Primitive Manners and Customs

by James Anson Farrer

THE IRISH STORY.

‘The birds all met together one day, and settled among themselves that whichever of them could fly highest was to be the king of all. Well, just as they were on the hinges of being off, what does the little rogue of a wren do, but hop up and perch himself unbeknown on the eagle’s tail. So they flew and flew ever so high, till the eagle was miles above all the rest, and could not fly another stroke, he was so tired. “Then,” says he, “I’m king of the birds....” “You lie,” says the wren, darting up a perch and a half above the big fellow. Well, the eagle was so mad to think how he was done, that when the wren was coming down, he gave him a stroke of his wing, and from that day to this the wren was never able to fly further than a hawthorn bush.’[372]

It is impossible to assign limits either to the vitality or to the range of a story. If the commerce which has ever prevailed between the different tribes of the world, as it prevails to this day, either by conquest or by barter, has caused so wide a dispersion of the races and products of the earth, the wonder would rather be if the products of men’s thoughts and fancies had not prevailed so widely, had not taken so deep root in man’s memory, seeing that they cost nothing either to carry or to keep. For many stories therefore of wide range, agreeing in such minute particulars as to render difficult the theory of their independent origin, the mystery of their resemblance is amply solved by the theory of their gradual dispersion, without their proving anything as to the common origin of those who tell them. The story, for instance, of Faithful John, the central idea of which is, that a friend can only apprise some one of a danger he will incur on his wedding night, by himself incurring suspicion and being turned into stone, is told with little variation in Bohemia, Greece, Italy, and Spain; and the discovery of the leading thought in a story in India makes it possible that it was there originated.[373] In Polynesia, again, the story of stopping the motion of the sun is widely spread; in New Zealand, Maui makes ropes of flax, goes with his brothers to the point where the sun rises, hides from it by day, and when it rises next day succeeds in his purpose before letting it go further. In Tahiti, Maui is a priest, or chief of olden time, who builds a marae which must be finished by the evening, and who therefore seizes the sun by its rays and binds him to a tree till his work is finished. In Hawaii Maui stops the sun till evening, because his wife has to finish a certain dress by twilight. In Samoa, Maui appears as Itu, a man who is anxious to build a house of great stones, but is unable to do so because the sun goes too fast; he therefore takes a boat and lays nets in the sun’s path, but as these are broken through, he makes a noose, catches the sun, and only lets it free when his house is finished.[374] Obviously, these stories are all related, but it is impossible to say whether they spread from any one place to the others, or whether they are remnants, retained in altered form, from the primitive mythology of a common Polynesian home. It is, however, worthy of notice that in Wallachian fairy lore also a cow pushes back the sun to the hour of mid-day, to enable a youth who had fallen asleep to accomplish his task,[375] and that the idea of catching the sun is not unknown to the mythology of America.

There is, however, a large class of stories which arise independently, and owe their remarkable family likeness neither to a common descent nor to importation, but to the natural promptings of the imagination. Thus, the idea of a tree so high that it reaches the heavens, and consequently of the heavens as thereby attainable, naturally produces such a story as Jack and the Beanstalk, a story which is said to be found all over the world, but the versions of which agree in no other single point than in the admission to the sky by dint of climbing.[376] In the same way many of the ideas common to the Indo-European nations, and so often explained as originally derived from the fanciful meteorology of the primitive Aryans, find startling analogues outside the Aryan family, where there is no reason to suppose them anything more than the direct offspring of the dreamer or the story-teller. If the constancy of Penelope to Ulysses, tormented by her suitors, is simply that of the evening light, assailed by the powers of darkness, till the return of her husband the sun in the morning,[377] shall we apply the same interpretation to the story of the wife of the Red Swan, of the Odjibwas, who, when he returns from the discovery of his magic arrows from the abode of the departed spirits, finds that his two brothers have been quarrelling for the possession of his wife, but been quarrelling in vain?[378] If the legend of Cadmus recovering Europa, after she has been carried away by the white bull, the spotless cloud, means that ‘the sun must journey westward until he sees again the beautiful tints which greeted his eyes in the morning,’[379] shall we say the same of a story current in North America, to the effect that a man once had a beautiful daughter whom he forbade to leave the lodge lest she should be carried off by the king of the buffaloes; and that as she sat, notwithstanding, outside the house, combing her hair, ‘all of a sudden the king of the buffaloes came dashing on, with his herd of followers, and taking her between his horns, away he cantered over plains, plunged into a river which bounded his land, and carried her safely to his lodge on the other side,’ whence she was finally recovered by her father?[380]

Again, in Hindu mythology, Urvasi came down from heaven and became the wife of the son of Budha, only on condition that two pet rams should never be taken from her bedside and that she should never behold her lord undressed. The immortals, however, wishing Urvasi back in heaven, contrived to steal the rams; and as the king pursued the robbers with his sword in the dark, the lightning revealed his person, the compact was broken, and Urvasi disappeared.[381] This same story is found in different forms among many people of Aryan and Turanian descent, the central idea being that of a man marrying someone of aerial or aquatic origin, and living happily with her till he breaks the condition on which her residence with him depends. Thus there is the story of Raymond of Toulouse, who chances in the hunt upon the beautiful Melusina at a fountain and lives with her happily till he discovers her fish-nature and she vanishes; but exactly parallel stories come no less from Borneo, the Celebes, or North America than from Ireland or Germany; for which reason it seems sufficient to receive them simply as they stand, as fairy tales natural to every tribe of mankind that has a fixed belief in supernatural beings, rather than to explain these wonderful wives as the ‘bright fleecy clouds of early morning, which vanish as the splendour of the sun is unveiled.’[382] Let us compare the story as it is told in America and Bornoese tradition.

THE BORNOESE STORY.

A certain Bornoese, when far from home, once climbed a tree to rest, and whilst there ‘was attracted by the most ravishing music, which ever and anon came nearer and nearer, until it seemingly approached the very roots of the tree, when a pure well of water burst out, at the bottom of which were seven beautiful virgins. Ravished at the sight, and determined to make one of them his son’s wife, he made a lasso of his rattan, and drew her up.’ One day, however, her husband hit her in anger, and she was taken up to the sky.[383]

THE AMERICAN STORY.

Wampee, a great hunter, once came to a strange prairie, where he heard faint sounds of music, and looking up saw a speck in the sky, which proved itself to be a basket containing twelve most beautiful maidens, who, on reaching the earth, forthwith set themselves to dance. He tried to catch the youngest, but in vain; ultimately he succeeded by assuming the disguise of a mouse. He was very attentive to his new wife, who was really a daughter of one of the stars, but she wished to return home, so she made a wicker basket secretly, and by help of a charm she remembered, ascended to her father.[384]

It has been imagined that all the fairy tales of the world may be reduced to certain fundamental story roots; but these story roots we should look for not in the clouds, but upon the earth, not in the various aspects of nature, but in the daily occurrences and surroundings of savage life. The uniformity which appears in so many of the myths or fairy tales of the world would thus simply arise from a uniformity of the experiences of existence. The evidence concerning savage astro-mythology is conclusive, that nothing is conceived of the heavenly bodies that has not its prototype on earth; that the skies do but mirror the events or objects of earth, where the memorable incidents of the chase or the battle are told of the stars: nor is it strange if in a few years such tales should have so gained in the telling, that it is often impossible to separate the fact from the fiction, or to distinguish a crude supposition from the creation of a fanciful myth.