In the Russian story of ‘Baba Yaga’ (Ralston’s ‘Russian Folk Tales,’ pp. 139) we have the three magic gifts. Though Mr. Campbell has a very ingenious solution for the idea of the supernatural attaching to swords (i. lxxii), the same does not seem at all to explain the introduction of supernatural combs; when I once found a comb transformed into a mountain in a Tirolean story, I thought, as Mr. Ralston has also suggested (p. 144), that it fitted very well with the German expression for a mountain-ridge; but he does not tell us whether the metaphor holds good in Russ, where he finds it used; and in the present instance it is a hedge of thorns into which the comb resolves itself. I have another Roman story, in which the comb ‘swelled and swelled till every one of its teeth became a pier, and the spaces between them were arches, and it was a bridge by which one could pass over.’
(4.) The kiss which brings forgetfulness, again, is found in the myths of every country. It occurs in the Tirolean story I have given as the ‘Dove-Maiden’ in ‘Household Stories from the Land of Hofer,’ though I had to omit it there for want of space; but the remaining episodes of that story are nearly identical with those of the Russian story of ‘The Water-King;’ and in the Tirolean story the maiden is fetched from a heathen magician’s house by the aid of saints, while in the others it is from giants’ or witches’ abodes, by aid of other giants and witches. Mr. Ralston supplies, at pp. 132–7, a long list of variants of this story, and in a Russian one, at p. 133, comes a ride on a Bear, which is one of the incidents in the ‘Dove-Maiden,’ though, if I remember right, it does not occur in any of the others. In Mr. Campbell’s notes to ‘The Battle of the Birds’ are also collected notices of variants of this episode.
The affinity of this story with others again will be found in Mr. Cox’s ‘Mythology of the Aryan Nations,’ ii. p. 301.]
[1] This story comes from Palombara. [↑]
[2] The expression employed in this place was ‘Orca;’ as this is a word of most frequent, but somewhat capricious use, I interrupted the narrator to inquire her conception of it. ‘Well, it means a species of beast,’ she said; ‘but you see it must have been a bewitched (‘fatata’) beast, because the story says it was so rich, and had a palace, and spoke and did all the things you shall hear.’ She did not, however, seem to identify it with the evil principle according to its undoubted derivation, nor did she allow either that it had any connexion with ‘orso,’ a bear, as the narrator of the ‘il Vaso di Persa’ had expounded it, and indeed as the details of that story required; it will be seen, therefore, that popular fancy invests the monster with various shapes. The story of ‘The Pot of Marjoram,’ it will be seen, contains one or two incidents in common with this one. The apparently insignificant detail of the little plant—on which, however, both stories rest for a foundation—is noteworthy, the narrator in each instance being most positive that it was the one she had named and no other, and in both cases insisting on showing me the plant, that there might be no mistake about it. (See note to the word ‘Persa,’ infra, p. 54.) [↑]
Filagranata bella bella,
Tira giù le bionde trecce,
Ch’ io son nonna vecchiarella.