In an Abruzzian version the fisherman has but one son, born after his wife has consumed broth made of the magical fish. The bitch, having eaten the head, brings forth a puppy, and the mare, having eaten the flesh, a foal. Swords sprout up in the garden where the bones have been buried. The boy, grown to manhood, fights a seven-headed dragon and rescues the princess who was to have been its prey; and the story ends with his confutation of the fraudulent charcoal-burner in the ordinary way.[65.2]
Three Swabian variants substitute the Life-token for the Supernatural Birth. Two of them, almost exactly the same, display, so far as they go, some similarity to the Argyllshire tale mentioned in a previous chapter. Three brothers depart on their travels together. At the first finger-post they separate, each of them sticking his staff into the post until he return, so that either, coming back to the place, would know whether the others had gone home. Hans, the hero, takes service with a nobleman as a shepherd, and is cautioned never to go into the forest; for three giants dwell there, and they will kill him. One Sunday he goes into the forest and finds a castle. Entering it, he meets with no one until he gets to the last room of the top story, where is an enchanted princess. She gives him a pipe, by blowing into which he can make all things dance that hear him. He afterwards drives the sheep repeatedly into the forest, to feed on the excellent pasture there. At length the giants catch him on successive days; but Hans blows in his pipe and sets them dancing, and then takes the opportunity to kill them. He cuts out their tongues and eyes, which he wraps in his handkerchief. The princess whom he thus frees asks him to marry her and become king; but he excuses himself at present on the ground that his time of service is not up. After a while, the maiden’s father, being tired of waiting, issues a proclamation for her deliverer. The nobleman, to whom Hans has foolishly confided his victory, sends his own son to court, with the bodies of the giants, to claim the reward. Hans, however, by means of the tongues and eyes, easily convicts him of falsehood. But before permitting Hans to marry the princess, the king requires him to win at the sport of running at the ring. The giants’ servants in the castle furnish him with horse and splendid clothes, and instruct him in the game, so that he wins. But the king, under pretence of sending him to a monastery to learn, shuts him in an enchanted castle, haunted by thirteen devils. Hans with his pipe dances the devils to death, and the king can no longer withhold the promised reward of the princess’ hand and the kingdom. After some years, Hans makes up his mind to go home, whither his brothers have preceded him. So he puts on his old shepherd-clothing, and is despised by his brothers, one of whom has become a general, and the other a merchant. He endures all their indignities for some six weeks, until his consort, wearying of his absence, comes to look for him. He still pretends stupidity, and does all sorts of foolish things; but she recognises him through it all, and induces him to resume his royal garb, to the confusion of his father and brothers, who have been ill-using him.[67.1]
Here the Life-token has dwindled into a mere token of the brothers’ having returned home, and all its magic is lost. The remaining variant presents no special points of interest, save that it too is obviously in a state of decay. There are three brothers who depart together. The life-token is a sword stuck in a fir-tree, to become spotted with rust if its owner die. The hero obtains helpful animals (a bear, a wolf and a lion) in the old familiar manner. The dragon is seven-headed; the coachman is the impostor, and is found out by the want of the tongues. What became of the hero’s brothers nobody knows.[67.2]
Finally, there is a type, not very common, which includes only the three incidents of the Supernatural Birth, the Life-token, and the Dragon-slaying. The Portuguese legend of Saint George may be taken as the typical form. The saint is represented as one of the twin sons of a fisherman who caught the same fish three days successively. The first two days it had begged for life; but the third day it directed that it should be cut into six pieces, two for the fisherman’s wife, two for his mare, and two to be buried behind his garden-gate. From the last-mentioned pieces two lances grow. Saint George and his brother start on their adventures together, but soon part, the saint giving his brother a branch of basil-gentle, and saying: “When it withers, come in search of me, because I shall then be in danger.” George rescues the princess from the dragon; and her father desires to make him general and give him the maiden in marriage. At this critical moment his brother perceives the branch withering, and hurries off to find him. The difficulty is that George, by virtue of vows he has taken, cannot marry. His brother comes in time to accommodate his tender conscience, by taking the lady himself and leaving George the honours of canonisation.[68.1] In a story from Lorraine a different turn is given to the characters of the two younger brothers, but one which indicates a close relation with the Portuguese legend: they are the impostors who pretend to have slain the dragon. Here the fisherman catches the Queen of the Fishes repeatedly, until his wife insists on eating her majesty. The fish requests that some of its bones be placed under the bitch, some under the mare, and the rest under a rose-tree in the garden. Three puppies are found under the bitch, three foals under the mare, and three boys beneath the rose-tree. The life-tokens are the roses on the tree, one of which falls when misfortune happens to either of the brothers. The first brother takes all three dogs; and, with their help, in a three days’ conflict he quells the seven-headed beast and delivers the princess. She thereupon invites him to come home with her; but he prefers to return to his father’s house, carrying the beast’s heads. The king issues a proclamation for him. The youngest brother personates him; but the heads he brings turn out to be of wood, with which the real victor has deceived him. The king throws him into prison, and condemns him to be hanged the next day. His rose falls from the tree. The next brother goes to rescue him; and the king condemns him to the like punishment. His rose falls. The real victor then takes the seven heads and the seven tongues to the castle. For his sake his brothers are spared. He weds the princess, and they wed two of her maids of honour.[69.1]
The mention of the seven tongues, as it were by accident, is a reminiscence of what I hold to be the ancient and typical form of the Imposture-episode. A similar survival occurs in another tale from Lorraine, wherein the dragon and the Medusa-witch are confounded together. In this tale there are likewise three brothers, sons of a fisherman who had given three drops of blood of a certain big fish to his wife, three to his mare, and three to his bitch, and had preserved three in a glass as the life-token. The eldest brother, seeking adventures, enters the castle of a seven-headed witch, and is forthwith changed into a toad. The blood at home boils in the glass; and the second brother sets out, only to meet with the same reverse. The third brother conquers the witch with the assistance of a charcoal-burner, and cuts out her tongues. Now, he who slew the witch, and brought her tongues in proof, would have the castle and marry the king’s daughter. The charcoal-burner bethinks himself of his folly in not taking the tongues. To secure them, he kills the youth; and, exhibiting them to the king, he succeeds in obtaining the princess.[70.1] Charcoal-burners are the favourite villains of the Perseus märchen; but it is rarely they are successful. Nor, indeed, is it often that the folktale descends to a style of art worthy of Miss Braddon.
CHAPTER IV.
THE INCIDENT OF THE SUPERNATURAL BIRTH IN MÄRCHEN.
We have found the story of Perseus to consist of three leading trains of incident, namely, the Supernatural Birth, the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head, and the Rescue of Andromeda. In a large number of modern variants, however, the hero is duplicated, or even tripled. This introduces a fresh element, that of the Life-token. And in nearly all the modern European variants the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head undergoes a modification, and suffers a displacement to the end of the narrative. Other incidents are of course frequently mixed up with these, or even substituted for one or other of them. But, speaking broadly, the tale may be taken to consist essentially of the four elements I have named, which I now propose to examine separately.
The first in order is the Supernatural Birth. Stories of supernatural birth may be said to have a currency as wide as the world. Heroes of extraordinary achievement or extraordinary qualities were necessarily of extraordinary birth. The wonder or the veneration they inspired seemed to demand that their entrance upon life, and their departure from it, should correspond with the impression left by their total career. Tales of supernatural birth are accordingly so numerous that it is hopeless to give an adequate account of them here. The utmost that can be done is to lay before the reader a few of the most interesting and important examples analogous to those we have been considering in previous chapters.
If we examine stories of the Danae type, or The King of the Fishes type, we find that when, as usually in the former case, a maiden is the hero’s mother, only one child is born of her. It is sufficiently remarkable for a virgin to bring forth one child. But when, as in the greater number of variants of the latter type, a married woman is the mother, the prodigy must be placed beyond doubt by a double or threefold birth, and often by its repetition upon other animals who partake of the impregnating influence. This influence is generally conveyed in food. The peoples among whom the stories originated were either savages, or in a stage of civilisation but little advanced beyond that of savagery. They credited every marvel because they knew little of the properties of nature. Of the organisation of their own bodies they entertained the most rudimentary notions. Whether from an analogy between the normal act of impregnation and that of eating and drinking, or because they had learned that at least one mode of operating effectively on the organism, for purposes alike of injury and healing, was by drugs taken through the mouth, this was the favourite method of supernatural impregnation. In the stories we have already considered, fish or fruit has been the kind of food oftenest employed. Similar incidents are very numerous outside the Perseus group.
Among Slavonic nations, the agency of a fish, even in the special form in which it appears in the story of The King of the Fishes, is not uncommon as an opening to other tales. Several are cited by Leskien and Brugman in the notes to their Litauische Märchen; and of them we may mention one or two. A Serbo-Croatian tale exhibits an eel cut into four pieces, of which the woman, the mare and the bitch eat one each and bear twins; the remaining piece, being buried, grows up into two golden swords. In a tale from the seaboard of Croatia a fisherman cuts a fish into three, giving a part each to his wife, the mare and the bitch, and hanging the scales in the chimney. The latter are forgotten in the sequel; but twins are born to the woman and the animals. A king in a Czech tale causes two fish with golden and silver fins to be caught. He eats one and his consort the other, with the result that she bears two boys, one with a golden, the other with a silver, star on his forehead. One of Afanasief’s Russian tales relates how a beggar advised a king to assemble boys and girls of seven years old, and let the maidens spin and the boys in one night knit together a net with which a carp having golden fins is to be caught for the queen to eat. The dog, however, gets the intestines, and the three mares the water wherein the fish has been washed; while the cookmaid gnaws the bones. Queen, cook and dog bear each a son named Ivan, of whom the dog’s son is the strongest; and he makes a successful raid underground on the realm of the monsters. The mares bear a foal each. A childless king, in another of Afanasief’s tales, builds a bridge over a pathless swamp; and when it is finished he sends a servant to hide and listen to the remarks of the wayfarers. Two beggars approach. The one praises the king; the other says: “One ought to wish him posterity.” And he goes on to prescribe a silken draw-net knit by night before cock-crow. This, if let down into the sea, would catch a golden fish; and the queen, eating thereof, would bear a son. A Polish tale represents a Gipsy woman as counselling a noble, but barren, lady to catch a fish full of roe in the sea, and to eat the roe at sunset at full-moontide. Her chambermaid, however, tastes it also, and, like her mistress, bears a son.[74.1] In Bohemia the tale is related of a childless monarch, who issues a proclamation offering a reward to any one who will find means whereby he may obtain an heir. An old woman presents herself and offers her help, on condition of being maintained until her death in honour in the royal palace. Her terms being accepted, she hastens to the brook which flows through the royal gardens and draws forth a gold-fish and a silver-fish. When these are cooked the queen eats the gold-fish and the beldam the silver-fish. The former bears a son on whose forehead beams a golden star, and the latter a son similarly adorned with a star of silver.[74.2]