At the same time stories found among other nations represent the hero as a herd or a menial servant. In a Swabian märchen already cited he is a shepherd.[10.1] A Norwegian tale, bearing some markedly Norse characteristics, also comprises a similar incident. Here Osborn Boots is the youngest of three brothers, who successively hire themselves to a king. The two elder had been dismissed with three stripes cut out of their backs, and the wounds rubbed with salt or hot embers. Boots shares his food with an old hag he meets on the way, and receives in return an old key, which has the property of showing him, when he looks through the ring, whatever he wishes to see. With the help of this and of his own shrewdness, he drives off a troll from the king’s mill-dam, and on another occasion saves the king’s sheep from him. But one day the king, when hunting, trod by chance upon wild grass and lost his way in the wood. The troll met him and offered to let him go home in consideration of having the first thing the king set eyes on when he got to his own land. The victim proved to be his eldest daughter. A man called Glibtongue accompanied her to the spot where the troll was to meet and fetch her. He turned out to be a coward; and Boots, opportunely appearing, overcame the monster by trickery, but spared his life on condition of his restoring the king’s younger daughter, whom he had stolen before. The maiden thus rescued gives him a ring; but Glibtongue of course takes the credit of the deed, and is to be married to her. The troll then stops the springs, so that there is no water to boil the bridal brose. Boots to the rescue again; and now he is identified by the ring, which is seen glistening in his hair. Glibtongue is thrown into a pit full of snakes; the troll is slain; Boots weds the younger princess, and with her receives half the kingdom.[11.1] The hero of a Negro tale from the Bahamas, is a boy who is first a shepherd and then a horse-herd or stable-boy. His master had every year to give one of his daughters in exchange for water. The last daughter he had was about to be thus bartered. Her coachman declined to allow the stable-boy to accompany him when he took the maiden to exchange her, but set him a task instead. The boy performs the task by magical power, obtains horse, carriage, and armour, and follows. By the utterance of a wish he sets two boar-lizards fighting; and while they fight the water is obtained and brought back with the lady. The next day the adventure is repeated, with the variation that it is two cocks which fight. The boy stains his handkerchief red and passes it to the girl. Her father offers her in marriage, with a dowry of two thousand dollars, to any one who can take the stain out of the handkerchief. “All on ’em was tryin’, dey couldn’ git it out. This fellah haxed dem to let ’im try it. Fathe’ told ’im, ‘All right, ’e could try it.’ ’E rolled up ’is sleeve; spread the handke’-chief over ’is harm; then ’e spit on it, taken ’is hand and rubbed over it. The stain went out. Her fathe’ give ’er to ’im to wife, and ’is two thousan’ dollahs. Dat en’s de hold story.”[11.2] A Portuguese tale from Brazil begins with the barter by a fisherman of his son, born unknown to him, for a catch of fish. It belongs to the Forbidden Chamber cycle. After flying from the ogre the hero takes service as under-gardener to a king. The youngest princess penetrates his disguise. The king offers his eldest daughter to him who would slay a seven-headed beast which was devastating the realm. The under-gardener performs the feat and takes the tips of the beast’s tongues. As nobody appeared to claim the reward, the king decided to marry all his daughters. The youngest refuses to marry anybody but the under-gardener. The prince who is to marry the eldest claims to have slain the beast, and the bridegroom of the second sister claims another achievement of the hero; but the latter at the wedding-feast puts them to open shame.[12.1]
There is one characteristic, however, which is common to a vast number of variants belonging to almost every type, and which, in the story from the Odenwald, stands out in full relief. If it be not a savage characteristic, at least it is not in accordance with the etiquette of civilisation in the nineteenth century for the hero to persist in such unaccountable modesty, that, having slain the monster and won the princess, he must be pursued like a criminal flying from justice, and compelled to confess and claim his reward. When at last he is made known, and the impostors, whom his want of gallantry and overload of humility had encouraged, if not instigated, are convicted of their fraud, he indulges in a savage revenge. Burning alive, indeed, is in harmony with a certain kind of civilisation, such as that of Saint Dominic or Bloody Mary; and the punishments the peasantry delight to recount in these tales are an index of their culture. The hero is deterred no more than the most bigoted fanatic by any considerations of humanity, or even of kinship. As a single example of the disregard of kinship, take the story of The King of Al-Yaman and his three Sons, found in some versions of the Arabian Nights. There the king’s youngest son, disliked by his father and despised by his two brethren, picks up a string of pearls and emeralds, and is deprived of it by the elder sons, who pretend themselves to have found it. Their father lays upon them the injunction to bring him the wearer. After they have set out, the youngest goes forth too, and delivers a princess from the scourge of her father’s city, a monstrous lion, to which a maiden is offered by lot every year. He refuses in the usual way to return with her, and is only discovered by means of a proclamation requiring all the men in the city to defile before the palace. He is married to her; but, arising before day, while she is still asleep, he exchanges rings with her and writes upon her hand his name, Aláeddín, his parentage and a request, if she love him truly, to come and seek him at his father’s capital of Al-Hind. He departs, and repeats the adventure, slaying this time an elephant. Afterwards he continues his quest, and succeeds in obtaining the enchanting bird Philomelet, the wearer of the necklace, while its mistress, a princess, is sleeping. He writes his name on the palm of her hand also, and a similar request to seek him at home. As he returns his brothers fall in with him, rob him of the bird, and carry it to their father as their own prize. The three princesses, each with her father and an army, go after him and meet together. They of course reject the two elder brothers as impostors, and Aláeddín is at last vindicated. He then, having put his brothers to shame, falls upon them, and with a single blow of his sword despatches them both; nor is it without difficulty that he is restrained from putting his father to death too. He adds to the number of his wives the princess to whom the bird Philomelet belonged, and lives happy ever after.[14.1] The vengeance in the Arab tale, reported from a region where no reminiscences of the auto-da-fé linger, shows to advantage in comparison with the cruelties in which the tales of the peasantry of Christian Europe rejoice. And if the hero spare not his own flesh and blood, it must be remembered that he is only the half-brother of the impostors, and that both he and his mother have suffered great personal wrong at their hands and those of his father. In a variant of the story, cited from the same source in a previous chapter, the hero even intercedes with his father for his brothers’ lives.[14.2] Happily in western stories he does not always visit their sins on their heads. In the Shetlandic story, originally from Scandinavia, Assipattle is treated with contempt by his six elder brothers. But he had a fast friend in his only sister, who was taken to court to be the king’s daughter’s maid. The Mester Stoorworm, a terrific sea-monster in which we have a reminiscence of the Midgard Snake, threatened the land. By a mighty sorcerer’s counsel, every Saturday seven damsels were bound upon a rock and delivered to him, to glut his maw and save the kingdom. The only way to get rid of the scourge, the sorcerer declared, was to deliver Gemdelovely, the princess, to be devoured. All the champions who volunteered to save her shrank from the task when they beheld the grisly foe. Assipattle alone had the courage to get a boat and go out to meet the worm, whose horrid length stretched half across the world. He allowed himself to be swallowed, boat and all; and once inside the cavernous throat he “waded and ran, and better ran, till he came to the enormous liver of the monster.” Then he cut a hole in it and placed a live peat, which he had brought for the purpose, in the hole and “blew till he thought his lips would crack.” By and bye “the peat began to flame; the flame caught the oil of the liver, and in a minute there was a stately euse. In troth, I think it gave the Stoorworm a hot harskit.” Hurrying into his boat again, Assipattle was spewed out by the monster’s dying spasms, and thrown high and dry on the land. Of course he married the princess; and the vengeance, without which the story would not be complete, fell not on his brothers for their ill treatment of him, but on the sorcerer, who it turned out was the queen’s lover.[15.1]
The conquest of the dragon by attacking it from the inside carries us back to Herakles’ deliverance of Hesione. The incident, rare in modern folklore, is also found in a Gipsy tale from Transylvania; but there, as might be anticipated, there is no question of a sea-monster. Radu, a young Gipsy of the Kukuya stock, driven to desperation by his shrewish wife, cleaves her head with a hatchet and flees for his life from his tribal brethren. In the forest he finds a large horse’s head lying under a tree. It bids him creep into its left ear; and he becomes so small as to do it easily. There he lies hidden safely until all pursuit is over, when he creeps out again through the right ear, returning at once to his proper size. He takes the head with him, for it tells him it will protect him; and when he longs for a horse he is met by two cavaliers who direct him to make water into the head, which will immediately change into a steed, red in the morning, white at noon, and black at night. Mounted on this mysterious animal he reaches a town hung with black, because a ninety-nine-headed dragon, living on the Glass Mountain, has carried off the king’s daughter and will eat her on the morrow. The next day, having taken his horse’s advice, he rides at morning, at noon, and at evening once up and down the mountain, daunting the dragon by the belief that he has three champions to contend with. He again rides to the hill, alights, makes water thrice over the steed, and thus changes it back into a horse’s head. Creeping into the left ear, he is swallowed by the serpent. Once in the serpent’s body, he crawls out of the skull, and, tearing off his clothes, he sets fire to them. The dragon bursts; the Glass Mountain disappears; Radu finds himself in the arms of the princess, whom he soon weds; and as it is recorded that he lived with his second wife in joy and happiness, we may indulge the pleasing thought that she lacked the exasperating tongue of the first.[16.1]
In an earlier chapter I have abstracted a Lithuanian tale where the hero, having taken charge of a sister, is betrayed by her to a robber. This is quite a common incident in Slav märchen, not always found in connection with the Rescue of Andromeda. Another Lithuanian tale presents a brother and sister, turned out of doors by their father for bad conduct, arriving at a robber’s dwelling. Before leaving home, the youth had possessed himself of his father’s magical staff, which paralysed opponents. Aided by this he slays eleven of the twelve robbers, and severely wounds the twelfth. Having thrown their corpses into a Bluebeard’s chamber, already used for a similar purpose by the robbers themselves, he gives the keys of the house to his sister, forbidding her to enter the room where the bodies lie. She naturally disobeys, and is seized by the still living robber and compelled to bring him certain healing plants, which are hanging from the ceiling. The robber makes love to her, not without success, and persuades her to feign illness, and get her brother to procure, first, wolf’s milk, and then lioness’ milk, wherewith the wounded man is completely restored to health. When this is effected he comes forth, attacks the brother and threatens him with death. But in procuring the milk the hero has also won the favour of the she-wolf and lioness, as well as of a hare, for sparing their lives; and they have given him each a whistle to be blown when he is in need of help. He now blows; and immediately the grateful beasts rush to his help, tearing the robber and his paramour to pieces. Setting out with the animals, he comes to a town where the king’s last daughter is about to be given to a nine-headed dragon. His conquest of the dragon follows, and the cutting out of its nine tongues; after which he and his beasts lie down and fall asleep with utter weariness. While he sleeps, the princess puts her ring on his finger. She has hardly done so when some servants of the king, her father, come to the place, kill and bury him, and oblige her to take an oath to recognise their chief as her deliverer and bridegroom. On awaking, the hero’s animals miss their master and disperse, to meet again at the same spot three years later, in accordance with a tryst given them by him before lying down to sleep. The bear smells the corpse; the lion and wolf dig it up; and the hare fetches some leaves of a herb used by two snakes they have seen in combat at an earlier stage of their adventures. With these he restores the hero to life; and they all return to the town, as luck will have it, on the day of the wedding. The hare carries a letter to the princess, who induces her father to invite the stranger to the festivities. There he inquires what token of victory over the dragon the bridegroom had produced; and when the heads are shown him he draws the tongues out of his pocket, fits them into the throats and adds as a proof of his own identity the princess’ ring. The pretender is torn to pieces by oxen, and the hero happily married to the princess.[18.1] Variants of the story are well known in Italy. It is found in Brittany and Andalucia, and has even crossed the Atlantic with the Portuguese to Brazil.[18.2] None of these need be mentioned now, save a Piedmontese version, which accounts for the hero’s refusal to claim his bride as soon as he has won her, by the excuse that he was in mourning for his sister, slain by his dogs for her treachery, together with her paramour.[18.3] In variants from Bohemia and Transylvania, the sister is, after her lover’s death, shut up by her brother for her misconduct, and left when he goes abroad on his travels. When he is married he releases her and takes her to live in the palace. But she sticks in his bed a knife which pierces and kills him. He is brought to life again by his hounds, and his sister receives the reward of her double guilt.[19.1] In these two, as well as in a Sienese variant, the dogs are enchanted men who regain their true form after the hero is finally settled in life.
A type of the story found in Italy opens with the search made by a brother for a sister who had been carried off by an ogre. According to the Venetian tale he meets a priest, who bestows on him three dogs, called Rend-iron, Seize-all, and Now’s-the-time-to-help-me. With their assistance he slays the ogre; and then, leaving his sister in possession of the ogre’s palace and magical wand, he sets out for further adventures. The dogs at his command slay the seven-headed beast and bring him the heads. He will not return with the king’s daughter; but cutting out the beast’s tongues he puts them in a box, gives a ring to the lady as a pledge that he will return, and goes back with the good news to his sister. On the way he stops at an inn, and there meets a chimney-sweeper—a new and more modern shape of our old acquaintance, the charcoal-burner. Imprudently he shows the tongues to his new acquaintance, who robs him of them, and boldly claims the princess. The hero, however, gets wind of the wedding, and, breaking into the festivities, demands permission to speak. He cross-examines the bridegroom: “Are you the bridegroom?” “Yes.” “How did you manage to deliver this maiden?” The chimney-sweeper shuffled: “How did I do it? Look, here are the seven tongues!” “I ask you, How did you manage to deliver her? I will have an answer.” “With those three dogs.” “Good! Since you managed to deliver her by the help of those three dogs, in the presence of this noble company call the dogs by their names.” The impostor was confounded, dumb. Then the youth turned to the company and told his story, adding sarcastically: “And this gentleman here is he who stole the box.” The gentleman denied it. Like a trained advocate, the hero calls as a witness the innkeeper, who saw him showing the tongues to the chimney-sweeper, and confronts him with the bridegroom. The king is convinced; and the hero gets permission to do as he likes with his opponent. “Rend-iron, Seize-all, Now’s-the-time-to-help-me, eat him up.” And in the presence of the assembled guests, the chimney-sweeper was eaten up accordingly. The wedding then proceeded with a new bridegroom.[20.1]
This dramatic solution combines ancient and modern elements in an unexpected and interesting manner. A variant current in Sicily returns to the usual proof of the deliverer’s identity by means of the tongues. He slays the dragon with a magical sword belonging to the giant who has carried off his sister, and heals the wound he and his horse have received in the combat by means of a salve he has extracted from the giant’s head after putting him to death.[20.2] In a Georgian tale the hero is not born until after his sister has been carried away by a hundred-headed monster, and her three elder brothers, in attempting to rescue her, have been slain. Their desolate mother is given by a stranger an apple to eat, whence she bears a son called Asphurtzela. He conquers the monster, opens his breast and brings out the dead bodies of his brothers, restoring them to life by means of an enchanted handkerchief, also found in the monster’s breast. On the way home the ungrateful brothers tie him to a tree and leave him; but he succeeds in escaping. He cannot, however, remain at home after their evil conduct. So he sets forth again, and picks up two companions of supernatural power, with whose aid he liberates three fair maidens about to be married to three ogres. One ogre is left. He cozens the hero’s companions, one after the other, out of the food being prepared for their supper. Asphurtzela shoots the ogre and cuts him in two. The head rolls into a hole, wherein they find three lovely maidens. The two companions attempt successively to rescue them, but on letting them down their courage fails and they call out to be drawn up again. Asphurtzela descends and sends up the damsels. His companions close the hole and leave him to his fate. Wandering about in the lower regions he rescues a king’s daughter from a dragon, and sets free the water withheld by the monster. The king offers him presents, which he rejects, only asking to be sent back to his own land of light. Ultimately he finds a dragon attacking a griffin’s nest and shoots it. The griffin in gratitude carries him up to the surface of the earth. But to give her strength for the purpose it is necessary that she should be constantly supplied with food. When the provisions he has taken run short he cuts a piece off his own leg and throws it into her mouth. She restores it to him on arriving at the top, and heals the wound. He finds his two companions about to marry the maidens rescued from the hole and slays them, afterwards wedding the youngest maiden, and giving the two elder ones to his brothers.[21.1]
Here we find what we may call the Stolen Sister type, combined with another. The Underworld type, as it may be named, is somewhat more fertile in variants. Among Galland’s manuscripts is a tale he obtained from a Christian Maronite of Aleppo, named Hanna—that is, John. It concerns the three sons of the Sultan of Samarcand, who built a house for Rostam, his eldest son, unwittingly just above the underground dwelling of the eldest daughter of the genius Morhagian. The genius destroys it, and, when pursued by the prince, disappears in a well. The sultan then builds a similar house for his second son above the dwelling of Morhagian’s second daughter, with the same result. The house intended for the third son, Badialzaman, is built over the genius’ third daughter’s palace. It is destroyed like the others; but Badialzaman succeeds in wounding the genius thrice ere he reaches the well, and persuades his brothers to join him in pursuing the foe down into the well. Of course Badialzaman is the only one of the three who has the courage to be let down to the bottom. There he is entertained for forty days, first by one and then by another of Morhagian’s beautiful daughters, of whom the youngest is the loveliest. He announces his intention of taking vengeance on their father. Each of them endeavours to dissuade him, but in vain; and the youngest warns him that he has no chance against the genius, who will simply take his head in one hand and his feet in the other and rend him in twain. As she has foretold, so it happens. The pieces, however, are brought to the lady by two of her women; and when she has put them together she revives the hero by applying the Water of Life to his wounds. Having then made him swear to wed her, she teaches him how he may kill her father, by attacking him asleep and giving him one blow—no more—with his own sword, which will be found hanging above his head. The treachery of his brothers in drawing up the three maidens and leaving Badialzaman in the pit, his conquest of the monster, deliverance of the princess and release of the water, and finally his conveyance to the upper world by a grateful rokh whose young he had saved from a serpent, follow the course of the Georgian tale. Before the three maidens were sent up they had reduced their palaces to the size of three balls, which they had put into his care; and by the advice of the youngest he had cut some hair from the tail of Morhagian’s magical steed. A little of the hair had only to be burnt to bring the steed to him. With the help of these things, having taken service with a tailor, he prepares a robe for the youngest maiden on the occasion of her marriage to his brother Rostam, and attending the festival he slays the bridegroom with Morhagian’s sword. Then he disappears; but three months afterwards, when the same damsel is to be married to his second brother, he repeats the performance. Poetical justice is completed by his marriage with the lady; and her sisters are given to two other princes.[23.1]
The tale is current in Italy, and is widely spread in the Levant. As it is told at Lesbos, the cause of the hero’s descent into the lower world is the robbery every year by a monster of the three golden apples growing on a tree in a king’s garden. The youngest brother succeeds in wounding the thief and tracking him to a pit. He slays the monster and delivers three maidens, whom he sends up to his brothers above. His brothers’ treachery and all the other incidents follow. Here he has to prove against other pretenders that it is he who has put the dragon to death. This he does in the ordinary way by means of his tongues. He rejects the king’s treasures, the half of his kingdom, and even his lovely daughter, and will only accept the provisions necessary for the eagle which is to carry him up to this world again. His father having awarded the youngest maiden to his eldest brother, she demands three dresses representing, one, the heaven with all its stars, another, the earth with all her trees and flowers, and the third, the sea with all the fishes that dwell therein. These, of course, can only be furnished by the hero from three walnuts handed by her to him before parting. When they have been obtained the master-tailor is summoned and compelled to declare whence he got them. The hero is recognised; but his vengeance on his brothers is limited to banishing them from the realm.[24.1]
In a story of the Avares of the Caucasus the hero is the offspring of a king’s daughter by a bear, and is called Bear’s-Ears from a peculiarity which he owes to his parentage. His companions are not his brothers, but two heroes like himself, of extraordinary strength, who, however, are successively robbed of their food by a dwarf. Bear’s-Ears catches the dwarf, cleaves a plane-tree and fastens him by the beard in the cleft. The dwarf uproots the plane-tree and escapes into a pit. Bear’s-Ears liberates only one princess from the dwarf. The dragon has nine heads; and the hero, cutting off his ears, carries them to the king.[24.2] In this tale there seem no impostors. As the Nubians tell it, an ogre obtains the food of the hero and his companions, of whom there are four; and here again only one lady is delivered from the pit. When he is left at the bottom by his treacherous friends, he rescues a king’s daughter from a crocodile that stops the river. Then dipping his fingers in its blood he marks the damsel’s thigh; and this serves as the proof when others claim to have performed the deed of valour.[25.1] Among the Vlachs we return to the dwarf; but there is no lady to be rescued from his power. Peter Firitschell, as the hero is called, however, makes friends with a blind old woman, who is captive to certain dragons. He slays the dragons and restores the woman’s sight. He then acquires three Helpful Beasts, a fox, a wolf, and a bear. The monster to whom the princess is to be given has twelve heads, and dwells in a marsh outside the city. Peter lies down to sleep in the maiden’s lap while he is waiting for the monster, and she abstracts one of his twelve arrows. With the rest he shoots off eleven of the monster’s heads, and borrows of her a pin to shoot the twelfth. He cuts out the tongues, and lies down again to sleep. A Gipsy strikes his head off, takes the dragon’s twelve heads and claims the victory. Peter is brought to life again by his faithful animals, and is in time to prevent the Gipsy’s marriage to the king’s daughter. Wallachia being a Christian country, the punishment inflicted on the impostor is merely that of being rolled down a hill in a barrel studded inside with spikes. Peter then weds the lady and remains in the Underworld, where he succeeds in due time to her father’s throne.[25.2]
Nearly related to the Underworld type is that of Fearless Johnny. A Breton story, obtained by M. Sébillot at Dourdain in the department of Ille et Vilaine, has also lately been given by a contributor to the Rivista delle Tradizioni Popolari Italiane, as coming from Cagliari, so nearly in the same words as to lead to the conclusion that it must have been in very recent years carried directly from Brittany to Sardinia, or vice versâ. It relates that Johnny, being a lad of noted courage, discovers a practical joke played upon him by some of his companions with the object of frightening him by the apparition of a pretended corpse. He then sets out to learn what fear is, and rescues the souls of some robbers who have been hanged, by finding the treasure they have stolen from a church and restoring it to the priest, from whom he will take no reward except his consecrated stole—a magical article of considerable value in the legends of Roman Catholic lands. With this stole he delivers a house from a devil that haunts it, and afterwards kills the dragon, taking its tongues, with which he proves himself the victor. A swallow scratches up a little earth over his face as he lies asleep on the ground weary from his combat; and awaking he cries: “Ah! I did not know till now whether Fear was furred or feathered; now I see that it is feathered.” That was the only time he ever experienced even the beginning of fear; and then he was more than half asleep.[26.1]