The Folktale
Stith Thompson
Born from a Fish |
Part Two The Folktale from Ireland to India II – The Complex Tale 8. Good and bad relatives C. Banished Wife or Maiden |
The same hostile forces which frequently bring about the replacement of the true bride by the false are often responsible for the invention of slanders or for other machinations which result in the banishment of an innocent wife or maiden. Four popular and widely distributed tales have this central motivation, and still others have developed in particular areas. [158] This theme of the banished wife was popular in the literature of the Middle Ages, and sometimes appeared in forms very close to those found in oral tradition today. [159] Most closely related to the tragic story of Constance, as Chaucer has made it known to the literary world, are The Maiden Without Hands ( The literary treatment of this general theme begins as early as the year 1200 in southern England. Between that time and the seventeenth century it received not fewer than seventeen distinct literary handlings, [162] including those in Chaucer and Gower and in the romance of Emare. With slight variations, it appears in the Thousand and One Nights from which it has entered the Arabic oral tradition. Basile tells the story in his Pentamerone and it forms the subject of a special group of south Slavic folksongs. [163] Whatever may be the relation of the oral tale to the well-known literary treatments, there can be no doubt as to the popularity of the theme among unlettered story tellers. Few collections of any extent in all of Europe from Ireland to eastern Russia fail to have this story. It is known in the Near East and in central Africa, but has not been noted in the tales of India or lands beyond. In America it has not only been taken over by the Micmac and Wyandot Indians but has been carried by the French to Missouri and by Cape Verde Islanders to Massachusetts. It has reached Brazil and Chile in South America. The oral tale is so popular and so widely distributed that it deserves more study than it has yet received. Even more popular is the other tale of the calumniated wife, The Three Golden Sons ( Over the entire area the story appears with considerable uniformity. As in The Maiden Without Hands, the king marries a girl whom he happens to meet. Here, however, we usually have three girls who make their boasts as to what would happen if they should marry the king. The king over hears the youngest of the girls say that if she were the queen she would bear triplets with golden hair, a chain around their necks, and a star on their foreheads. After the king has taken her as wife her sisters plot against her. They substitute a dog for the newborn children and accuse the wife of giving birth to the dog. The children are thrown into a stream, but they are rescued, sometimes by a miller or a fisherman. The wife is imprisoned, [165] or banished. After the children have grown up, the eldest one sets out on a quest. The reason for his undertaking the quest varies much in the different versions. He may go out to try to find his father or to seek the speaking bird, the singing tree, and the water of life. [166] On his quest the eldest brother fails and is transformed into a marble column. The second brother has the same experience, and it remains for the youngest (sometimes a sister) to rescue them. The kindness and consideration of the latter secures the help of an old woman, and eventually the disenchantment of the brothers and the possession of the magic bird and the magic objects. When all have returned from the quest, the king's attention is attracted by means of the magic objects, and the bird of truth reveals to him the whole story. The children and wife are restored and the sisters-in-law punished. Another tale which has many points in common with The Maiden Without Hands ( This tale shows so much variation from the time it appeared in Straparola in the sixteenth century and a hundred years later in Basile that its history might be difficult to work out. It shows frequent contamination with other tales, especially The Maiden Without Hands, and the uncertainty of whether we are dealing with a pious legend of the Blessed Virgin or with a story of a cruel witch has introduced many inconsistencies into the tradition. It is known in all parts of Europe, the Near East, North Africa, and Jamaica, but seems nowhere to have achieved great popularity. On the whole, the witch as the foster mother seems to be better known than the Blessed Virgin. The central incident of the loss of the children, as well as the marriage of the king to a girl who has been mutilated or disabled, makes understandable the confusion of this tale with the two just discussed. Before leaving the tales of slandered wives, mention should be made of a story which has been reported only from the Scandinavian peninsula, Born from a Fish ( The main action of the four tales which we have just examined—the discovery of the persecuted maiden in the woods or a tree, her marriage to the king, the slander concerning the birth of her children, the loss of the children, the abandonment of the queen, the eventual discovery of the truth, and the reunion of the family—is so uniform that there has been much transfer from one tale to the other, if, indeed, they are all essentially different stories. In the brief summary of the plots, a number of widespread motifs, found now in one and now in another, have escaped our notice. Among these are the casting off of the wife and child in an open boat The banished girl in our European folktales is frequently a young maiden, like Snow White. [169] The motivation in this story ( In the last few years this story has come to the attention of millions of children and adults through the remarkable treatment in the cinema version of Walt Disney. This was based directly upon the Grimm text. Much less well known than Snow White is the tale of The Wonder Child ( A study of this last tale might show some very interesting results. Though its area of distribution is relatively small and though it is nowhere especially popular, the tale seems well enough recognized to constitute a real tradition. No literary versions have been noticed, so that we are apparently dealing with something which is essentially, if not entirely, oral. |
[158] The whole subject of the outcast child, including both banished daughters and banished sons, has been discussed in some detail by E. S. Hartland (Folk-Lore Journal, IV, 308). He makes the following divisions: (1) the King Lear type, dealing with the adventures of the king's three daughters; (2) the value of salt type, concerned only with the adventures of the youngest daughter; (3) the Joseph type, in which a boy or girl is banished because of dreams of future greatness. The fourth and fifth types record the career of an only son who has fallen without reasonable cause under his father's anger. Of these types, the third will be discussed in section IX, p. 138, below. The fourth and fifth are represented by [159] An excellent discussion of this whole cycle of literary tales is found in Margaret Schlauch's Chaucer's Constance and Accused Queens (New York, 1927). [160] An incident which we shall find in [161] See [162] For a listing of these, see Bolte-Polívka, I, 298ff. The whole tale has been studied by Däumling (Studie über den Typus des Mädchens ohne Hände, München, 1912) and the Comte du Puymaigre (Revue d'histoire des religions, Sept.-Oct., 1884; summarized in Mélusine, II, 309). [163] For these, see Bolte-Polívka, I, 306. [164] For a study of the Chilean versions of the tale, see Rodolfo Lenz, "Un Grupo de Consejas Chilenas, Estudio de Novelistica comparada" (Santiago, 1912); see also Espinosa, Journal of American Folklore, XXVII, 230. [165] In some versions the wife may be thrown into a stream and transformed, as in The Black and the White Bride ( [166] In connection with the quest, the story frequently shows the influence of The Three Hairs from the Devil's Beard ( [167] The oldest known version of this story, that in Straparola's Nights, is a thorough amalgamation of the two tales. [168] For other motifs belonging here, see cross references assembled at [169] Aside from Snow White and The Maiden Without Hands, we shall find Cap o' Rushes and others of the Cinderella cycle being cast out. See also [170] See Böklen, Sneewittchenstudien. [171] The compassionate executioner appears in a number of stories from the time of Joseph on down; see |
Types: 303, 403, 461, 510B, 517, 671, 705, 706, 707, 708, 709, 710 |
Motifs K512, K2155.1.1, S211, S431.1, N711, S301, S400, S410, S431 |
Part Two The Folktale from Ireland to India II – The Complex Tale 12. Origin and history of the complex tales |
Not every complex tale known to story-tellers of the area we are considering has found a place in the discussion just concluded. But practically all of those omitted are of very limited distribution. [283] With each tale the main facts about its history and its occurrences in oral tradition have been indicated wherever conclusions seemed possible. While discussing each tale, I have had before me a summary of the scholarship which has been devoted to it and a complete list of oral versions insofar as the extensive reference books and regional surveys now available made this possible. Frequently the mere bringing together of this material was sufficient to compel conclusions about the tale which do not seem likely to need revision. But when all tales with such clear-cut histories have been considered, there remain a large number which present problems sufficient to occupy the attention of scholars for many a decade to come. Of these complex tales, along with a few closely related simple anecdotes, we have examined somewhat over two hundred. The order in which they have been taken up has been determined by their subject matter. And that means that tales about the same kinds of characters or incidents have been brought together, often when there was no organic relationship between them and when they had little if anything in common in their origin and history. When so much remains dark about the beginnings and about the vicissitudes of so large a number of our folktales, no complete account of them can be based upon historical categories. Nevertheless, in a very tentative way it may be of interest to see which of our tales have a history that can be proclaimed with some confidence, which of them show great probabilities of proper solution, and which of them still present difficult problems. That many of our European and Asiatic folktales go back to a literary source is as clear as any fact of scholarship can be made. There would thus seem to be no reason to doubt that an Oriental literary text is responsible for the subsequent development of a considerable number of tales which have received oral currency in Europe and sometime in the Orient. In the older Buddhistic sources [284] are found: Death's Messengers ( Similarly, an ultimate origin in European literature seems unmistakable for a dozen or more of the stories current today, whether locally or over the complete European-Asiatic area. Three of the tales which we have noticed certainly go back to Greek literature: Oedipus ( The fact that one may cite a literary form of a story, even a very old version, is by no means proof that we have arrived at the source of the tradition. Nothing is better authenticated in the study of traditional narrative than the fact that the literary telling of a tale may represent merely one of hundreds of examples of the story in question and have for the history of the tradition no more significance than any other one of the hundreds of variants at hand. Apuleius's telling of Cupid and Psyche and the author of Tobit's version of The Grateful Dead Man tale appear both to be rather late and somewhat, aberrant forms of much older oral tales. With this warning in mind, the careful student should be slow in arriving at the conclusion that a stated literary document is the fountainhead of a particular narrative tradition. For those tales which we have just listed, the actual dependence on the literary source has seemed well established. In addition to these, there are a considerable number for which there is a well-known early literary form to which the weight of evidence would point probably, but not quite certainly, as the actual source. Some of these tales have been very popular among story-tellers, and have spread over two or more continents, and some have had only a very limited acceptance among the people. The degree of popularity and the geographical extent of the distribution is a fact which must be taken into consideration with every tale when we are trying to judge the question of its ultimate literary or oral invention. For this reason, in listing the tales with probable literary sources, it is helpful to indicate briefly what type of oral distribution each has. At least related to the old Greek story of The Cranes of Ibycus is the tale The Sun Brings All to Light ( The rich prose literature of medieval Iceland has in it many folktale elements, most of which doubtless go back to popular tradition. But this may not have been true in all cases: an Icelandic prose tale of 1339 seems to lie back of the oral tale Godfather Death ( The jestbooks of the Renaissance contain a number of folktales. In many cases, these were taken from older literary collections, or indeed from oral tradition. But occasionally they seem to have served as a real source for tales which now belong to the folk. Such would seem to be true of The Wishes ( A German literary tale of the thirteenth century may well be the beginning of The Frog King ( For all the tales mentioned thus far in this summary there seems a strong probability of ultimate literary origin. But it cannot be too frequently repeated that the fact of the appearance of a tale in some literary document is no proof that it did not originate among the people. Oral tales have been a very fruitful source For literary story-tellers everywhere. It thus happens that frequently the literary appearance of a story only represents one of many hundreds of versions and is, of course, less important in the history of the tale than the oral variant from which the story was borrowed. It is not always easy to tell when a story belongs primarily to oral tradition and frequently the problem of priority is quite unsolvable. But a very considerable number of tales appearing in literary collections show such a preponderance of oral variants, as well as other indications of popular origin, that their literary appearance would seem to be purely incidental. There can be little doubt that they are all essentially oral, both in origin and in history. Several such oral tales have found a place in Oriental literary collections. In the Hindu fable collection, the Panchatantra, occurs a good part of the tale of Luck and Intelligence ( Much more frequently have oral tales found a place in one or more European collections of literary stories. In another place more specific mention [p. 181] is made of popular tales embedded in the Greek or Latin classics. [286] Sometimes these retellings represent rather faithfully what must have been the plot of one of our oral tales at the time and place it was heard, though there may be radical adaptation to literary form or fashion. Such is true of the retelling of the tale of Polyphemus ( It is sometimes difficult to tell whether such a classical story as that of Perseus is really a version of a folktale now current in Europe. There is little doubt, however, that the appearance of the story of The Dragon-Slayer ( In other literary forms of the Middle Ages there occasionally appear oral tales. Geoffrey of Monmouth, in telling the story of King Lear, includes the incident of Love Like Salt ( Though the jestbooks which were in vogue during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries normally consist of very simple anecdotes, occasionally they included a complex folk story, like Hansel and Gretel ( For the history of the folktale, two collections in the novella tradition are especially important. Insofar as they contain folktales, they are either purely oral stories or else tales of literary origin which had already become a part of the folklore of Italy. Many of these oral tales have their first literary appearance in these collections. In the Pleasant Nights of Straparola in the sixteenth century are versions of: The Magician and His Pupil ( An even longer list of oral tales is found for the first time in the Pentamerone of Basile, 1634-36. Among them are: The Maiden in the Tower ( The folktale collection of Charles Perrault which appeared in 1697 is hardly to be considered as literary at all, but rather as a group of fairly faithful versions of oral tales. The later French collections of Madame D'Aulnoy, on the other hand, were definitely literary, and seldom contained any real folktales which had not already appeared in writers like Straparola or Basile. Exceptions are The Mouse as Bride ( Such are the principal collections of literary tales which have given us versions of oral stories. To complete the list, one would have to make several miscellaneous additions. The King and the Abbot ( Such is the list of those tales which, although they have appeared in one or more literary collections, seem quite certainly to be oral, both in origin and in history. Sometimes their subsequent popularity has been greatly increased by the fact that they have been charmingly retold by Basile or Perrault. Otherwise, their history is in no essential respect different from that large group of stories to which we shall now turn. These belong to the folklore of Europe and Asia, and have never had the fortune to appeal to any literary story teller. We know them only in oral form and can therefore speak with almost complete certainty of their origin among the people. Here belong some of the most interesting of all folktales. Most of the European stories which originated in the Orient either go back to literary sources in the East or else, in spite of their origin in popular Oriental tradition, have received literary treatment in Asia or in Europe. Such tales, of literary origin or handling, have just been discussed. There remain a few which seem to have developed orally in Asia and to have reached Europe entirely by word of mouth. Such is true of Three Hairs from the Devil's Beard ( By far the largest number of purely oral European and Asiatic tales seem quite certainly to have developed in Europe. The great majority of these are confined to the European continent, but some of them are worldwide in their distribution. Examples of the latter are The Dragon-Slayer ( A considerable number of oral stories have received very wide distribution over the entire European continent but, except for purely sporadic occurrences, they do not appear elsewhere. To this list belong: The Hunter ( The stories just listed are well represented in all parts of Europe, so that without special investigation it is not easy to say just where the story has developed. With a large number of tales, however, we find that, in spite of occurrences over the entire continent, their area of great popularity is clearly limited, sometimes to a single country, more often to a group of neighboring peoples. Such tales with occurrences primarily in eastern Europe are: The Princess in the Shroud ( General European tales most popular in eastern and northern Europe are: The Danced-Out Shoes ( Especially characteristic of Scandinavia and the Baltic states are: The Boy Steals the Giant's Treasure ( Rather widespread traditions having their focus definitely in Scandinavia are: The Man from the Gallows ( Oral tales distributed over all Europe, but especially characteristic of the western countries, are: The Giantkiller and his Dog (Bluebeard) ( Finally, at least two tales seem to be especially characteristic of British tradition: Tom-Tit-Tot ( There has been no attempt in this book to give notice to all folktales known in Europe and Asia, especially to the hundreds of oral stories which are told in only a single locality or which have never traveled far from their original home. A considerable number of such stories local to Roumania, Hungary, Wallonia, and Russia may be examined in the excellent folktale surveys of these countries. [289] Of such of them as appear in the Aarne-Thompson Types of the Folk-Tale, it will be noticed that a large number of the local tales are characteristic of the Baltic area. It must be borne in mind that very exhaustive lists have been made of the Finnish and Estonian tales, [290] so that these large numbers are no cause for wonder. Of these oral tales in the main part of the Aarne-Thompson index, the following seem to be confined to the Baltic states: a version of The Black and the White Bride ( Local to the Baltic and Scandinavian countries are: [291] a version of The Children and the Ogre ( A much smaller group are limited to the Baltic states and Russia: The Strong Woman as Bride ( Though the groups of peoples just noticed are represented by a large number [p. 186] of local stories, some tales of limited dissemination occur almost everywhere. Thus The Faithless Wife ( In the rapid summary just completed it seems clear that for most of the complex tales of the European and Asiatic areas some generalizations are safe. Though we may not be able to say just when or just where a tale originated, or whether it was first an oral story or a literary creation, the general probabilities are such as we have indicated. Many questions of detail within the limits of these probabilities will engage the efforts of future scholars. There still remain a considerable number of these complex tales where the evidence at present available is either insufficient to lead to general conclusions or else is so overwhelming in amount that it has never yet been properly utilized for systematic investigation. For some tales, when the data are all assembled, the question as to whether they are essentially literary or oral seems quite unsolvable without much further study. Among such tales are: The Gifts of the Little People ( In another group the question as to whether the tale is essentially Oriental or European is still not satisfactorily solved: The Ogre's (Devil's) Heart in the Egg ( Finally, a half dozen stories well known over the entire world present major problems of investigation, because of the great mass of materials at [p. 187] hand, much of unorganized. Each of them offers a challenge to scholarship. These six tales The Man on a Quest for his Lost Wife ( |
[283] An exhaustive treatment would include a considerable number of such tales of purely local development for Lithuania, for Roumania, for Russia, and for India. The material for the first three of these countries may be examined in the surveys of Balys, Schullerus, and Andrejev, respectively (see references on pp. 420f.). No adequate survey of the material for India has yet been made. I have been working upon one for some years and have reasonable hopes of completing it. [284] These are best represented by (1) Cowell, The Jātaka; (2) Chavannts, 500 Contes. [285] For a discussion of this point, see p. 160, above. [286] See pp. 278ff., below. [287] See pp. I39f., above. [288] The other tales which are distributed over the world and have received literary treatment have already been discussed. [289] For Roumania, Hungary, and Wallonia, see FF Communications Nos. 78, 81, and 101 respectively. For the Russian, see Andrejev, Ukazatel' Skazočnich Siuzhetov. [290] The number of purely Baltic tales would be greatly increased by inclusion of all those listed in Balys' Motif Index, which appeared after the Aarne-Thompson Index, and also by citing many of the "Types not Included" from the Aarne-Thompson Index. [291] Single sporadic occurrences elsewhere are disregarded.
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Types: 123, 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 306, 307, 310, 311, 312, 313, 314, 315, 315B*, 316, 325, 326, 327A, 327B, 327C, 328, 329, 330, 331, 332, 333, 335, 360, 361, 363, 365, 366, 400, 401, 402, 403, 403C, 405, 407, 408, 409, 410, 425, 426, 428, 430, 431, 432, 433, 440, 441, 449*, 450, 451, 460A, 460B, 461, 465, 470, 471, 473, 475, 480, 500, 501, 502, 503, 505, 506A, 506B, 507A, 507B, 507C, 508, 510, 510A, 510B, 511, 511*, 513, 513A, 514, 516, 517, 518, 519, 530, 531, 532, 533, 545A, 545B, 550, 551, 552, 552B, 553, 554, 555, 559, 560, 561, 562, 563, 564, 565, 566, 567, 569, 570, 571, 575, 577, 580, 590, 591, 592, 593, 610, 611, 612, 613, 620, 621, 650, 652, 653, 654, 655, 660, 665, 670, 671, 672A, 672B, 672C, 673, 675, 677, 700, 705, 706, 707, 708, 709, 710, 711, 715, 720, 725, 735, 736, 745, 750A, 750B, 751, 752A, 752B, 753, 755, 756A, 756B, 756C, 759, 761, 765, 780, 781, 785, 791, 800, 801, 802, 803, 804, 810, 812, 815, 820, 821, 822, 830, 831, 832, 836, 837, 840, 841, 844, 850, 851, 852, 853, 854, 870, 870A, 875, 881, 882, 884, 888, 890, 892, 900, 901, 910A, 910B, 910C, 910D, 920, 921, 922, 923, 923A, 927, 930, 931, 935, 945, 950, 951A, 951B, 952. 953, 954, 956A, 956B, 960, 1137, 1525, 1535, 1538, 1539, 1540, 1542, 1544, 1640, 1641, 1642, 1650, 1651, 1652, 1655, 1697, 1750 |