I had gone through three-quarters of the tales and notes contained in the present book before I became acquainted with the modestly named Anmerkungen zu Grimm's Mährchen, 2 vols., 1913-15, by J. Bolte and E. Polivka. This is one of those works of colossal erudition of which German savants alone seem to have the secret. It sums up the enormous amount of research that has been going on in Europe for the last hundred years, on the parallelism and provenance of the folk-tales of Europe, and in a measure does for all the Grimm stories what Miss Roalfe Cox did for Cinderella. Only two volumes have as yet appeared dealing with the first 120 numbers of the Grimm collection in over a thousand pages crammed with references and filled with details as to variants. The book has obviously been planned and worked out by Dr. Bolte, who had previously edited the collected works of his chief predecessor, R. Koehler. Dr. Polivka's contribution mainly consists in the collection and collation of the Slavonic variants, which are here made accessible for the first time. I therefore refer to the volume henceforth by Dr. Bolte's name. The book is indispensable for the serious students of the folk-tale, and would have saved me an immense amount of trouble if I had become acquainted with it earlier.
In thirty-eight or nearly a third of the tales Dr. Bolte gives a formula, or radicle, summing up the "common form" of the story, and I am happy to find that in those cases, which occur in the early part of the present volume, my own formulæ, agree with his, though of course for the purposes of this book I have had to go into more detail. Dr. Bolte has not as yet expounded any theory of the origin of the Folk Tale, but, with true scientific caution, judges each case on its merits. But his whole treatment assumes the organic unity of each particular formula, and one cannot conceive him regarding the similarities of the tales as due to similar mental workings of the folk mind at a particular stage of social development.
Finally, I should perhaps explain that in my selection of typical folk-tales for the present volume, I have included not only those which could possibly be traced back to real primitive times and mental conditions, like the "Cupid and Psyche" formula, but others of more recent date and composition, provided they have spread throughout Europe, which is my criterion. For instance "Beauty and the Beast" in its current shape was composed in the eighteenth century, but has found its place in the story-store of European children. A couple, like "Androcles and the Lion" and "Day Dreaming," owe a similar spread to literary communication even though in the latter case it is the popular literature of the Arabian Nights. These must be regarded as specimens only of a large class of stories that are found among the folk and can be traced in the popular mediæval collections like Alfonsi's Disciplina-Clericalis or Jacques de Vitry's Exempla, not to speak of the Fables of Bidpai or The Seven Wise Masters of Rome. These form quite a class by themselves and though they have come to be in many cases Folk-Lore of European spread, they differ in quality from the ordinary folk-tale which is characterized by its tendency to variation as it passes from mouth to mouth. Still one has to recognize that they are now European and take their place among the folk and for that reason I have given a couple of specimens of them, but of course my main attention has been directed to attempting to reconstruct the original form of the true folk-tale from the innumerable variants now current among the folk.
I. CINDER-MAID
Source.—Miss Roalfe Cox's volume on Cinderella, published by the Folk-Lore Society (London: David Nutt, 1893), contains 130 abstracts and tabulations of the pure Cinderella "formula," found in Finland, the Riviera, Scotland, Italy, Armenia, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, France, Greece, Germany, Spain, Calcutta, Ireland, Servia, Poland, Russia, Denmark, Albania, Cyprus, Galicia Lithuania, Catalonia, Portugal, Sicily, Hungary, Martinique, Holland, Bohemia, Bulgaria, and the Tyrol. Besides these there are 31 intermediate stories approximating to the Cinderella type, from Russia, Asia Minor, Italy, Lorraine, The Deccan, Poland, Hungary, Catalonia, Corsica, Finland, Switzerland, and in Basque, Spain. The earliest form in which the pure type occurs is in Basile's Pentamerone, 1634, and of the indeterminate type in Bonaventure des Periers Nouvelles Récréations, 1557, though the latter seems more cognate to the Catskin formula.
In many of the variants there is an introductory series of incidents in which the heroine, after the loss of her mother, is set tasks by the envious step-mother and sisters, which she is aided to perform by means of an animal helper, mainly sheep or cow, which, in some of the versions, is clearly identified with her mother either in a transformed or a natural state. In these versions the magic dresses, for example, are taken out of the ear of the cow or sheep! These incidents however seem to me to be incongruous with the rest of the story, which involves a monogamous society with fairly fixed social grades and with the wearing of shoes at least among the upper strata of society. They belong rather to the type of story represented by the Grimm's "One eye, Two eyes, Three eyes"; and I have therefore reserved them for my retelling of this formula. In a similar way, in some of the Celtic versions, a long series of incidents is inserted, clearly taken from the Sea Maiden story (see Celtic Fairy Tales, xvii.).
The central incident of the Cinder-Maid formula is clearly the Shoe Marriage Test, up to which everything leads and upon which the mutilation incidents at the end depends. The mutilation again implies that the shoe in question must have been of a hard or metallic substance which could not be pressed out of shape. In the form endeared to most European children of the upper classes by Charles Perrault, the slipper is made of glass. It was first suggested by Balzac that Perrault's pantoffles de verre was due to his misunderstanding of the pantoffles de vair, or fur (the word vair is still used to indicate this in heraldry), which he had heard from his nurse or other folk-tale informant. But the step-sisters would not have been compelled to hack their heels to get inside a fur slipper, and, from this point of view, the glass shoe would be preferable. I have had, however, to reject it because it occurs in only six of the variants obviously derived directly, or indirectly, from Perrault. The majority of the versions prefer gold (see Miss Roalfe Cox's enumeration p. 342).
The Shoe Marriage Test again involves the previous meetings of the high-born lover and the menial heroine, transformed for the nonce by her dress into a dame of equal standing. In some of the variants these meetings are in church and not at a ball, royal or otherwise. But the Shoe Marriage Test involves a highly desirable parti who can practically command any wife he desires; this points to some super-chief or king. I have, therefore, reserved the church meetings for the Catskin type of story in which the heroine is scullery-maid in the young lord's own household. The obtaining of the dresses needed for the Royal Balls involves some animal or supernatural aid (in Perrault it is, of course, a fairy god-mother, unknown to the folk mind), while the menial condition of the heroine is best explained in the usual folk-tale manner by the envious step-mother or sisters.
I have pointed out in English Fairy Tales (Note to "Childe Rowland") that in most folk-tales of a romantic type the mode of telling is by prose narrative interspersed with rhyming formulæ analogous to the cante-fable as in "Aucassin and Nicolete." The Cinderella formula shows clear traces of such rhymes, especially at the stages of the narrative where incidents are repeated—the appeal for aid at the mother's grave (Dress Rhyme), the avoidance of pursuit by the guards (Pursuit Rhyme), and the calling attention of the Prince to the mutilated feet of the step-sisters (Feet Rhyme).
Now some of these rhymes are found in similar and almost identical shape in collections made in different countries and different languages; thus the Tree Rhyme is found in the Archivio (Cox, p. 139) and in Ive (p. 265), in Bechstein (p. 166), and in Grimm (p. 222), and in Hahn (p. 244), and Moe (p. 322), each pair having practically identical rhymes. Thus we have the existence of a Tree Rhyme, shown in Italy and Germany, Greece and Denmark. So, too, the Feet Rhyme is found in Scotland and Denmark, Germany and Brittany. It is scarcely possible to doubt that all these came from one original form of the story in which similar rhymes occurred at the same stage of the narrative. The possibility of such coincidences arising casually may fairly be regarded as out of the question.