CHAPTER XIX.
THE MEDUSA-WITCH IN MÄRCHEN.
The stories analysed in the first three chapters are abundant evidence that the form assumed by the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head in modern märchen is that of a sojourn in a witch’s dwelling, resulting in death or petrifaction by enchantment, followed by rescue and the annihilation of the witch. This incident is not confined, any more than the others with which we have dealt, to tales of the Perseus cycle—that is, to tales wherein one or more of the other three principal incidents of the Perseus märchen occur. In company with the incident of the Life-token it is frequently found in stories belonging to the type of The Two Sisters who envied their Cadette.[95.1] From many of such stories, however, the Life-token appears to have dropped. The Greek märchen of The Tzitzinæna is an example. There, as in the Arabian Nights, a king overhears three maidens boasting what they could do if they could only marry the royal confectioner, the royal cook, and the king himself respectively. The boast of the youngest sister is that she would bear her lord three children—Sun, Moon, and Star. The king gratifies their desires, to the annoyance of his mother, who plays the part of the envious sisters in Galland’s tale. She so arranges matters that when the children (two fair boys and a girl) are born they are thrown into the sea; and after the third abortion, as the king is led to believe, the unfortunate queen is shut up in a foul and noisome prison. The children are found by a solitary monk, and brought up until they are old enough to shift for themselves. He then gives them money and sends them into the world. They settle in the town; and there the eldest buys from a Jew a mysterious casket which contains a green, winged horse. The midwife who had been charged with the destruction of the children now discovers them still living; and in order to put an end to them, she excites in the maiden a desire to possess the golden apple watched in a certain garden by forty dragons. With his enchanted horse the eldest brother obtains for her not only the golden apple, but also, on a second journey, a golden bough on which all the birds of the world gather to sing. He is then sent for the Tzitzinæna to explain what the birds say. On arriving at the Tzitzinæna’s house the horse directs him to call it. The creature replies, “Marble”; and the youth is petrified to the knees. The calls are exchanged until he becomes marble to the girdle. He then remembers that on bidding himself and his brother and sister farewell the monk had given him some hairs from his beard, with directions to burn one of them when in need. He burns one accordingly; and the monk appears, and calls the Tzitzinæna, compelling it to bring a bottle of water of immortality and sprinkle the youth and his steed. By the power of this water they are loosed from the spell. But they have not been the Tzitzinæna’s only victims. In obedience to the monk it delivers them all, and among them the hero’s brother, who had been lost. The Tzitzinæna, thus captured, like the Talking Bird, is the means of revealing the truth to the king and restoring to him his wife and children.[97.1] The story is obviously imperfect, whole episodes, like the loss of one of the brothers, being referred to but not detailed. Hence there can be little doubt that it once contained the Life-token. It is doubtless a waif from the coffee-houses of the Levant stranded on Hellenic shores. In a variant from Epirus the errands are to obtain the Flying Horse of the Plain and the Beauty of the Land. The latter had turned many men into stone; but she goes with the hero, becomes his wife, and contrives the solution of the plot, as in the typical tale.[97.2]
In the former of these two cases the transformation is effected by the witch’s word; in the latter we are left in doubt. A German tale from the Odenwald brings us nearer to Galland’s version in this respect. There, as in the Greek stories, a king, to his mother’s disgust, marries beneath him, with the usual catastrophe. The children are two girls and a boy. A branch of the Tree with Golden Fruits is the object of desire. The hero takes it; but on his way back he hears some one calling him, and turning to reply he is changed into a pillar of salt. This fate also befalls the elder sister on seeking the Talking Bird in the same garden where the Tree grew. The younger, fetching the Leaping Water, resists the temptation, and by sprinkling the water on the two pillars recovers her brother and sister.[97.3] A Swabian tale belonging to the same cycle presents the task as the disenchantment of a castle in the forest by fetching thence a certain blackbird in a cage. This could only be done between eleven and twelve at noon. The first of the princes having entered the castle allows the precious hour to pass while he is listening to the lovely music that resounds through the ensorcelled chambers. Noon strikes, the doors close, and he is caught fast in the trap. The second prince fares no better; but their sister finds the bird and hastens out before the fatal hour, thus undoing the spell and restoring to their proper human form a lion, a bear, and a number of apes which inhabited the building.[98.1]
The villain of a Catalonian variant is no less a personage than the Devil himself, to whom the heroine had been given by her father. A king found her in the Devil’s den, and stole her away, to marry her. It is the Devil who arranges the catastrophe by means of forged letters to and from her husband when she gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl. The secondary villain is a witch bribed by “the ladies of the people” to excite the maiden’s longing, first, for a tree bearing leaves of all colours, next, for water of all colours, and lastly, for a bird with plumes of all colours, which sings all songs. These are to be found in the garden of the Castle of Go-and-not-return. The maiden’s brother, by the help of the wise Solomon, who dwells in a castle on the way, succeeds in the quest of the first two; but disregarding the counsels which have been given him, he takes the wrong bird on his third journey and remains enchanted at the gate, until rescued by his sister. The bird, here also, once captured, becomes the means of retrieving the happiness of the family.[98.2]
The Kabyle tale of The Children and the Bat makes the villain out of the heroine’s barren fellow-wife. The children are seven sons and a daughter. They are carried by the envious woman into the forest one after another as they are born. An old woman induces the maiden to ask her brothers to get a bat; and an old man directs the brothers one after another to a certain date-palm on the sea-shore. “What wild beast comes here?” asks the bat from the top of the tree. “Go to sleep, old head,” answers the lad. The bat changes the adventurer’s gun into a bit of wood, and renders the adventurer himself “microscopic.” When she has thus lost all her brothers the maiden goes to seek the bat. She does not answer the creature, but waits until it is asleep. Then she climbs the tree, seizes the bat, and compels it to restore her brothers, promising in return to clothe it in silver and gold. The bat conducts the band of children back to their father, saves them from partaking of the poison offered to them by their stepmother, and reunites them to their parents. The stepmother is bound to a horse’s tail and dragged to death, while the bat is returned to its tree and clad in silver and gold.[99.1] A version from Mirzapur comprises the Supernatural Birth. The children are three in number, two lovely boys and a girl, born of the king’s favourite wife, in consequence of eating three fruits given by a fakir. Their mother’s fellow-wives play the usual treacherous part at their birth. When, years after, the wicked queens find out that the children are still alive and dwelling in a miraculous palace, the gift of the friendly fakir, they send to persuade the maiden (it is always the woman) to ask for a nightingale that dwelt in a certain jungle, could sing a thousand notes, and could talk like a man. The fakir warns the elder brother not to answer when the bird cries out to him, else he will be turned into stone. The youth succeeds; and as in the other variants, the evil devised by the wicked queens recoils on their own heads, for it is by means of the bird that the truth is brought to light and punishment inflicted.[100.1]
A Lesbian tale looks like an ill-remembered variant of the Perseus group. A king, we are told, who had thirty-nine sons, longed for a daughter. A son, however, was born, and at the same time his favourite mare foaled, and the colt was allotted to the boy. When he was sixteen the brothers all set out together to seek their fortune. The youth, while his brothers slept, conquered forty dragons which had come to draw water at a spring where they were reposing. The next night he slays a seven-headed beast at another fountain, and cuts out its tongues. The following day the band of brethren separated, and the youngest pursued his way alone. A sorceress advises him how to pass a monster whom he will meet in the way, and warns him that he will reach the castle of another witch, who will offer him all sorts of fruits, of which he may partake with safety, but he must beware of drinking the wine she will present, otherwise she will petrify him. Instead, he is to give it to his dog, and he will see it instantly changed to marble. The witch, however, will have power to recall the animal to life. The youth follows her directions, and finds his brothers already turned to statues in the witch’s palace. He compels her to restore them as well as his dog, and having put her to death leads his brothers back to their father.[100.2]
We may reasonably suspect that the Life-token has originally been part of all these variants, as in Galland’s tale. It is needless to follow the instances where it still remains an integral portion of the narrative. Another point is worthy of notice. In most cases the object of search is a bird. So in a tale told by the Armenian immigrants of the Land beyond the Forest a king’s three sons set out to obtain a wonderful nightingale, the only thing wanting to complete the beauty of a church that he has built. The eldest son, however, settles down comfortably as the husband of a king’s daughter, and shirks the quest. The second is found by a gigantic Moor stretched at rest in a grassy glade of the forest, and asked: “What do you want here?” On his replying, “Nothing,” the Moor spits upon him and turns him to stone. The youngest son, returning successful with the nightingale, comes to the same spot, and is confronted by the Moor with the same question. He asks in turn, What are all these many stones he sees around him? The Moor answers that they were men whom his spittle had turned into stone, and threatens him with the same fate. Thereupon the nightingale began to sing, and the Moor fell down upon the ground, a heap of ashes. The stones promptly became men once more, the king’s second son among them. It is sad to relate that in the sequel, in spite of this deliverance, the second son joined his elder brother in betraying the youngest, and leaving him to perish in the depths of a fountain, while they hurried home with the prize. Fortunately the youth found his way out, vindicated his claims, married the fairy to whom the nightingale belonged, forgave his brothers, and they all lived happy ever after.[101.1]
In the romance of Hatim Taï the enchantment is caused by failing to kill the bird, and dissolved by its death. The renowned Kaiumarath, when hunting, found a diamond weighing three hundred miskals. To preserve it in safety he founded the bath of Bagdad, where he placed the stone in the body of a caged parrot. On the chair within the hall was laid a bow with arrows. Every visitor was allowed to shoot three arrows at the parrot, and if he hit it right through the head he would break the enchantment; otherwise he would become a marble statue. The mysterious mansion was uninhabited save by those statues; and the foregoing information was conveyed by an inscription over the door. Hatim failed twice, and became stone to his middle. Persevering, however, he put his trust in God, took aim, and shutting his eyes let fly the third arrow. It pierced the parrot’s brain, when the whole enchantment disappeared amid thunder, lightning, and whirlwinds. All the marble statues started into life, and falling at Hatim’s feet, vowed to serve him. He took the diamond, which was the object of his search, and thus accomplished the last of his seven adventures.[102.1]
The search is not always for a bird. The hero of a Gipsy tale from Transylvania undertakes to deliver the daughter of a good urme from a wicked urme who has carried her off. In the wicked urme’s service he has to perform a number of tasks: among them to find a ring which has been dropped into a fountain and hang it up below a round mirror in the large hall. The water in the fountain is boiling hot; but he plunges without harm, having previously bathed in the milk of the urme’s cow. The real danger was a voice that sounded in his ear as he hung up the ring: “Thou art a handsome youth, a handsome youth. Only look in the glass!” Had he complied with this flattering suggestion he would have been turned into stone. He resisted it, however, to encounter the still more flattering offer from the urme to wed him. It was necessary before doing this that he should cut her up and throw the pieces into a Medean kettle, whence she would issue the most beautiful woman on earth, and they would then live happy and contented together. But he had already seen too much of this lady to trust himself with her; so having obeyed her instructions to cut her up, he threw the pieces into the boiling fountain instead of the kettle, thus destroying her and the enchanted castle with her. The maiden whom he came to free drew from her head some hairs, and letting them fly in the wind, she sang:
“Ye who have been changed to stone,
Beast or human creature’s son,
Hither, hither, every one!”