Fairy Tales, Their Origin and Meaning; With Some Account of Dwellers in Fairyland

by John Thackray Bunce

So the Princess went to the Red Sea, and counted the reeds, and cut off the eleventh reed, and beat the Caterpillar with it, and then the Lion conquered in the fight, and both of them took their human forms again. But the Enchanted Princess was too quick for the poor wife, for she instantly seized the Prince and sprang upon the back of the Griffin, and away they flew, quite out of sight. Now the poor deserted wife sat down on the desolate shore, and cried bitterly; and then she said, "So far as the wind blows, and so long as the cock crows, will I search for my husband, till I find him;" and so she travelled on and on, until one day she came to the palace whither the Enchanted Princess had carried the Prince; and there was great feasting going on, and they told her that the Prince and Princess were about to be married. Then she remembered what the Sun had said, and took out the casket and opened it, and there was the most beautiful dress in all the world; as brilliant as the Sun himself. So she put it on, and went into the palace, and everybody admired the dress, and the Enchanted Princess asked if she would sell it?

"Not for gold or silver," she said, "but for flesh and blood."

"What do you mean?" the Princess asked.

"Let me sleep for one night in the bridegroom's chamber," the wife said. So the Enchanted Princess agreed, but she gave the Prince a sleeping draught, so that he could not hear his wife's cries; and in the morning she was driven out, without a word from him, for he slept so soundly that all she said seemed to him only like the rushing of the wind through the fir-trees.

Then the poor wife sat down and wept again, until she thought of the egg the Moon had given her; and when she took the egg and broke it, there came out of it a hen with twelve chickens, all of gold, and the chickens pecked quite prettily, and then ran under the wings of the hen for shelter. Presently, the Enchanted Princess looked out of the window, and saw the hen and the chickens, and asked if they were for sale. "Not for gold or silver, but for flesh and blood," was the answer she got; and then the wife made the same bargain as before—that she should spend the night in the bridegroom's chamber. Now this night the Prince was warned by his servant, and so he poured away the sleeping draught instead of drinking it; and when his wife came, and told her sorrowful story, he knew her, and said, "Now I am saved;" and then they both went as quickly as possible, and set themselves upon the Griffin, who carried them over the Red Sea; and when they got to the middle of the sea, the Princess let fall the nut which the North Wind had given to her, and a great nut-tree grew up at once, on which the Griffin rested; and then it went straight to their home, where they lived happy ever after.

One more story of the same kind must be told, for three reasons: because it is very good reading, because it brings together various legends, and because it shows that these were common to Celtic as well as to Hindu, Greek, Teutonic, and Scandinavian peoples. It is called "The Battle of the Birds," and is given at full length, and in several different versions, in Campbell's "Popular Tales of the West Highlands."[5] To bring it within our space we must tell it in our own way.

Once upon a time every bird and other creature gathered to battle. The son of the King of Tethertoun went to see the battle, but it was over before he got there, all but one fight, between a great Raven and a Snake; and the Snake was getting the victory. The King's son helped the Raven, and cut off the Snake's head. The Raven thanked him for his kindness and said, "Now I will give thee a sight; come up on my wings;" and then the Raven flew with him over seven mountains, and seven glens, and seven moors, and that night the King's son lodged in the house of the Raven's sisters; and promised to meet the Raven next morning in the same place. This went on for three nights and days, and on the third morning, instead of a raven, there met him a handsome lad, who gave him a bundle, and told him not to look into it, until he was in the place where he would most wish to dwell. But the King's son did look into the bundle, and then he found himself in a great castle with fine grounds about it, and he was very sorry, because he wished the castle had been near his father's house, but he could not put it back into the bundle again. Then a great Giant met him, and offered to put the castle back into a bundle for a reward, and this was to be the Prince's son, when the son was seven years old. So the Prince promised, and the Giant put everything back into the bundle, and the Prince went home with it to his father's house. When he got there he opened the bundle, and out came the castle and all the rest, just as before, and at the castle door stood a beautiful maiden who asked him to marry her, and they were married, and had a son. When the seven years were up, the Giant came to ask for the boy, and then the King's son (who had now become a king himself) told his wife about his promise. "Leave that to me and the Giant," said the Queen. So she dressed the cook's son (who was the right age) in fine clothes, and gave him to the Giant; but the Giant gave the boy a rod, and asked him, "If thy father had that rod, what would he do with it?" "He would beat the dogs if they went near the King's meat," said the boy. Then Said the Giant, "Thou art the cook's son," and he killed him. Then the Giant went back, very angry, and the Queen gave him the butler's son; and the Giant gave him the rod, and asked him the same question, "My father would beat the dogs if they came near the King's glasses," said the boy. "Thou art the butler's son," said the Giant; and he killed him. Now the Giant went back the third time, and made a dreadful noise. "Out here thy son," he said, "or the stone that is highest in thy dwelling shall be the lowest." So they gave him the King's son, and the Giant took him to his own house, and he stayed there a long while. One day the youth heard sweet music at the top of the Giant's house, and he saw a sweet face. It was the Giant's youngest daughter; and she said to him, "My father wants you to marry one of my sisters, and he wants me to marry the King of the Green City, but I will not. So when he asks, say thou wilt take me." Next day the Giant gave the King's son choice of his two eldest daughters; but the Prince said, "Give me this pretty little one?" and then the Giant was angry, and said that before he had her he must do three things. The first of these was to clean out a byre or cattle place, where there was the dung of a hundred cattle, and it had not been cleaned for seven years. He tried to do it, and worked till noon, but the filth was as bad as ever. Then the Giant's youngest daughter came, and bid him sleep, and she cleaned out the stable, so that a golden apple would run from end to end of it. Next day the Giant set him to thatch the byre with birds' down, and he had to go out on the moors to catch the birds; but at midday, he had caught only two blackbirds, and then the Giant's youngest daughter came again, and bid him sleep, and then she caught the birds, and thatched the byre with the feathers before sundown. The third day the Giant set him another task. In the forest there was a fir-tree, and at the top was a magpie's nest, and in the nest were five eggs, and he was to bring these five eggs to the Giant without breaking one of them. Now the tree was very tall; from the ground to the first branch it was five hundred feet, so that the King's son could not climb up it. Then the Giant's youngest daughter came again, and she put her fingers one after the other into the tree, and made a ladder for the King's son to climb up by. When he was at the nest at the very top, she said, "Make haste now with the eggs, for my father's breath is burning my back;" and she was in such a hurry that she left her little finger sticking in the top of the tree. Then she told the King's son that the Giant would make all his daughters look alike, and dress them alike, and that when the choosing time came he was to look at their hands, and take the one that had not a little finger on one hand. So it happened, and the King's son chose the youngest daughter, because she put out her hand to guide him.

Then they were married, and there was a great feast, and they went to their chamber. The Giant's daughter said to her husband, "Sleep not, or thou diest; we must fly quick, or my father will kill thee." So first she cut an apple into nine pieces, and put two pieces at the head of the bed, and two at the foot, and two at the door of the kitchen, and two at the great door, and one outside the house. And then she and her husband went to the stable, and mounted the fine grey filly, and rode off as fast as they could. Presently the Giant called out, "Are you asleep yet?" and the apple at the head of the bed said, "We are not asleep." Then he called again, and the apple at the foot of the bed said the same thing; and then he asked again and again, until the apple outside the house door answered; and then he knew that a trick had been played on him, and ran to the bedroom and found it empty. And then he pursued the runaways as fast as possible. Now at day-break—"at the mouth of day," the story-teller says—the Giant's daughter said to her husband, "My father's breath is burning my back; put thy hand into the ear of the grey filly, and whatever thou findest, throw it behind thee." "There is a twig of sloe-tree," he said. "Throw it behind thee," said she; and he did so, and twenty miles of black-thorn wood grew out of it, so thick that a weasel could not get through. But the Giant cut through it with his big axe and his wood-knife, and went after them again. At the heat of day the Giant's daughter said again, "My father's breath is burning my back;" and then her husband put his finger in the filly's ear, and took out a piece of grey stone, and threw it behind him, and there grew up directly a great rock twenty miles broad and twenty miles high. Then the Giant got his mattock and his lever, and made a way through the rocks, and came after them again. Now it was near sunset, and once more the Giant's daughter felt her father's breath burning her back. So, for the third time, her husband put his hand into the filly's ear, and took out a bladder of water, and he threw it behind him, and there was a fresh-water loch, twenty miles long and twenty miles broad; and the Giant came on so fast that he ran into the middle of the loch and was drowned.

Here is clearly a Sun-myth, which is like those of ancient Hindu and Greek legend: the blue-grey Filly is the Dawn, on which the new day, the maiden and her lover, speed away. The great Giant, whose breath burns the maiden's back, is the morning Sun, whose progress is stopped by the thick shade of the trees. Then he rises higher, and at midday he breaks through the forest, and soars above the rocky mountains. At evening, still powerful in speed and heat, he comes to the great lake, plunges into it, and sets, and those whom he pursues escape. This ending is repeated in one of the oldest Hindu mythical stories, that of Bheki, the Frog Princess, who lives with her husband on condition that he never shows her a drop of water. One day he forgets, and she disappears: that is, the sun sets or dies on the water—a fanciful idea which takes us straight as an arrow to Aryan myths.

Now, however, we must complete the Gaelic story, which here becomes like the Soaring Lark, and the Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and other Teutonic and Scandinavian tales.