At once all the stones which had been men and beasts, but had had the misfortune to look in the magical mirror, returned to their proper forms and danced around the maiden for joy. It remained to obviate the only other danger. The urme had left a son, a dragon who was to have wedded the maiden. He was luckily absent; but before he went away his mother had cut his hair and thrown the pieces among the stones. These they gathered up and burnt. The maiden then prevailed on her deliverer to come home with her and be her husband. They therefore all returned to the good urme in the speediest manner by swallowing the ashes of the dragon’s hair and wishing themselves at their destination.[103.1]
This of course is the ordinary bride-quest of fairy tales. The destined lady is in the power of a magician, who may be her father or merely her master. The hero, usually by her help, performs various tasks, which end in his winning her and destroying, or foiling, the magician. The transformation by the magician of his captives is not, perhaps, a very common incident in the plot. More frequently they are slain and their heads adorn in truly savage fashion the palisades of his dwelling. In a story from the neighbourhood of Bologna, they are turned into statues of salt.[104.1] Elsewhere, as in a Breton tale, they are changed into trees.[104.2]
The incident of the Medusa-witch in the foregoing stories, while in some cases it approaches more closely to the classical saga, lacks the special development gained in the modern Perseus-märchen. Tales, however, are not wanting in European tradition where the incident in that form appears divorced from the other incidents of the complete märchen. The Portuguese tale of The Tower of Ill Luck is an example. A boy sets forth on adventures accompanied by a horse and a lion, and arrives at the Tower of Ill Luck whence no one ever returns. An old woman within tells him to put his animals in the stable, and gives him a fine hair to tie them up with by rolling it round their necks. When he has done this she challenges him to wrestle. Finding himself overpowered he calls his beasts. But the hag cries out: “Be thickened, thin hair, into a strong coil, binding your horse and lion!” Immediately the hair becomes a thick iron chain which effectually prevents the animals from rescuing their master; and he is at length killed. The same result attends the second brother’s venture. The third is too clever. He cuts up the hair into little bits and throws them into the sea. Hence, when he calls, his animals are free to help him. He compels the witch to give him a salve to anoint his brothers’ bodies and a scent for them to smell. The salve and the scent revive them; and they feel no compunction in burying the hag alive.[105.1] A story obtained in the Orkney Islands gives the three animals as a hound, a hawk, and a horse. The lad finds a castle, blows the horn, and the door opens. He walks in, but meeting with no one, he sits down by the fire and eats a good supper, which is already prepared. At midnight in comes the Dräglin’ Hogney. “He sat down over against the young man and glowered at him. Then said the Dräglin’ Hogney: ‘Does yer horse kick ony?’ ‘Ou ay,’ said the young man. ‘There’s a hair to fling ower him.’ The young man flung it over his horse. ‘Does yer hound bite ony?’ ‘Ou ay,’ said the young man. ‘There’s a hair to fling ower him.’ Again, ‘Does yer hawk pick ony?’ ‘Ay, ay,’ said the young man. ‘There’s a hair to fling ower him.’ With that the Dräglin’ Hogney whiecked (whisked) frae the tae side to the tither, till he fell upon the young man and killed him.” His next brother fares no better. But the third brother throws the hairs on the fire. “What’s that crackin’?” asks the Dräglin’ Hogney each time as he hears the hair in the fire. “It’s the craps o’ the green wud come yer waysay,” replies the lad. When by the help of his animals he has slain the Dräglin’ Hogney he “ransacks the castle, finds the enchanter’s wand, disenchants his two brothers, their horses, hawks and hounds, divides the spoil, sends for their father, and, in the old wind-up of a Scotch fairy tale, they live happy, and dee happy, and never drink out of a dry cappy.”[106.1] A Slavonic story in which the two elder brothers, serving at a certain castle and warned against entering the forest, successively persist in doing so, seems to belong to this type. Both youths are petrified, with their dogs, but are rescued by their youngest brother.[106.2]
In Buddhist literature the story takes a much more civilised shape. The Bodisat is the eldest of three brothers, sons of Brahmadatta, king of Benares. The mother of the two elder was dead; and the mother of the youngest having plotted to secure the succession for her son, the two elder, by their father’s counsel, withdrew from the city. Their brother, however, joined them, being unwilling to be left behind. In the course of their wanderings they came into the Himalayas. While resting one day the Bodisat sent the youngest down to a pool near at hand for water. “Now that pool had been delivered over to a certain water-sprite by Vessavana, who said to him: ‘With the exception of such as know what is truly godlike, all that go down into this pool are yours to devour. Over those that do not enter the waters, you have no power granted to you.’ And thenceforth the water-sprite used to ask all who went down into the water what was truly godlike, devouring every one who did not know.” He put the question to Prince Sun, the Bodisat’s younger brother, who replied: “The sun and moon.” “You don’t know,” said the monster, and pulled him down into the depths of the water. Prince Moon, the Bodisat’s elder brother, being sent after the first, makes the equally foolish answer: “The four quarters of heaven,” and is likewise imprisoned in the water-sprite’s abode. The Bodisat himself then suspecting the truth, girt with his sword and armed with his bow, tracked his brothers’ footsteps to the water and waited beside the pool. Finding that he did not enter it the demon appeared in the shape of a forester to the Bodisat and inquired why he did not bathe. But the Bodisat recognised him and charged him with seizing his brothers. The demon explained that he had done so because they did not know what was godlike. Subsequently the Bodisat declares that they only are godlike “who shrink from sin, the white-souled, tranquil votaries of Good.” The demon, pleased with this, offers to give up one of his brothers; and the Bodisat chooses the younger. When taken to task for this choice by the ogre, he justifies it on the ground that it was on this boy’s account that they had sought refuge in the forest, and that not a soul would believe him if he were to give out that the child had been devoured by a demon. The water-sprite admits his wisdom; and “in token of his pleasure and approval he brought forth the two brothers and gave them both to the” Bodisat. Then the latter undertook the demon’s conversion, which happily effected, he continued to dwell at that spot under the reformed monster’s protection, until one day he read in the stars (a primitive but accurate kind of court journal) that his father was dead. “Then taking the water-sprite with him, he returned to Benares and took possession of the kingdom, making Prince Moon his viceroy, and Prince Sun his generalissimo. For the water-sprite he made a home in a pleasant spot and took measures to ensure his being provided with the choicest garlands, flowers and food,” so that he was under no temptation to return to his evil courses. The Bodisat “himself ruled in righteousness until he passed away to fare according to his deeds.”[108.1]
It is abundantly clear that the European tales I have cited cannot have been derived from this highly moral Játaka, in which nobody is punished, but on the contrary things are made comfortable all round—even for the demon. The story must have been found in a more savage form, and fashioned by the early teachers—perhaps by Gautama himself—into an apologue that would have done no dishonour to a Christian apostle.
To examine every kind of enchantment current in märchen would be an endless task. In the classical story, as well as in a large number of modern märchen, petrification is the result of the evil spell. This is softened in the Játaka, and in some other tales, to mere imprisonment; while metamorphosis into trees or into brute forms is the result in other cases. Petrifaction, or change into stones or rocks, is a fate whereto not merely human beings are liable at the hands of supernatural powers: with the hero his horse and other animals undergo this misfortune. In a totally different cycle of stories—that of The Magical Steed—petrifaction is occasionally practised on the horse only. It is then done as a means of preservation for use when wanted. In the intervals between the hero’s tasks his enchanted pony vanishes, sometimes of its own accord, sometimes also by the hero’s appointment. “Now,” said the pony in an Irish tale cited in a previous chapter, “strike a blow with your rod of druidism upon me, and make of me a rock of stone, and whatever time at all you are in need of me, you have nothing to do but strike another blow on me, and I am up as I was before.”[109.1] Everything in the world is according to savage belief subject to the mysterious energies of the wizard. In the remains of prehistoric superstition imbedded in the Irish folktales we get a truer view of Druidism than that conveyed to us by classical writers, who interpreted the religion of the Celts by their own more advanced polytheism. The Druids were in fact shamans, innocent, as I have already pointed out, of any systematic philosophy.
Lastly, we may notice one of the most interesting “properties” possessed by the Medusa-witch, namely, the hair she gives the hero to bind his dogs withal. It appears in many of the tales, though it is not always used in the same way. A Russian story, whether strictly belonging to the Perseus cycle I am not able to say, relates that “Ivan Dévich (Ivan the servant-maid’s son) meets a Baba Yaga, who plucks one of her hairs, gives it to him, and says: ‘Tie three knots and then blow.’ He does so, and both he and his horse turn into stone. The Baba Yaga places them in her mortar, pounds them to bits, and buries their remains under a stone. A little later comes Ivan Dévich’s comrade, Prince Ivan. Him also the Yaga attempts to destroy, but he feigns ignorance, and persuades her to show him how to tie knots and to blow. The result is that she becomes petrified herself. Prince Ivan puts her in her own mortar, and proceeds to pound her therein, until she tells him where the fragments of his comrade are, and what he must do to restore them to life.”[109.2]
In the glorious mabinogi of Kulhwch and Olwen the hair is put to its more ordinary use. Among the tasks laid upon Kulhwch as a condition precedent to his marriage with Olwen, the fair daughter of Yspaddaden Penkawr, is that of procuring a leash made from the beard of Dillus Varvawc, the son of Eurei, for Drudwyn, the cub of Greid, the son of Eri. No other leash in the world would hold the cub; and for this purpose it was to be plucked with wooden tweezers while Dillus Varvawc was yet alive, otherwise it would be brittle. The episode of the quest of this leash furnishes an explanation of a snatch of song, probably an old popular rhyme, imbedded in the tale and attributed to King Arthur.[110.1] Here it is the supernatural strength of the hair which constitutes its value, as in the stories already passed in review in this and earlier chapters. So too Kerza, in a Slavonic tale, takes a hair from the long white beard of a dwarf magician and therewith binds the magician’s wicked wife, who has taken the form of a wooden pillar the better to carry out her evil ends, and binds her so effectually that she is thenceforth unable to resume her proper shape, or to use her magical powers.[110.2]
A different example of the power of a hair is found in the Arabian Nights, where the king’s daughter in defence of the Second Calendar draws a hair from her head, and waving it in the air mutters over it for a while, until it becomes a trenchant sword-blade, with which to cut in twain the Ifrit.[110.3] The Princess Labám in a Hindu tale pulls out a hair from her head and gives it to the hero. Her father has imposed on him the task of dividing a thick tree-trunk with a waxen hatchet. “To-morrow,” she said, “when no one is near you, you must say to the tree-trunk, ‘The Princess Labám commands you to let yourself be cut in two by this hair.’ Then stretch the hair down the edge of the wax hatchet’s blade.” And we are told that “the minute the hair that was stretched down the edge of the hatchet blade touched the tree-trunk, it split into two pieces.”[111.1] A similar quality is that of the hair of the Giant of the Mountain, as related on the island of Zante. By its means, on touching the mountain it opens and admits the Giant into his own kingdom.[111.2]
The hair, of course, in all these tales, though severed from the person of the magician, is still in invisible union with him, and is the depositary of his undivided might. Its relation to its original owner is made clear in another story from Zante where the king’s son finds two hairs from the three-headed snake he is destined to subdue. At the proper moment he binds them on his hands, and they draw him direct to the sea-shore over-against an island on which the monster has made his lair. The youth crosses the water, slays and flays the dragon, and brings its hide and horns to the Lady of Earth and Sea, thus completing his tasks and winning her as his bride: an unhappy match, for the masterful dame ends by calling the waters upon the land and drowning every human creature, while she hovers aloft in the air looking on. She then, by sowing stones, creates a new race of men, whom she rules, mistress of the whole world, from her hereditary throne.[111.3]