Thus much premised, let us turn to the facts so far as we know them. The geographical boundaries within which the story, as a whole, may be found, are the geographical and ethnical boundaries of that stage of culture which forms the seed-plot of the incident of most restricted range. We can only look for it among nations who have approached and passed the level of barbarism where human sacrifices are offered to brutes; for it is only among such that the Rescue of Andromeda can have been conceived. This excludes races like the Australians, who seem never to have practised sacrifices of the kind referred to, even if their country were infested with beasts or reptiles addicted to such food. It does not exclude peoples like the ancient Quiché, who assuredly offered human sacrifices, and whose legend, partly cited in the last chapter, looks back to a time when such offerings were made to wild animals. Among the ferocious gods petrified by the sun when it rose upon the primeval darkness, we are told, were those “connected with the lion, the tiger, the viper, and other fierce and dangerous animals. Perhaps we should not be alive at this moment,” continues the chronicler, “because of the voracity of these fierce animals, had not the sun caused this petrifaction.” But this did not end the mischief; for these gods could recover life and mobility when they pleased. And the four Quiché patriarchs were impelled, apparently by a supernatural vision, to wet their altars with the blood of human victims. Wherefore they watched in their mountain stronghold for lonely travellers belonging to the neighbouring tribes, and, having seized and overpowered them, slew them for a sacrifice; and wherever the blood of a victim was found, there also were always found the tracks of many tigers. This was the craft—so the tale says—of the priests; but at last the tribes that suffered thus found out that the loss of their friends was due not to attacks of wild animals but to the desire of the Quiché patriarchs to provide offerings for their gods; and they made war upon the aggressors. They were beaten by the aid of a miraculous horde of wasps and hornets; but their lives were spared and they became tributaries to the Quiché for ever.[150.1] The legend records, in traditional form, the change from the worship of living creatures to that of gods of stone. But it does not record the abandonment of human sacrifices, for that never took place; and being told from the point of view of the conquerors it contains no rescue-incident. What the subject-nations may have had to say upon the matter we do not know. Inasmuch, however, as they probably continued to furnish the victims from time to time, we may assume that no rescue-incident was included in their folklore. At all events the incident has not been recorded among any people on the Western Continent, save in circumstances pointing to importation since the days of Columbus.[151.1]
In the eastern world it is found from Ireland to Japan, from Scandinavia to Quilimane. If we set aside the story from Quilimane[151.2] as sporadic, and introduced by the Portuguese, the southern limit of the extension of the Perseus group may perhaps be fixed on the shores of the Red Sea, where, Ælian tells us, in ancient times Perseus, the son of Zeus, was honoured, and where we may be allowed to indulge the hope that our archæological explorers will sooner or later recover some trace of the tale. Eastward, a variant embodying the incidents of the Life-token, the Rescue of Andromeda, and the Medusa-witch, has been found in Cambodia; and the Rescue of Andromeda has been found alone in Japan. The area, therefore, within which the place of origin is to be sought may roughly be said to include the whole of Europe and Asia, and the parts of Africa which lie to the north and east of the Great Desert.
Comparing the classical version of the legend, as it has come down to us in the writings chiefly of Ovid and Lucian, with what may be regarded as the typical shape of the modern märchen, we are struck by a number of differences, among which we may reckon the difference in the mode of the supernatural conception; the absence from the ancient tale of the Life-token and of the impostor who pretends to have slain the dragon; the displacement of the incident of the Medusa-witch and its elevation in the classical story to a more prominent position than it usually occupies elsewhere; the substitution in modern tales of the Helpful Beasts for the divine gift of weapons; and lastly the enthralling power of Fate, supplying the artistic motive for the romance of Perseus, but absent from most of the folktales gathered in later times. Some of these differences of detail, however, are more apparent than real. In Phineus, who, according to Ovid, invades the wedding banquet, we have an analogue of the impostor. Too cowardly to fight the monster and save his betrothed, he comes forward with a posse of friends to take her by force from the victor, and is only vanquished when Perseus exhibits the Gorgon’s head. It is tempting to suggest that in the prototype of the story Perseus attacked and slew the monster on his outward journey, that he passed on to the slaughter of Medusa before celebrating his union with Andromeda, and that meanwhile Phineus laid claim to the victory and its guerdon, and was confounded on the hero’s return, either by production of the Gorgon’s head, as in Ovid’s text, or by proof in the shape of the dragon’s head or tongue, as in the more modern tales. This conjecture might be supported by the fact that Perseus is represented by Ovid[152.1] as using only his sword in the combat with the monster, as well as by the consideration that it supplies a motive for the inexplicable desertion by the victor of the lady whom he has saved from the dragon’s maw, which occurs in so large a number of variants. The order in question does occur, though rarely, in modern stories;[153.1] but, as we shall see hereafter, there is a decisive reason against supposing it ever to have formed part of the classical legend.
The versions preserved by the author of the Metamorphoses and in a more fragmentary way by Lucian are substantially similar. That other versions were current in antiquity we know from many sources. I have already in the opening chapter given several instances of inconsistent statements pointing unmistakably to this conclusion. The most important of them for this inquiry are derived from Ælian. Writing in the third century after Christ, he tells us of a fish found in the Red Sea and called after Perseus, who was honoured by the Arabs dwelling on the shore. If the modern märchen did not refer to a fish as the source of life of the twin-heroes this would be puzzling, since no reference is made in the classical saga to a fish. But in face of the facts it seems to show, not merely that the literary form of the saga is only one of two or more current in antiquity, but that one at least of the popular and unrecorded variants included a version of the Supernatural Birth which was allied to that in the Breton tale of The King of the Fishes. The same writer in a later passage associates a marine crustacean with Perseus. Many persons abstained from eating it, because they deemed it sacred. This I understand to be an assertion of a practice not confined to the island of Seriphos; whose inhabitants, Ælian goes on to say, if they found it dead would bury it, if they caught it alive would not keep it in their nets, but returned it to the sea. They would even weep over dead specimens, for they held these creatures to be dear to Perseus, the son of Zeus.[154.1] The custom of solemnly burying, and mourning for, dead animals is very widespread, and is connected with totemism.[154.2] We are probably right in believing that in the first instance the crustacean referred to was the totem of some of the inhabitants of Seriphos, that the national hero was either identified with it or held to be its offspring, and that in process of time this hero was either accepted and glorified as Perseus, the son of Zeus, by the more polished Greeks of the mainland, or from the similarity of his birth and exploits became merged in the hero of Argos and Mykene. Doubtless in the ruder ages tales common in their origin but independent in their development were told both at Seriphos and on the mainland. As intercourse increased, the tales of Argos and Mykene would become known to the people of Seriphos, and vice versâ, their similarity would be recognised and their heroes identified. If the Seriphiote saga connected its hero with the rock-lobster, which was regarded as a totem, as the triplet boys are connected in the Breton märchen with the King of the Fishes, all the conditions would be fulfilled to account for the Seriphiote practices. We seem here, therefore, to have a third version of the story. The two versions which did not reach literary immortality both brought the hero into close relations with a marine animal. We can hardly doubt that in both cases those relations were such as described in so many of the modern variants.
The next question to consider is that of the relation between the ancient and modern variants of the story. If it were confined to that between the ancient variants and the variants current to-day in Italy and Greece, it would be comparatively simple. The problem is, in fact, much larger; for we have to take into account variants found all over the area, already described, within which the place of origin is to be sought. We cannot conclude, I need hardly say, that the first-recorded version of a tale is the parent of all the rest, or of any of them. Our scepticism must go much further. It often happens that the first-recorded version is one current in a higher grade of civilisation, and therefore more refined and artistic, than a version subsequently gathered from oral tradition. Emphatically is this the case with classical stories and Buddhist parables, as writers on folklore have often observed. But what has not been equally insisted on is, that the reason why these classic stories and Buddhist parables have found their way into literature is because they are the more refined and artistic versions. It is quite certain that if Ovid had had to choose between the picturesque narrative of the shower of gold, with the parentage of the highest god of Olympus, on the one hand, and a totemistic tale about a fish or a rock-lobster on the other hand, he could not have hesitated to which of these sources he should, for literary purposes, assign the begetting of Perseus. So, to take an instance outside the range of the present study, if the compilers of the Jātaka could have chosen between the Tar-baby of Negro story-tellers and the Demon with the matted hair, they would have preserved in their collection the story in the form which actually appears.[156.1] Probably neither alternative was actually offered, the causes which would have operated in the mind of the poet or the parable-writer having already wrought, less consciously indeed, but not less effectively, in the popular mind, so as to render, by a process, analogous with that of natural selection, which we may call traditional selection, the version that has reached us predominant over all others. For æsthetic and ethical development speedily outstripped that of abstract thought and criticism. Savages often attain a high degree of taste and skill in the production and ornamentation of their utensils and weapons. The beauty of mediæval architecture has rarely been approached and never been surpassed, though the generations which built the great cathedrals of Europe were under bondage to one of the most cruel and extravagant systems of superstition that the wit of man has elaborated. At the same time in many directions, and at all events theoretically, they had attained a comparatively advanced moral elevation. The arts of poetry and story-telling come to maturity later than the material arts, because they are dependent upon the critical sense; but even they are quite compatible with very gross credulity. No people has displayed a finer critical sense than the ancient Greeks; yet no people has told more absurd stories about its divinities or practised sillier customs; and that, even in the age which produced their most finished sculptures and their most exquisite poems. The unbelief of the philosophers was confined to a small class; and the populace that applauded the verses and appreciated the art of Euripides pinned its faith to omens, found presages in the flight of birds, and gave implicit credence to the magical effect of incantations, to say nothing of the ridiculous and impossible tales about the gods which were part of its religious faith, and as such were literally and devoutly accepted. Yet even among these a process of selection was going forward, tending to eliminate the ruder and coarser, preserving and refining, not necessarily the more credible, but the more artistic. From the more cultured cities of Greece a literary and æsthetic influence was diffused throughout all Greek-speaking communities. To this aggressive influence local beliefs and local customs gradually yielded. They were either identified and amalgamated with the beliefs and customs to which it gave a continually wider and wider currency, gaining in the process a less barbarous exterior; or, if too stubborn for identification and amalgamation, they were thrust aside bit by bit and left to rustics and to slaves. The same process, repeated in the modern world, has caused the powers and distinguishing marks of the ancient superseded deities to be attributed to the Madonna and the saints, and many of the heathen shrines and superstitions to be baptized into the Christian Church. The rest have been relegated to the peasantry, and driven into more and more remote districts by the continual pressure, direct and indirect, of the triumphant religion and the increasing civilisation. So it has been everywhere, not only in Europe, but wherever in the whole world a higher has been carried, either by arms, commerce or persuasion, across the frontiers of a lower culture. We may conclude, therefore, that the story of Danae made its way throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, to the disadvantage of the stories told in various places of the birth of a hero similar in the rest of his life to Perseus, because of its own æsthetic qualities, and because it was accepted by the most intellectual peoples of Greece. These two causes, it will be seen, are at bottom one. For it was precisely the intellectual characteristics of the polished peninsular Greeks which had given the tale its artistic form, and thus fitted it for prevailing over its competitors. Traditional selection, first in the inhabitants of Argos and the neighbourhood, and afterwards in all those with whom they and their allies and fellow-countrymen came into contact, determined its shape and secured its victory.
But though Ovid may have been ignorant of other versions of the story, it is manifest that others existed. And here it is material to observe that the incident of the Rescue of Andromeda stands in the poet’s account on a very different footing from that of the remaining incidents. Though it is now (perhaps by virtue of the Christian symbolism read into it from early days of Christianity) the incident which first springs into the mind on mention of the name of Perseus, in the Metamorphoses it is a mere episode, not organically connected with the hero’s story. The encounter with Andromeda is represented as fortuitous. It is not led up to by the previous narrative. It affects the after-incidents in no way. The dragon is not even petrified by the Gorgon’s head. On the other hand, the fatal prophecy is the foundation of all the rest of the saga, from which nothing could be omitted (save, it may be, the visit to Atlas) without impairing the natural, the inevitable, development of the legend as an artistic whole. We must infer that the Rescue is an intrusive episode, and that, as in many modern variants, the tale comprised at first only the other two trains of incident, already characterised as the Birth and the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head. The remaining versions current in antiquity, or some of them, probably omitted Andromeda with all her picturesque possibilities; and it may be permitted to conjecture that the story we regard as classical may have been formed by the imperfect fusion of a legend consisting of the Birth and the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head, with one recognised for some reason as kindred, and consisting only of the Birth and the Rescue of Andromeda. The Albanian märchen, related in our opening chapter, may represent the latter by direct transmission, while the sagas involved in Ælian’s allusions—perchance also as known to Herodotus—may have been guiltless of the fight with the Dragon.
We cannot pursue the conjecture into the region of probabilities, because of the obvious confusion of the Albanian tale, and of the imperfect state of our knowledge with regard to local legends not taken up into Greek and Roman literature, and with regard to Egyptian and Babylonian cults. The Tuscan tale from Pratovecchio[159.1] seems, however, to have descended in right line from the familiar version of Ovid and Lucian—not, that is to say, from their writings, but from the oral sources whence they drew—though on its way to us it has not passed wholly uncontaminated by other streams. But can we venture to assert the same either of the Irish, German, Swedish, and Russian tales which I have assigned to the Danae type; or of the various modern Italian and Greek stories wherein the hero’s birth is ascribed to entirely different causes? Of the latter, some are perhaps derived from local variants current in antiquity. Yet even to assume this will carry us but a little way towards the solution of the problem of origin of a märchen told as far afield as Ireland and Cambodia.
The legend in classical literature is the product of a comparatively high stage of civilisation. In proof of this, it is only necessary to refer to the divine gift of weapons. The helmet, the shield of metal, brightly polished as a mirror, the sword, are not the weapons of the unsophisticated savage. They are replaced in a large number of modern variants by the gift of Helpful Animals. Now, everywhere in the lowest planes of culture we find stories of birds, beasts, reptiles, and even insects, talking and acting in human fashion, sometimes hostile, more usually perhaps helpful to man. It would seem as though man, at variance with his fellow-man, and therefore having unintermittent reason to suspect him, beset, too, by the awful supernatural powers of his imagination, turned for sympathy, perforce, and consolation to his fellow-creatures of a different shape, whom he credited with ability to aid him in his need. No line was drawn between nature and that which was beyond or above nature. But while he imagined in his own form the powers whose enmity he dreaded, he sought, of necessity, his allies among those of other forms. He observed their characteristics; he experienced their usefulness in supplying his wants; he felt himself akin to them; out of them he framed totems, and ultimately gods. The modern incident, therefore, of the Helpful Animals cannot be derived from the classical gift of weapons; for not only is it utterly different in character, but it comes up from a deeper depth of barbarism. Thus it constitutes a strong presumption that the stories wherein it occurs, however they may have been modified in the course of ages, are not to be traced back to the classic literary saga. Still less can we venture to assert that they are derived from the local variants of antiquity. They would be likely to owe their origin rather to a tale already common property, than to one merely local. And of the local variants we only know that Perseus was connected in one of them with a fish; whereas the corresponding heroes of modern variants are frequently so connected, while they are never connected with a crustacean, but often with other artificial means of generation, not noticed in any of the hints that have reached us from ancient times.
To elucidate the matter, I have compiled and placed in an Appendix tables of the variants accessible to me. I do not, of course, pretend that they are complete. Statistics of the kind never are; and they must not be taken for more than they are worth. Still, I have no reason to think that they would be seriously modified by the addition of other variants. If we glance at [Table A] we shall see that out of 110 examples (comprising stories properly belonging to the cycle, and also stories wherein the Rescue of Andromeda is the only incident belonging to the Legend of Perseus) forty-four represent the Helpful Beasts as congenital with the heroes, while four others represent some of the Beasts as congenital, the rest of them being obtained in another way. By congenital I mean born of the same material which causes the birth of the heroes, as in the case of the fish, where one part given to the woman originates the children, and another given to a mare or a bitch originates the foals or the puppies. This, the most savage conceit of the manner in which the Helpful Beasts were obtained, is thus found in more than forty-one per cent. of the stories. They are told throughout the whole of Europe, from Donegal to Georgia, from Sweden to Greece. One of them, indeed, has been carried, as we may assume, from Portugal to Quilimane, where the origin of the Helpful Beasts is reproduced by the natives in the most intensely savage form of all; for the woman gives birth not only to the heroes but to their dogs, and even their spears and their guns. In ten cases in the table the Beasts are given by their parent animals, while in ten others (or eleven, if we add, as we probably may, the Servian case[162.1]) they attach themselves to the heroes out of gratitude.[162.2] The total percentage of stories in which the Beasts attach themselves, or are given by the parent animals out of gratitude, to the heroes is thus nearly twenty. In sixteen cases, less than fifteen per cent., they are obtained by exchange of some other animals, or of arms or corn. In nine cases, or little more than eight per cent., they are acquired from conquered foes; while in only eight cases, a still smaller percentage, they are obtained in the classical way from a mysterious personage. If we add the two classes of exchange and gift by a mysterious personage together, we obtain twenty-four cases, or a little under twenty-two per cent., of which three alone properly belong to the Perseus group: that is, contain more than one of the four chief trains of incident which compose it. One of these three is the Tuscan story I have already indicated as probably a direct descendant of the classical tale. The rest of the twenty-four come from different parts of European Russia, Transylvania, Bohemia, Germany, Italy, the Celtiberian Peninsula, Brittany, and Achill Island, two variants having been carried to North America, possibly by the French.
If we turn to [Table B], relating to the Gift of Weapons, we find results not very different. Out of a total number of seventy-two stories, twenty-two (or thirty per cent.) represent the Weapons as congenital. These are all from Central Europe, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Sicily, Spain and Portugal, including the story from Quilimane; and they all belong to the Perseus group. Then we have twelve, or, if we add the Lithuanian tale in which the Weapons are taken from an uninhabited house, thirteen variants, or eighteen per cent., in which the Weapons are obtained from conquered foes. None of these thirteen stories contain any other of the four chief trains of incident than the Rescue of Andromeda. They are more widely spread than the former, ranging from the west of Ireland to Lithuania and the Levant. There are next seven instances (just under ten per cent.) in which the Weapon is forged to order or bought by the hero. Of these, three come from Scotland, one from Brittany, one is Basque, one is found in the island of Syra, and one in Georgia. Lastly, we have ten cases in which the Weapons are given by a mysterious person without any consideration, two in which they are given to redeem stolen eyes, five in which they are given out of gratitude, two in payment for services rendered or in exchange, and one in which they are given by a fish: in all, twenty cases, or not quite twenty-eight per cent.