In "Big Claus and Little Claus" Hans Christian Andersen succeeded in writing one of the most popular of his stories without making any significant changes in the tradition as he had learned it. The material itself is so diverting that it has pleased not only the literary audience which he addressed but also the listeners to tales in all parts of the world. We need not inquire too curiously as to why men of all countries and stations delight in the successful accomplishment of a swindle, but the truth seems to be that if the terms of the transaction are clearly understood, a story of clever cheating receives a universal response. This tale of The Rich and the Poor Peasant (Type 1535) has been told in European literature since its appearance in the Latin poem Unibos in the tenth century and has seldom been omitted from any collection where it was at all appropriate. But it is also immensely popular as an oral tale. A hasty survey of easily available versions shows 875. It appears in nearly every collection of stories over the whole of Europe and Asia; it is among the most popular stories in Iceland and Ireland, in Finland and in Russia, in India and the Dutch East Indies. It is well known not only on the North African coast but is also found in many parts of central and south Africa. In the western hemisphere it has been reported all the way from Greenland to Peru. Eleven North American Indian versions show borrowings from the Scandinavians, the French, and the Spanish. It appears in the French tradition of Missouri, Louisiana, and Canada; in the English of Virginia, the Spanish of Puerto Rico and Peru, the Portuguese of Brazil and Massachusetts, and the Negro of Jamaica and the Bahamas.

It is natural that in these hundreds of occurrences considerable variation should appear, both in the order and the nature of the details. But all versions conform sufficiently well to a norm to make identification easy and unmistakable. The story frequently begins with a piece of blackmail. A man is set to watch a chest which is falsely said to be full of money, or he is asked to guard a wooden cow which is supposed to be a real cow. The rascal brings it about that the object is stolen and demands damages. The cheater next takes along a supply of lime or ashes and succeeds in selling this under the pretext that it is gold. Another trick is the sale of some pseudo-magic object—a cow-hide [p. 166] or a bird-skin that is alleged to accomplish marvels. Sometimes this object is exchanged for a chest in which an adulteress has hidden her paramour. The rascal is usually given a large sum of money by the frightened lover in payment for his freedom. These adventures with the adulteress and her lover sometimes occur independently (Motif K1574). The next cheat, the unsuccessful imitation, we have met before in stories of magic or the miraculous. [259] Here, however, there is no magic, but only a pretense of it. The rascal claims to have a flute (or a fiddle or knife, or the like) which will bring people back to life. His confederate, a woman, plays dead, and he apparently revives her. The rich peasant buys the magic object, kills his own wife so as to use it, and then is unable to bring her back to life. Sometimes before and sometimes after this adventure the poor peasant reports the large price that he has received for his cow-hide. The rich peasant is therefore induced to kill all his cows in order to sell their hides. He finds, of course, that it was only the frightened lover in the chest who would pay an exorbitant price for a cow-hide. Eventually the cheater is caught and is placed in a sack or a chest where he must await execution of his sentence. A shepherd finds him there and asks what he is doing. The cheater says that he is the angel Gabriel on the way to heaven or that he has been put in the sack because he will not marry the princess. The shepherd is only too glad to take his place so as to receive the good things he tells about. [260] The rich peasant now sees the escaped cheater and asks him where he came from. He tells him that he has been down in the river where he has acquired many sheep, that the way to get them is to dive down after them. The rich peasant dives off the bridge and kills himself.

As indicated, several of these traits occur independently and may constitute complete anecdotes in themselves. The order in which the incidents occur is also treated with great freedom. Particularly is there a frequent mixture of the elements of this tale with that of Cleverness and Gullibility (Type 1539), if, indeed, the two are actually to be thought of as independent stories. In the latter tale much is made of the sale of worthless animals and objects under the pretense that they are either magic or marvelous. Sometimes a cow is sold as a goat, a rabbit as a letter-carrier, or it may be a magic hat which is supposed to pay all bills, a wand that revives the dead, or a pot that cooks of itself. He also has a horse that is alleged to drop gold. By means of placing a gold coin in the horse's dung, he is able to persuade the buyer. After many such tricks the young man has himself buried alive and when his enemy comes to where he is, stabs him with a knife from out of the ground.

Most reporters of folktales have not distinguished this latter type from [p. 167] the more familiar story of The Rich and the Poor Peasant. It is clear, however, that this particular type is very well known all around the Baltic and in Russia. The tradition seems to center in Finland, where 253 versions are listed.

One difficulty in a comparative study of tales like the two we have just noticed is the fact that they are little more than a loose series of single anecdotes. Types of this kind have a natural instability very baffling to the investigator of folktale origins and dissemination.

A story represented by the old French romance of Trubert of the thirteenth century has some elements in common with The Rich and the Poor Peasant. The Youth Cheated in Selling Oxen (Type 1538) concerns itself with the revenge which the hero takes on his enemies. He masks as a carpenter and persuades the man who has cheated him to go to the woods to look at trees. He gives him a good beating and exacts a large sum of money before he will stop. Later he masks as a doctor and again beats his enemy.

In some versions he also avenges himself on the purchaser's wife. Eventually he is arrested and condemned to be hanged. But he persuades a miller to take his place by the old trick of lying about the good things awaiting him. [261] In some versions the story ends with the youth having himself buried and stabbing his enemy from the ground. [262]

Although this tale has never attained extraordinary popularity in any country, it has been collected orally in every part of Europe. No comparative study of the tale seems to have been made, but it would seem probable that we have here a literary invention which has been taken over into the repertory of oral story-tellers.

The material handled in the tale of The Rich and the Poor Peasant and in the two other related stories just examined has been freely drawn upon to make other combinations. One of these has attained some currency in northern and eastern Europe—The Clever Boy (Type 1542). It will be noted that almost every incident belongs in one of these tales, though the story of The Master Thief (Type 1525) has furnished at least two traits. A brother and sister live together but are poor, and the brother goes out to make a living by Tooling people. He reports to the king that he has some marvelous "fooling sticks," and he gets the king's horse by borrowing it to ride home for them. In other versions he sells the king a wolf to guard his fowls and a bear to keep watch over his cows. He sells the king what he says is a self-cooking kettle and a marvelous staff to hang it on. He feigns to kill and resuscitate his sister with a magic pipe, which the king buys and experiments with disastrously. The hero now puts on his sister's clothes and is taken into the palace as a companion of the princess. A prince comes as a suitor to the supposed maiden, who leaves just in time, but not before the princess is with [p. 168] child. The story may end in several ways: he may be caught and put in a cask or sack, where he exchanges places with a shepherd; he may be condemned to be hanged but again persuades someone to take his place; or the king may be so impressed with his cleverness that he takes him as son-in-law.

We have here about as clear a case of a folktale concocted out of others as it is possible to find. When the incidents from other stories are eliminated, there seems to remain nothing but the brother and sister as confederates in their swindles, and the access to the princess through masking as a girl. Even these motifs can easily be found elsewhere. [263]

A very diverting story which seems to be rather well known in Scandinavia and Finland [264] is The Man Who Got a Night's Lodging (Type 1544). In this tale the rascal feigns deafness and always accepts hospitality before it is offered. He deliberately misunderstands everything. For example, he takes the host's horse out of the stable and puts his own in. He is supposed to pay for his lodging with a goat skin: he takes one of the man's own goats. At the table they put poor food before him but he always manages to get the best. At night he succeeds in sleeping with the wife or the daughter. He eats the food which the wife has put out in the night for her husband. Having seduced the women, he now threatens to tell about it, and they confess. The husband becomes very angry and is going to kill the trickster's horse, but kills his own instead.

The tale of the rascal who seduces his host's wife and then tells on her has many variations in the literature of jests, especially those of the Renaissance. One told by Hans Sachs and by Johannes Pauli, The Parson's Stupid Wife (Type 1750), has received some oral currency in northern and eastern Europe.

A mercenary lover makes the parson's wife believe that chickens can be taught to talk. At her request, he undertakes to hatch out hens' eggs, and he receives a large amount of corn to feed the chickens. When the chickens do hatch, he declares that they sing, "The peasant has slept with the parson's wife." He is allowed to keep the corn.

The four tales of tricksters just considered are all of relatively limited popularity and serve as good examples of the fact that tales of this nature may often be well known in one area without spreading to neighboring countries. But the extreme popularity of The Rich and the Poor Peasant shows that sometimes these stories may be almost universal in currency.

Another trickster tale which is well known both in the Orient and the Occident is The Student from Paradise (Paris) (Type 1540). As told in most of Europe, it begins with a wandering student who tells a woman that he is just back from Paris. She thinks he has said "from Paradise" and she immediately gathers together a sum of money and a quantity of goods for him to take to her late husband. The student has hardly gone with the misappropriated [p. 169] goods when the woman's son returns home. He realizes the cheat and sets out to overtake the student and recover the goods. He finds the student, who tells him that the thief has just escaped through the Woods. They are too thick to ride through, so that the man leaves his horse, which the student rides away. In other versions the student tells him that the thief has gone to heaven by way of a tree. The man lies on his back to look for the ascending thief and meantime the student steals the horse.

This jest is popular in the joke collections of the Renaissance, and as an oral tale it is related not only in all parts of Europe but in Asia as far east as Indonesia. Antti Aarne has accorded the tale a thorough study based upon more than 300 oral versions. He finds that the play upon words (Paris, Paradise) is essentially a European trait and is absent from the Oriental. In the eastern stories the deceased to whom a present is sent is the woman's son rather than her husband, as in the European. In the latter part of the tale the report that the thief has escaped up a tree is Oriental; the escape through the woods European. Aarne is uncertain as to which of these forms is the earlier. In his discussion of Aarne's work, Kaarle Krohn [265] concludes that an origin in India is very likely. It must be said, however, that the evidence as to the direction in which this tale has moved is inconclusive.

One of the most important elements in many trickster tales is the use made by these rascals of the desire most people have to avoid scandal. Almost as strong is the fear of being haled into a law court. In a story whose oral distribution extends from the British Isles to central Asia—The Profitable Exchange (Type 1655)—both these fears are played upon to the enrichment of the cheater. He has asked hospitality, since he has only one grain of corn left. The corn is eaten by the cock and when he threatens suit, he is allowed to keep the cock as damages. Later he has the same experience when the hog eats the cock, and when an ox eats the hog. The story may very well end at this point, but it frequently proceeds with further profitable exchanges. [266] He barters his ox for an old woman's corpse, which he sets up so that the princess knocks her over (Motif K2152). In order to avoid the scandal that will come from the accusation of murder, she marries the rascal. The ending of the story is often not well integrated with the main plot. Sometimes it is said that he and the princess have a son who surpasses even his father in cunning. In others, he places the princess whom he has won in a bag, but he is at last outwitted, for someone substitutes a worthless object or an animal and lets the princess escape.

In his thorough monograph on this tale, Christiansen, [267] who has started with a discussion of a story from the Scottish island of Barra and one from County Kerry in Ireland, concludes: "So far some main lines in the distribution [p. 170] of the tale emerge. The versions from Kerry and from Barra belong to a chain of tradition running through France to Italy. It is, however, difficult to discern how the further development went. Perhaps the tale is a combination, made in Italy(?) or somewhere in Southern Europe, from those two motifs, the lucky exchanges, and the girl in the bag. Outside of Europe both these incidents occur as separate stories, as some brief references will show." The lucky exchange by itself occurs frequently in African tales, and the substitution of an animal or object in the bag is practically worldwide. [268]

The humor of the folk does not always make close discrimination between stupidity and cleverness. Sometimes a story begins with a series of absurd actions where we are amused at their utter foolishness. But later the fool turns out to be really clever. This pattern is well enough known in romantic stories of the Male Cinderella type; [269] but the mixture is also found in tales designed for humor. [270] Such a tale of mixed motifs is The Good Bargain (Type 1642). It appears in Basile's Pentamerone in the seventeenth century and is known throughout central Europe, both north and south, but has not been reported from either the east or the west of the continent. Many of the separate motifs appear by themselves, so that the tale has no well-integrated plot. A numskull throws money to frogs so that they can count it, [271] or he sells meat to dogs or butter to a signpost. He complains of his losses to the king and thus makes the princess laugh for the first time. Though the king offers her to the boy as a reward, he does not want to marry her. The king therefore tells him to return later for his reward. When he does so, he promises the doorkeeper to share the reward with him. It turns out that the boy is to be rewarded with a beating, which the doorkeeper receives instead. At the end of the tale the boy is summoned before the king on the complaint of a certain Jew. He borrows the Jew's coat and then discredits his testimony by predicting successfully that the Jew would even claim the coat which the boy is wearing.

Tales both of clever tricks and of stupid action are very likely to have extremely loose plots and to be susceptible of easy addition and subtraction. Indeed, for a whole series of such relatively unstable stories, it is much more convenient to examine anecdotes separately with only incidental attention to some of the ways in which they are occasionally combined. Thus a considerable number of incidents listed by Aarne in his type index as having to do with stupid people or with clever tricksters [272] are not mentioned here but will be noticed along with other similar motifs in a later chapter. [273] [p. 171]