In some forms the farmer has three sons, of whom the youngest adopts thievery as a profession, which indeed it was in the Middle Ages (as we know from the Cul-le-jatte of The Cloister and the Hearth). In Hahn, 3, the Master Thief has to bring a "Drakos" instead of a priest. Curiously enough, in Gonzenbach, 83, the Master Thief has to bring back a "dragu."
In many of the variants the Master Thief executes his tricks in order to gain the King's daughter by a sort of Bride Wager. But in most cases he does them in order to escape the natural consequences of his thievery.
XVII. THE UNSEEN BRIDEGROOM
The adult reader will of course recognize that this is the story of Cupid and Psyche, as told by Apuleius, and translated with such felicity by Pater in his Marius, Pt. i., ch. 5. Though the names of the gods and goddesses—Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Juno, Proserpine, etc.—are scattered through the tale, it is now acknowledged on all hands that it has nothing to do with mythology but is a fairy tale pure and simple, as indeed is acknowledged by Apuleius who calls it a "fabella anilis." From this point of view it is of extreme interest to the student of the folk-tale as practically the same tale, with the Unseen Bridegroom, the Sight Taboo, the Jealous Mother-in-law, the Tasks, and the Visit to the Nether-World, occur in contemporary folk-tales scattered throughout Europe, from Norway (Dasent, "East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon") to Italy (Gonzenbach No. 15, Pitre No. 18 given in Crane No. 1, King of Love); for the variants elsewhere see Koehler on Gonzenbach. The earliest form of the modern versions is found in Basile (1637), Pentamerone v., 4, The Golden Root.
Now there are several circumstances showing the identity of the ancient and modern forms of this story. All of them contain the punishment for curiosity motive, which is doubled both in Apuleius (with the coffer at the end) and in Basile and Crane. In several of the folk-tales the Ant-Help occurs in the performance of the tasks, and in Apuleius the successive visits to Juno and Ceres evidently represent the visits to the Queen-mother's sisters, often known as ogresses, found in Dasent, Basile, and in Grimm 88. It is possible, of course, that in some cases dim memories of Apuleius have percolated down to the folk, as is shown by the name of the hero in Pitre's version Il Re d'Amore. Kawczynski (Abh. d. Krakauer Akad. 1909, xlv. 1) declares for the derivation of the whole series of folk-tales from Apuleius but against this is the doubt whether this author was at all known during the Middle Ages.
But, to prove that the folk-tales were not derived directly or solely from the classical romance they, in almost every case, had a series of adventures not found there, including the incidents, Obstacles to Pursuit, False Bride, and Sale of Bed. Now these incidents really belong to another formula, that of the Master-Maid, in which an ogre's or giant's daughter, helps the hero to perform tasks, flees away with him, is pursued by the ogre, loses her beloved through an Oblivion Kiss and has to win him again from his False Bride by purchasing the right of spending three nights with him. These incidents come in logically in the Master-Maid formula but are dragged in without real relevance into Cupid and Psyche; yet they occur as early as Basile where there is a dim reminiscence of the Oblivion Kiss. In reconstructing the formula I have therefore omitted these incidents, reserving them for their proper place (see Master-Maid).
Cupid and Psyche is of special interest to the student of the folk-tale since it is a means of testing the mythological, the anthropological, and the Indian theories of its origin. The mythological interpretation is nowadays so discredited that it is needless to discuss it, especially as we have seen that the mythological names given by Apuleius are only dragged in perforce. The anthropological explanation, given most fully by Andrew Lang in his admirable introduction to Addington's translation of Apuleius in the Bibliotheque de Carabas, gives savage parallels from all quarters of the globe to the seven chief incidents making up the tale, but leaves altogether out of account the artistic concatenation of the incidents in the tale itself and does not consider the later complications of the European folk-tales connected with it. M. Cosquin and others bring in the Vedic myth of Urvasi and Pururavas, but we have seen reason to reject the notion that the tale is, in its essence, mythological, and therefore need not consider its relation to Indian mythology. Cosquin, however, gives reference to the tale of Tulisa taken down from a washerwoman of Benares in 1833 (Asiatic Journal, new series, vol. 2), which has the invisible husband and the breaking of taboo, the jealous mother-in-law, and the tasks. This is indeed a close parallelism sufficient to raise the general question of relation between the Indian and the European folk-tale. But the earlier existence of the tale in Apuleius and Basile would give the preference to European influence on India rather than vice versa.
I should add that I have followed Apuleius in giving a symbolic name to the heroine of the tale, in order to suggest its relation to the classical folk-tale of Cupid and Psyche, but not of course to indicate that it is in any sense mythological. The Descent-to-hell incident, which is found both in the classical and in the modern European forms and therefore in my reconstruction is only, after all, the application of a common form to the notion of difficult Tasks, which is of the essence of the story.
XVIII. THE MASTER-MAID
This is one of the oldest and widest spread tales of the world, and the resultant formula was, therefore, more than usually difficult to reconstruct. The essence of the tale consists in the Menial Hero—Three Tasks—Master-Maid Help—Obstacles to Pursuit—Oblivion Kiss—False Bride—Sale of Bed—Happy Marriage. In essentials this is the story of Jason and Medea, where we have the Tasks, the Pursuit, and the False Bride, though the dramatic genius of the Greeks has given a tragic ending to the tale. Lang, in his Custom and Myth, pp. 87-102, has pointed out parallels, not alone in modern folk-tales, like Grimm 92, Campbell 2, Dasent 11, and Basile 11, but even in Madagascar (Folk-Lore Journal, Aug., 1883), and Samoa (Turner 102) while the Flight and Obstacles are found in Japan and Zululand. Even in America there is the Algonquin form of the Tasks (School-craft, Algic Researches ii., 94-104), and the Flight is given in an interesting article in the Century Magazine, 1884. According to Lang's general views, he seems to regard these incidents as being universally human and having no affiliation with one another, though he entitles his essay, "A Far Travelled Tale."