D The re-awakened memory of the hero during his marriage ceremony or wedding feast with a new bride, either through the conversation of the true bride with an animal or through the true bride’s kiss. In some forms of the story, the hero’s memory is restored on the third of three nights sold to the heroine by the venial second bride.[4]
E The marriage of the hero and heroine.
Andrew Lang (Custom and Myth, 2d ed., 87–102) traces incidents A and B as far back as the myth of Jason, the earliest literary reference to which is in the Iliad (vii, 467; XXIII, 747). But this story does not contain the last three incidents: clearly they have come from some other source, and have been joined to the first two,—a natural process in the development of a folk-tale. The episode of the magic flight is very widely distributed: Lang mentions Zulu, Gaelic, Norse, Malagasy, Russian, Italian, and Japanese versions. Of the magic flight combined with the performance of difficult tasks set by the girl’s father, the stories are no less widely scattered: Greece, Madagascar, Scotland, Russia, Italy, North America (Algonquins), Finland, Samoa (p. 94). The only reasonable explanation of these resemblances, according to Lang, is the theory of transmission; and if Mr. Lang, the champion of the “anthropological theory,” must needs explain in this rather business-like way a comparatively simple tale, what but the transmission theory can explain far more complicated stories of five or six distinct incidents in the same sequence?
The “Forgotten Betrothed” cycle was clearly invented but once; when or where, we shall not attempt to say. But that its excellent combination of rapid, marvellous, and pathetic situations has made it a tale of almost universal appeal, is attested to by the scores of variants that have been collected within the last half-century and more. In his notes to Campbell’s Gaelic story, “The Battle of the Birds,” No. 2, Köhler cites Norwegian, Swedish, Italian, German, and Hungarian versions (Orient und Occident, 2 : 107). Ralston (pp. 132–133), Cosquin (2 : No. 32 and notes), Crane (No. XV and notes, pp. 343–344), Bolte (in his additions to Köhler, 1 : 170–174), and Bolte-Polívka (to Nos. 51, 56, 113) have added very full bibliographies. It is unnecessary here to list all the variants of this story that have been collected, but we will examine some of the analogues to our tale from the point of view of the separate incidents.
After the hero of our present story has been deserted by his treacherous brothers, and has found himself once more in the under-world, he is told by a mysterious voice to go to the Land of the Pilgrims, where he will find his fate. He meets an old man, who directs him to a hermit. The hermit, in turn, directs the youth to another hermit, who learns from an eagle where the Land of the Pilgrims is, and directs the bird to carry the youth thither. While the story does not state that the Land of the Pilgrims is on the “upper-world,” we must suppose that it is, and that the eagle is the means whereby the hero escapes from the underground kingdom. In a large number of members of the “Bear’s Son” cycle, to which, as has been said, the first part of our story belongs, this is the usual means of escape. The incident is also found in a large number of tales not connected otherwise with this group (see Cosquin, 2 : 141–144). It is sometimes combined with the quest for the water of life, with which in turn is connected the situation of the hero’s being referred from one guide to another (giants, sages, hermits, etc.), as in our story (cf. Grimm, No. 97, and notes; also Bolte-Polívka to No. 97, especially 2 : 400; Thorpe, 158; Tawney, 1 : 206; Persian Tales, 2 : 171). This whole section appears to have been introduced as a transition between parts 1 and 2.
The second part of our story opens with the “bride-wager” incident (see Von Hahn, 1 : 54, “Oenomaosformel”), though I can point to no parallel of Juan’s method of making love to the princess; that is, by means of a letter conveyed by a kite.
The tasks which the hero is obliged to perform vary greatly in the different members of the “Forgotten Betrothed” cycle. Juan has to plant wheat and bake bread from the ripened grain in twenty-four hours, separate a jar of mongo from a jar of sand, and fetch a ring from the sea. The first task imposed by the king has analogies in a number of European tales. In Groome’s No. 34 the Devil says to the hero, “Here is one more task for you: drain the marsh, and plough it, and sow it, and to-morrow bring me roasted maize” (p. 106). In Groome’s No. 7 the king says to the old man, “See this great forest! Fell it all, and make it a level field; and plough it for me, and break up all the earth; and sow it with millet by to-morrow morning. And mark well what I tell you: you must bring me a cake [made from the ripened millet-seed, clearly; see p. 23] made with sweet milk.” Cosquin (2 : 24) cites a Catalan and a Basque story in which the hero has not only to fell a great forest, but to sow grain and harvest it. In kind this is the same sort of impossible task imposed on Truth in a Visayan story (JAFL 19 : 100–102), where the hero has to beget, and the princess his wife to bring forth, in one night, three children. Helpful eagles solve this difficulty for Truth by conveying to him three newly-born babes. The second task is a well-known one, and is found in many members of the “Grateful Animals” cycle. Usually it is ants, which the hero has earlier spared, that perform the service of separating two kinds of seed, etc. (see Tawney, 1 : 361 and note). The mixture of sand and mongo, in our story, is not a very happy conception. Originally it must have been either gravel and mongo, or else mongo and some other kind of lentil nearly resembling it in size. The third task, with the method of accomplishing it, is perhaps the most interesting of all. In a Samoan story of the “Forgotten Betrothed” cycle (Lang, op. cit., p. 98), the heroine bids the hero cut her body into pieces and cast them into the sea. There she becomes a fish and recovers the ring. In a Catalan tale (Rondallayre, 1 : 41) the hero is also required to fetch a ring from the bottom of the sea. His loved one tells him to cut her to pieces, taking care not to let any part drop to the ground, and to throw all into the water. In spite of all his care, he lets fall to earth one drop of blood. The heroine recovers the ring, but lacks the first joint of her little finger when she resumes her original shape.
The “magic flight” is discussed by Cosquin (1 : 152–154) and Macculloch (167 ff.). Two kinds of transformation are to be noted in connection with this escape: the pursued either transform themselves, and thus escape detection by the pursuer, or else cast behind them magic objects, which turn into retarding and finally insurmountable obstacles in the path of the pursuer. In our story the transformations are of the second type, as they are in the story of [“Pedro and the Witch”] ([No. 36]). So far as I know, the first type does not occur in Filipino folk-tales. Both types are found frequently in Occidental Märchen, but in Oriental stories the second seems to predominate over the first (see Cosquin’s citations of Oriental occurrences of this incident). In Somadeva (Tawney, 1 : 355 ff.) we have two flights and both types of escape. As to the details of the flight itself in our story, we may note that the comb becoming a thicket of thorns has many analogues. The ring becoming seven mountains suggests with its magic number an Oriental origin. With spittle turning into a lake or sea, compare similar transformations of drops of water and a bladder full of water (Macculloch, 171–172).
The incident of the “forgetting of the betrothed” is usually motivated with some sort of broken taboo. When the hero desires to visit his parents, and leaves his sweetheart outside the city, she usually warns him not to allow himself to be kissed. In a Gaelic Märchen he is forbidden to speak; sometimes he is warned by his wife not to eat, etc. (Köhler-Bolte, 172). In our story the taboo is somewhat unusual: the hero is to allow no tears of joy shed by his parents to fall on his cheeks. The idea behind this charge, however, is the same as that behind the forbidden kiss. With the taboo forbidding the partaking of food, compare the episode of the “Lotus-Eaters” in the Odyssey.
In most of the Märchen of this group the re-awakening of the memory of the hero is accomplished through the conversation of two birds (doves or hens) which the forgotten betrothed manages to introduce into the presence of her lover just before he is married to another (Köhler-Bolte, 172; Rittershaus, 150). In our story the heroine asks a dog questions about the tasks she had helped the hero perform. I can point to no exact parallel of this situation, though it agrees in general with the methods used in the other members of the group.