Part Two

The Folktale from Ireland to India

II – The Complex Tale

11. Realistic tales

C. Robbers

The final group of stories which we shall notice in our survey of the complex tale in Europe and Asia is concerned with robbers and their adventures. Many stories with this general theme consist of a single incident or motif. But since these incidents frequently form a part of one of the longer complex tales, it will be convenient to notice them in connection with these longer stories with which they have affinity and of which they are frequently an organic part. [274]

One of these complex robber tales has a very long known history. Herodotus, in the fifth century before Christ, tells the story of the treasure house of Rhampsinitus (Type 950). [275] Some of the parts of this tale were apparently known in Greece before his time. But there seems little doubt that all subsequent versions of the story go back eventually to Herodotus. It appears not only in the literary collections of the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, but also in the Buddhistic writings of the early Christian era and in the Ocean of Story from India of the twelfth century. Moreover, the tale has had a wide acceptance in oral tradition all the way from Iceland across Europe and Asia to Indonesia and the Philippines. It does not seem to have gone to central or south Africa nor to the western hemisphere except in a tale of the Cape Verde Islanders in Massachusetts.

Herodotus tells the story in a good deal of detail, and the changes which have taken place in the twenty-four hundred years since his time consist in minor elaborations. The architect of the king's treasure house has left a stone loose in the building. As Herodotus tells it, he leaves directions to his two sons at the time of his death so that they may have free entry to the king's treasure. In some more modern versions it is the architect himself who robs the treasure house. Sometimes the theft is detected by means of a straw fire the smoke of which escapes through the secret hole. In any event, the thief is caught in a trap. In order that his identity may be concealed and that his brother can continue the thefts, he has the brother cut off his head and leave the headless body. The king wishes to identify the thief and to this end has the body carried through the streets to see if anyone will weep for it. Though the son has forewarned the family, the mother becomes importunate and insists upon the rescue of her son's body. His brother succeeds in stealing the body either, as Herodotus shows, by cleverly getting the guards drunk or else by putting on the same motley garb as the guards and thus being taken for a guard. The last attempt of the king to capture the robber is also un successful. The king sends his daughter to a brothel and gives all men free access to her. She makes each of them declare his most dangerous exploit. [p.172] When she learns of the theft, she is to mark the culprit with a black sign. The rascal marks all of the knights, and even the king himself, and thus escapes detection. Herodotus tells it somewhat differently. The princess is to hold tight to the hand of the robber when she discovers him. Knowing this, he takes with him the hand of a corpse, and she finds that he has escaped while she holds on to the dead man's hand. Some other versions also tell how a child is used to test guilt. The boy will hand a thief a knife. But at the proper time the rascal exchanges a toy with the child and thus escapes detection. At the end, he is always rewarded by marriage with the king's daughter.

This is one of the best examples of stability in a folktale. Nevertheless, a study of the detailed changes, especially by oral raconteurs, should be of great interest in connection with the mutual relations of literature and folklore. It would be interesting to know by what devious routes this story of Herodotus has come to be part of the repertory not only of the novelle writers of the Renaissance, but of simple story-tellers in the farthest reaches of Europe and Asia.

The interest of the teller of this tale is obviously on the side of the robber in his opposition to the king. In a tale familiar to the literature of northern Europe since the Renaissance and known orally in Germany, the Baltic states, and Hungary, [276] the king is in alliance with the robber. He joins him in disguise to rifle a bank. The robber, however, will not permit him to take more than six shillings, pointing out that the king has so many thieves. In another purely Baltic tale, The Bank Robbery (Type 951B), robbers help the king by accidentally discovering a conspiracy against him as they climb up to enter the bank.

A tale of a robber is used at least once as a framework for bringing together a group of related stories. Though the tale is undoubtedly literary, appearing as it does in written narrative collections since the twelfth century, it is nevertheless rather well known in the folklore of Ireland, Scotland, Germany, and Roumania. In this story, The Old Robber Relates Three Adventures to Free His Sons (Type 953), the captor demands that each adventure should be more frightful than the last. He tells first of all of a fearful encounter with ghostlike cats. Next comes an adventure with a one-eyed giant, such as Odysseus experienced with Polyphemus. The third adventure reminds one of Hansel and Gretel: an ogre is fooled by the substitution of a corpse for a child who is to be cooked for him. Lastly, the robber tells how he substituted himself later in order to save the child. It turns out that the rescued child of the last tale is the robber's present captor. In gratitude, he rewards the old man liberally.

Story-tellers are not always on the side of the robbers, for they realize that robber bands are often cruel and ruthless, and they may be interested [p. 173] in the ways in which such bands are defeated. A story rather popular in northern and eastern Europe is that of The King and the Soldier (Type 952) in which the soldier is impelled to testify to the king against the crimes of his superior officer. He accompanies the king, whom he does not know, to the robbers' house and there renders them helpless by a magic spell or else succeeds in killing them and saving the life of the king. Later the king reveals himself and rewards the soldier.

Familiar to all readers of the Arabian Nights is the story of The Forty Thieves (Type 954). The robbers attempt to enter the house hidden in oil casks. The clever girl inside detects the plan and kills them all. This story is, of course, literary, but is occasionally heard as a folktale in all parts of Europe and sometimes elsewhere. It may not, indeed, be original with the Arabian Nights, since there is an ancient Egyptian tale with the same general plot. [277]

In somewhat simpler fashion, merely by cutting off their heads as they enter the house, one after the other, the hero of the story At the Robbers' House (Type 956A) gets rid of them, escapes from the hot chamber where he is confined along with many corpses, and takes away the robbers' treasure. This is not a well-known tale, though it is occasionally told all the way from Flanders to Russia.

Better known is its female counterpart, The Clever Maiden Alone at Home Kills the Robbers (Type 956B). She also cuts off their heads as they enter, one by one. But this story has a sequel, for a companion of the robbers takes revenge by appearing as a suitor for the girl. He beguiles her into the woods, where the robber band finds her. Only with great difficulty does she escape. This tale, with its greater range of interest, seems to be at home in all parts of Europe, but except for a corrupt New York State version has not been reported outside.

The girl wooed by the robber is even more familiar in the story of The Robber Bridegroom (Type 955). Though she imagines she has married a fine gentleman, she finds that she has been taken into a den of robbers. While she is hidden under the bed, she sees another girl murdered. She severs the fingers of the murdered girl and keeps them as proof of the imposition. The details of the story differ a good deal. Sometimes she finds her way, by means of ashes or peas which she has scattered, to make a path through the woods. [278]

The story has several points in common with the Bluebeard tale [279] of the girl who unwittingly marries an ogre and discovers the corpses of her sisters, and there has been some mutual influence between the two types. The Robber Bridegroom is rather popular in various countries in all parts of Europe, but seems to be quite unknown in others. The single versions in [p. 174] Armenia, India, New York State, and the Virginia mountains are the only ones thus far reported outside of Europe.

By far the chief of all folktales concerning robberies is The Master Thief (Type 1525). In one or another of its forms it appears in nearly every collection of tales from Europe and Asia and occasionally in all other parts of the world. It consists first of all of a nucleus, a well-defined series of incidents which occurs almost everywhere and which affords a clue by which even very fragmentary stories can be identified as belonging to this cycle. To this nucleus (designated as Type 1525A) other appropriate incidents are added with a good deal of freedom, though these special developments are by no means haphazard in their geographical relationship. Of this nuclear part of the tale, more than seven hundred oral versions have been noted from all over the world, and literary tellings have been common since its appearance in Pauli's Schimpf und Ernst early in the sixteenth century.

This most usual part of the tale normally begins with the return home of a prodigal son who is now a great man and who boasts of his skill as a thief. Sometimes there are brothers who have been away to learn trades, and they vie with each other in bragging about their accomplishments. [280] A neighboring earl hears about the master thief and challenges him to submit to tests. He steals the horses from under vigilant mounted horsemen, either by disguising himself as an old woman or else by skillfully inducing them to get drunk. He steals horses or cattle from their drivers when he lets loose a rabbit so that the drivers all join in the chase. A much severer test is to steal a ring from the countess's finger and a sheet from the bed in which she is sleeping. He does this by raising a corpse to the bedroom window and inducing the earl to shoot it. In order to avoid scandal, the earl goes outside and buries the body of the man whom he thinks he has killed. While this is going on, the thief enters into the dark bedroom pretending to be the husband and persuades the countess to give him the sheet, so that he can wrap up the corpse. He also persuades her that it would be the decent thing to bury him with her ring on, since he has lost his life in the attempt to get the ring. When the earl returns, they realize that they have been duped.

After these and other similar thefts, the hero is condemned to death. While he is awaiting execution, he is put in a sack. Just as in the tale of The Rich and the Poor Peasant, [281] he persuades a gullible passerby to take his place in the sack by saying that he is waiting to be taken to heaven. [282]

To this central part of the story additions may be made with considerable freedom. The cheater steals a horse by pretending to show the earl how a [p. 175] horse may be stolen but by really riding it away (Type 1525B). Or he fishes in the street and, while travelers are watching his foolish actions, his confederate steals their wagons (Type 1525C). These two latter incidents are usually inserted within the general framework of the tale. The theft of the horse is much the better known of the two. But the next series of incidents (Type 1525D) is so popular that it might well be considered an essential part of the type. It has been noted in all parts of the world and in considerably more than three hundred versions. These incidents always concern the stealing of an animal, usually an ox. One of the best known devices is the putting of shoes in the road separately. The owner of the ox passes the first by, but when later he finds the second, he leaves his ox unguarded while he returns for the first. In some versions the articles are a sword and a sheath or a knife and a fork. The ox owner may also be attracted away from his animal when the rascal apparently hangs himself in the woods or when he imitates the bellowing of cattle so that the owner leaves one ox in order to try to recover one that he has lost. More rarely in this series of incidents, the thief steals clothes by inducing the owner to take them off and go bathing. Sometimes also he scares some thieves away from their treasure by striking an ox which he himself has killed and crying out, "Those others did it."

The next two incidents to be considered are often quite independent of the central part of the master thief tale. In one of these, The Thieves and their Pupil (Type 1525E), members of the group take turns in stealing from each other. Finally the pupil surpasses them all. The last incident, a purely Baltic development, is really a combination of several other tales by which horses and money are stolen. Usually this incident is followed by the exchange of the prisoner in the sack (Type 1525F).

Stories of clever thieves are very old, and as we read literature and look into the folklore of remote parts of the world, we will find many stories of this general nature. But within the range of the European and Asiatic folktale, the story of The Master Thief is much more than a casual group of clever thefts. As a well-defined folktale, it appears to have a wide geographical distribution with clearly recognizable relationships from area to area, and a literary history going back at least to the Renaissance. Because of the interesting affinities between this tale and many other stories of thefts and because of the extremely wide circulation which this tale has experienced over the world, it would be interesting to know much more about its history and development that we do now, when no really adequate study has been devoted to it. A tale of this kind, in which incidents can be inserted rather freely, presents comparative problems which should be susceptible to analytical study with as much hope of success as any one of the two hundred and more complex tales which we have now finished reviewing. [p. 176]

[274] A number of anecdotes concerning thieves and robbers are postponed for treatment elsewhere, since they show no such affinity to larger narrative complexes. See pp. 199ff., below.

[275] Herodotus, Book II, ch. 121.

[276] The King and the Robber (Type 951A).

[277] See p. 274, below.

[278] An incident already noticed in Hansel and Gretel (Type 327A).

[279] Types 311 and 312.

[280] Like the skillful brothers in Types 653

and 654.

[281] Type 1535. This incident sometimes appears as an independent tale (Type 1737), though it is usually a part of one of these longer tales.

[282] A considerable variety and ingenuity is shown in the persuasive tale which the man in the sack uses to bring about this exchange of places. Instead of the expected journey to heaven, there may be almost any kind of tempting prospect held forth.

311, 312. 327A, 653, 654, 950, 951A, 951B, 952, 953, 954, 955, 956A, 956B, 1525, 1525A, 1525B, 1525C, 1525D, 1525E, 1525F, 1535, 1737

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 (Type 335); Six Go Through the Whole World (Type 513A); The Three Snake Leaves (Type 612); [p. 177] The Two Travelers (Type 613); The Animal Languages (Type 670); "Think Carefully Before You Begin a Task" (Type 910C); The Brave Tailor (Type 1640); and Doctor Know-All (Type 1641). In the Ocean of Story, a Sanskrit collection brought together in the twelfth century but based upon much older material, there appear, as probable originals of the European oral tradition, versions of: Wise Through Experience (Type 910A); The Servant's Good Counsels (Type 910B); and Faithful John (Type 516). From other collections of literary tales originating in India appear to come: The Bridge to the Other World (Type 471); The Four Skillful Brothers (Type 653); The Wise Brothers (Type 655); and One Beggar Trusts God, the Other the King (Type 841). From various literary sources in India the incidents which make up two of our related tales have been taken and unified at some point before they entered into the oral tradition of the west. [285] These two are : The Son of the King and of the Smith (Type 920); and The King and the Peasant's Son (Type 921). Whatever may be the ultimate source of the stories in the Thousand and One Nights, several of our old folktales are found in that work in much the form in which these stories first reached European taletellers. Among these tales appearing in the Arabian Nights are: Siddhi Numan (Type 449*); Aladdin (Type 561); Open Sesame (Type 676); Luck and Wealth (Type 736); Hatch-penny (Type 745); Oft Proved Fidelity (Type 881); The Treasure of the Hanging Man (Type 910D); and The Forty Thieves (Type 954). Finally, of these tales of Oriental origin, may be mentioned one which appears in the Persian collection, The Thousand and One Days. This is The Prophecy (Type 930).

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 (Type 931) to Sophocles; Rhampsinitus (Type 950) to Herodotus; and The Wolf and the Kids (Type 123) to the Aesop collection. A fourteenth century Latin poem, the Asinarius, is responsible for the very few oral versions of The Ass (Type 430). Folktales have borrowed very freely from saints' legends: certainly Pride Is Punished (Type 836) is a mere oral treatment of the legend of Polycarp. The great collections of illustrative tales which in the Middle Ages went under the name of Exempla contained a considerable number of folktales. Frequently it is impossible to tell whether they may be reworkings of oral tradition, but sometimes it is quite evident that the oral tale is taken directly from the literary collection. This is clearly true of: Friends in Life and Death (Type 470); The Boy Who Learned Many Things (Type 517); The Three Languages (Type 671); The Angel and the Hermit (Type 759); and Who Ate the Lamb's Heart (Type 785). At least two tales seem to have been learned from the work of the German Meistersinger: The Faithful Wife (Type 888); and [p. 178] The Pound of Flesh (Type 890). Of course, both of these tales were used by Shakespeare, and that fact has doubtless been of influence on their subsequent popularity. Many stories have undoubtedly originated among the people of Italy, and it is sometimes difficult to know whether a tale recounted by those great writers of novelle beginning with Boccaccio was learned from the people or was invented by the author. For at least three of our folktales such literary invention by the novella writer seems the most reasonable hypothesis. The Wager on the Wife's Chastity (Type 882) is in Boccaccio's Decameron; The Luck-Bringing Shirt (Type 844) in the Pecorone of Ser Giovanni; and The Taming of the Shrew (Type 901) in the Nights of Straparola. The Pentamerone of Giambattista Basile of the early seventeenth century is almost completely made up of oral folktales, though transformed into an extraordinary literary style. But it is probable that he invented several tales by freely combining traditional material. Such seems to be the situation with The Forsaken Fiancée (Type 884). Finally, at least one tale given currency by the Grimms, The Two Girls, the Bear, and the Dwarf (Type 426), comes directly from a German literary collection of stories which appeared in 1818.

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 (Type 960; oral: Spain to Russia). From saints' [p. 179] legends at least two oral tales appear to have been taken: Hospitality Rewarded (Type750B; oral: scattered thinly over most of Europe); and Christ and the Smith (Type 753; oral: all Europe, especially the Baltic states). Certainly influenced by some of the legends of the popes, if not directly borrowed from them, is The Dream (Type 725; oral: moderately popular in eastern Europe and the Baltic states). In addition to the folktales which we are sure have come from books of Exempla, there are several where such an origin seems likely: The King and the Robber (Type 951A; oral: Germany and the Baltic states, sporadic in Hungary and Russia); The Old Robber Relates Three Adventures (Type 953; oral: thinly scattered, Ireland to Roumania); and "We Three; For Money" (Type 1697; oral: thinly scattered over all Europe). The influence of the chivalric romance in general is seen in The Bride Won in a Tournament (Type 508) which was told in Straparola's Nights and received frequent literary treatment in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but has been collected orally only in three versions in Lithuania.

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 (Type 332; oral: Iceland to Palestine, especially the Baltic states, but not Russia). A medieval chronicle of 1175 probably forms the beginning of the tradition later carried on through French and German jestbooks and at least one English play, and connected with the name of a famous Lord Mayor of London. This is Whittington's Cat (Type 1651; oral: scattered from western Europe to Indonesia, especially popular in Finland).

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 (Type 750A; oral: popular throughout Europe, sporadic in China); The Tailor in Heaven (Type 800; oral: scattered thinly over Europe, sporadic among Buryat of Siberia); The Devil as Advocate (Type 821; oral: all Europe, especially Baltic, moderately popular); Sleeping Beauty (Type 410; oral: scattered thinly over Europe, one-third of versions Italian, based on Basile); and The Three Brothers (Type 654; oral: confined to Europe).

A German literary tale of the thirteenth century may well be the beginning of The Frog King (Type 440; oral: Germany to Russia only). The habit of writing literary folktales was carried on into the eighteenth century, both in France and in Germany. Many of these tales never assumed any oral popularity. On the other hand, The Girls Who Married Animals (Type 552), although concocted by Musäus at the end of the eighteenth century of authentic oral material, combined with an analogous tale in Basile, has since entered into the stream of oral tradition in the form he then designed. Its [p. 180] oral distribution shows the greatest inconsistency and indicates frequent direct use of the literary source.

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 (Type 945); it also occurs in recent literary form in India, but has a vigorous life in popular tradition of India and the Near East, and sporadically as far afield as Germany and the Philippines. In the Ocean of Story, as well as in the Thousand and One Nights, occur fragments of Devils Fight over Magic Objects (Type 518; oral: all Europe, western Asia, and North Africa) and of The Prince's Wings (Type 575; oral: sparingly over north and eastern Europe). In the Ocean of Story, likewise, there is an analogue of The Girl as Helper in the Hero's Flight (Type 313). This story does not otherwise appear in central Asia but is one of the most popular of all oral folktales in Europe and America; it is no wonder that it has been retold by such story-tellers as Straparola and Basile. Two tales popular in the tradition of the Near East appear in the Persian Tuti Nameh: The Grateful Animals (Type 554; oral: Europe and Asia, especially Baltic countries) and The Magic Bird-heart (Type 567; oral: eastern and southern Europe, and Persia; origin probably in Persian tradition). In an Arabic history of the ninth century appears an abbreviated version of The King and the Abbot (Type 922), though Walter Anderson has shown that the tradition is certainly oral, in spite of frequent literary treatments in Europe. Likewise, the occurrence of the story of The Monster in the Bridal Chamber (Type 507B) in the apocryphal Book of Tobit does not carry the implication that this version is the source of the tradition: it is obviously a late and considerably modified form of the story, which appears to have developed orally in the Near East.

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 (Type 1137) by Homer, of Cupid and Psyche (Type 425) by Apuleius, and of Perseus and Andromeda (a version of Type 300? ) by various writers of myths.

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 (Type 300) in connection with that of The Two Brothers (Type 303) in Icelandic saga does represent an actual version of an oral tale, apparently originating in France, and now known by almost every taleteller in the world. In Icelandic saga there also appears a version of The Clever Peasant Girl (Type 875), though this does not represent its source, which is certainly oral and central European. The learning of animal speech by eating the flesh of a serpent occurs in a German and Baltic oral tale (Type 673) and also in the Siegfried story, but this is the only parallel, and the resemblance may not indicate actual relationship.

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 (Type 923), widely known, not only through Shakespeare's treatment, but also as a part of the Cinderella cycle (Type 510). The chivalric romances, likewise, contain much that must have been taken directly from the people. Marie de France thus tells the tale of The Prince as Bird (Type 432), which, though certainly oral, has been frequently retold by both medieval and Renaissance writers. In some versions of the Tristram story occur elements of The Clever Horse (Type 531; oral: western Europe to the Philippines, origin probably India), and in an Icelandic saga of the fourteenth century there is a much clearer version. In the Fortunatus romance, which occurs in many forms, there is found a version of The Three Magic Objects and the Wonderful Fruits (Type 566), essentially west European folk tradition. The Gesta Romanorum, and later, Hans Sachs, have versions of The Three Doctors (Type 660), a tradition well known from Ireland to Russia. Despite the fact that the French and German fabliaux are usually literary in content, at least two oral tales are used in such collections: The Hero Catches the Princess with Her Own Words (Type 853) and King Thrushbeard (Type 900).

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 (Type 327A); Master Pfriem (Type 801); One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes (Type 511); The [p. 182] Student from Paradise (Type 1540); or The Three Lucky Brothers (Type 1650). The latter story also appears in a collection of novelle. These prose tale collections, beginning as early as Boccaccio's Decameron, sometimes contain stories which the author had heard, though they are usually much changed in style from what must have been the oral original. Such is true of The Smith Outwits the Devil (Type 330), and of Six Go Through the Whole World (Type 513). The latter tale appears in many other literary collections, both Oriental and European.

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 (Type 325; apparently of oral origin in India); The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What Fear Is (Type 326); The Youth Transformed to a Horse (Type 314; one of the most popular of oral tales); Cap o' Rushes (Type 510B); The Three Golden Sons (Type 707); Our Lady's Child (Type 710); The Cat Castle (Type 545A); Puss in Boots (Type 545B); and The Lazy Boy (Type 675).

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 (Type 310); The Black and the White Bride (Type 403); The Three Oranges (Type 408); Little Brother and Little Sister (Type 450); The Maiden Who Seeks her Brothers (Type 451); The Spinning-Woman by the Spring (Type 480); The Three Old Women Helpers (Type 501); Dung-beetle (Type 559); The Magic Ring (Type 560); The Louse-Skin (Type 621); The Carnation (Type 652); Snow-White (Type 709); and The Good Bargain (Type 1642).

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 (Type 402) and The Shift of Sex (Type 514).

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 (Type 922) appears in a German poem of the thirteenth century and frequently thereafter; the oral tradition of how Peter's Mother Falls from Heaven (Type 804) is given in a fifteenth century German poem; The Monster's Bride (Type 507A) appears in a sixteenth century English comedy; Bearskin (Type 361) is [p. 183] retold by Grimmelshausen in 1670; and Demi-coq (Type 715) is given a French name because of his appearance in a French story written in 1759.

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 (Type 461), very often told in connection with the tale of The Prophecy (Type 930). The latter story is Oriental, but is found in early Buddhistic material. [287] The widely diffused tale of The Little Red Bull (Type 511*), while showing relation to several well-known European stories, probably comes from Oriental folk tradition.

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 (Type 300), John the Bear (Type 301), and The Two Brothers (Type 303). [288] Some European oral tales have traveled far into the Orient: Bluebeard (Type 311); The Journey to God to Receive Reward (Type 460A); The Journey in Search of Fortune (Type 460B); The Wild Man (Type 502); The Speaking Horsehead (Type 533); and The Profitable Exchange (Type 1655). Others have gone no further than the Near East: The Princess Transformed into Deer (Type 401); The Princess on the Glass Mountain (Type 530); Strong John (Type 650); The Juniper Tree (Type 720); and The Greater Sinner (Type 756C).

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 (Type 304); [p. 184] The Dwarf and the Giant (Type 327B); Hiding from the Devil (Type 329); The House in the Wood (Type 431); The Water of Life (Type 551); The Fisher and His Wife (Type 555); The Rabbit-herd (Type 570); The Self-righteous Hermit (Type 756A); The Devil's Contract (Type 756B); The Singing Bone (Type 780); The Peasant in Heaven (Type 802); The Birthmarks of the Princess (Type 850); The Golden Ram (Type 854); The King and the Soldier (Type 952); The Robber Bridegroom (Type 955) and The Clever Maiden Alone at Home Kills the Robbers (Type 956B).

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 (Type 307); The Faithless Sister (Type 315); and The Prince and the Arm Bands (Type 590). These last two are closely related and seem to have their center in Roumania.

General European tales most popular in eastern and northern Europe are: The Danced-Out Shoes (Type 306); Lenore (Type 365); The Helpful Horse (Type 532); and The Snares of the Evil One (Type 810).

Especially characteristic of Scandinavia and the Baltic states are: The Boy Steals the Giant's Treasure (Type 328, the English story of Jack the Giant Killer); Bear-skin (Type 361); The Man as Heater of Hell's Kettle (Type 475); The King is Betrayed (Type 505); The Spirit in the Blue Light (Type 562—popularly influenced by H. C. Andersen's treatment); The Greedy Peasant Woman (Type 751); Sin and Honor (Type 755; also very popular in Ireland); The Devil's Riddle (Type 812); The Hero Forces the Princess to Say "That is a Lie" (Type 852); The Youth Cheated in Selling Oxen (Type 1538); The Clever Boy (Type 1542); and The Man Who got a Night's Lodging (Type 1544).

Rather widespread traditions having their focus definitely in Scandinavia are: The Man from the Gallows (Type 366); The Princess Rescued from Robbers (Type 506B); The Wonder Child (Type 708); The Princess Confined in the Mound (Type 870); and The Little Goose-Girl (Type 870A).

Oral tales distributed over all Europe, but especially characteristic of the western countries, are: The Giantkiller and his Dog (Bluebeard) (Type 312); The Nix of the Mill-pond (Type 316); Little Red Riding Hood (Type 333); Bargain of the Three Brothers with the Devil (Type 360); The Healing Fruits (Type 610); and The Presents (Type 620).

Finally, at least two tales seem to be especially characteristic of British tradition: Tom-Tit-Tot (Type 500) and Out-riddling the Judge (Type 927). The special form of Type 328 known as Jack the Giant Killer and that known as Jack and the Beanstalk represent peculiar British developments. [p. 185]

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 (Type 403C); The Girl in the Form of a Wolf (Type 409); Punishment of a Bad Woman (Type 473); "Iron is More Precious than Gold" (Type 677); The Rich Man's and the Poor Man's Fortune (Type 735); The Cruel Rich Man as the Devil's Horse (Type 761); The Princess who Murdered her Child (Type 781); Solomon binds the Devil in Chains in Hell (Type 803); The Deceased Rich Man and the Devils in the Church (Type 815); The Devil as Substitute for Day Laborer at Mowing (Type 820); The Boastful Deer-slayer (Type 830); The Dishonest Priest (Type 831); The Disappointed Fisher (Type 832); How the Wicked Lord was Punished (Type 837); and The Wolves in the Stable (Type 1652).

Local to the Baltic and Scandinavian countries are: [291] a version of The Children and the Ogre (Type 327C); The Vampire (Type 363); The Prince as Serpent (Type 433); The Raven Helper (Type 553); The Magic Providing Purse (Type 564); The Magic Mill (Type 565; sporadic in Ireland, Greece, and France); Beloved of Women (Type 580); The Thieving Pot (Type 591); Fiddevav (Type 593); The Gifts of the Dwarfs (Type 611); The Beautiful and the Ugly Twin (Type 711); The Mother who Wants to Kill her Children (Type 765); the Prodigal's Return (Type 935); and At the Robbers' House (Type 956A).

A much smaller group are limited to the Baltic states and Russia: The Strong Woman as Bride (Type 519); The Man Who Flew like a Bird and Swam like a Fish (Type 665; also in Bohemia); The Punishment of Men (Type 840); The Bank Robbery (Type 951B); and Cleverness and Gullibility (Type 1539; 253 versions in Finland alone, sporadic in Greece, Turkey, and America).

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 (Type 315B*) belongs to the Baltic and Balkan states and Russia. Hans my Hedgehog (Type 441) is known from Norway to Hungary, but depends entirely upon the Grimm version. Born from a Fish (Type 705) seems purely Scandinavian, and four tales apparently are known only in Norway: The Animal Sons-in-law and their Magic Food (Type 552B); The King's Tasks (Type 577); The Children of the King (Type 892); and Like Wind in the Hot Sun (Type 923A). Confined to south eastern Europe is The Serpent Maiden (Type 507C). Primarily Italian, but also known in Russia, is The Wolf (Type 428). Central European, primarily German, are the three varieties of The Serpent's Crown (Types 672A, B, and C). And two tales, except for occasional appearances of the Grimm version in other countries, seem to be limited to German tradition: Jorinde and Joringel (Type 405) and The Girl as Flower (Type 407).

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 (Type 503); The Princess Rescued from Slavery (Type 506A); The Jew Among Thorns (Type 592); Tom Thumb (Type 700); The Maiden Without Hands (Type 706); Christ and Peter in the Barn (Type 752A); The Forgotten Wind (Type 752B) ; The Saviour and Peter in Night-Lodgings (Type 791); The Lazy Boy and the Industrious Girl (Type 822); The Princess who Cannot Solve the Riddle (Type 851); and The Parson's Stupid Wife (Type 1750).

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 (Type 302); The Spirit in the Bottle (Type 331); The Prince as Bird (Type 432); The Man Persecuted because of his Beautiful Wife (Type 465); The Table, the Ass, and the Stick (Type 563); and "All Stick Together" (Type 571).

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 (Type 400); Cinderella (Type 510A); The Bird, the Horse, and the Princess (Type 550); The Knapsack, the Hat, and the Horn (Type 569); The Master Thief (Type 1525); and the Rich and the Poor Peasant (Type 1535). [p. 188]

[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.

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

Part Two

The Folktale from Ireland to India

III – The Simple Tale

1. Jests and Anecdotes

E. Thefts and Cheats

The Master Thief and The Treasure House of Rhampsinitus, two of the longer tales of robbery (Types 1525, 950), we have already noticed. There remain in addition a number of anecdotes about robbers sometimes connected with longer tales but frequently appearing as stories for their own sake. One of these has to do with the millstone or the door dropped from a tree on robbers who are counting their money below (K335.1.1; Type 1653).

This anecdote is frequently joined to the story of the literal-minded woman who is told to guard the door and who takes it off and carries it with her (K1413; Type 1009). Variations (K335.1.2.1; Type 1653B and K335.1.2.2; Type 1654**) tell how the robbers are frightened away by a corpse or a sham dead man. This whole group of incidents seems to come from Buddhistic literature in India and appears frequently in fabliaux and jestbooks. But they have become well established in oral folklore in many parts of the world. [p. 200]

Jestbooks have a long list of tales in which a thief presents a false order to the guardian of money or valuables. Some of these incidents appear in The Master Thief. Another of this class, well known as an independent oral tale, is the story about Long Winter (K362.1; Type 1541). A numskull has been told to keep his sausage "for the long winter." He talks about his instructions everywhere. A rascal hears this and comes to the door, introducing himself as Long Winter, and so receives the sausage. The details of the play upon words in this anecdote undergo the greatest variation, but the general idea is always the same, the trickster's taking advantage of the fool's babbling about his secret instructions. [308]

Anecdotes of the way in which a thief escapes detection assume a considerable variety of forms. In some of them, usually concerned with animal tales, the blame for the theft is fastened on a dupe. Many such incidents form a part of larger cycles, and many are purely literary and do not really belong to popular tradition at all. But some of these literary tales have their place in folklore. Such is the anecdote of the thief who steals a horse from the wagon while its owner sleeps. The thief hitches himself to the wagon and persuades the owner the next morning that he is really the horse, who has been transformed into a man overnight (K403; Type 1529). This literary tale comes from the Orient but is told in all parts of Europe and in North Africa, and has been reported from the Philippines. We shall meet other stories of cheating and swindling when we look into the tales told about animals.

[308] For another anecdote often associated with this, see J2355. Here the fool is told that he must never serve a man with a red beard. Having heard about this, the villain dyes his beard black.

950, 1009, 1525, 1529, 1541, 1653, 1653B, 1654**

J2355, K1413, K335.1.1, K335.1.2.1, K335.1.2.2, K362.1, K403

Part Two

The Folktale from Ireland to India

III – The Simple Tale

4. Legends and traditions

F. Legends of Places and Persons

In a somewhat systematic way, we have reviewed a number of those popular beliefs which have found a place in the traditional stories of Europe and western Asia. Nearly always the important thing about such traditions has been the underlying belief, and the exact form of the story illustrating this belief has frequently been a matter of indifference. If we think of the avowedly fictional folktale—the wonder story like The Dragon Slayer or Faithful John—as one extreme of folk tradition and actual beliefs in various supernatural manifestations as the other, we shall notice that in the accounts just reviewed of origin legends, strange animals, and marvelous manifestations, we have been moving in an area much closer to actual belief than to fiction.

But sharp lines are hard to draw; and many traditions strongly attached to particular places or persons have tendencies to wander, so that it is frequently hard to determine the original location or person about whom the legend grew up. Such stories, because of their great mobility, are often very near to fiction, though usually some effort is made at localization and at other means of suggesting that we are listening to a true tale rather than to some flight of fancy. No generalization is safe about how much actual belief is accorded legends of this kind. All depends upon the attitude of teller and hearer.

But whenever there has been conscious transfer of one of these traditions from place to place or from person to person it would seem that, at least for the story-teller, we have the conscious creation of fiction. Every country has some migratory legends of this kind, so that a listing of all of them would be unduly tedious. In addition to these tales of limited area, however, there are a considerable number known pretty well throughout the western world. Some of them have remained on the purely oral [p. 264] level, and some have taken their place in literature, although unmistakably popular in origin.

This literary development of a very widely known mythological concept is clearly seen in the last chapter of the Arthur legend, where it is confidently asserted that the great king will one day return in the hour of his people's need (A580). This belief is usually held concerning some god or demigod whose second coming is awaited by the faithful. It is found in most parts of the world, and is not peculiar to any one of the great religions.

Of the localized legends about animals, two have had extensive migrations. To Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, have long been attached the story of how they were suckled by the she-wolf (B535). But the animal nurse is not always a wolf, and she is found ministering to children almost anywhere. The same type of popularity is accorded to the legend of Llewellyn and his Dog (B331.2) in which the master returns and finds that the child who has been trusted to the dog is covered with blood. He thereupon kills the dog, only to find that the blood has come from a snake which threatened the child's life and which the faithful dog has killed. [412] This tale keeps being reported from various parts of the world as an actual happening, and it may, of course, depend in last resort upon a real event.

Tales of magic have not usually resulted in well-formed traditions that persist in all details. We hear much about witches in general and about magic powers, and we have already noticed a few cases, like the moving of the rocks at Stonehenge, in which a magic act is attached to a well-known historical or legendary character. There are, to be sure, a series of literary legends concerning Virgil as a magician (D1711.2), and a similar series concerning Solomon (D1711.1), though none of these has ever been adopted by the oral story-teller. Much nearer to real folklore is the Pied Piper of Hamelin (D1427.1), the tale of the magician who, in revenge for the failure of the city to pay him when he has piped away its rats, uses his pipe to entice all the children into a cave and underground. This tale has traveled so that Hamelin is but one of several cities which have their Pied Pipers. More definitely attached to a particular place is the story of Bishop Hatto and the Mouse Tower (Q415.2), familiar to all who have made the trip by steamer up the Rhine. The Bishop is punished for his hardheartedness by being devoured by swarms of mice or, as it is sometimes told, of rats.

In another connection we have noticed the story of The Sleeping Army [413] which is only waiting to come back from the dead at the moment of supreme need. Hardly to be distinguished from this legend is that usually known as [p. 265] Kyffhäuser (D1960.2) from the mountain in which the aged Barbarossa sits through the ages surrounded by his men. Whether this is death or magic sleep, his beard has grown through the table (F545.1.3) from long sitting and he, too, will not stir except to rescue his folk when they need him most. This story of the sleeping king belongs, of course, definitely to medieval historical legend. But the related tale of The Seven Sleepers (D1960.1) is much older and is connected with the early days of the struggling Christian Church. The legend of these pious young men who awake in their cave after a sleep of many years is attached to the city of Ephesus. But there have been a series of analogous tales extending over the centuries to Rip Van Winkle and beyond.

However prominent a part of folk thought the idea of tabu is, it has not formed the central motif of many definite legends. To be sure, the Biblical tradition of Lot's wife looking back and being turned into the pillar of salt (C961.1) has appealed to the popular imagination and is generally known and frequently told. One prominent historical tradition, that of Lady Godiva and Peeping Tom, does rest upon the enormity of violating an express prohibition (C312.1.2). This legend, it will be remembered, is attached to the city of Coventry in late Anglo-Saxon times. In order to free the townspeople of a grievous tax, Lady Godiva agrees to ride the full length of the city nude, and clothed only in her long hair (F555.3.1). The citizens are all commanded to shut their windows and stay indoors and all obey except one. Peeping Tom is stricken with blindness because of his disobedience (C943).

Several marvelous legends, told of ancient Greek gods or heroes, have lived on and are met even today in unexpected quarters. Such, for instance, is the group of legends around King Midas: the person with the ass's ears (F511.2.2); the magic reed which grows from the hole where the king has whispered his secret and which spreads the secret to the rest of the world (D1316.5); the king's barber who discovers the monstrous ears and who lets the world know (N465); and especially King Midas's power to turn all things into gold, and his distress when his wish is fulfilled (J2072.1).

The myth of Orpheus and his descent to the world of the dead to bring back his wife (F81.1) lived on into the Middle Ages, both in the literary romance and the popular ballad. There has been a transfer of the action from the world of the dead to the land of the fairies and, although the name of Orpheus has been retained, some of the details have dropped out, such as the marvelous harping and the prohibition against looking at the wife on the way out and the consequent failure of the mission. The general outlines of this story with its journey to the otherworld to bring back the dear departed is of such universal interest that we might well expect to find parallels where there is little likelihood of actual contact. It is, however, surprising to learn that the analogous, tale among the North American Indians nearly always contains the prohibition about conduct on the return journey and in many [p. 266] cases the disastrous violation of this tabu. [414] All evidence, however, would indicate that, in spite of the resemblances, the so-called American Indian "Orpheus myth" is an independent growth.

Readers of Herodotus find one of the chief interests in his accounts of marvels and of other incredible traditions. Whatever may be his value as sober history, he is an excellent source for the legends and traditions of the Mediterranean world in his day. Some of his stories have worked themselves into the regular folktale repertories of many parts of Europe, [415] sometimes constituting complete tales and sometimes only subsidiary motifs. It is in the latter use that his legend of The Ring of Polycrates (N211.1) survives in modern folklore. The ring which the ruler has thrown into the sea is found the next day in a fish which is being prepared for his table. This motif fits into stories about lost magic objects or about the marvelous accomplishment of impossible tasks. [416]

Biblical legend, especially explanatory tales, are an important element in the folklore of Europe and a large part of Asia. [417] Such traditions are by no means confined to accounts of origins. A number of the well-known Bible stories, such as Ruth, Susanna and the Elders (J1153.1), Daniel in the Lions' Den, Jonah in the belly of the Fish (F911.4), and the like, keep being told with no substantial change. But certain of the biblical worthies have attracted to themselves appropriate legends not authorized by Scripture. Some of these have been propagated primarily through literary collections, Jewish [418] and others, though they have received a certain amount of acceptance in actual folklore. Solomon's wisdom, for example, is illustrated not only by the authorized story of the quarrel of the two women over the child and his offer to cut the infant in two and divide him (J1171.1), but also by much elaboration of detail concerning the visit of the Queen of Sheba. Perhaps most interesting of these is the account of the riddles which she propounds and which he always answers correctly (H540.2.1). [419] Likewise, the contest of wits between king and servant, frequent in European tales, is often ascribed to Solomon and his man Marcolf (H561.3; Type 921). Indeed, almost any legend dealing with a wise king may enter into the Solomon cycle. Such, for instance, is the story of the hidden old man whose wisdom [p. 267] saves the kingdom. In the famine, all of the old men are ordered to be killed. But one man hides his old father and when all goes wrong in the hands of the young rulers, the old man comes to the rescue (J151.1). [420] To Solomon is also ascribed the tale of The Widow's Meal (J355.1). The king upbraids the wind for blowing away a poor widow's last cup of meal. But when he finds that the wind has saved a ship full of people by that very act, he acknowledges, in all humility, the superior wisdom of God.

The Bible contains several incidents parallel to motifs well known in other connections in European and Asiatic folklore. The exact relation between these traditions and the Scriptures is not always clear, for we do not know certainly which is dependent upon the other. In the story of Moses, for example, we learn that he was abandoned in a basket of rushes (L111.2.1); and the same general legend is attached to Cyrus, to Beowulf, and to many less known heroes. The adventures of Joseph, likewise, contain incidents paralleled not only in folktales [421] and in classical Greek literature, but also in miscellaneous popular legends. The prophecy of future greatness coming from a dream (M312.0.1), and the vain attempt to get rid of the youth who has had the dream (M370) are found in several folktales. The same general pattern also occurs in the story of Oedipus, though here the infant is exposed (M371) in order to avoid the carrying out of the predicted murder of his father and marriage to his mother. All of these motifs concerning the avoidance of fate have been rather freely used as traditional themes. Joseph's experience in Egypt with Potiphar's wife (K2111) is paralleled not only in the legend of Bellerophon, in the Iliad, but also in the old Egyptian story of The Two Brothers. [422] Similar tales of temptresses and false accusations are found in many traditions, some certainly not directly dependent upon the Joseph story.

Such are some of the legends of classical antiquity and of Biblical or Apocryphal literature which have lived on through the centuries. There are, of course a legion of anecdotes about historical characters which have been repeated in many literary collections but have in no sense become a part of popular legend. Such is true of the stories about Socrates and Xantippe, and about Diogenes. One tale about the painter Zeuxis (also told of Apelles) came to be ascribed to various artists of the Renaissance. Two artists compete in the painting of realistic pictures. The first paints a mare so realistic as to deceive a stallion, whereupon the second paints a curtain which deceives the first artist. Variations in details appear: sometimes a fly is painted on the nose of some figure in the painting and the other artist involuntarily tries to drive the fly away (H504.1).

A widely known legend connecting the ancient and modern worlds is [p. 268] that of the Wandering Jew (Q502.1), the blasphemer punished with inability to die and restlessly going from place to place from the days of Christ down to our own. This is but the best known of a number of medieval legends directed against the Jews. Another is the persistent tale of a Christian child killed to furnish blood for a Jewish rite (V361). This legend is best known in connection with Hugh of Lincoln, and is familiar to all readers of Chaucer's Prioress's Tale.

Popular stories concerning kings and their adventures were particularly common in the Middle Ages, and many of these have become truly traditional. Of the boyhood of a number of future kings the story is told of how the child first learns of his illegitimacy when he is taunted by his playmates (T646). Sometimes an earlier chapter in his adventures has told of how a royal lover has left with a peasant girl certain tokens to be given to their child if it should turn out to be a son (T645). In perhaps the most famous of such tales, Sohrab and Rustem (N731.2), we have an example of another widespread tradition. Unaware of each other's identity, the father and son engage in mortal combat and the son is killed, to the everlasting grief of the father.

Kings are so in the habit of assuming command that they sometimes lose all humility and need to be given a lesson. King Alfred in disguise is beaten by the peasant for letting the cakes burn (P15.1), and the same tale has been repeated with variations about other royal figures. Much beloved also have been the stories of Canute and of Robert of Sicily. The former is said to have placed his throne on the beach and to have vainly forbidden the tides to rise and surround it (L414). Robert of Sicily comes out of his bath to find that an angel in his form has taken his place and that he himself is regarded as an impostor. He is repulsed on all sides and thoroughly humiliated until he repents of his haughty conduct (L411). The latter tale seems to go back to an Oriental original but has become very definitely related to the figure of King Robert.

Some royal legends have attached themselves to the popes. One of these, known also in folktales (Type 671) and in Oriental and classical tradition, is associated with Gerbert, whose election to the papacy is said to have been decided by the lighting of a bird. In similar tales horses or elephants deter mine the choice of ruler, and sometimes the future pope's candle lights itself (H41.3). [423]

Of the hundreds of saints' legends current in the Middle Ages, [424] only a [p. 269] relatively few have become popular in Protestant countries. But even there one finds repeated stories of Saint Peter and the Lord wandering on earth. [425] A pious tale appearing in the Grimm collection (No. 205) and known over a good part of Europe tells of the holy man who dies as an unknown pilgrim in his own father's house (K1815.1.1), a legend certainly related to that of Saint Alexis. But much more familiar, even if not always known in all its details, is the story of Saint Christopher, who carries an unknown child on his shoulders across a stream. In spite of the fact that the child grows miraculously heavier on his shoulders, he bears him to the other bank. He finds that he has been carrying the Christ Child and for his faithfulness receives an eternal reward (Q25).

Ecclesiastical legend has furnished stories not only of saints and holy men, but also of their opposites, sometimes merely exemplars of wicked lives and sometimes persons actively in league with the devil. A monstrous tale of punishment meted out to those who sit in judgment is that of the woman who has three hundred sixty-five children (L435.2.1). In her self-righteousness she has unmercifully condemned a girl who has a bastard child. Whether or not the unusual number has been influenced by the length of the year and has some appropriate symbolic meaning, the tale was widely known in the Middle Ages.

In the story of The Devil's Contract (Type 756B) it will be remembered that even before his birth the parents have promised their son to the devil. [426] A form of this motif especially popular in medieval romances and Renaissance chapbooks is known as Robert the Devil (S223.0.1). Perhaps the most skillful use of this legend appears in the romance of Sir Gowther. Here a childless wife, having despaired of help from heaven, at last invokes the devil to give her a child, even if he is like the devil himself. Her wish is fulfilled. In a blasphemous parody of the Annunciation the devil appears to her and tells her that she shall have such a son. The child kills his nurses and commits unnamable crimes. Eventually he is converted and does severe penance before he is rescued from the dominion of the adversary.

Gowther, or Robert the Devil, was not himself to blame for his demonic association, since the fault lay entirely with his mother. But sometimes it is said that a man has deliberately, at an age of discretion, sold himself into the devil's power for a sufficient consideration (M211). So it was with Theophilus, and so, of course, with Faust. The details of this bargain and the dealings between man and the evil one have interested not only men like Goethe and Marlowe but many more humble bearers of tradition since the Middle Ages. [p. 270]

A favorite type of legend has always been that dealing with narrow escapes. Sometimes these concern the mere escape from captivity of persons and their pursuit, such as the legend, attributed to various heroes, of the spider who spins her web over the hole in which the fugitive is hiding and thus throws his pursuers off the track (B523.1). It is also about flight from personal danger that another ancient and widely known anecdote is told, the escape by reversing the shoes on the horse or the ox (K534). This anecdote appears in the Buddhistic legends of China, in Greek antiquity, in Icelandic saga, in Scottish ballads, and in folk legends from northern Europe to Central Africa.

A third story concerning escape from captivity lacks the happy ending. This is the tale of the noble lady who pleads for the release of her husband (or sometimes her brother) and eventually agrees in return for the promise of release to sacrifice her honor to his captor. But she is shamefully betrayed, for the lord refuses to carry out his bargain (K1353). This tale is recounted of various women with the setting of the action usually in Italy and in the Renaissance. It is still popular as an Italian folksong.

The most interesting legends concerning warfare usually have to do with famous sieges. The events connected with military attack and defense are in general so alike that anecdotes of this kind are easily taken up and are likely to travel from place to place, however definitely they may at first have been localized. One of these legends favors the attackers. It is said that in a certain siege of Cirencester the surrounding army attached flaming articles to the feet of birds so that when they flew into the city they set it on fire (K2351.1). The interest in the attackers is also seen in the legend, used so effectively by Shakespeare in Macbeth, of Burnam Wood which comes to Dunsinane (K1872.1). The army cuts boughs and carries them so that the whole wood seems to be on the march. As used in connection with the prophecy of disaster when the wood shall come to Dunsinane, the stratagem is doubly impressive.

Finally, any consideration of legends of besieged cities must include that tale of wifely devotion usually known as The Women of Weinsberg (J1545.4.1). The conqueror of the city gives each woman permission as she leaves the town to carry out her dearest possession. Much to the surprise of the general, they take out their sleeping husbands. [427]

As we have been viewing legends of various cities and persons, it has been obvious how strong is the tendency for such material to make new attachments which may even drive out all memory of the original person or place. It has been perfectly clear to the tradition of the last century and a half that it was Marie Antoinette who, when told that the people had no bread to eat, said, "Let them eat cake" (J2227). Yet this very legend was sufficiently alive to be recorded in a sixteenth century jestbook. Whatever may have been Marie Antoinette's failings, it is not likely that this cruel remark was hers. [p. 271]

Popular legend in Europe and Asia covers an enormous area not only with regard to the material handled, but also to the form in which it is transmitted and the audiences for which it is designed. It is by no means all of one piece. Some of it is essentially mythology, some less pretentious origin legend, some local history, some an embodiment of supernatural belief; and some assumes such definitive narrative form that it differs little from the complex folktale. Probably from no point of view could a logical justification for bringing all of this material together be made. But it has been at least convenient to pass in rapid survey the principal classes of narrative which have not formed themselves into regular folktales, either complex or simple. Whatever may be the heterogeneous origin of the varied literary forms in which they appear or the present-day acceptance of these legends, they do all have in common their connection with the world of fact, at least as conceived in the mind of the teller of the story. As fantastic as some of this material is, it is related as an object of belief and its effect, in contrast with that of the ordinary folktale, is the effect of history, rather than of fiction.

[412] It is hard to know whether this is a purely literary tradition or not. Certainly it has a long literary history, both in the European Middle Ages and in the older Oriental collections. But it has had a vigorous life in the oral folklore of India; cf. M. B. Emeneau, Journal of American Oriental Society, LXI (1941), 1-17 and LXII (1942), 339-341.

[413] See E502, p. 258, above; cf. also N570, p. 263, above.

[414] See A. H. Gayton, "The Orpheus Myth in North America," Journal of American Folk-Lore, XLVIII (1935), 263ff. See also p. 351, below.

[415] See, for example, Type 950. Cf. W. Aly, Volksmärchen, Sage und Novelle bet Herodot und seinen Zeitgenossen (Gottingen, 1921).

[416] See, for example, Types 554 and 560.

[417] See pp. 235ff., above.

[418] Good collections of such Jewish material may be found in: M. J. bin Gorion, Der Born Judas: Legenden, Märchen und Erzählungen (6 v., Leipzig, 1918ff.); M. Gaster, The Exempla of the Rabbis (London and Leipzig, 1924); and L. Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (tr. Paul Radin; 7 v., Philadelphia, 1910ff.).

[419] Some of these have worked themselves into the folktale of The Clever Peasant Girl, Type 875.

[420] See also Type 920, p. 159, above, and H561.5, p. 277, below.

[421] Particularly Type 930.

[422] See p. 275, below.

[423] For these legends of popes, see J. J. I. von Döllinger, Die Papst-Fabeln des Mittelalters (2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1890). Another interesting papal legend is that of Pope Joan, the woman in disguise who is supposed to have served as pope (K1961.2.1).

[424] The literature of saints' legends is very extensive. A good introduction to the general subject is found in G. H. Gerould, Saints' Legends. The most important compendium of such legends is the Legenda Aurea of Jacobus a Voragine, which has appeared in many editions. Definitive treatment is found in the enormous collection known as Acta Sanctorum which has been appearing for the last three centuries under the editorship of the Bollandist Society of Brussels.

[425] See p. 150, above.

[426] For the sale or promise of children to the devil or an ogre, see S220ff.

[427] For a similar ruse otherwise employed see Type 875.

554, 560, 671, 756B, 875, 920, 921, 930, 950

A580, B331.2, B523.1, B535, C312.1.2, C943, C961.1, D1316.5, D1427.1, D1711.1, D1711.2, D1960.1, E502, F81.1, F511.2.2, F545.1.3, F555.3.1, H561.5, F911.4, H41.3, H504.1, H540.2.1, H561.3, J151.1, J355.1, J1153.1, J1171.1, J1545.4.1, J2072.1, J2227, K534, K1353, K1961.2.1, K2111, K1815.1.1, K1872.1, K2351.1, L111.2.1, L411, L414, L435.2.1, M211, M370, M371, N211.1, N465, N570, N731.2, P15.1, Q25, Q415.2, Q502.1, S220ff., S223.0.1, T645, T646, V361

Part Two

The Folktale from Ireland to India

IV – The Folktale in Ancient Literature

1. Ancient Egyptian

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, K754.1). Another fragment dealing with historic characters tells how the cries of the hippopotamuses of Egypt keep people awake 600 miles away (B741.2). This motif appears later in other parts of the world with the expected changes of place.

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 (M341.2.4.1). To forestall this fate he is confined to his tower (M372). When he grows up, however, he sets out on adventures and finds a king who will give his daughter in marriage to the suitor who can reach the princess's chamber, seventy ells above [p. 275] the ground. [430] Though the youth has introduced himself as the son of an army officer, the king is eventually informed of his identity and the marriage takes place. In later parts of the story the princess saves his life from a snake and he himself escapes from a crocodile. The tale breaks off without coming to the expected conclusion—his death in some way through the toy dog which he has kept. This tale as a whole has no exact modern parallels, though it contains several widely known motifs.

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 (K2111); advice from speaking cow (B211); obstacle flight (the river separating the fugitive from his pursuer) (D672); separable soul (E710); evil prophecy (M340); love through sight of hair of unknown woman (T114.1); betrayal of husband's secret by his wife (K2213.4); life token: foaming beer (E761.6.4); resuscitation by replacing heart (E30); repeated reincarnation (E670); person transforms self, is swallowed and reborn in new form (E607.2). It is of great interest to the student of oral fiction to know that at least these themes were already developed as early as the thirteenth century before Christ.

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 (Type 950)—the story of the architect who has left a stone loose in the treasury, of how the treasury is robbed and the thief escapes detection. Herodotus is skeptical of the truth of the story, but this fact has not kept it from surviving the vicissitudes of twenty-four centuries.

[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, Type 530.

[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.

530, 950

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

Part Two

The Folktale from Ireland to India

IV – The Folktale in Ancient Literature

3. Ancient Greek

From ancient Greece we have an abundance of literary records of almost every kind, but not a single attempt to preserve for us an authentic folktale as known and told by the ordinary Greek. The situation is much the same as with Biblical tradition: [437] there is much evidence of the presence of many of our best-known folktale motifs and sometimes indication that many of the more elaborate narratives were known in much the form familiar to us in present-day folklore. But both in the Bible and in Greek literature these narratives are lifted from their natural homely surroundings and are made to serve the purposes sometimes of the writer of sacred books, sometimes of the epic poet, and sometimes even of the dramatist.

From casual references scattered throughout Greek literature we may be sure that something very close to the folktale as known among the peasantry of modern Europe was a part of the entertainment not only of children but of adults. [438] They are frequently spoken of as "old wives' tales," and as filled with all kinds of marvels, including a large array of frightful animals and ogres.

Much more about the real nature of the ancient Greek folktales can be inferred from the way in which they are handled in Greek literature. In spite of the fact that they are often adapted to an entirely different literary medium, it is frequently easy to recognize close analogies to modern folk tales. [439] Sometimes, of course, the literary form may be the original from which a modern folktale has been developed, but a thorough study of the individual cases tends to show that normally the story as it appears in Greek literature is merely the adaptation of a popular Greek form of a folktale already well established in the world. [440]

There is much folktale material in Homer. Besides the Polyphemus episode, the whole series of adventures which Odysseus relates to the Phaeacians is laid in a world of wonders characteristic of the popular tale. Such are the [p. 279] harpies (B52); the sirens (B53); the enchantress Circe, who transforms his men (G263.1); the journey to the world of the dead (F81); the successive transformations of Proteus, the old man of the sea (G311); and the lotus flower that causes his companions to forget the homeward way (D1365.1.1). The Iliad, too, has its folktale motifs. For such, certainly, is Achilles' horse which speaks and advises him (B211.3); the war between the pygmies and the cranes (F535.5.1); and especially the tale of Bellerophon, containing as it does the motif of the hero falsely accused by the queen of attempting her honor (the Potiphar's wife motif, K2111), the letter sent to a neighboring king ordering the hero's execution (Uriah letter motif, K978), and the winning of a princess as a reward for overcoming monsters (T68).

In the myths which arose around the figure of Heracles we have many analogies to modern tales of the deeds of the strong man (Type 650). By his precocious strength, manifested already in the cradle, he overcomes the marvelous serpent, and later performs the whole series of "labors" in which he overcomes monsters, secures the golden apples, strikes off the hydra's nine heads, and brings Cerberus from hell. Some of these deeds are paralleled in the legend of Theseus, who also performs great feats of strength. Particularly like adventures in folktales is the defeat of the minotaur in King Minos's labyrinth where Theseus is helped by the king's daughter Ariadne (G530.2). Another widely used moti

[437] Many of these Biblical traditions have already been mentioned: The Garden of Eden, The Flood, and various explanatory legends (pp. 235ff.), Ruth, Susanna, Daniel, Jonah, Solomon, Moses, and Joseph (pp. 266ff.). For the Apocryphal story of Tobit, see Type 507B, above. For references to later Jewish legends, essentially literary, see p. 266, above.

[438] Ample evidence on this point has been assembled; see Bolte-Polívka, IV, 41ff.

[439] In his Griechische und albanesische Märchen (Leipzig, 1864), von Hahn classifies modern folktales on the basis of their resemblance to ancient Greek myths. The comparisons are often interesting, but the kind of direct relationship which he assumes is in most cases certainly not actual.

[440] Mention has already been made of the story of Oedipus (Type 931), of Rhampsinitus (Type 950), of The Wolf and the Kids (Type 123), coming respectively from Sophocles, Herodotus, Aesop, and Homer.

[441] The Legend of Perseus.

[442] See Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica.

[443] We have here an analogue not only to the Christopher story (Q25), but also to the much more general series of tales in which the gods or saints visit mortals in disguise (K1811).

[444] Cf. Types 513 and 514. These men, each endowed with some remarkable power (supernatural sight, hearing, speed, or the like), appear not only in modern folklore, but in the older written literature of such widely divergent places as Wales and India.

[445] For a good discussion of these relations, see Sven Liljeblad, "Argonauterna och sagorna om flykten från trollet," Saga och Sed, 1935, pp. 29 ff.

[446] For a good discussion of this motif, see Bolte-Polívka, III, 368.

[447] See Bolte-Polívka, IV, 113 ff.

[448] For these, see pp. 265f., above.

[449] For the literary fable, see p. 218, above.

123, 507B, 513, 514, 650, 931, 950

B52, B53, B211.3, D1365.1.1, F81, F535.5.1, G263.1, G311, G530.2, K978, K1811, K2111, T68

Number of Borrowing of European-Asiatic Tales by Indonesians, African, and American Indians

Type

Indonesianx

Africanx

Americanx Indianx

1. The Theft of Fish		5	7
2. Tail-Fisher		3	13
4. Carrying the Sham-Sick Trickster		5
5. Biting the Foot	13	16
6. Inquiring about the Wind		2
7. Calling of Three Tree Names		1
8. The Painting	2	7
9A. The Unjust Partner: Bear Threshes		7
9B. The Unjust Partner: Corn and Chaff			2
15. Theft of Butter (Honey) by Playing Godfather		13	2
21. Eating His Own Entrails	1	1
30. Fox Tricks Wolf into Falling into a Pit		1
31. Fox Climbs from Pit on Wolf's Back	15
33. Fox Plays Dead and is Thrown out of Pit and Escape	20	5
36. Fox in Disguise Violates the She-Bear	1
37. Fox as Nursemaid for Bear	7	30
38. Claw in Split Tree	11	2
47A. Fox Hangs by Teeth to Horse's Tail		2	1
49. Bear and the Honey			2
50. Sick Lion	1
55. Animals Build a Road		18	1
56. Fox Steals Young Magpies		7
60. Fox and Crane			3
62. Peace Among Animals			1
72. Rabbit Rides Fox a-Courting	1	6	7
73. Blinding the Guard		2	2
100. Wolf as Dog's Guest Sings			1
101. Old Dog as Rescuer of Child			1
104. Cowardly Duelers			3
105. Cat's Only Trick		2
111. Cat and Mouse Converse	3
122A. Wolf Seeks Breakfast		2
122B. Cat Washes Face before Eating		5
123. Wolf and Kids			1
125. Wolf Flees from Wolf-Head		12
130. Animals in Night Quarters			1
154. "Bear-Food"		6	1
155. Ungrateful Serpent Returned to Captivity	12
156. Splinter in Bear's Paw		1
157. Learning to Fear Men		1	1
175. Tarbaby and Rabbit	2	39	23
210. Cock, Hen, etc. on Journey	10
221. Election of Bird King	2
222. War of Birds and Quadrupeds		4
225. Crane Teaches Fox to Fly	4	3	43?
228. Titmouse Tries to be Big as Bear	1	8
235. Jay Borrows Cuckoo's Skin	3
248. Dog and Sparrow	1
249. Ant and Cricket			3
275. Race of Fox and Crayfish	26		1
295. Bean, Straw, and Coal			3
300. Dragon-Slayer	1		14
301. Three Stolen Princesses			16
302. Ogre's Heart in Egg	2		1
303. Twins or Blood-Brothers	3		3
307. Princess in the Shroud		2
311. Rescue by Sister (Girls in Sacks)		5	1
313. Girl as Helper in Hero's Flight		2	33
314. Youth Transformed to Horse (Goldener)	24	4	15
325. Magician and Pupil	1
326. Learning What Fear Is			2
327A. Hansel and Gretel	6	8	10
327B. Dwarf and Giant	3
327C. Devil Carries Hero in Sack		9	6?
328. Boy Steals Giant's Treasure			6
331. Spirit in Bottle			1
333. Red Ridinghood; Six Little Goats		16
400. Quest for Lost Wife	37	11	29
401. Princess Transformed into Deer		1
402. Mouse (Cat, etc.) as Bride	1
403. Black and White Bride	1	15	6
408. Three Oranges		1
425. Search for Lost Husband (Cupid and Psyche)	5	5	1
432. Prince as Bird		1
450. Little Brother and Little Sister		3
451. Maiden Who Seeks her Brothers			1
461. Three Hairs from Devil's Beard	17	1	1
471. Bridge to Other World	1	1	1
480. Spinning Woman by the Spring	6		3
506. Rescued Princess: Grateful Dead	6		1
507. Monster's Bride: Grateful Dead			1
510A. Cinderella	2	3	4
510B. Cap o' Rushes		2	1
511. One-Eye, Two-Eyes, Three-Eyes	3
513. The Helpers (Extraordinary Companions)		2	3
514. Shift of Sex	1
516. Faithful John		1
518. Devils Fight over Magic Objects		2
531. Clever Horse		3	2
533. Speaking Horse-head		6
545. Cat as Helper (Puss in Boots)	2	10
550. Bird, Horse, and Princess	4	4
551. Sons on Quest for Remedy		4
552A. Three Animal Brothers-in-Law			1
554. Grateful Animals	11
555. Fisher and His Wife	5
559. Dungbeetle		1	4
560. Magic Ring	36	8	2
561. Aladdin	1		2
563. Table, Ass, and Stick	7	14	4
566. Three Magic Objects and Wonderful Fruits	2		1
567. Magic Bird-heart	13	1	1
569. Knapsack, Hat, and Horn	5		5
570. Rabbit-herd	1	1
571. "All Stick Together"		1
590. Prince and Arm Bands			1
592. Jew Among Thorns	1
612. Three Snake-Leaves	2
613. Two Travelers		5	1
621. Louse-Skin	3
650. Strong John	27	3	4
653. Four Skillful Brothers	8	12
655. Wise Brothers	1	2
670. Animal Languages	6	23
671. Three Languages		2
675. Lazy Boy	2
676. Open Sesame	1	9
700. Tom Thumb		5	1
706. Maiden Without Hands		6	2
707. Three Golden Sons		8	1
709. Snow White		6
750. The Wishes: Hospitality Rewarded	1	1	3
780. Singing Bone		8
781. Princess Who Murdered her Child		12
785. Who Ate the Lamb's Heart?	1
851. Princess who Cannot Solve Riddle	3	2
852. Princess Forced to Say, "That is a Lie."	1	2
853. Princess Caught with her own Words			2
854. Golden Ram			1
875. Clever Peasant Girl	3	3
882. Wager on Wife's Chastity	2
900. King Thrushbeard		1?
901. Taming of the Shrew			1
910. The Good Precepts		2
921. King and Peasant's Son	1	2
922. King and Abbot	1
923. Love Like Salt		1
930. Prophecy for Poor Boy		1	1
931. Oedipus	1
935. Prodigal's Return			1
945. Luck and Intelligence	8	1
950. Rhampsinitus	1
1000. Anger Bargain	5		2
1004. Hogs in Mud, Sheep in Air	2	3	4
1012. Cleaning the Child	1
1015. Whetting the Knife	2
1030. Crop Division	1
1031. Roof as Threshing Flail			2
1060. Squeezing the Stone	1	1	1
1061. Biting the Stone		1	1
1062. Throwing the Stone	1		1
1063. Throwing Contest with Golden Club			1
1074. Race with Relatives in Line	6	38	12
1085. Pushing Hole in a Tree			1
1088. Eating Contest: Food in Bag			20
1115. Attempted Murder with Hatchet		10
1119. Ogre Kills Own Children: Substitutes in Bed		14	5
1149. Children Desire Ogre's Flesh	10	4
1157. Gun as Tobacco Pipe		1
1200. Sowing of Salt		1
1250. Bringing Water from Well: Human Chain		1	2
1260. Porridge in Ice Hole	1
1276. Rowing without Going Forward	4
1278. Bell Falls into Sea: Mark on Boat	2
1310. Crayfish as Tailor: Drowned	18	22	31
1319. Pumpkin as Ass's Egg, Rabbit as Colt			1
1350. Loving Wife: Man Feigns Death		1?
1360C. Old Hildebrand			1
1380. Faithless Wife: Husband Feigns Blindness		1
1384. Quest for Person Stupid as Wife		2
1386. Meat as Food for Cabbage	7
1415. Lucky Hans	2		1
1430. Man and Wife Build Air Castles	7	1
1525. Master Thief	2		6
1528. Holding Down the Hat	2		1
1530. Holding up the Rock		11	3
1535. Rich and Poor Peasant	10	16	11
1537. Corpse Killed Five Times	3		2
1539. Cleverness and Gullibility	7		3
1540. Student from Paradise (Paris)	3
1541. For the Long Winter			2
1542. The Clever Boy: Fooling-Sticks			8
1563. "Both?"			3
1585. Lawyer's Mad Client			1
1590. Trespasser's Defense			1
1610. To Divide Presents and Strokes		2
1611. Contest in Climbing Mast			1
1612. Contest in Swimming			1
1640. Brave Tailor	3		4
1641. Doctor Know-All	21	3
1642. The Good Bargain: Money to Frogs			4
1651. Whittington's Cat	2	2
1653. Robbers under Tree	2	1	5
1655. Eaten Grain and Cock as Damages		10	1
1685. Foolish Bridegroom	6	1
1696. "What Should I Have Said?"	6	4	2
1698A. Search for Lost Animal: Deaf Person	1
1698B. Travelers Ask the Way: Deaf Peasant		1
1730. Three Suitors Visit Chaste Wife	2	3
1737. Parson in Sack to Heaven		1
1775. Hungry Parson			3
1920A. Lying Contest: "Sea Burns"	1
1930. Schlaraffenland		3
2028. Troll (Wolf) Cut Open		1
2030. Old Woman and Pig	2	4
2031. Frost-bitten Foot	4	3
2033. Nut Hits Cock's Head		3
2034C. Lending and Repaying, Progressive Bargains		22
2035. House that Jack Built		4
2400. Ground Measured with Horse's Skin			1

1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9A, 9B, 15, 21, 30, 31, 33, 36, 37, 38, 47A, 49, 50, 55, 56, 60, 62, 72, 73, 100, 101, 104, 105, 111, 122A, 122B, 123, 125, 130, 154, 155, 156, 157, 175, 210. 221, 222, 225, 228, 235, 248, 249, 275, 295, 300, 301, 302, 303, 307, 311, 313, 314, 325, 326, 327A, 327B, 327C, 328, 331, 333, 400, 401, 402, 403, 408, 425, 432, 450, 451, 461, 471, 480, 506, 507, 510A, 510B, 511, 513, 514, 516, 518, 531, 533, 545, 550, 551, 552A, 554, 555, 559, 560, 561, 563, 566, 567, 569, 570, 571, 590, 592, 612, 613, 621, 650, 653, 655, 670, 671, 675, 676, 700, 706, 707, 709, 750, 780, 781, 785, 851, 852, 853. 854. 875, 882, 900, 901, 910, 921, 922, 923, 930, 931, 935, 945, 950, 1000, 1004, 1012, 1015, 1030, 1031, 1060, 1061, 1062, 1063, 1074, 1085, 1088, 1115, 1119, 1149, 1157, 1200, 1250, 1260, 1276, 1278, 1310, 1319, 1350, 1360C, 1380, 1384, 1386, 1415, 1430, 1525, 1528, 1530, 1535, 1537, 1539, 1540, 1541, 1542, 1563, 1585, 1590, 1610, 1611, 1612, 1640, 1641, 1642, 1651, 1653, 1655, 1685, 1696, 1698A, 1698B, 1730, 1737, 1775, 1920A, 1930, 2028, 2030, 2031, 2033, 2034C, 2035, 2400