CHAPTER VIII.
THE LIFE-TOKEN IN TALE AND CUSTOM.
The life-tokens we have met with in previous chapters may be divided into two classes, namely, such as have some original connection with the hero, and such as are merely arbitrary. Of the first, the most widespread and important is the tree that grows up from some portion of the magical fish. In The King of the Fishes and in the corresponding Norman tale the tree is a rose-tree growing, in the one case from the buried scales, in the other from the buried bones. In one of the stories from Lorraine it will be remembered that some of the fish’s bones were buried under a rose-tree, and there the babes are subsequently found. Their life-tokens are not the tree, but three roses growing upon it. In one of Grimm’s German tales we find two golden lilies growing from two pieces of the fish. Two cypresses arise from the fish’s tail in the Greek story. In the Hungarian Gipsy tale, where the mother becomes pregnant by drinking from an urme’s breast, the urme drops of her milk into two holes in the ground, whence the life-tokens, two oak-trees, spring. The mermaid, in a Highland märchen, gives twelve grains, of which three are for the fisher’s wife and produce three boys, and three are to be planted and produce trees of a kind unspecified. Equally, doomed to death at the hands of a Rakshasi, her fellow-wife, gives her son in a golden vessel a small quantity of her own breast-milk, which will become red if his father be killed, and more deeply red if she herself be slain.[4.1]
In both these cases there has been originally an organic connection between the token and the person whose condition is indicated. Such a connection is not common outside the Perseus cycle. Usually there is no more connection traceable between the hero and his life-token than that subsisting between an owner and his property, sometimes not so much. At most it is founded in the planting by him, or at the time of his birth, of the tree that serves as the token. A remnant of organic connection, however, appears in the Panjâbi story about Prince Lionheart. This personage was born in consequence of his mother’s eating some barleycorns given her by a fakir. When the prince bids farewell to his retainer, the knife-grinder, on whom he has bestowed a kingdom and a bride, he gives him a barley-plant as a life-token. He afterwards gives, in similar circumstances, a barley-plant each to his other retainers, the blacksmith and the carpenter. His instructions are that these plants be carefully tended and watered, for so long as they flourish he will be alive and well; but if they droop, misfortune will be at hand. The prince’s life is dependent on his sword. When the sword is thrown into the fire, a burning fever comes over him: when the hilt comes off, his head rolls off; and at the same moment every one of the barley-plants snaps, so that the ears fall to the ground.[5.1] In a Bengali tale, and in the first of the tales in the Siddhi-Kür, each of the heroes plants a “life-tree.”[5.2] In a Karen tale the hero sets two plants, and directs his comrades, if the plants wither, to come and seek for him.[5.3] Ibonia, a Malagasy hero, plants arums and plantain-trees, saying to his parents: “If these grow withered, then I am ill; and if they die, that is a sign that I also am dead.”[5.4] The princess in a Russian tale, when her husband leaves her, gives him a sackful of seeds, telling him to throw them on either side of the road he travels: “Wherever they fall, that moment trees will spring up; on the trees precious fruit will be hanging in beauty, various birds will sing songs, and tom-cats from over the sea will tell tales.” When he is drugged, the tree-tops begin to wither; and the princess sets out after him.[5.5] An Indian story shows us the lame prince, on undertaking an adventure, giving his mother a plant as his life-token.[5.6] Apparently the plant is a growing one, but it does not appear whether the prince had himself set it. A curious example is found in a variant of Cinderella, collected by M. Cosquin in Lorraine. Florine was a king’s only daughter. Her mother in dying had commended above all things to her daughter’s care a little white lamb. This lamb gives her magical food. When her stepmother discovers this, she feigns to be sick and persuades the king to kill the lamb that she may eat of it. Ere it dies the lamb directs Florine to gather its bones and put them on the pear-tree, whose branches will thenceforward be adorned with pretty little golden bells, ringing ceaseless chimes: if these bells be ever silent, it will be a sign of misfortune. By her command over this magical tree Florine is enabled to pluck and give to a certain king some of the bells, which her stepsister cannot do. The king, therefore, marries her. In his absence her stepmother throws the bride into the river and puts her own daughter in her place. Forthwith the golden bells cease to chime. Now, their sound could be heard two hundred leagues around. The king, remarking that they have stopped, hastens home, and arrives just in time to save the drowning heroine.[6.1] There is little doubt that the tale in its more archaic shape exhibited both the lamb and the pear-tree as transformations of the heroine’s mother, and in this way connected with the heroine by a tie of blood.
It is not uncommon for the plants to be set by natural or adoptive parents. The young Klepht in a modern Greek folksong begs his mother:
“Do thou plant a rose-tree, and plant a dusky clove,
And water them with sugar, and water them with musk.
So long they blossom, mother, so long they put forth flowers,
This son of thine will not be dead, but meet the Turks in battle.
But if the day of sorrow, the bitter day should come,
If the two trees fade together, and if their flowers fall,
Then I, too, shall be smitten, and thou shalt wear the black.”[6.2]
A Negro story from Angola represents one of the heroes, immediately on his birth, as directing his parents to plant his kilembe, or life-tree, at the back of the house.[7.1]
The Smyrnæan tale I have already mentioned in Chapter IV. brings before us a childless queen, who is gifted by a dervish with three apples. These she must eat, and she will then give birth to three boys. At the birth of each a pumpkin is to be planted in the garden: it will bring forth one fruit, wherein the child’s strength will reside. Afterwards, when one of the pumpkins is cut and carried away, the corresponding youth falls ill, until it is recovered.[7.2] Here the pumpkin is rather the life itself than the life-token; but the distinction, as we shall hereafter see, is not very important. A Tirolese variant of The Two Sisters who envied their Cadette describes the gardener who rescues the children as planting a gilliflower for each of the two boys, and a rose for the girl. Apparently this is done at the time he finds and adopts the babe. The boys grow up and go away successively to seek the Three Beauties of the World; and their flowers wither when they themselves are changed into marble by the Medusa-witch.[7.3]
Often, however, the original planting is not mentioned. The twins, in a Melanesian story from the island of Aurora, simply set a taboo upon a banana belonging to them, and said to their uncle Qatu: “If you go into the garden and see our bunch of bananas beginning to ripen at the top and ripening downwards to the end, Taso has killed us; but if you see that it has begun to ripen at the end and is ripening upwards, we shall have killed him.”[7.4] A banana growing by the hero’s hut is also his life-token, in a Malagasy story.[8.1]
There is a large number of cases which need not detain us now, where on departure the hero gives a flower that will continue fresh and flourishing so long as he is hale and prosperous, but will fade on misfortune or death happening to him. This is a markedly oriental form of the Life-token, occurring repeatedly in India and among the Arabs of modern Egypt.[8.2] In the Sinhasana Dwatrinsatika, or Thirty-two Stories of the Speaking Statues, a Sanskrit work, Siva gives to Vikram a lotus-flower, saying: “When this flower withers, then you will know that you must die in six months, and prepare accordingly.”[8.3] Here the ideas of the Life-token, the life itself, and a prophetic message are all mixed up.
The knife stuck into a tree, to drip with blood, or to rust, if the owner die, is a commonplace of Slavonic stories.[8.4] In a Serbian tale the knife falls out when the hero is overpowered by the witch.[8.5] When three brothers part on the search for a magical pelican, in a Hungarian märchen, they mark a finger-post at the cross-roads. Blood will ooze out of it, on the return of any of them, if the absent one be in misery or captivity; but milk will flow if he be well.[8.6] A German tale represents the brothers as each cutting a tree. The cut becomes blood-red if either of them be dead or in need.[9.1] In the Arabian Nights Bahman gives his hunting-knife to Perizadah: it will become blood-stained on his death. The same incident is found in Spain, in Iceland, and in Italy.[9.2] Elsewhere other weapons are named. So long as a poniard can be drawn from its sheath, in a tale obtained by M. Luzel at Plouaret in Lower Brittany, no ill has happened to its owner; but if it stick, he is dead.[9.3] Sikulume, in a Kaffir story, sticks his assagai in the ground before he ventures among some cannibals, saying: “If it stands still, you will know I am safe; if it shakes, you will know I am running; if it falls down, you will know I am dead.”[9.4] An Epirote story makes one of the twins say, when they part: “If the sword of either of us become bloody, that will be a sign that the other one lies dying.”[9.5]