had no more real existence than his famous cat, and though we are indebted for the means by which his great wealth was acquired only to the pleasant invention of the popular-romance writer.
[18] Wordsworth, ‘The Prelude.’ [Back]
Probably many of these stories possess an historical origin, and could we recover their original form, they might be found to record real incidents in the life of an historical personage or of a nation. The original form, however, can now hardly be even guessed at. Successive generations of story-tellers have added to the original tale, and have changed archaic incidents for those better understood by the audience, and therefore appealing the readier to their sympathies. When transplanted from its home to a distant land the local colouring has been changed, unintelligible customs have been made to give place to vernacular ones, until so little remains of the old tale that even with the help of comparative analysis it is now impossible to recover the form in which it was given out at the first. Even with a written literature and with diffused information, Shakespeare found it necessary to the stories which he dramatized to interweave appliances made known by modern discoveries, and, accordingly, anachronisms abound in his plays. If this has been the case even where the national literature was a written one, we might be confident beforehand that we should find the story-teller of the Southern Slavs lengthening out and giving variety to his tale, not from the stores of archæology, but from such common, every-day customs as would appeal forcibly to his simple audience.
The reader who is familiar with the stories accumulated by recent collectors, will trace, without difficulty, in the present volume, those fragments of the primary tales out of which story-tellers in all parts of the world have for many generations constructed or expanded their own tales. It is, therefore, unnecessary for me to do this. I add, however, a few notices of some of the tales included in this volume, merely as illustrations of the way in which they have been built up out of older materials: like the palaces of the modern Roman nobility, out of the marbles which were originally intended to perpetuate the memory of the victories of the Republic and the magnificence of the ministers of the Empire.
In the tale which is entitled ‘Justice or Injustice,’[19] the manner in which the king’s daughter is enticed on ship-board, and carried off with her attendant maidens, will at once recall the incident related in the opening paragraph of the history of Herodotus. The resemblance between the narrative of the abduction of the daughter of Inachus by the Phœnician merchants, and that in the tale, is so close that it can hardly be accidental. Some will think that this lends some support to the notion that the account in Herodotus is mythological; others that the Serb tale is probably based on an historical fact. That the tale in this volume is not of Serbian origin, is evident from the introduction of the elephants, and the description of their capture after being intoxicated. The restoration of the hero by means of ‘the water of life,’ is an incident common to very many of these folk-tales, and may fairly be regarded as a ‘story-radical.’ In the tale of ‘Bash-Chalek,’ this water of life is changed and christianized into ‘the water of Jordan,’ whereas in its North Slavonic variant it is still the ‘water of life’ which is retained as the means by which the hero is recalled from death. In most particulars the Serbian tale closely follows the Russian type, and may be compared with the tale which Mr. Ralston has translated under the title of ‘Marya Morevna.’[20] The ‘True Steel’ of the Serbian tale is the Koshchei the Deathless of the Russian story; and the younger brother of the North Slavonic story is evidently the Prince Ivan of the South Slavonic tale. Again, two of the wooers are the same in both stories, the chief variation being that in the Serbian folk-tale the raven is introduced instead of the dragon of the Russian story.
[19] Ralston’s ‘Russian Folk-Tales,’ p. 85. [Back]
[20] Ralston’s ‘Russian Folk-Tales,’ p. 85. [Back]
The Bosniac story of ‘The Three Brothers’ is a good example of the way in which the expansion of these stories is effected. We have here three separate stories thrown into one; the various incidents of which are to be sought for in a variety of tales and in different countries. In part the tale seems to be an echo of the Egyptian story, which, written on papyrus and believed to be of the date of the Exodus of the Israelites, is preserved in the Bibliothèque Impériale. Of this story, Mr. Goodwin has given an abstract in the Cambridge Essays of 1858. The astonishing leap made by the horse of the younger brother is but an exaggeration of the sufficiently exaggerated exploit of Buddha’s horse, Kantako, which was thirty-six feet long, was able to go three hundred miles in one night, and, when impeded by the Déwas, overcame the obstacles interposed in the way of its progress by leaping across the river Anoma, a distance of two hundred and ten feet.[21] In part, however, the details of this part of the story accords with the account of the leap made by the horse Rama Rajah which took three successive leaps, not only over a wide river, but also over four thick and tall groves of copal, soparee, guava, and cocoa-nut trees, as told in the story of ‘Rama and Luxman.’[22] Again, the iron teeth of the sister in the Bosniac story make part of the marvels in the Russian story of ‘The Witch,’[23] and has its counterpart in the incident of the Syriote story of ‘The Striga.’[24] The way in which the old woman destroys her victims by throwing around them a hair of her head is also common to these folk-tales, and to several which may be found in the collections of similar tales told in widely separated countries.
[21] Hardy’s ‘Legends and Theories of the Buddhists,’ p. 134. [Back]