the immortal or deathless,” is merely one of the many incarnations of the dark spirit which takes so many monstrous shapes in folk-tales. Sometimes his death, that is, the object with which his life is indissolubly connected, does exist within his body. In one story he carries off a queen, for whom her three sons, one after another, go in search. Prince Ivan, the youngest, at last discovers where his mother dwells, and she at the approach of Koshchei hides her son away. The monster sniffs the blood of a Russian, and inquires if her son has not been with her. She assures him it is only the Russian air in his nostrils. Then after talking to him affectionately on one thing and another, she asks where his death is, and he tells her that, “under an oak is a casket, in the casket is a hare, in the hare is a duck, in the duck an egg, in the egg is my death.” Prince Ivan found the egg, and reached his mother’s house with it. Presently Koshchei flew in and said, “Phoo, phoo; no Russian bone can the ear hear or the eye see, but there’s a smell of Russia here.” Then Prince Ivan came out from his hiding place, and, holding up the egg, said, “There is your death, oh Koshchei!” then he smashed it, and Koshchei fell dead. In another story Koshchei is killed by a blow on the forehead from the mysterious egg. Mr. Ralston also quotes a Transylvanian Saxon story concerning a witch’s life, which is a light burning in an egg inside a duck that swims on a pond inside a mountain, and she dies when the light is put out. In the Bohemian story of the Sun-horse a warlock’s strength lies in an egg in a duck, which is within a stag under a tree. A seer finds the egg and sucks it. Then the warlock becomes as weak as a child, “for all his strength had passed into the seer.”
In Servian folk-tale the strength of a baleful being who had stolen a princess lies in a bird which is inside the heart of a fox, and when the bird was taken out of the heart and set on fire, that moment the wife-stealer falls down dead, and the prince regains his bride. From the same source we have the tale of the Golden-haired Twins, with an incident akin to that in Punchkin. When the king’s stepmother buries the twins whom she had stolen, there spring from the spot where they lie trees with golden leaves and blossoms. The king’s admiration of them aroused her jealousy, and she had them cut down, but eventually his golden-haired princes are restored to him.
Thus far the illustrations have been drawn solely from the folk-tales of the widespread Indo-European races, but they are not confined to these. From non-Aryan sources we have the Tatar story of the demon-giant who kept his soul in a twelve-headed snake carried in a bag on his horse’s back. The hero finds out the secret, kills the snake, and the giant dies. In one of the Samoyed tales a man had no heart in his body, and could recover it only on restoring to life a woman whom he had killed. Then the man said to his wife, “Go to the place where the dead lies; there you will find a purse, in that purse is her soul; shake the purse over her bones, and she will come to life.” The wife did as she was ordered, and the woman revived, whereupon her son dashed the heart to the ground, and the man died.[75]
More elaborate than these are the tales from The Thousand and One Nights. In Seyf-el-Mulook the jinnee’s soul is enclosed in the crop of a sparrow, and the sparrow is imprisoned in a small box, and this is in seven other boxes which are put into seven chests; these are enclosed in a coffer of marble that is sunk in the ocean surrounding the world. By the aid of Suleyman’s seal-ring Seyf-el-Mulook raises the coffer, and extricating the sparrow, strangles it, whereupon the jinnee’s body is converted into a heap of black ashes. In some tales not included by Galland or Lane, which Mr. Kirby has translated and edited under the title of the New Arabian Nights, we have a variant of the above under the title of Joadar of Cairo and Mahmood of Tunis. Joadar is bent on releasing his enchanted betrothed, which he does by also strangling a sparrow, the ogre being simultaneously dissolved into a heap of ashes.
The most venerable illustration of the leading idea in the Punchkin group is however found, though in more subtle form, in the Egyptian tale of the Two Brothers. This is of great value on account of its high antiquity, and, moreover, specially interesting as recording an incident similar to that narrated in the life of Joseph. It is contained in the D’Orbiney papyrus preserved in the Bibliothèque Impériale, the date being about the fourteenth or fifteenth century B.C.
There were two brothers, Anepou and Satou, joined as one in love and labour. One day Satou was sent to fetch seed-corn from Anepou’s house, where he found his brother’s wife adorning her hair. She urged him to stay with her, but he refused, promising, however, to keep her wickedness secret. When Anepou returned at even, she, being afraid, “made herself to seem as a woman that had suffered violence,” and told him exactly the reverse of what had happened. Anepou’s wrath was kindled against Satou, and he went out to slay him; but Satou called on Phra to save him, and the god placed a river between the brothers, so that when day dawned Anepou might hear the truth. At sunrise Satou tells his story, and, mutilating himself, he says that he will leave Anepou and go to the valley of the cedar, in the cones of which he will deposit his heart, “so that if the tree be cut his heart will fall to the earth, and he must die.”
For us the value of these folk-tales lies in the relics of barbaric notions concerning the nature of man and his relation to external things which they preserve. They have amused our youth-hood; they may instruct our manhood. But if we go to the solar mythologists for their interpretation, we shall learn from Sir G. W. Cox that the “magician Punchkin and the heartless giant are only other forms of the Panis who steal bright treasures from the gleaming west,” that “Balna herself is Helen shut up in Ilion ... the eagles the bright clouds,”[76] and from Professor de Gubernatis that the duck is the dawn and the egg the sun.
These venerable tales have a larger, richer meaning than this, expressive of the wonder deep-seated in the heart of man. Like the “drusy” cavity in granite rock which, when broken open, reveals beautiful prisms of topaz and beryl, the folk-tales disclose under analysis that thought, now crystallised, which confuses ideas and objects, illusions and realities, substances and shadows.