Another “famous History” which came with these into the chap-books, was that of Valentine and Orson, first printed by Wynkyn de Worde, and reprinted at the close of the nineteenth century as an “old fairy tale”. It has some novel features besides the usual stage properties of romance. Of the twin brothers separated in childhood, one is brought up at Court and trained in knightly exercises; the other carried off by a bear and nourished with her cubs. This is a foretaste of The Jungle Book:
“In a cave, the bear had four young ones, among whom she laid the child to be devoured, yet all the while the young bears did it no harm; but with their rough paws stroked it softly. The old bear, perceiving they did not devour it, showed a bearish kind of favour towards it, inasmuch that she kept it and gave it suck among her young ones for the space of one year”.
The second chapter records how the bear’s nursling, Orson, grew up into a Wild Man, and how the young knight Valentine, his brother, meeting him in a wood, won a victory of skill against strength; after which, still unconscious of their relationship, he tamed the Wild Man and taught him the arts of chivalry.
The more magical elements of the story have a flavour of the East, and doubtless belong to the older strata of Eastern romance. The adventure of the Dwarf Pacolet suggests the tale of the “Magic Horse” in the Thousand and One Nights; for by his art this dwarf, who was an Enchanter, “had contrived a horse of wood, and in the forehead a fixed pin, by turning of which he could convey himself to the farthest part of the world”.
Many such marvels, related during the Middle Ages by merchants or Crusaders returning from the East, had been caught up in the weavings of romance; but it is a sort of magic that has little to do with the myth-making power of childhood. Pacolet’s flying horse is made of wood; the touch of its hoof never brought water from a mountain-side. It represents the magic of ingenuity which comes half-way between pure romance and the practical marvels of a scientific age.
Indeed, it is but a step from the flying horse of Eastern tales to Roger Bacon’s horseless chariots and flying “instruments”. The “Learned Friar”, a clerk of Oxford in the thirteenth century, foretold many things to be performed by “Art and Nature”, wherein should be “nothing magical”. Yet he studied such strange matters that he was persecuted for practising magic, and the chap-books set him down a conjurer. The Enchanted Head of Brass which in Valentine and Orson reveals the parentage of the brothers, reappears in the Famous History of Friar Bacon, as the Brazen Head, wrought in so many sleepless nights by the Friar and his brother-in-magic, Friar Bungay.
Greene, in his play of Fryer Bacon and Fryer Boungay (1591), follows this well known tract,[4] which came down with few changes to the eighteenth century. Here the old magic machinery goes with the light movement of a popular tale. The Brazen Head should have disclosed a secret whereby Friar Bacon “would have walled England about with brass”; but the stupidity of his servant Miles prevented it. For when the two magicians, worn out with toil, lay down to sleep, they set him to watch the Head, commanding him to call them the moment it should speak; and he, the while, kept up his spirits “with tabor and pipe and song”.
When at last the Head spake these words: “Time Is,” and no more, Miles, understanding nothing by that, fell to mockery: “If thou canst speak no wiser, they shall sleep till doomsday for me. Time is! I know Time is, that you shall hear, Goodman Brazen Face!”
So saying, he fitted the words to the tune of “Dainty, come thou to me”, and sang for half-an-hour. Thereupon the Head spake again, saying two words and no more: “Time Was”; whereat the Simpleton railed afresh, and another half-hour went by.
Then the Brazen Head spake again, these words: “Time is Past”, and then fell down; and presently followed a terrible noise, with strange flashes of fire, so that Miles was half-dead with fear.