The Folktale
Stith Thompson
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The Princess on the Glass Mountain |
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Part Two The Folktale from Ireland to India II – The Complex Tale 2. Supernatural adversaries |
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In nearly all complicated fairy tales there is some kind of conflict. The hero must overcome obstacles in order that he may at last win his reward. A large series of stories throughout the European and western Asiatic area confront the hero with some type of supernatural adversary. Frequently the exact nature of the opponent is not made clear or will vary from one version of the story to another. In those which we shall first consider this adversary is sometimes a dragon, a horrible animal, or simply an undefined monster. In spite of the unstable character of the chief opponent, the tales relating to these adventures are well defined and are among the best known of all narratives current in this area. [p. 24] If one wished to study the ways in which a tale in the course of centuries becomes scattered over the whole of Europe he could not do better than to direct his attention to the two closely related folktales, The Two Brothers ( It will be convenient to discuss The Dragon Slayer as an independent story before considering its relationship to other tales with which it has combined. As a result of his analytical study Ranke has arrived at a form of the tale which would seem to include all the original elements. From this form, or one very much like it, all the other thousand or more variants seem to have been derived. This reconstruction is as follows: A poor married couple have two children, a boy and a girl. When the parents die they leave behind them only a small house and three sheep. The girl inherits the house, and the boy the animals. He exchanges these animals for three marvelous dogs and sets out with them into the world. On the way he meets an old man (or a woman) from whom, in recognition of a courtesy which he has shown, he receives a magic sword or a magic stick. Everything that he strikes with it will fall dead. He arrives at the royal city which he finds all hung with black cloth, and he learns at an inn of the cause of the mourning. He discovers that a seven-headed dragon who lives on a mountain in the neighborhood demands periodically a maiden as a sacrifice, else he will lay waste the entire country. The sacrifice has been agreed upon and the lot has fallen to the princess. The king promises that whoever saves her shall have her hand and half his kingdom. The young man goes with his animals to the place where the dragon lives and reaches there at the same time as the princess, who has been brought by the king's coachman. He approaches her, comforts her, and promises to fight the dragon for her. The monster appears with a great roar, but the young man does not let himself be frightened. He goes against him and with his [p. 25] sword strikes off all his heads. In this action, the dogs help him by holding the dragon fast. The hero now cuts out the tongues from the dragon's heads and puts them into his pocket. The rescued princess wishes him to go back with her to her father to receive the promised reward, but the hero wants to wander about for a while and to experience adventures. They agree upon a definite time when they will see each other again. He bids her to preserve silence in spite of everything, and goes on his way. The coachman, who has accompanied the princess and has remained near by so as to see what happens, comes now and threatens her with death if she will not agree, on oath, to tell the king that it is he who has slain the dragon. As further witness, he takes along the heads of the slain dragon. These he shows to the king and, supported by the declaration of the princess, demands the promised reward. The king is much pleased, and sets a time for the wedding. His daughter, however, is able to have it postponed until the time when she has agreed to meet her rescuer. But when at this time he still does not appear, the time for the wedding is definitely fixed. On the very day of the wedding the young man arrives in the city which is now, in contrast to the first time, decorated in red. In the same inn he inquires about the rejoicing and learns of the wedding. The innkeeper expresses the wish that he may have food to eat from the royal table, and the young man sends his dogs several times with a basket and with a message written on a card tied to their necks. The princess recognizes the animals and fulfills the directions of her rescuer. She, or the king, orders him to be invited in and he appears at the castle. He immediately declares that he is the real dragon slayer and asks whether the dragon heads have tongues in them. The heads are brought forth and it appears that they have none. The young man takes them out of his pocket and lays each of them in that particular head where it fits. The king and all those present acknowledge him as the true rescuer of the princess and immediately carry out the marriage of the two. The impostor is punished. The related story of The Two Brothers actually provides a larger number of examples of that part of the story given above containing the dragon slaying, the impostor, the dragon-tongue proof, and the marriage with the princess than does the form we have just discussed. Nearly 800 of these stories are known, and only a few lack the dragon fight. This story in outline is as follows: [13] A fisherman who has no children catches the King of the Fishes, who begs to be let loose. In return for his freedom he promises the fisherman other fish or shows him the place where they can be caught. When the fisherman catches him the second time the Fish once more persuades him to let him swim away. When this happens a third time, the Fish advises the fisherman to cut him up into a certain number of pieces and to give one part each to his [p. 26] wife, to his mare, and to his dog, and to bury the rest in the garden under a tree. The wife bears two sons, and at the same time the mare and dog each give birth to two young ones, and in the garden there grow two swords and trees. The twin boys are nearly identical, as are also the animals. When the boys grow up, the first of them wishes to go out into the world. If any misfortune should happen to him his particular tree will fade and the brother will come to his rescue. He sets forth with his sword, horse, and dog, and after a while arrives at a royal city. From this point on the story is identical with The Dragon Slayer tale given above, but after the marriage with the princess the narrative proceeds: On the marriage night the curiosity of the young king is aroused by an extraordinary sight, a fire in the woods or on a mountain. He asks his wife about the appearance of this fire, and she tells him that no one who has gone to the fire has ever returned. She warns him not to follow it. But he is overcome with the desire for adventure and decides to find out the cause of this mystery. He saddles his horse and rides with his dog and sword toward the light of the fire. He comes to a house in which lives an old woman who is a witch. She pretends to be afraid of his dog and bids him to lay one of her hairs on it so that the dog will be quiet and not harm her. The young man performs her bidding. The hair transforms itself into a chain. She now approaches and strikes him with a rod and turns him to stone. Back home the tree fades, and the second brother sees from this that the first is in dire peril or possibly dead. He saddles his horse, takes his dog and sword, and sets forth. After a long wandering he comes to the city in which his brother has become king. The innkeeper with whom he first stops and the young queen to whom he then goes mistake him for her husband, since he looks exactly like his brother. He realizes immediately that people are mistaking him for his brother and he lets them believe this, so that he may more easily find out something about his brother's fate. At night when he is to sleep with his sister-in-law, he lays the naked sword between her and him. He also sees the curious light and asks about its occurrence. The queen is astonished at his question, which she remembers to have already answered once, and warns him a second time. But he rides away, since he realizes now where his brother has had his misfortune, and comes to the hut and finds the old woman. He does not obey her order to lay the hair on the dog, but he sets the dog on to the witch and threatens her with death. She gives him the rod with which she has enchanted the first brother, and he strikes the stone with it and in this way disenchants him. The old woman is killed, and both brothers return together to the city. Such, in a general form, are these two well-known tales. It will be noticed that when the incident of the dragon slaying is used in the Two Brothers [p. 27] story the only modification necessary is that the hero be accompanied by only one dog instead of three. Several other possible introductions are to be found and some differences in detail, but the story as given above has a remarkable stability over the entire area where it is found. Both forms, the longer Two Brothers tale and the simpler Dragon Rescue story, have approximately the same distribution. A definite indication of this distribution will be interesting as showing the relative importance of boundary lines, national, racial, cultural, or linguistic, for determining the dissemination of a widely-known tale which has been handed down by word of mouth for a long time. In the following list the number of reported versions of the Two Brothers story are given first and then those for the simpler Dragon Rescue tale. It will be noted that all of them contain the central core: the rescue from the dragon, the impostor, the dragon-tongue proof, and the marriage with the princess. The distribution is as follows: If certain countries in this list seem to be represented with a disproportionate number, it must be borne in mind that collecting has been much more thoroughly carried out in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Finland than in most other countries. It seems quite certain, for example, that if French tales had been thoroughly collected during the last generation their showing would be much better. As it is, every French collection which we possess indicates the presence of these tales in the area which it covers. [p. 28] The place where a folktale is most likely to suffer change is in its introduction, where a preliminary action really proper to another story but capable of being logically joined to the one in question is easily substituted. Such a substitution may very well be accepted and may set up a new tradition which, in a limited area, may live on side by side with the more regular form of the tale. This has happened with the two stories we are considering. In The Two Brothers there has occurred confusion with the story of The Magic Bird-Heart ( Another story frequently amalgamated with The Two Brothers is the East European tale of The Three Brothers. This begins with the fishing episode of The Two Brothers, proceeds with adventures proper to supernaturally strong men ( In some twenty percent of all versions of The Two Brothers occurs the motif of The Jealous Brother. In these tales the younger brother, having been resuscitated and having heard that his brother has slept with his wife, kills his rescuer. Then on hearing the truth he repents and resuscitates him. Ranke feels that this ending is hardly an original part of the story since it is far from uniform in its occurrence, and since the means of resuscitation is usually the same as that already used for disenchantment in the same tale. On the other hand, the motif is not a recent invention. It occurs in Basile's Pentamerone (1634-36) and also has a wide distribution, indicative of a relatively long history. These are the most important variations of The Dragon Slayer and The Two Brothers. Ranke has attempted, on the basis of his huge collection and his careful analysis, to arrive at some conclusions as to the history of the stories. It seems clear that The Dragon Slayer is the older of the two stories, [p. 29] and that The Two Brothers has simply taken over this old tale as a cluster of motifs in its composition. Ranke's study is not concerned with any possible earlier forms of The Dragon Slayer before it assumed its present definite structure. He realizes that the concept of the dragon is old; he sees unmistakable resemblances between this story and the Greek myth of Perseus and Andromeda, and with many older tales of rescues from monsters. He knows also that, as Hartland has pointed out in his three-volume work on The Legend of Perseus, many of the separate motifs in the story, such as the life-token, the enchantment and disenchantment, and the magic birth, are found in nearly all parts of the world, and may appear in a multitude of narrative connections. But with more than a thousand examples of the fully developed stories before him, he has confined his task to the establishment of a typical form of the tale which would approximate the original from which all the rest have been derived. These typical forms of the tale are those which we have outlined here. On the basis of the entire study, he is convinced that The Dragon Slayer as we know it at present was developed in western Europe where the versions are closest to the typical form. As one goes east, greater and greater variation occurs. Particular departures from type show special geographic distribution, and are therefore to be listed as different redactions of the tale. To illustrate once for all the way in which such a story develops new forms, let us examine these redactions of The Dragon Slayer (and the Dragon Rescue episode of The Two Brothers) as worked out by Ranke. I. The Romance Cycle of Redactions (a) French. Like type except that in about half of versions impostor is a charcoal burner. (b) French Colonial. On the periphery of French, and in the colonies (Cambodia, North America, Malay peoples). (c) Spanish. Like French but not so regularly developed. Impostor a charcoal burner or Negro. In 63 percent of (d) Portuguese. Like French. But one Portuguese and Brazilian have introduction from Hansel and Gretel. Portugal, Cape Verde Islands, Brazil. (e) Italian. Near to original form. Basile's version (1634), recent Italian, Albanian. (f) General Romance redaction. Main characteristics: periodic sacrifice to dragon. Change of details as one gets away from France. Found (in addition to Romance countries) in all parts of Europe. This form has apparently spread through Germany to Scandinavia, the Baltic Countries, and Russia and sporadically to Japan. [p. 30] II. Central European. No periodic sacrifice to dragon. Sometimes this may be an unintentional omission. The spread is from Germany eastward and in a few cases northward. Some of these tales may be influenced directly by Grimm's version. III. The Murder Redaction. The dragon slayer is killed by the impostor and later resuscitated. About half the Two Brothers tales in this group have The Magic Bird Heart ( IV. The Northern Redaction Cycle. (a) General Northern Redaction. Giant adventure precedes dragon fight. Red Knight attempts rescue but in fear climbs tree and witnesses fight, later to appear as impostor. Three dragons. Battle at sea side. Princess louses hero and leaves ring in his hair. Recognition by ring. This version is certainly Scandinavian, probably from Norway (1) to Denmark and North Germany, (2) to Sweden and the Baltic countries, (3) to Scotland. Of this Northern cycle, Ranke distinguishes a number of sub-groups: (b) Porter (hero as porter for king; dragon knocks at door). Denmark to Schleswig-Holstein. (c, d, e) "Peril" redactions (no sacrifice, but king has promised daughter to monster to save his life). Denmark to rest of Scandinavia and Finland, (f) Danish hesitation redaction (dragon postpones sacrifice three days), (g) Lillekort ("little short"). Tiny hero. Dragon fight plus experience with sea troll. Recognition by costly garments of princess. Norway to all parts of Scandinavia, (h) Finnish wake redaction. Like Norwegian but princess awakens hero who sleeps with his head on her lap. (i) Glass mountain tradition. Continuation with V. Binding redaction. Ogre magically bound. A mixture with VI. Irish shoe redaction. Slipper recognition like Cinderella. Otherwise resembles Northern redaction. VII. Spring redaction. Dragon guards spring and refuses to give people water. Arose in Balkans. Then (1) to Hungary, Russia, Poland, and [p. 31] Baltic States, (2) to Greece and Turkey and around the Mediterranean to North and Central Africa and to Cape Verde Islands. VIII. Baltic Impostor redaction. Like Central European (II) but hero places the dragon tongues under a stone which the impostor cannot lift. From Baltic to Finland, Poland, and Russia. IX. Slavic Waking redaction. Hero sleeping with head in princess's lap is awakened by hot tears. Expansion of Central European (II). Great Russia to (1) Baltic lands, (2) Little Russia, Roumania, Greece, Arabia. X. Baltic Wrestling redaction. Hero and dragon sink into ground as they struggle. Baltic countries and Denmark. XI. Lettish Devil redaction. Like Central European (II) but devil or devils instead of dragon. From Latvia to other Baltic countries. This investigation of the Dragon Rescue both in The Dragon Slayer ( The very few versions of this tale found outside of Europe are clearly the result of the telling of the story by travelers or colonists. The American Indian variants are all from the French or Spanish, and the Cape Verde Island from the Portuguese. The appearance in Cambodia, Sunda Island, and Japan is purely sporadic. Careful analysis of the Dragon Slayer story indicates that literary versions have had very little, if any, influence on its development. It has apparently spread east over Europe and only slightly into countries beyond, where it has undoubtedly been carried long distances by travelers or colonists. The Two Brothers ( As mentioned before, Ranke is not attempting a history of The Dragon Slayer before it assumed the typical form found in the modern folktale. What its connection with Perseus and Andromeda or with Saint George and the Dragon may be he does not consider. There may well have been such older dragon fight stories which served as a foundation for the present tale, but the special complex which seems to have spread outward from France had taken on all of its present characteristics before its dissemination began. And it is only with the history of this fully formed tale that he is concerned. As to The Two Brothers ( In the case of both these tales ( Although the two stories which we have just considered in detail are those usually associated with the dragon fight, the dragon may also figure as the supernatural adversary in several other well-known tales. There is a tendency in these other stories, however, to leave the nature of the ogre or monster very vague—sometimes with human form, sometimes as a giant, and some times as a frightful being in half animal form. Probably the best known of this whole group of stories is John the Bear, [p. 33] or The Bear's Son ( He eventually reaches the upper world through the help of a spirit or, more often, of an eagle who carries him on his back and who demands to be fed. The hero feeds the eagle with his own flesh. He arrives at the home of the rescued princesses on the wedding day and, just as in the Dragon Rescue story, he sends his dogs to steal from the wedding feast, presents tokens, unmasks his rivals, and marries the most beautiful of the princesses. Most versions of the tale are fairly true to the outline just given. Frequently, however, an entirely different introduction appears. A monster comes in the night and steals from the king's orchard. One after the other, the king's sons guard the orchard and watch for the monster. The youngest son pursues the thief and follows him into the lower world. The elder brothers wait for the hero, expecting to pull him up on a rope. The treacherous abandonment, the theft of the girls, and the conclusion of the story are exactly alike, whether introduced by John the Bear or by the Watch for the Devastating Monster. This story is one of the most popular in the world. It is scattered over the whole of Europe, being especially well known in the Baltic states and in Russia. It is found in the Near East and North Africa but seems to have traveled only in fragments as far east as India. It is very popular among the French and Spanish who have taken it to America, where it has been adopted by American Indian tribes and also is told by the French in Canada and in Missouri. [p. 34] In the story of The Skillful Hunter ( This tale has some interesting motifs, especially the deception of the giants and the princess's recognition in the inn, but it has never achieved great popularity among taletellers. Although it is current through most of central Europe and as far east as the Caucasus, only a single version appears in France, and no other so far west. Even in Finland, where tales have been so well collected, there are but few variants, and in the huge Lithuanian collections it does not appear at all, nor has it been carried by travelers or colonists to other continents. In all, not more than seventy-five versions have thus far been reported. [17] The tale of The Danced-out Shoes ( This tale, like the last, seems to be primarily Central European with most frequent appearance in the area from Serbia north to Finland. It does not, so far as is now known, go east of Russia and is represented but once in France and Portugal. A single version is found in central Africa, and it has not thus [p. 35] far been reported in any other continents. Within its rather narrow geographical range it seems to be fairly popular, since somewhat more than a hundred variants are known. The heroine in The Danced-out Shoes does not seem to be anxious to be rescued from her otherworld lover. In most tales, however, these supernatural lovers have forced themselves upon the princess and keep her in duress. One of the most popular tales of rescue from such an ogre lover is the story of The Monster with His Heart in the Egg ( In the whole area from Ireland to India this tale has had a deserved popularity. It is frequently well told and the adventures of the hero and the princess in overcoming the monster lover have wide appeal to those who listen to tales of wonder. Within this area the tale has been reported some 250 times and seems to be well represented everywhere. In contrast to all the stories thus far mentioned it is popular in India. It has been pointed out that the versions in Asia place the ogre's heart in a bird or insect, whereas the typical European form has it in the egg. The story has been carried several times to Africa and to America, where it has taken its place in the traditions of the native Africans and the American Indians. |
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[11] This and similar numbers in parentheses after the title of a tale refer to Aarne-Thompson, The Types of the Folk-Tale (hereafter referred to as "Types"). [12] Die zwei Brüder. [13] This reconstruction of the typical form of the tale is taken from Ranke, op. cit., p. 341. [14] See p. 75, below. [15] This story has never been thoroughly studied, though Panzer (Beowulf) has written a monograph pointing out the relations of this tale with the Beowulf epic. His conclusions are dubious. [16] These extraordinary companions belong also to another story, [17] This is to be compared with the 770 versions of The Two Brothers and more than a thousand versions of both The Dragon Rescue and The Bear's Son. [18] For a series of other tales in which the heroine has a supernatural and usually monstrous lover, see |
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Types: 300, 301, 302, 303, 304, 306, 330, 506-508, 513, 514, 530, 567, 650 |
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Part Two The Folktale from Ireland to India II – The Complex Tale 3. Supernatural helpers F. Helpful Horses |
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Of all helpful animals, none has been so popular with taletellers as the horse. In not fewer than five well-known folk stories he plays a role almost as important as the hero himself. The most popular of these stories is undoubtedly that known by the Germans as the Goldener Märchen, from the hair of real gold which the hero acquires in the course of his adventures ( The boy mounts the magic horse but is followed closely by the devil, who almost overtakes him. At the horse's advice, the boy has provided himself with three magic objects, a stone, a comb, and a flint. When he throws the stone behind him, a mountain rises in the devil's path and delays him. Later the comb produces a forest and the flint a great fire. At last the youth escapes. He arrives in the neighborhood of the king's court, hides his magic horse, and covers his golden hair with a cloth, pretending to have the scald head. [p. 60] He is employed as gardener to the king and as such is seen one day by the princess as he combs His" golden hair. She falls in love with him and insists upon marrying him. The king consents, but puts them into the pigsty to live. Much despised by his haughty brothers-in-law, he goes to his magic horse for help. Whatever the task may be that the hero needs to carry out, the horse brings it about, so that his young master is honored and the brothers-in-law put to shame. In some versions the hero slays a dragon or brings a magic remedy for the king. [50] The usual adventure, however, is participating in a tournament. When the hero leaves for the tournament his horse has the appearance of a broken-down nag, so that when, three days in succession, he and his wonderful steed are the victors, no one recognizes him. By means of various tokens—centers from the captured flags, the point of a sword which his brother-in-law has broken off in his leg, and the hoof marks which the vanquished brothers-in-law have permitted him to place on them—he proves his identity and is accepted by the king as his favorite son-in-law. This complicated story appears without much variation over a large area and in many versions. It is particularly popular in Germany, Scandinavia, and the Baltic countries. But it is also well represented in Ireland and France, and has been carried by the French to America, where it is told by American Indians in at least fifteen versions, as well as by the Missouri French. Eastward it is popular in Bohemia, Poland, and all parts of Russia, and is told throughout the Caucasus, south Siberia, and the Near East. In south Asia three versions have been reported from India and three from Indonesia. It is also known in diverse parts of Africa. The tale contains within it one incident which is literally world wide, The Obstacle Flight ( One whole group of tales about the golden-haired hero and his horse ( While this story of the wild man is by no means so popular as the other, it is spread over almost exactly the same territory in Europe, but it hardly goes outside that continent. It has been carried to Siam, to Missouri, and to Brazil. Both of these two tales which we have just treated appeared in literary form as early as the sixteenth century in the work of Straparola. No attempt, however, has been made to investigate the influence of this literary form on the very strong and far-flung oral tradition. Confined, so far as now appears, to a very limited section of eastern Europe is the story of the hero called "I Don't Know." It is hard to tell whether this should be considered as a distinct tale type ( This seems to be essentially a Russian development which has achieved some popularity in Finland and Hungary. It is known in the Baltic countries, but not popular, and is not found further west. The tales of helpful horses have a tendency to merge into one another in many of their details, sometimes in the way in which the magic horse is acquired, sometimes in the remarkable deeds accomplished. Nevertheless, the separate tales are unmistakable entities. This confusion of parts is seen with especial clearness in the tale of the Princess on the Glass Mountain ( The king offers his daughter in marriage to the man who can ride up to her on top of a glass mountain. Although all suitors have failed to do so, the [p. 62] hero succeeds and receives from the princess at the summit a token which he later presents and by means of which he receives her in marriage. [53] This story is clearly divided into the two parts mentioned above, the acquisition of the horse and the marvelous deed. Sometimes instead of the watching for the devastating animal, the hero may take care of his flocks at night so as to keep them from wandering over into the possessions of an ogre or troll. The animals do so in spite of his watching, and he overcomes the troll when he goes after the animals. He finds the magic horses among the troll's possessions. This introduction would seem to have been borrowed from the tale of The Dragon Fighter ( The second part of the tale also displays considerable variety. Instead of to the glass mountain the riding may be to the top of a tall building, three-storied or four-storied. Sometimes the magic horse must jump over a wide excavation or ditch; sometimes, as in the last two stories we have noticed, he helps his master to victory in a tournament; and sometimes he wins a race, it may be with the princess herself. The tale is well distributed over Europe, particularly northern and eastern, and it is found in the Caucasus and the Near East. One version is reported from Burma. The last word on this tale has certainly not been written. Dr. Boberg's study is far from adequate, since it is based upon less than half of the available material. Her analysis of the story into "oikotypes," each characteristic of a certain linguistic: area, is unconvincing, as Professor Krohn clearly shows. On the other hand, Krohn's conclusion that the tale originated in India and reached Europe at a relatively late period by way of Asia Minor is at least problematical, in view of the fact that only one version has been reported from India. In the Grimms' tale of Ferdinand the Faithful and Ferdinand the Unfaithful ( As a general thing the quest for the princess in this tale is caused by the sight of a beautiful hair which has been found floating down a stream and which is shown to the king, who will not rest until the faraway princess to whom the hair belongs has been found. This motif, combined with the tasks assigned at the suggestion of a treacherous rival, is very old. It is found in the Egyptian story of The Two Brothers in the thirteenth century B.C. [54] It also occurs frequently in literary tales since that time, for instance in the story of Tristram and Isolt. Nevertheless, the combination into, the tale as we have it does not seem to go back to antiquity, though it must have been developed by the twelfth century after Christ and in several parts of Europe. In its oral form it is distributed with remarkable uniformity over the whole of Europe. It is found in an unbroken line through the Caucasus, the Near East, India, Cambodia, and the Philippines. Five versions have been reported from the Arabic population of Egypt, and three from Central Africa. The French have carried it to Missouri and to the Menomini Indians of Wisconsin; the Spanish to the San Carlos Apache of New Mexico. The story has never been thoroughly investigated, but a superficial view of its distribution suggests that it may have come to Europe from the East, probably from India. The tradition is not always coherent and the tellers of the tale apparently do not always understand the significance of what they are telling. The place of the pen in the story is an example of such confusion, for it is seldom clear why the hero should have a pen and what good it is to serve in the tale. In one story at least, the horse renders his most efficient service after his death. This tale is best known from the German version of Grimm, The Goose Girl ( In some versions the princess is blinded, and it is later necessary to buy back her eyes from the person who has blinded her. In addition to the speaking horse-head, other means are sometimes employed for bringing the truth to light. Her magic objects may speak, or she may sing a song into a stove which she must take care of. This tale has not been found in any great multitude of versions. Liungman's study [55] is based upon fourteen variants, all of them European, extending from France to Russia, except a single one among the Kabyle of North Africa. Besides this list, he cites several central African tales with a similar plot but lacking some of the principal characteristics. It is problematical whether all tales in which a servant girl replaces a princess on the way to marry a prince should be thought of as having any organic connection with this story of The Goose Girl. Liungman's conclusion as to its origin and dissemination is that it seems to have developed somewhere on the upper Danube, but that the German versions have been of greatest influence in its subsequent distribution. This tale has so much in common with several other stories of false brides that it has frequently become confused with them, particularly with The Black and The White Bride ( The tales of helpful animals which we have just reviewed are those best known in Europe and western Asia, but there are, of course, many other stories in which animals aid their human masters and mistresses. Some of these are legends, such as that of Llewellyn and His Dog, and some of them are more elaborate folktales much like the European stories we have been studying, but current entirely among some primitive group such as the American Indians. [56] Although scholars of two generations ago tended to find connection between the stories of helpful beasts and the Hindu attitude toward animals, [57] stories with this motif have been found in so many parts of the world as to show that it is a natural development in story-telling which may take place anywhere. [p. 65] |
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[49] For similar bargains with the devil, see [50] The dragon slaying belongs properly to [51] This motif (or really cluster of motifs) was the last subject to which the distinguished folklorist, Antti Aarne, gave his attention. See his Magische Flucht. [52] It is almost a regular part of the Hansel and Gretel story ( [53] See Inger Margrethe Boberg, "Prinsessen på Glasbjaerget," Danske Studier, 1928, pp. 16-53. Discussed by Krohn, Übersicht, pp. 96-99. For a later study by Dr. Boberg see Handwörterbuch des deutschen Märchens, II, 627. For a very ancient analogue of the idea of reaching the princess on a height, see p. 274, below. [54] See p. 275, below. [55] Två Folkminnesundersokningar. [56] For Llewellyn and His Dog, see [57] See A. Marx, Griechische Märchen von dankbaren Tieren (Stuttgart, 1889). |
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Types: 300, 313, 314, 327, 400, 403, 502, 530, 531, 532, 533, 551, 756B, 810 |
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Motifs B331.2, D672 |
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Part Two The Folktale from Ireland to India II – The Complex Tale 12. Origin and history of the complex tales |
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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 ( |
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[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 |
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Part Two The Folktale from Ireland to India IV – The Folktale in Ancient Literature 1. Ancient Egyptian |
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From ancient Egypt we have several collections of tales which have been preserved on papyri. [429] These show rather clearly a traditional background in many respects resembling that found in the oral literature of present-day Europe and western Asia. Most of them are obviously the work of priests, and the tales probably fail in two ways to give us a true indication of the exact content or style of an oral narrative of that era. Generally the stories are not Well integrated and suggest that the writer had a very imperfect understanding of the action. The tales are given a definitely Egyptian setting and are closely related not only to the known history and geography of Egypt but to its religious conceptions and practices as well. On the other hand, they are so clearly related to folk tradition outside of Egypt that they are valuable indications of the antiquity of many of our oral motifs and even of complete tale types. The earliest of these surviving Egyptian tales, dating from about 2000-1700 B.C., is that of the Shipwrecked Man. An Egyptian sailing in the Red Sea is shipwrecked, and he alone of all on the ship escapes drowning. He is cast up on a lonely island which is inhabited by a king of the spirits in the form of a serpent. The latter receives him kindly and succeeds after four months in having a passing ship rescue him, but meantime tells him of his own misfortunes and predicts that his days are numbered and that the island will sink into the sea. Mention is also made (without explanation) of an earthly maiden who had formerly lived on the island but had perished along with the family of the king of the spirits. The story is so confused that it seems hardly possible that the man who wrote it in its present form understood its motivation. The hero is said to have been in great fear before the giant serpent, who is so kind to him. The role of the maiden is left unexplained [p. 274] and undeveloped. Are we dealing with the tale of an ogre and the rescue of a girl, as in the folktale of today? Whatever may be the answer to these speculations, the tale seems to point unmistakably to the existence of folktales much like our own in Egypt by 2000 B.C. Aside from a fragmentary story of a shepherd and a kind of fairy woman who keeps enticing him, nothing except this tale remains from this important era of Egyptian literature. For the period around 1700 B.C. there exists one manuscript containing folktales. Though there are only three stories, they give the student of the folktale important information. For one thing we are told that Cheops, the builder of the great pyramid caused folktales to be told to him; and we are thus able to get our first historic view of story-telling as a human activity five thousand years ago. Moreover, the stories in the collection seem to contain very old tradition, since one of them explains the supernatural origin of three kings of the fifth dynasty, about a thousand years before the tale was written. Two of the stories are little more than accounts of magicians and their deeds—the magic creation of a giant crocodile to punish adultery, and the magic recovery of a lost ornament from the river—, but the third is much like a modern wonder tale. A magician who eats and drinks enormously makes slain animals live but refuses to obey the king when he is commanded to try his powers on a human being. The king commands him to find "the castles of the god Thoth." These (whatever they may be), the magician says, can be found in a chest in the temple of the sun god at Heliopolis, but can be obtained only by the eldest son of a priestess of the god Rē of Sachebu who is pregnant with three children of that god. The story now goes over to the adventures of that woman. The children became the first three kings of the fifth dynasty. The best-known Egyptian folktales come to us from the New Kingdom (about 1600 to 1000 B.C). One is a tale of military strategy containing two well-known motifs. The opposing leader is deceived by the Egyptian general, who pretends to be willing to betray his army and who thus gets the enemy general into his tent and so much off his guard that he is easily overcome. The next day he pretends to send hundreds of sacks into the city as presents, but the sacks contain soldiers who overcome the city (the Trojan Horse motif, Another story from this period of the New Kingdom is about The Enchanted Prince. At the prince's birth it is prophesied that he will meet his death from a serpent, a crocodile, or a dog ( Better known is The Two Brothers, discovered in 1852 in a papyrus dating from about 1250 B.C. and once belonging to King Seti II. The story is given in great detail and is much like a modern folktale. There are two brothers. The elder, Anup, is married; the younger, Batu, lives in his house. The wife tries in vain to seduce Batu and then accuses him before her husband. Anup believes her and takes his knife and waits behind the stable door so as to kill his brother when he returns in the evening. But Batu, being warned by his cow, who speaks to him in human voice, flees and as he flees he calls for help to the sun god Rē. The god creates behind him a stream full of crocodiles, so that Anup cannot reach him. At sunrise Batu reveals to his brother the falseness of his wife and departs. He goes into the valley of cedars and hides his heart in a cedar flower. The nine gods give him the most beautiful of maidens, but the seven Hathors prophesy an evil end for her. The river carries a lock of her hair to Pharaoh, who is so taken with its perfume that he will not rest until he has her as wife. The thankless woman reveals the secret of her first husband and has the cedar flower cut down in which his heart is hidden. Then Batu falls down dead. But his elder brother sees that his beer foams up and he knows that his brother is in distress. He sets forth, finds the body and, after a long search, discovers the heart and places it in water and gives it to Batu to drink. The dead brother comes to life and begins to plan revenge. He turns himself into a bull, has his brother take him to the king's court and talks to the faithless wife. She has the bull killed but from two drops of his blood grow two peach trees. When the woman has these cut down, a splinter flies into her mouth and from this she bears a child, who is none other than Batu. He grows up as son of Pharaoh and succeeds him to the throne. Then he has the woman slain and calls his brother to share the kingdom with him. Though this tale has some resemblance to the present day European story of The Two Brothers, the plot is essentially different and they probably do not have direct connection. C. W. von Sydow sees in it a corruption of an original Indo-European myth and finds parallels in Eastern Europe and Asia. [431] But whether it is organically connected with any of the current tale types, it has many motifs that are a part of the common store of such tales: [p. 276] Potiphar's wife ( Some indications of the presence of the oral tale in the later pre-Christian centuries are found in illustrations on papyrus, many of which have not been published. [432] From these and from a few scattered texts we can conclude that the ancient Egyptians had a good number of animal tales, some of them, but not all, related to the Aesop fables. Herodotus, writing in the middle of the fifth century B.C., has an interesting section on Egypt and recounts several stories he has heard there. One that is still told is The Treasure House of Rhampsinitus ( |
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[429] See G. Maspéro, Les contes populaires de l'Egypte ancienne (Paris, 1882); W. M. F. Petrie, Egyptian Tales (2 vols., London, 1899). [430] A motif very close to the central theme of The Princess on the Glass Mountain, [431] "Den fornegyptiska Sagan om de två Bröderna," Yearbook, of the New Society of Letters at Lund, 1930, pp. 53-89. [432] Handwörterbuch des deutschen Märchens, I, 36; Bolte-Polívka, IV, 100. |
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Types: 530, 950 |
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Motifs B211, B741.2, D672, E30, E607.2, E670, E710, E761.6.4, K754.1, K2111, K2213.4, M341.2.4.1, M340, M372, T114.1 |
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