This Siberian tale links securely those which precede it with a remarkable group of stories, covering by representatives still extant, or which may be shown to have existed, a large part of Asia and of Europe. This group includes, besides a Wallachian and a Magyar tale from recent popular tradition, one Sanskrit form; two Tibetan, derived from Sanskrit; one Mongol, from Tibetan; three Arabic and one Persian, which also had their source in Sanskrit; two Middle-Greek, derived from Arabic, one of which is lost; and two old Russian, from lost Middle-Greek versions.[16]
The gist of these narratives is that one king propounds tasks to another; in the earlier ones, with the intent to discover whether his brother monarch enjoys the aid of such counsellors as will make an attack on him dangerous; in the later, with a demand that he shall acquit himself satisfactorily, or suffer a forfeit: and the king is delivered from a serious strait by the sagacity either of a minister (whom he had ordered to be put to death, but who was still living in prison, or at least seclusion) or of the daughter of his minister, who came to her father's assistance. Which is the prior of these two last inventions it would not be easy to say. These tasks are always such as require ingenuity of one kind or another, whether in devising practical experiments, in contriving subterfuges, in solving riddles, or even in constructing compliments.[17]
One of the Tibetan tales, which, though dating from the beginning of our era, will very easily be recognized in the Siberian tradition of this century, is to this effect. King Rabssaldschal had a rich minister, who desired a suitable wife for his youngest son. A Brahman, his trusty friend, undertook to find one. In the course of his search, which extended through many countries, the Brahman saw one day a company of five hundred maidens, who were making garlands to offer to Buddha. One of these attracted his notice by her behavior, and impressed him favorably by replies to questions which he put.[18] The Brahman made proposals to her father in behalf of the minister's son. These were accepted, and the minister went with a great train to fetch home the bride. On the way back his life was twice saved by taking her advice, and when she was domiciliated, she so surpassed her sisters-in-law in housekeeping talents and virtues that everything was put under her direction. Discord arose between the king of the country she had left and Rabssaldschal, under whom she was now living. The former wished to make trial whether the latter had an able and keen-witted minister or not, and sent him two mares, dam and filly, exactly alike in appearance, with the demand that he should distinguish them. Neither king nor counsellor could discern any difference; but when the minister's daughter heard of their difficulty, she said, "Nothing is easier. Tie the two together and put grass before them; the mother will push the best before the foal." This was done; the king decided accordingly, and the hostile ambassador owned that he was right. Soon after, the foreign prince sent two snakes, of the same size and form, and demanded which was male, which female. The king and his advisers were again in a quandary. The minister resorted to his daughter-in-law. She said, "Lay them both on cotton-wool: the female will lie quiet, the male not; for it is of the feminine nature to love the soft and the comfortable, which the masculine cannot tolerate." They followed these directions; the king gave his verdict, the ambassador acquiesced, the minister received splendid presents. For a final trial the unfriendly king sent a long stick of wood, of equal thickness, with no knots or marks, and asked which was the under and which the upper end. No one could say. The minister referred the question to his daughter. She answered, "Put the stick into water: the root end will sink a little, the upper end float." The experiment was tried; the king said to the ambassador, "This is the upper end, this the root end," to which he assented, and great presents were again given to the minister. The adverse monarch was convinced that his only safe course was peace and conciliation, and sent his ambassador back once more with an offering of precious jewels and of amity for the future. This termination was highly gratifying to Rabssaldschal, who said to his minister, How could you see through all these things? The minister said, It was not I, but my clever daughter-in-law. When the king learned this, he raised the young woman to the rank of his younger sister.
The wise daughter is not found in the Sanskrit tale,[19] which also differs from the Buddhist versions in this: that in the Sanskrit the minister had become an object of displeasure to the king, and in consequence had long been lying in prison when the crisis occurred which rendered him indispensable, a circumstance which is repeated in the tale of The Wise Heykar (Arabian Nights, Breslau transl., XIII, 73 ff, Cabinet des Fées, XXXIX, 266 ff) and in the Life of Æsop. But The Clever Wench reappears in another tale in the same Sanskrit collection (with that express title), and gives her aid to her father, a priest, who has been threatened with banishment by his king if he does not clear up a dark matter within five days. She may also be recognized in Moradbak, in Von der Hagen's 1001 Tag, VIII, 199 ff, and even in the minister's wife in the story of The Wise Heykar.
The tasks of discriminating dam and filly and the root end from the tip end of a stick, which occur both in the Tibetan tales and the Shukasaptati, are found again, with unimportant changes, in the Wallachian popular story, and the Hungarian, which in general resemble the Arabic. Some of those in the Arabian tale and in the Life of Æsop are of the same nature as the wit-trials in the Servian and German popular tales, the story in the Gesta Romanorum, and the German and English ballads. The wise Heykar, e.g., is required to sew together a burst mill-stone. He hands the king a pebble, requesting him first to make an awl, a file, and scissors out of that. The king of Egypt tells Æsop, the king of Babylon's champion sage, that when his mares hear the stallions neigh in Babylon, they cast their foal. Æsop's slaves are told to catch a cat, and are set to scourging it before the Egyptian public. Great offense is given, on account of the sacred character of the animal, and complaint is made to the king, who sends for Æsop in a rage. Æsop says his king has suffered an injury from this cat, for the night before the cat had killed a fine fighting-cock of his. "Fie, Æsop!" says the king of Egypt; "how could the cat go from Egypt to Babylon in one night?" "Why not," replies Æsop, "as well as mares in Egypt hear the stallions neigh in Babylon and cast their foal?"
The tales in the Shukasaptati and in the Dsanglun represent the object of the sending of the tasks to be to ascertain whether the king retains the capable minister through whom he has acquired supremacy. According to the Arabian tale, and those derived from it, tribute is to be paid by the king whose riddles are guessed, or by him who fails to guess. This form of story, though it is a secondary one, is yet by no means late, as is shown by the anecdote in Plutarch, Septem Sapientum Convivium (6), itself probably a fragment of such a story, in which the king of the Æthiops gives a task to Amasis, king of Egypt, with a stake of many towns and cities. This task is the favorite one of draining [drinking] all the water in the sea, which we have had in the Servian tale (it also is in the Life of Æsop), and Bias gives the customary advice for dealing with it.[20]
From the number of these wise virgins should not be excluded the king's daughter in the Gesta Romanorum who guesses rightly among the riddles of the three caskets and marries the emperor's son, though Bassanio has extinguished her just fame: Madden's Old English Versions, p. 238, No 66; Collier, Shakspere's Library, II, 102.
The first three or four stanzas of A-E form the beginning of '[Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight],' and are especially appropriate to that ballad, but not to this. The two last stanzas of A, B, make no kind of sense here, and these at least, probably the opening verses as well, must belong to some other and lost ballad. An elf setting tasks, or even giving riddles, is unknown, I believe, in Northern tradition, and in no form of this story, except the English, is a preternatural personage of any kind the hero. Still it is better to urge nothing more than that the elf is an intruder in this particular ballad, for riddle-craft is practised by a variety of preternatural beings: notoriously by Odin, Thor, the giant Vafþrúðnir, and the dwarf Alwíss in the Edda, and again by a German "berggeist" (Ey, Harzmärchenbuch, p. 64, 'Die verwünschte Prinzessin'), a Greek dragon (Hahn, Griechisebe u. Albanesische Märchen, II, 210), the Russian rusalka, the Servian vila,[21] the Indian rakshas. For example: a rusalka (water-nymph) pursues a pretty girl, and says, I will give you three riddles: if you guess them, I will let you go home to your father; if you do not, I shall take you with me. What grows without a root? What runs without any object? What blooms without any flower? She answers, Stones grow without a root; water runs without any object; the fern blooms without any flower. These answers seem satisfactory, as riddles go, but the ballad concludes (with an injustice due to corruption?), "The girl did not guess the riddles: the rusalka tickled her to death." (Wojcicki, Pieśni, I, 205.) A rakshas (ogre) says he will spare a man's life if he can answer four questions, and shall devour him if he cannot. What is cruel? What is most to the advantage of a householder? What is love? What best accomplishes difficult things? These questions the man answers, and confirms his answers by tales, and gains the rakshas' good will. (Jacob, Hindoo Tales, or the Adventures of Ten Princes, a translation of the Sanskrit Dasakumaracharitam, p. 260 ff.)
The auld man in J is simply the "unco knicht" of 1 C, D, over again. He has clearly displaced the elf-knight, for the elf's attributes of hill-haunting and magical music remain, only they have been transferred to the lady. That the devil should supplant the knight, unco or familiar, is natural enough. He may come in as the substitute of the elfin knight because the devil is the regular successor to any heathen sprite, or as the embodiment of craft and duplicity, and to give us the pleasure of seeing him outwitted. We find the devil giving riddles, as they are called (tasks), in the Grimms' K. u. H. märchen, No 125 (see also the note in vol. III); Pröhle's K. u. V. märchen, No 19; Vernaleken, Oesterreichische K. u. H. märchen, No 37. He also appears as a riddle-monger in one of the best stories in the Golden Legend. A bishop, who was especially devoted to St Andrew, was tempted by Satan under the semblance of a beautiful woman, and was all but lost, when a loud knocking was heard at the door. A pilgrim demanded admittance. The lady, being asked her pleasure about this, recommended that three questions should be put to the stranger, to show whether he were fit to appear in such presence. Two questions having been answered unexceptionably, the fiend proposed a third, which was meant to be a clincher: How far is it from earth to heaven? "Go back to him that sent you," said the pilgrim (none other than St Andrew) to the messenger, "and say that he himself knows best, for he measured the distance when he fell." Antiquus hostis de medio evanuit. Much the same is related in the legend of St Bartholomew, and, in a Slovenian ballad, of St Ulrich, who interposes to save the Pope from espousing Satan in disguise.[22]