Part Two

The Folktale from Ireland to India

II – The Complex Tale

3. Supernatural helpers

D. The Extraordinary Companions

In the story of The Bear's Son (Type 301) we have already met the next group of helpers to be considered, the extraordinary companions who are each endowed with some remarkable power. This motif (F601ff.) is by no means a necessary part of that tale, but it may well have been taken over from the two stories we are now to consider in which these helpers play a |leading role. Both of these stories have the same beginning, but show considerable variation in the body of the narrative. The first story especially is very widespread, and an examination of the variants shows that the storytellers have used a considerable freedom in the way in which they have combined motifs. The tales have never been adequately analyzed and studied, but a superficial examination of them indicates that both tales and both of the main varieties of the first tale are current in the same areas. The types are certainly not always kept clearly apart.

The younger of three brothers, unlike the two elder, has been kind to an old man who helps him provide a ship that goes both on land and water. For the building of such a ship the king has promised to give his daughter in marriage. On his way to the court with the ship the hero encounters, one after another, six extraordinary men. One of them is so strong that he pulls up trees. One can shoot out the left eye of a fly two miles away. One can blow hard enough to turn a windmill. One can hear grass grow, or the wool on the back of a sheep. One can run around the world in a moment, and one can eat or drink enough for an army. A number of other strangely endowed men appear in the hundreds of variants of this tale.

With his marvelous ship and these strange friends who have joined him, the hero reaches the castle, shows his ship, and demands the princess in marriage. The king puts him off and will fulfill the bargain only when the youth has performed certain tasks—deeds which the king knows are quite impossible. With the help of his companions, the hero succeeds in performing all the tasks assigned and in winning the princess.

The tasks assigned in this tale are always fitted to the special endowments of the companions. With this limitation, they show a wide variety. Most [p. 54] usual are: eating a tremendous amount, fetching water from the end of the world, enduring extreme heat or cold, defeating an opposing army, or rescuing the princess. Sometimes the task takes the combined efforts of two of the helpers. When the water must be brought from the world's end, the runner goes for it, but he sleeps on the way and the shooter has to wake him.

As one looks over the versions of this tale, it is clear that a large number do not have the incident of the land and water ship. The simpler version is usually called, after Grimm, How Six Travel Through the World (Type 513A); that with the marvelous boat, The Ship that Went on Sea and Land (Type 513B). Both varieties of the tale are found all over Europe, but it is only the first which has gone farther, and The Ship seems to be a special development which has taken place on European soil and has not traveled elsewhere.

The most striking part of this tale is undoubtedly the specially endowed companions and the way in which they perform the tasks set for the hero. This nucleus of the story is very old. It has interesting parallels in the literature of ancient India. [45] Similar characters were found among the Argonauts, though they were not used exactly as in our story. The most striking resemblance to our tale in the older literature is the old Welsh story of Kylhwch and Olwen which is found in the Mabinogion of the eleventh century. It is interesting that in this Welsh tale the companions are at the court of King Arthur and that some of them bear names which in the later development of the Arthurian story are given to certain knights of the Round Table.

We do not, of course, know how long this story has been told by taletellers in Europe. None except the Mabinogion have exalted the companions into Arthurian knights, but have kept the adventures on the usual folktale level. The tale has been fortunate enough to be reworked by several composers of literary stories, Sercambi in fourteenth century and Basile in seventeenth century Italy, and Madame d'Aulnoy in France at the end of the seventeenth century.

The whole story, in its various modifications, shows evidence of having come into Europe from India. It is found not only in older Buddhistic writings, but also in the modern oral collections of tales of India. It is also reported frequently in the folklore of the peoples of western Asia and eastern Europe. In Europe itself, the distribution is remarkably uniform, and indicates a long period of development. The tale of the remarkable helpers has also been carried to distant places by travelers and settlers: to China, to Indonesia, to Africa, and to America, where it is found not only among the French of Canada and Missouri, but also among the American Indians of Nova Scotia and of the central plains.

With its wide ramifications of plot, its obviously long history, its great [p. 55] popularity as a folktale, and its frequent use in literary tale collections, an adequate investigation of this story would bring the scholar face to face with practically all the difficult problems of folktale scholarship.

Before leaving the extraordinary companions, mention should be made of a story which was developed by literary writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and which has been collected in a few countries from oral raconteurs (Type 514). A maiden disguised as a man goes to the wars in place of her brother (or father). The complications that arise are not consistent in all versions. In some she marries the princess, who keeps her secret. In others the queen attempts to seduce the "hero," and then when unsuccessful, demands that the king send him on a dangerous expedition. Whether expelled for marrying the princess or because of the anger of the king, the heroine secures the help of extraordinary companions and performs the tasks necessary. In some versions she disrobes and brings about the discomfiture and execution of the queen, and later marries the king. In others she secures magic help whereby she actually does change her sex and then returns to be reunited with the princess.

[45] This aspect of the history of the story is developed by Theodor Benfey in his "Menschen mit den wunderbaren Eigenschaften" (Kleinere Schriften, III, 94-156).

301, 513A, 513B, 514

F601ff.

Part Two

The Folktale from Ireland to India

II – The Complex Tale

4. Magic and marvels

C. Magic Remedies

A special kind of magic object which appears very frequently in tales is magic remedies. The belief in things endowed with such healing powers is practically universal and plays a minor role in a large number of folktales, [73] some of which we have already noticed. At times the acquisition and use of these potent agencies constitutes the central motivation of the tale. It cannot be said of such stories that they form a group for, excepting this central motif, they have little, if anything, in common.

One of them is really little more than an introduction which may be attached to several other tales. [74] In this story of The Healing Fruits (Type 610) the hero, in contrast to his elder brothers, has been kind to an old woman. As a reward, she gives healing power to the fruits which he has. In the course of his adventures he is able to cure a sick princess who has been offered to anyone who can restore her to health. As is true in many stories of this general pattern, the hero does not immediately receive his reward, but is compelled to undertake dangerous tasks or quests. At this point the story may go off into any one of several well-known folktales: The Rabbit-Herd (Type 570), in which the hero must bring together a large flock of rabbits; The Land and Water Ship (Type 513B); or The Three Hairs from the Devil's Beard (Type 461), in which he must fetch a feather from a magic bird.

It is really impossible to study this tale without at the same time investigating those which are usually joined with it. As an introduction to one or other of these stories it is found in all parts of western Europe, but has never achieved any great popularity except perhaps in France, where seven versions have been noted. It does not seem to have gone as far east as Russia nor to have been reported outside of Europe.

Even more restricted geographically is The Gifts of the Dwarfs (Type 611), which seems to be primarily Norwegian and Finnish, with only isolated Danish and Livonian variants. The hero, son of a merchant and betrothed to the daughter of another merchant, goes to sea. As the reward for rescuing a child he receives certain magic objects, among them a heading salve. He is able to heal the sick princess and to overcome a hostile army with his magic sword. Having achieved great wealth, he returns home and marries his first love. [p.80]

This same general pattern—acquisition of the magic medicines, healing of a princess, and reward—is also found in the very common story of The Two Travelers (Type 613). This tale has had such a long history and is spread over such immense areas that several ways of handling its main incidents have developed. The essential point of the first part of the story is that one of the companions is blinded. There are three ways of accounting for this mutilation. Two travelers (often brothers) dispute as to whether truth or falsehood is the better (or in some cases, which of their religions is the better), and they call on someone else, who is in league with the first, to act as judge. As a result of the loss of the wager, the second man permits himself to be blinded. The other openings of the tale are simpler. One traveler has the food and will not give any to his starving companion unless he permits himself to be blinded. In still other tales a traveler is robbed and blinded by his covetous companion.

In any case, the blinded man wanders about and settles himself down for the night, often in a tree where he can be safe from molestation. During the night he overhears a meeting of spirits or animals, and learns from them many valuable secrets. By using the secrets which he has heard, he first of all restores his own sight, cures a princess (sometimes a king), opens a dried-up well, brings a withered fruit tree to bearing, unearths a treasure, or performs other tasks for which he is richly rewarded. When his wicked companion hears of his good fortune and learns how he has acquired it, he himself attempts to deceive the spirits or animals in the same way. But instead they tear him to pieces, and the ends of justice are served.

As a literary story, this tale is not less than fifteen hundred years old. It is found in Chinese Buddhistic literature, in both Hindu and Jaina writings, and in Hebrew collections, all antedating the ninth century after Christ and some of them much earlier. It has appeared in such medieval collections as the Thousand and One Nights and the Libro de los Gatos and in novelistic tales of Basile in his Pentamerone. In spite of this very considerable literary history, which shows clearly enough the popularity and long standing of the tale throughout the Near East and even as far afield as China and Tibet, the story seems to have been accepted long ago into European and Asiatic folklore. As an oral story, it enjoys great popularity throughout the whole of Europe and Asia. Eleven modern oral versions have been reported from India, and it is known in Ceylon, Annam, and Korea. It appears not only in North Africa, but in practically every area of central Africa. In America variants have been recorded from the Canadian and Missouri French, from the Micmac Indians of Nova Scotia and the Tepecanos of Mexico. A good Negro version, perhaps from Africa, has been taken down in Jamaica.

A tale of such wide acceptance naturally presents many problems to the scholar who attempts to unravel its history. Its rather remote and Oriental origin seems clear, and the general lines of development of the oral versions [p. 81] as worked out by Christiansen [75] are plausible. Some of the questions involved are, for example, whether the original tale concerned a dispute over religion or over good and evil, whether the secrets were learned from devils or animals, whether the travelers were originally brothers or not. Whatever be the final conclusion about these matters, the story does illustrate nearly every problem that concerns the student of a tale. It is a long road from The Two Travelers as it appears in the ancient literature of the Orient to the utterly unsophisticated story-telling of the Jamaica Negro.

[73] For example, Types 551 and 612.

[74] For an example of a similar introductory tale, see the story of the devils who fight over magic objects (Type 518).

[75] R. Th. Christiansen, The Tale of the Two Travellers, or the Blinded Man; see also: A. Wesselski, Märchen des Mittelalters, 202, No. 14; K. Krohn, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, XXVI (1925), 111ff.; M. Gaster, Studies and Texts in Folklore, II, 908ff.

461, 513B, 518, 551, 570, 610, 611, 612, 613