The
 Legend of Perseus

 A STUDY OF TRADITION IN STORY
 CUSTOM AND BELIEF: BY

 Edwin Sidney Hartland
 F.S.A.

 VOL. III.
 ANDROMEDA. MEDUSA




 Published by David Nutt
 in the Strand, London
 1896




 [IMPRINT]

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty




 [DEDICATION]

 _TO
 DAVID BRYNMÔR JONES, Q.C., M.P._

 _If any worth be found within these pages,_
  _If any skill, however poor, have traced_
 _Man’s thoughts and purposes down the long ages_
  _Where thought is dim and purpose half-effaced--_

 _To you the opportunity be reckon’d,_
  _To you the worth. You flung the portals wide_
 _Which guard enchanted palaces, and beckon’d_
  _To new adventures life had else denied--_

 _Enchanted palaces, where gods forgotten_
  _Dream through an afternoon of endless years;_
 _Adventures follow’d, far from fields erst foughten,_
  _’Neath wilder heav’ns, aflame with mightier spheres._

 _Yours be the spoils, then, from that realm of glamour;_
  _At least some gracious memories they will bring,_
 _When husht the forum, husht is party clamour,_
  _And you can listen to their whispering._




 NOTE

This volume contains, in addition to the final instalment of the
inquiry sketched at the beginning of the first volume, a Supplementary
List of Works referred to in volumes ii. and iii., and the Dedication
and General Index for the whole.

Since the publication of the second volume local inquiries have
satisfied me that the account of the ceremony at Market Drayton (or
rather at Wollerton, near that town), mentioned on p. 292 of the
volume in question, is inaccurate. The wine and biscuits were handed
to the bearers, but not _across_ the coffin; and the minister merely
reprobated in general terms the custom of drinking at funerals.

Corrigenda of a minor character are, in volume i. p. 57, note 1, for
217 read 178, and p. 61, last line but one, for _fisherman_ read
_merchant_; in volume ii. p. 147, note, after _letter xxviii._ insert
_to Daines Barrington_, and p. 271, note 4, for 68 read 57.

I cannot lay down the pen without reiterating my very inadequate
thanks to Mr. Rouse and Mr. Alfred Nutt for the unstinted and
invaluable aid I have received in various ways from them: aid which,
beginning with the opening chapter, has been continued to the latest
pages of this effort to solve the problem of the Legend of Perseus.

 Highgarth, Gloucester,
   _June_ 1896.




 CONTENTS

{x}

 CHAPTER XVI

 The Rescue of Andromeda in Märchen

 Simplest form of the incident--Strong Jack--The Herdsman type--Menial
 hero in other tales--Punishment of impostors--Attacking the monster
 from inside--Faithless Sister type--Stolen Sister type--Underworld
 type--Fearless Johnny type--Helpful Animals--Change of sex--Rescue of
 youth--Omaha tale--Its European origin--Vira, the Tuscan
 forest-sprite.

 CHAPTER XVII

 The Rescue of Andromeda in Sagas

 Classical stories--Saint George--The Pollard Worm--Cuchulainn and
 Devorgoil--Susa No and Inada--The Dragon of Deerhurst--Other British
 legends--Variants in the East and Africa--The Maiden her own
 deliverer--Christian legends--Chinese tale--Rescue of youth--Maiden
 rescued from thraldom only--Ragnar Lodbrog.

{xi}

 CHAPTER XVIII

 The Rescue of Andromeda: its Relation to Human Sacrifices

 Legends of the slaughter of a monster are widespread--Origin of the
 conception of the monster--Totemism--Animal gods--The incident of the
 Rescue a record of the abolition of human sacrifices to animal
 gods--Examples of such sacrifices in Africa and the East--Relics of
 the same among the South Sea Islanders, the Greeks and Romans--Tales
 of dragons inhabiting springs and lakes--Human sacrifices to water in
 India, America, Europe--Legends pointing to the same practice in
 various parts of the world--Legends of rescue of human sacrifices to
 other divinities.

 CHAPTER XIX

 The Medusa-witch in Märchen

 The Tzitzinæna--Petrifaction by the witch--Petrifaction on breach of
 various taboos--Power of the witch’s hair--Játaka containing the
 incident, its relations with the European tales--Petrifaction for
 preservation--The witch’s hair.

 CHAPTER XX

 The Medusa-witch in Saga and Superstition

 The witch’s hair--Other examples of the power of a hair--The Magical
 Fetter--The Magical Word--Power of a curse--Magical effect of an
 incautious word--The Magical Blow--Petrifaction by divine
 vengeance--Petrifaction as transformation--The Gorgonian power of
 petrifying by a look--The Evil Eye.

{xii}

 CHAPTER XXI

 The Story as a Whole. The Problem of its place of origin. Conclusion

 The origin of the story to be sought for among nations who have passed
 beyond human sacrifices to brutes--The story as a whole confined to
 certain parts of the Eastern Hemisphere--Differences between classical
 and modern stories--Relation between them--Traditional selection in
 classical times--The Helpful Animals--The Gift of Weapons--Cambodian
 _märchen_--Modern variants independent of the classical tale--The
 Impostor and the Tokens--Legend of Saint George--The Deliverer’s
 Sleep--Result of the inquiry--Bearing of some of the subjects
 discussed upon matters of Christian controversy--Conclusion.

 APPENDIX

 Table A. Helpful Animals

 Table B. Weapons

 Table C. The Impostor and the Tokens

 Table D. The Deliverer’s Sleep

 Supplementary List of Works referred to

 Endnotes




 THE LEGEND OF PERSEUS

{1}

 CHAPTER XVI.
 THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA IN MÄRCHEN.

We have traced the incidents of the Supernatural Birth and the
Life-token throughout the world: the two remaining incidents of the
Rescue of Andromeda and the Medusa-witch have a more restricted range.
For though traditions of a fight with a monster and of human beings
turned to stone, the germs of the incidents in question, are almost
universal, yet the special forms evolved from these germs in the
Perseus saga seem to be confined to the Eastern Continent, save where
immigrant peoples have taken them in modern times to the New World and
given them in some rare instances currency there among the aboriginal
tribes.

Of these incidents, the first with which we are concerned is that of
the Rescue of Andromeda. Its popularity in Europe is hardly exceeded
by that of any incident in traditional fiction, while it is known to
story-tellers over vast spaces of the Orient and of Africa. The
simplest form of the incident is found in a Berber _märchen_
preserved in a manuscript at the _Bibliothèque Nationale_ at Paris,
and translated some years ago by M. René Basset. In this tale a
youth, whose earlier experiences vividly recall those of Joseph down
to his temptation in Potiphar’s house, is {2} more leniently treated
than the Hebrew patriarch, being simply expelled from his master’s
family. He wanders away and reaches a fountain inhabited by a serpent,
which allows no water to be drawn, save in return for the sacrifice of
a woman. That day it was the king’s daughter’s turn to be devoured.
The youth, finding her at the spring, inquires why she weeps, and
undertakes her deliverance. The snake appears to have had more than
one head, though how many is not recorded. At all events the hero beat
them one after another, as they were stretched forth to seize the
prey, until the serpent died. The water was then free to everybody;
and when the king inquired whose doing it was, the stranger youth was
led before him and frankly owned his exploit. It is hardly necessary
to say that he was rewarded with the hand of the young lady he had
saved, and was named the king’s vicegerent. The wedding festivities,
we are told, lasted seven days.[2.1]

Sometimes the hero is possessed of extraordinary strength, which
enables him to overcome his foe. An example is found on the island of
Syra, where a tale is told of an ogre who was in the habit of eating
anybody who came in his way. Strong Jack fights and kills him, thus
delivering a king’s daughter, whom he marries. But she is afterwards
carried off by a monster, a half-man with only one eye, one hand, and
one foot. Her husband, strong as he is, attacks the half-man in vain.
He cannot be killed, for his external soul consists of two doves in
the belly of a certain wild sow. To such a monster the hero falls an
easy prey; but he is restored to life, and in due time has his
revenge.[2.2] In another story, from Agia Anna, the ogre is a female
{3} called the Krikeça, who eats a maiden daily. Though already a
married man, the hero undertakes the adventure; and the maiden on
whose behalf he fights brings him food enough to quell his craving--a
difficult task, for these strong heroes are enormous eaters--and so
supplies him with a continuance of strength to conquer the Krikeça.
The latter begs for life and becomes a converted character.[3.1] So,
in an Armenian tale from the Land beyond the Forest, does a wild sow
who has fallen into the same vicious habit of devouring maidens, and
who turns out to be an enchanted youth whom the hero frees from his
spell.[3.2]

These tales are closely allied with a type of which, with one
exception, I have not found any variants outside the Celtic and Basque
populations of the west of Europe. It may be called _The Herdsman_
type. Lod, the farmer’s son, in an Argyllshire tale, is unusually
strong. He takes service as herd with a king; and in the course of his
day’s work at different times encounters and puts to death two giants
and their mother, bringing home his cattle safe and sound as no herd
had done before him. A big giant then comes for the king’s daughter,
whom a squint-eyed, red-haired cook undertakes to save, his price
being the maiden in marriage. The cook hides behind a stone and covers
himself with sea-weed. Lod comes upon the scene and meets the heroine
weeping. He comforts her, and lying down with his head on her knee he
begs her to relieve him of the vermin. If he fell asleep under the
lulling influences of this operation she was to waken him by cutting
off the point of his little finger. On the giant’s appearance the
princess wakens him. He springs up, draws his club, {4} sweeps off the
giant’s three heads and throws them contemptuously at the cook, who
takes them and the king’s daughter home, as if he himself were the
deliverer. A day is appointed for the wedding; but the heroine
identifies Lod as the man, and proves it by the point of his finger,
which she produces from her pocket. She marries him accordingly, and
the cook is burnt to death.[4.1] The same story in effect is given by
Campbell as a variant of _The Sea Maiden_, cited in an earlier
chapter.[4.2] In Ireland the tale appears as that of _The Thirteenth
Son of the King of Erin_. The king having thirteen sons is advised to
give one to fate. The eldest is the one on whom the lot falls. His
father dismisses him with the gift of a steed of supernatural
fleetness; and he hires himself as cowherd to another king. He slays
three giants and takes possession of their castles and wealth, among
which are a black, a brown, and a red horse. The king’s daughter is to
be devoured by “an _urfeist_, a great serpent of the sea, a monster
which must get a king’s daughter to devour every seven years.”
Hundreds and hundreds of kings’ sons and champions were anxious to
save her, but were so frightened at the terrible _urfeist_ that they
would not go near her when she was conducted to the beach in readiness
for her death. The hero rides down on the black horse, clad in the
black gear he has found in the first giant’s castle. Dismounting, he
lays his head in the maiden’s lap and falls asleep, waiting for the
monster. While he slept she took three hairs from his head and hid
them in her bosom. With his sword of light he took off the serpent’s
head, but it rushed back to its place and grew on again. The serpent,
however, declined to fight any more that day. In a twinkle it {5}
returned to the sea, saying: “I’ll be here again to-morrow, and
swallow the whole world before me as I come.” Undaunted by this
threat, the hero appeared on the morrow in the blue dress of the
second giant and mounted on his brown horse. He laid his head on the
lady’s lap and slept as before; and she, taking out the three hairs,
compared them with his head, and said to herself: “You are the man who
was here yesterday.” He cut the monster in two, but the halves rushed
together and were one as before. “All the champions on earth won’t
save her from me to-morrow,” cried the _urfeist_ as he plunged into
the sea again. The third day the hero donned the third giant’s dress.
It had as many colours as there are in the sky, and his boots were of
blue glass. The giant’s housekeeper gave him a brown apple, with
instructions to throw it into the serpent’s open mouth. The princess
identified him as before; and when the _urfeist_ came up out of the
sea, “enormous, terrible to look at, with a mouth big enough to
swallow the world, and three sharp swords coming out of it, Sean Ruadh
threw the apple into his mouth, and the beast fell helpless on the
strand, flattened out and melted away to a dirty jelly on the shore.”
The red steed bore the victor away from the maiden, though she tried
to cling to him and stay him: she only succeeded in retaining one of
his blue-glass boots. Then a proclamation was made for all men to come
and try on the boot. Sean Ruadh tried to evade the proof. In vain: by
his old blind sage’s advice, the king sent men, twenty at a time, to
fetch him; but he bound them twenty in a bundle, and the bundles
together. At last the king himself went and, kneeling, prayed him to
come; and the boot sprang through the air to him and fitted itself on
his foot. The princess was downstairs in a twinkle, and in {6} the
arms of Sean Ruadh. He put all the other claimants to death without
more ado, and wedded her.[6.1] This tale, with unimportant variations,
has been found more than once during recent years in the west of
Ireland. It has been recovered also in Brittany, where one of the
variants takes the following form. A noble maiden disguised as a youth
becomes page to the queen of France, who falls in love with her, and,
being repulsed, sickens and dies. The page’s real sex is disclosed to
the king in consequence of a false accusation affecting one of the
maids of honour. The king marries her, and she bears him a son. A
strange animal appears, called a _murlu_, is caught and caged, but
released by the king’s son, who is, in consequence, compelled to flee
from his father’s wrath. The _murlu_ befriends the youth, and takes
him to the palace of the King of Naples, where he is engaged as herd.
With the _murlu’s_ aid he satisfactorily performs his duties, and
overcomes a giant, whose wealth he obtains. The _murlu_ transforms
itself into a magical steed, and helps him to conquer in a two days’
fight the seven-headed serpent to which the king’s daughter was to be
sacrificed. The herd cuts out the seven tongues and goes away, leaving
the heads on the ground. They are carried off by a charcoal-burner,
who professes to be the princess’ deliverer. The king is about to give
the maiden in marriage, in spite of her protests, to the pretender,
when the herd presents himself and, by means of the seven tongues,
proves himself the true victor. The charcoal-burner undergoes the
usual penalty of his falsehood; and on the occasion of the hero’s {7}
wedding the _murlu_ appears, declares itself the King of France’s
first wife, condemned for her sin in attempting the page’s virtue to
this transformation. The conditions of her punishment are now
fulfilled and her expiation complete.[7.1]

In one of the Basque variants the mysterious animal is called a
_Tartaro_. The youth is called Petit Yorge, which causes Mr. Webster
to suspect that the tale is borrowed from the French; though the
identification of Saint George with the slayer of the dragon, not
unknown in _märchen_, and more fully developed, as we shall hereafter
see, in the sagas, may suggest a different explanation. He takes
service as gardener. With a horse, a handsome dress, and a sword,
furnished by the friendly _Tartaro_, he fights the dragon on behalf of
the king, his master’s, youngest daughter. The fight lasts three days.
A charcoal-burner is the impostor. As the lady declines to marry him a
proclamation is issued for all the young men to ride under a bell, and
whoever can carry off on the point of his sword a diamond ring
suspended from the bell shall wed her. The hero succeeds and rides
away; but as he does so the king hurls his lance at him and wounds him
in the leg. He is thus identified, and then produces the serpent’s
tongues and forty-two pieces of silk he has cut from the damsel’s
dresses.[7.2] The other Basque variants are less elaborate, and
perhaps represent more nearly the original tale. The hero is the
youngest of three sons. In one of the variants, the two elder,
sallying {8} forth successively, refuse a morsel of cake to an old
woman and are eaten by a bear. The youngest, more charitable, is
rewarded by the hag with a magical stick, the touch whereof kills
seven bears that attack him, one after the other; and he obtains their
palace and riches. He takes service as shepherd, and with his stick
slays the seven-headed serpent, cutting out its tongues and also a
little piece of silk from each of the seven robes worn by the
princess. The usual charcoal-burner takes the heads and claims the
reward, but is confuted by means of the tongues and the silk.[8.1] In
the other variant, the youth on setting forth buys a pack of cards and
a formidable mace armed with teeth. He hires himself as cowherd; and
when the kine, having broken into the forbidden pastures, as in most
of the variants, draw down the wrath of the _Tartaro_ who owns the
pastures, the youth challenges the monster to a game of cards. The
_Tartaro_ was not unaccustomed to play with his adversaries; and his
trick was to drop a card, ask his opponent to pick it up, and kill him
while he was politely complying. But now he has met his match. The
youth tells him to pick up the card himself. As he stoops for the
purpose a blow from the mace puts an end to him. Three _Tartaros_ are
thus overcome; and their mansion passes into the possession of the
hero. The combat with the triple serpent lasts two days. The victor
returns to the _Tartaro’s_ palace, merely taking the seven tongues and
the seven pieces of silk, and thus enabling the charcoal-burner to
make his false claim. The king in his joy gives a dinner to his
friends, to which of course the hero is not invited. The _Tartaros_
owned three _olanos_, ogre-dogs. One of these is sent by the hero to
fetch him a dish from {9} the banquet. This of course leads to his
discovery, and to the establishment of his right to the king’s
daughter.[9.1]

The single variant of this type found elsewhere than in Celtic and
Basque lands comes from the Odenwald. In it the widowed King of Orange
falls in love with the portrait of the daughter of the King of
Septentrion, but is daunted by the dangers of the way. His only son,
Ferdinand, seeing the portrait, then attempts the adventure. A
mannikin directs him to dig at the first crossway, where he will find
a can of strength-giving wine and a magical sword and whistle. He
slays in fight eight giants, and makes his way to the realm of
Septentrion, taking possession, ere he reaches the capital, of a
magnificent palace, gaily furnished, having many fine horses in the
stable, but void of human inhabitants. Then he enters the king’s
service as fowl-herd. Clad in three different suits of armour from his
palace, he fights the dragon on three successive days, and cuts off
his three heads, disappearing after each combat, so that nobody knows
who the princess’ saviour is. In the same armour he takes part in a
three days’ tournament for the maiden’s hand. It is necessary to run
full tilt with his spear at a ring suspended from a beam, to carry it
off, and to hang it up again in returning. He succeeds where all
others have failed, and again makes off; but on the third day he is
wounded in the leg by one of the king’s men as he escapes. By this
token he is recognised; he marries the princess and becomes King of
Septentrion. The horses in his palace turn out to be enchanted men,
whose spell is dissolved by his success.[9.2] This tale seems to bear
traces of literary influence; and in any case it is obviously of a
less barbarous character than the others. Probably it is not {10}
indigenous to Germany, but has been carried thither from the west, and
has suffered some change in the transmission. The indications point to
a Celtic or Iberian population as the originators of the _Herdsman_
type.

At the same time stories found among other nations represent the hero
as a herd or a menial servant. In a Swabian _märchen_ already cited
he is a shepherd.[10.1] A Norwegian tale, bearing some markedly Norse
characteristics, also comprises a similar incident. Here Osborn Boots
is the youngest of three brothers, who successively hire themselves to
a king. The two elder had been dismissed with three stripes cut out of
their backs, and the wounds rubbed with salt or hot embers. Boots
shares his food with an old hag he meets on the way, and receives in
return an old key, which has the property of showing him, when he
looks through the ring, whatever he wishes to see. With the help of
this and of his own shrewdness, he drives off a troll from the king’s
mill-dam, and on another occasion saves the king’s sheep from him. But
one day the king, when hunting, trod by chance upon wild grass and
lost his way in the wood. The troll met him and offered to let him go
home in consideration of having the first thing the king set eyes on
when he got to his own land. The victim proved to be his eldest
daughter. A man called Glibtongue accompanied her to the spot where
the troll was to meet and fetch her. He turned out to be a coward; and
Boots, opportunely appearing, overcame the monster by trickery, but
spared his life on condition of his restoring the king’s younger
daughter, whom he had stolen before. The maiden thus rescued gives him
a ring; but Glibtongue of course takes the credit of the deed, and is
to be married to {11} her. The troll then stops the springs, so that
there is no water to boil the bridal brose. Boots to the rescue again;
and now he is identified by the ring, which is seen glistening in his
hair. Glibtongue is thrown into a pit full of snakes; the troll is
slain; Boots weds the younger princess, and with her receives half the
kingdom.[11.1] The hero of a Negro tale from the Bahamas, is a boy who
is first a shepherd and then a horse-herd or stable-boy. His master
had every year to give one of his daughters in exchange for water. The
last daughter he had was about to be thus bartered. Her coachman
declined to allow the stable-boy to accompany him when he took the
maiden to exchange her, but set him a task instead. The boy performs
the task by magical power, obtains horse, carriage, and armour, and
follows. By the utterance of a wish he sets two boar-lizards fighting;
and while they fight the water is obtained and brought back with the
lady. The next day the adventure is repeated, with the variation that
it is two cocks which fight. The boy stains his handkerchief red and
passes it to the girl. Her father offers her in marriage, with a dowry
of two thousand dollars, to any one who can take the stain out of the
handkerchief. “All on ’em was tryin’, dey couldn’ git it out. This
fellah haxed dem to let ’im try it. Fathe’ told ’im, ‘All right, ’e
could try it.’ ’E rolled up ’is sleeve; spread the handke’-chief over
’is harm; then ’e spit on it, taken ’is hand and rubbed over it. The
stain went out. Her fathe’ give ’er to ’im to wife, and ’is two
thousan’ dollahs. Dat en’s de hold story.”[11.2] A Portuguese tale
from Brazil begins with the barter by a fisherman of his son, born
unknown to him, {12} for a catch of fish. It belongs to the _Forbidden
Chamber_ cycle. After flying from the ogre the hero takes service as
under-gardener to a king. The youngest princess penetrates his
disguise. The king offers his eldest daughter to him who would slay a
seven-headed beast which was devastating the realm. The under-gardener
performs the feat and takes the tips of the beast’s tongues. As nobody
appeared to claim the reward, the king decided to marry all his
daughters. The youngest refuses to marry anybody but the
under-gardener. The prince who is to marry the eldest claims to have
slain the beast, and the bridegroom of the second sister claims
another achievement of the hero; but the latter at the wedding-feast
puts them to open shame.[12.1]

There is one characteristic, however, which is common to a vast number
of variants belonging to almost every type, and which, in the story
from the Odenwald, stands out in full relief. If it be not a savage
characteristic, at least it is not in accordance with the etiquette of
civilisation in the nineteenth century for the hero to persist in such
unaccountable modesty, that, having slain the monster and won the
princess, he must be pursued like a criminal flying from justice, and
compelled to confess and claim his reward. When at last he is made
known, and the impostors, whom his want of gallantry and overload of
humility had encouraged, if not instigated, are convicted of their
fraud, he indulges in a savage revenge. Burning alive, indeed, is in
harmony with a certain kind of civilisation, such as that of Saint
Dominic or Bloody Mary; and the punishments the peasantry delight to
recount in these tales are an index of their culture. The hero is
deterred no more {13} than the most bigoted fanatic by any
considerations of humanity, or even of kinship. As a single example of
the disregard of kinship, take the story of _The King of Al-Yaman and
his three Sons_, found in some versions of the _Arabian Nights_. There
the king’s youngest son, disliked by his father and despised by his
two brethren, picks up a string of pearls and emeralds, and is
deprived of it by the elder sons, who pretend themselves to have found
it. Their father lays upon them the injunction to bring him the
wearer. After they have set out, the youngest goes forth too, and
delivers a princess from the scourge of her father’s city, a monstrous
lion, to which a maiden is offered by lot every year. He refuses in
the usual way to return with her, and is only discovered by means of a
proclamation requiring all the men in the city to defile before the
palace. He is married to her; but, arising before day, while she is
still asleep, he exchanges rings with her and writes upon her hand his
name, Aláeddín, his parentage and a request, if she love him truly,
to come and seek him at his father’s capital of Al-Hind. He departs,
and repeats the adventure, slaying this time an elephant. Afterwards
he continues his quest, and succeeds in obtaining the enchanting bird
Philomelet, the wearer of the necklace, while its mistress, a
princess, is sleeping. He writes his name on the palm of her hand
also, and a similar request to seek him at home. As he returns his
brothers fall in with him, rob him of the bird, and carry it to their
father as their own prize. The three princesses, each with her father
and an army, go after him and meet together. They of course reject the
two elder brothers as impostors, and Aláeddín is at last vindicated.
He then, having put his brothers to shame, falls upon them, and with a
single blow {14} of his sword despatches them both; nor is it without
difficulty that he is restrained from putting his father to death too.
He adds to the number of his wives the princess to whom the bird
Philomelet belonged, and lives happy ever after.[14.1] The vengeance
in the Arab tale, reported from a region where no reminiscences of the
_auto-da-fé_ linger, shows to advantage in comparison with the
cruelties in which the tales of the peasantry of Christian Europe
rejoice. And if the hero spare not his own flesh and blood, it must be
remembered that he is only the half-brother of the impostors, and that
both he and his mother have suffered great personal wrong at their
hands and those of his father. In a variant of the story, cited from
the same source in a previous chapter, the hero even intercedes with
his father for his brothers’ lives.[14.2] Happily in western stories
he does not always visit their sins on their heads. In the Shetlandic
story, originally from Scandinavia, Assipattle is treated with
contempt by his six elder brothers. But he had a fast friend in his
only sister, who was taken to court to be the king’s daughter’s maid.
The Mester Stoorworm, a terrific sea-monster in which we have a
reminiscence of the Midgard Snake, threatened the land. By a mighty
sorcerer’s counsel, every Saturday seven damsels were bound upon a
rock and delivered to him, to glut his maw and save the kingdom. The
only way to get rid of the scourge, the sorcerer declared, was to
deliver Gemdelovely, the princess, to be devoured. All the champions
who volunteered to save her shrank from the task when they beheld the
grisly foe. Assipattle alone had the courage to get a boat and go out
to meet the worm, whose horrid length stretched half across the world.
{15} He allowed himself to be swallowed, boat and all; and once inside
the cavernous throat he “waded and ran, and better ran, till he came
to the enormous liver of the monster.” Then he cut a hole in it and
placed a live peat, which he had brought for the purpose, in the hole
and “blew till he thought his lips would crack.” By and bye “the peat
began to flame; the flame caught the oil of the liver, and in a minute
there was a stately euse. In troth, I think it gave the Stoorworm a
hot harskit.” Hurrying into his boat again, Assipattle was spewed out
by the monster’s dying spasms, and thrown high and dry on the land. Of
course he married the princess; and the vengeance, without which the
story would not be complete, fell not on his brothers for their ill
treatment of him, but on the sorcerer, who it turned out was the
queen’s lover.[15.1]

The conquest of the dragon by attacking it from the inside carries us
back to Herakles’ deliverance of Hesione. The incident, rare in modern
folklore, is also found in a Gipsy tale from Transylvania; but there,
as might be anticipated, there is no question of a sea-monster. Radu,
a young Gipsy of the Kukuya stock, driven to desperation by his
shrewish wife, cleaves her head with a hatchet and flees for his life
from his tribal brethren. In the forest he finds a large horse’s head
lying under a tree. It bids him creep into its left ear; and he
becomes so small as to do it easily. There he lies hidden safely until
all pursuit is over, when he creeps out again through the right ear,
returning at once to his proper size. He takes the head with him, for
it tells him it will protect him; and when he longs for a horse he is
met by two cavaliers who direct him to make water into the head, which
will immediately change into a {16} steed, red in the morning, white
at noon, and black at night. Mounted on this mysterious animal he
reaches a town hung with black, because a ninety-nine-headed dragon,
living on the Glass Mountain, has carried off the king’s daughter and
will eat her on the morrow. The next day, having taken his horse’s
advice, he rides at morning, at noon, and at evening once up and down
the mountain, daunting the dragon by the belief that he has three
champions to contend with. He again rides to the hill, alights, makes
water thrice over the steed, and thus changes it back into a horse’s
head. Creeping into the left ear, he is swallowed by the serpent. Once
in the serpent’s body, he crawls out of the skull, and, tearing off
his clothes, he sets fire to them. The dragon bursts; the Glass
Mountain disappears; Radu finds himself in the arms of the princess,
whom he soon weds; and as it is recorded that he lived with his second
wife in joy and happiness, we may indulge the pleasing thought that
she lacked the exasperating tongue of the first.[16.1]

In an earlier chapter I have abstracted a Lithuanian tale where the
hero, having taken charge of a sister, is betrayed by her to a robber.
This is quite a common incident in Slav _märchen_, not always found
in connection with the Rescue of Andromeda. Another Lithuanian tale
presents {17} a brother and sister, turned out of doors by their
father for bad conduct, arriving at a robber’s dwelling. Before
leaving home, the youth had possessed himself of his father’s magical
staff, which paralysed opponents. Aided by this he slays eleven of the
twelve robbers, and severely wounds the twelfth. Having thrown their
corpses into a Bluebeard’s chamber, already used for a similar purpose
by the robbers themselves, he gives the keys of the house to his
sister, forbidding her to enter the room where the bodies lie. She
naturally disobeys, and is seized by the still living robber and
compelled to bring him certain healing plants, which are hanging from
the ceiling. The robber makes love to her, not without success, and
persuades her to feign illness, and get her brother to procure, first,
wolf’s milk, and then lioness’ milk, wherewith the wounded man is
completely restored to health. When this is effected he comes forth,
attacks the brother and threatens him with death. But in procuring the
milk the hero has also won the favour of the she-wolf and lioness, as
well as of a hare, for sparing their lives; and they have given him
each a whistle to be blown when he is in need of help. He now blows;
and immediately the grateful beasts rush to his help, tearing the
robber and his paramour to pieces. Setting out with the animals, he
comes to a town where the king’s last daughter is about to be given to
a nine-headed dragon. His conquest of the dragon follows, and the
cutting out of its nine tongues; after which he and his beasts lie
down and fall asleep with utter weariness. While he sleeps, the
princess puts her ring on his finger. She has hardly done so when some
servants of the king, her father, come to the place, kill and bury
him, and oblige her to take an oath to recognise their chief as her
deliverer and bridegroom. On awaking, the {18} hero’s animals miss
their master and disperse, to meet again at the same spot three years
later, in accordance with a tryst given them by him before lying down
to sleep. The bear smells the corpse; the lion and wolf dig it up; and
the hare fetches some leaves of a herb used by two snakes they have
seen in combat at an earlier stage of their adventures. With these he
restores the hero to life; and they all return to the town, as luck
will have it, on the day of the wedding. The hare carries a letter to
the princess, who induces her father to invite the stranger to the
festivities. There he inquires what token of victory over the dragon
the bridegroom had produced; and when the heads are shown him he draws
the tongues out of his pocket, fits them into the throats and adds as
a proof of his own identity the princess’ ring. The pretender is torn
to pieces by oxen, and the hero happily married to the princess.[18.1]
Variants of the story are well known in Italy. It is found in Brittany
and Andalucia, and has even crossed the Atlantic with the Portuguese
to Brazil.[18.2] None of these need be mentioned now, save a
Piedmontese version, which accounts for the hero’s refusal to claim
his bride as soon as he has won her, by the excuse that he was in
mourning for his sister, slain by his dogs for her treachery, together
with her paramour.[18.3] In variants from Bohemia and Transylvania,
the sister is, after her lover’s death, shut up by her brother for her
misconduct, and left when he goes abroad on his travels. When he is
married he releases her and takes her to live in {19} the palace. But
she sticks in his bed a knife which pierces and kills him. He is
brought to life again by his hounds, and his sister receives the
reward of her double guilt.[19.1] In these two, as well as in a
Sienese variant, the dogs are enchanted men who regain their true form
after the hero is finally settled in life.

A type of the story found in Italy opens with the search made by a
brother for a sister who had been carried off by an ogre. According to
the Venetian tale he meets a priest, who bestows on him three dogs,
called Rend-iron, Seize-all, and Now’s-the-time-to-help-me. With their
assistance he slays the ogre; and then, leaving his sister in
possession of the ogre’s palace and magical wand, he sets out for
further adventures. The dogs at his command slay the seven-headed
beast and bring him the heads. He will not return with the king’s
daughter; but cutting out the beast’s tongues he puts them in a box,
gives a ring to the lady as a pledge that he will return, and goes
back with the good news to his sister. On the way he stops at an inn,
and there meets a chimney-sweeper--a new and more modern shape of our
old acquaintance, the charcoal-burner. Imprudently he shows the
tongues to his new acquaintance, who robs him of them, and boldly
claims the princess. The hero, however, gets wind of the wedding, and,
breaking into the festivities, demands permission to speak. He
cross-examines the bridegroom: “Are you the bridegroom?” “Yes.” “How
did you manage to deliver this maiden?” The chimney-sweeper shuffled:
“How did I do it? Look, here are the seven tongues!” “I ask you, How
did you manage to deliver her? I will have an answer.” “With those
three dogs.” “Good! Since you {20} managed to deliver her by the help
of those three dogs, in the presence of this noble company call the
dogs by their names.” The impostor was confounded, dumb. Then the
youth turned to the company and told his story, adding sarcastically:
“And this gentleman here is he who stole the box.” The gentleman
denied it. Like a trained advocate, the hero calls as a witness the
innkeeper, who saw him showing the tongues to the chimney-sweeper, and
confronts him with the bridegroom. The king is convinced; and the hero
gets permission to do as he likes with his opponent. “Rend-iron,
Seize-all, Now’s-the-time-to-help-me, eat him up.” And in the presence
of the assembled guests, the chimney-sweeper was eaten up accordingly.
The wedding then proceeded with a new bridegroom.[20.1]

This dramatic solution combines ancient and modern elements in an
unexpected and interesting manner. A variant current in Sicily returns
to the usual proof of the deliverer’s identity by means of the
tongues. He slays the dragon with a magical sword belonging to the
giant who has carried off his sister, and heals the wound he and his
horse have received in the combat by means of a salve he has extracted
from the giant’s head after putting him to death.[20.2] In a Georgian
tale the hero is not born until after his sister has been carried away
by a hundred-headed monster, and her three elder brothers, in
attempting to rescue her, have been slain. Their desolate mother is
given by a stranger an apple to eat, whence she bears a son called
Asphurtzela. He conquers the monster, opens his breast and brings out
the dead bodies of his brothers, {21} restoring them to life by means
of an enchanted handkerchief, also found in the monster’s breast. On
the way home the ungrateful brothers tie him to a tree and leave him;
but he succeeds in escaping. He cannot, however, remain at home after
their evil conduct. So he sets forth again, and picks up two
companions of supernatural power, with whose aid he liberates three
fair maidens about to be married to three ogres. One ogre is left. He
cozens the hero’s companions, one after the other, out of the food
being prepared for their supper. Asphurtzela shoots the ogre and cuts
him in two. The head rolls into a hole, wherein they find three lovely
maidens. The two companions attempt successively to rescue them, but
on letting them down their courage fails and they call out to be drawn
up again. Asphurtzela descends and sends up the damsels. His
companions close the hole and leave him to his fate. Wandering about
in the lower regions he rescues a king’s daughter from a dragon, and
sets free the water withheld by the monster. The king offers him
presents, which he rejects, only asking to be sent back to his own
land of light. Ultimately he finds a dragon attacking a griffin’s nest
and shoots it. The griffin in gratitude carries him up to the surface
of the earth. But to give her strength for the purpose it is necessary
that she should be constantly supplied with food. When the provisions
he has taken run short he cuts a piece off his own leg and throws it
into her mouth. She restores it to him on arriving at the top, and
heals the wound. He finds his two companions about to marry the
maidens rescued from the hole and slays them, afterwards wedding the
youngest maiden, and giving the two elder ones to his brothers.[21.1]

{22}

Here we find what we may call the _Stolen Sister_ type, combined with
another. The _Underworld_ type, as it may be named, is somewhat more
fertile in variants. Among Galland’s manuscripts is a tale he obtained
from a Christian Maronite of Aleppo, named Hanna--that is, John. It
concerns the three sons of the Sultan of Samarcand, who built a house
for Rostam, his eldest son, unwittingly just above the underground
dwelling of the eldest daughter of the genius Morhagian. The genius
destroys it, and, when pursued by the prince, disappears in a well.
The sultan then builds a similar house for his second son above the
dwelling of Morhagian’s second daughter, with the same result. The
house intended for the third son, Badialzaman, is built over the
genius’ third daughter’s palace. It is destroyed like the others; but
Badialzaman succeeds in wounding the genius thrice ere he reaches the
well, and persuades his brothers to join him in pursuing the foe down
into the well. Of course Badialzaman is the only one of the three who
has the courage to be let down to the bottom. There he is entertained
for forty days, first by one and then by another of Morhagian’s
beautiful daughters, of whom the youngest is the loveliest. He
announces his intention of taking vengeance on their father. Each of
them endeavours to dissuade him, but in vain; and the youngest warns
him that he has no chance against the genius, who will simply take his
head in one hand and his feet in the other and rend him in twain. As
she has foretold, so it happens. The pieces, however, are brought to
the lady by two of her women; and when she has put them together she
revives the hero by applying the Water of Life to his wounds. Having
then made him swear to wed her, she teaches him how he may kill her
father, by {23} attacking him asleep and giving him one blow--no
more--with his own sword, which will be found hanging above his head.
The treachery of his brothers in drawing up the three maidens and
leaving Badialzaman in the pit, his conquest of the monster,
deliverance of the princess and release of the water, and finally his
conveyance to the upper world by a grateful _rokh_ whose young he had
saved from a serpent, follow the course of the Georgian tale. Before
the three maidens were sent up they had reduced their palaces to the
size of three balls, which they had put into his care; and by the
advice of the youngest he had cut some hair from the tail of
Morhagian’s magical steed. A little of the hair had only to be burnt
to bring the steed to him. With the help of these things, having taken
service with a tailor, he prepares a robe for the youngest maiden on
the occasion of her marriage to his brother Rostam, and attending the
festival he slays the bridegroom with Morhagian’s sword. Then he
disappears; but three months afterwards, when the same damsel is to be
married to his second brother, he repeats the performance. Poetical
justice is completed by his marriage with the lady; and her sisters
are given to two other princes.[23.1]

The tale is current in Italy, and is widely spread in the Levant. As
it is told at Lesbos, the cause of the hero’s descent into the lower
world is the robbery every year by a monster of the three golden
apples growing on a tree in a king’s garden. The youngest brother
succeeds in wounding the thief and tracking him to a pit. He slays the
monster and delivers three maidens, whom he sends up to his brothers
above. His brothers’ treachery and all the other incidents follow.
Here he has to prove against other pretenders {24} that it is he who
has put the dragon to death. This he does in the ordinary way by means
of his tongues. He rejects the king’s treasures, the half of his
kingdom, and even his lovely daughter, and will only accept the
provisions necessary for the eagle which is to carry him up to this
world again. His father having awarded the youngest maiden to his
eldest brother, she demands three dresses representing, one, the
heaven with all its stars, another, the earth with all her trees and
flowers, and the third, the sea with all the fishes that dwell
therein. These, of course, can only be furnished by the hero from
three walnuts handed by her to him before parting. When they have been
obtained the master-tailor is summoned and compelled to declare whence
he got them. The hero is recognised; but his vengeance on his brothers
is limited to banishing them from the realm.[24.1]

In a story of the Avares of the Caucasus the hero is the offspring of
a king’s daughter by a bear, and is called Bear’s-Ears from a
peculiarity which he owes to his parentage. His companions are not his
brothers, but two heroes like himself, of extraordinary strength, who,
however, are successively robbed of their food by a dwarf. Bear’s-Ears
catches the dwarf, cleaves a plane-tree and fastens him by the beard
in the cleft. The dwarf uproots the plane-tree and escapes into a pit.
Bear’s-Ears liberates only one princess from the dwarf. The dragon has
nine heads; and the hero, cutting off his ears, carries them to the
king.[24.2] In this tale there seem no impostors. As the Nubians tell
it, an ogre obtains {25} the food of the hero and his companions, of
whom there are four; and here again only one lady is delivered from
the pit. When he is left at the bottom by his treacherous friends, he
rescues a king’s daughter from a crocodile that stops the river. Then
dipping his fingers in its blood he marks the damsel’s thigh; and this
serves as the proof when others claim to have performed the deed of
valour.[25.1] Among the Vlachs we return to the dwarf; but there is no
lady to be rescued from his power. Peter Firitschell, as the hero is
called, however, makes friends with a blind old woman, who is captive
to certain dragons. He slays the dragons and restores the woman’s
sight. He then acquires three Helpful Beasts, a fox, a wolf, and a
bear. The monster to whom the princess is to be given has twelve
heads, and dwells in a marsh outside the city. Peter lies down to
sleep in the maiden’s lap while he is waiting for the monster, and she
abstracts one of his twelve arrows. With the rest he shoots off eleven
of the monster’s heads, and borrows of her a pin to shoot the twelfth.
He cuts out the tongues, and lies down again to sleep. A Gipsy strikes
his head off, takes the dragon’s twelve heads and claims the victory.
Peter is brought to life again by his faithful animals, and is in time
to prevent the Gipsy’s marriage to the king’s daughter. Wallachia
being a Christian country, the punishment inflicted on the impostor is
merely that of being rolled down a hill in a barrel studded inside
with spikes. Peter then weds the lady and remains in the Underworld,
where he succeeds in due time to her father’s throne.[25.2]

{26}

Nearly related to the _Underworld_ type is that of _Fearless Johnny_.
A Breton story, obtained by M. Sébillot at Dourdain in the department
of Ille et Vilaine, has also lately been given by a contributor to the
_Rivista delle Tradizioni Popolari Italiane_, as coming from Cagliari,
so nearly in the same words as to lead to the conclusion that it must
have been in very recent years carried directly from Brittany to
Sardinia, or _vice versâ_. It relates that Johnny, being a lad of
noted courage, discovers a practical joke played upon him by some of
his companions with the object of frightening him by the apparition of
a pretended corpse. He then sets out to learn what fear is, and
rescues the souls of some robbers who have been hanged, by finding the
treasure they have stolen from a church and restoring it to the
priest, from whom he will take no reward except his consecrated
stole--a magical article of considerable value in the legends of Roman
Catholic lands. With this stole he delivers a house from a devil that
haunts it, and afterwards kills the dragon, taking its tongues, with
which he proves himself the victor. A swallow scratches up a little
earth over his face as he lies asleep on the ground weary from his
combat; and awaking he cries: “Ah! I did not know till now whether
Fear was furred or feathered; now I see that it is feathered.” That
was the only time he ever experienced even the beginning of fear; and
then he was more than half asleep.[26.1]

It will have been observed that a common opening of stories which
culminate in the incident of the Rescue is the hero’s acquisition of
Helpful Animals. Sometimes, as in a tale from Oldenburg, it is the
only other incident.[26.2] More {27} often it forms part of a larger
series of adventures. Occasionally the hero obtains the power of
transformation instead of the personal service of the beasts. Thus, in
a Norwegian tale he divides a dead horse between a lion, a falcon, and
an ant, and in return for the service they confer on him this power.
It enables him to get into a princess’ chamber and secretly make love
to her; and it stands him in good stead when he goes to fight the
dragon. This dragon was a less delicate feeder than some, for he only
demanded a tax of pigs, not maidens. The king had promised his
daughter to the deliverer; but before the wedding could take place she
was stolen by a hill-ogre, whose life was bound up with a grain of
sand under the ninth tongue of the ninth head of the slaughtered
dragon. Here, again, the power of transformation enables the lad to
triumph.[27.1]

There remain one or two types of a more abnormal kind briefly to
mention. A _märchen_ of the Gipsies of Southern Hungary speaks of a
dragon which threatened a certain city with destruction, unless in ten
years the king’s fair daughter were given to him. In the interval she
marries a man who wins the favour of a Keshalyi (a forest-fairy, or
Fate) by kindly combing her hair. The Keshalyi’s hairs, as we have
already seen, are powerful talismans, identified in Gipsy
superstitions with the floating cobwebs of autumn. He obtains one of
them, and by this means is able to take from the horns of the
moon-king’s black cattle a gold ring, a similar ring from the horns of
the sun-king’s white cattle, and one from the horns of the
cloud-king’s yellow cattle. These he gives to his bride. Their virtue
causes her to give birth successively to three heroes, of whom one is
so strong he can throw high into the air a stone which ten horses
cannot {28} move, another can by blowing burn everything around him to
ashes, and the third can spit balls from his mouth farther and truer
than the best guns can carry. When, at the appointed time, the great
dragon comes for her, sons like these prove invaluable. Though the
very houses shook with the monster’s voice, the youths quickly riddled
his skin with balls, buried him beneath great rocks, and burnt him
up.[28.1]

Another Gipsy tale concerns a youth who piped so well for the dancing
of a silver-clad river-nymph, daughter of the moon-king, that she gave
him a silver sickle and prayed him to come again on the morrow and she
would give him yet fairer gifts. But he is late for the tryst, and
finds her dead on the ground, heart-broken at his breach of faith; for
these ladies’ hearts are very fragile. Her sister appears from the
river and curses him, if a man, to become a woman, if a woman, to
become a man. She then carries the dead nymph back into the river,
and, as it seems, there restores her to life; for immediately
afterwards a magnificent black steed stands before the desolate youth
(now become a girl) and declares that he is sent by the deceased
maiden to bear him where his fortune blossoms. Mounted on the steed,
he is borne through the air like lightning to the aid of a king’s
daughter, given to a dragon who dwells in a fountain and requires a
maid once a year for dinner. He slays the dragon with the sickle; and
the king in his joy gives him his daughter to wife. He accepted the
lady amid the general excitement, without thinking that he was no
longer a man but a woman. This was awkward. The bride complained to
her father, who was afraid to attempt {29} his life by direct means.
Wherefore he sent him instead to rob the cloud-king of three golden
apples which had the property, one of them of making wealthy, another
of making lucky, and the third of making healthy. His steed helps him
to accomplish the task. But when the monster, half-man, half-dog, that
guards the apples, finds that he has been cozened, he flings the curse
after the robber: “If a man, become woman; if a woman, become man.”
The curse sets matters right again. “I don’t know what has happened,
dearest father,” says the bride to the king, “but my husband is a man
after all.”[29.1] In an Albanian variant the dragon-slayer is born a
girl. She kills a lamia to whom the king has given his son, and is
rewarded with a magical steed. Later on she wins another king’s
daughter in marriage by a feat of athletics, and, as in the last tale,
is guilty of the thoughtlessness of taking the bride. Being prescribed
a series of tasks by the king with the same object of getting rid of
her, she at last is cursed by some serpents with the requisite change
of sex.[29.2]

In this tale it is no longer Andromeda who is rescued, but a young
man. The variation is doubtless due to Oriental influence, conveyed
through a Mohammedan channel. At least, all the variants of this form
with which I am acquainted are of Arab or Indian provenience. In a
story from the Panjáb the hero is the younger of two brothers,
princes, the elder of whom has eaten a parrot and the other a
starling. Now the fate of these birds {30} was that whoever ate the
parrot would become a king, and whoever ate the starling a prime
minister. The elder brother received his kingdom; but the younger is
slain by a snake-demon and afterwards restored to life. Coming into a
strange town, he takes shelter with an old woman whose turn it is to
provide the victim for an ogre who daily eats a young man, a goat and
a wheaten cake. She has no difficulty about the goat and the cake; and
the prince volunteers to take the place of the human victim, in order
to kill the ogre. He is successful; and then, cutting off the
monster’s head, he ties it up in a handkerchief and falls asleep. An
impostor in the shape of a scavenger finds him, buries him in a
clay-pit and, taking the ogre’s head, claims from the king half the
kingdom and his daughter in marriage, as a reward for overcoming the
monster. We should expect the end to be the impostor’s conviction and
the hero’s wedding. However, the further adventures of the latter
result in his obtaining a different wife. With self-denial unusual in
polygamous countries, he finds one enough; so he makes the princess
over to his brother.[30.1] It would seem as though we had here a relic
of an earlier form of the tale wherein it is a maiden who is rescued.
Another tale, also from the Panjáb, countenances the
supposition.[30.2] As given in the _Siddhi-Kür_, on the other hand,
there is no reference to a lady. Two dragon-frogs who dwell at the
source of a river and can withhold the water, demand every year a
human being to eat. The lot falls on the khan himself; and no one but
his son will go in his stead. The son is accompanied by a poor man’s
son, who is his friend and will not quit his side. They overhear the
frogs incautiously talking, after the manner {31} of supernatural
beings in fairy tales, and telling one another how they may be
subdued. Thus they succeed in ridding the land of the pest; and
further, by eating the frogs’ heads, the one acquires the power of
spitting gold and the other of spitting emeralds--an endowment which
develops the plot in a new direction.[31.1] It would be strange if the
endless adventures of the favourite Arab hero, Hatim Taï, did not
include the incident. Accordingly, we learn that Hatim reaches a
village where a giant devours one of the villagers every week. That
week the lot has fallen upon the chief’s son. Hatim rescues him from
his impending fate by causing a mirror to be prepared and set up in
the monster’s path. When the giant beholds his own ugliness he bursts
with rage in the most natural but horrible manner. Substantial rewards
are offered to the deliverer. He rejects them, however, and goes about
his business as if nothing had happened.[31.2]

A Sanskrit story found in one of the manuscripts of the _Twenty-five
Tales of a Demon_ relates that a certain king had had a quarrel with
some demons about a lady, whom he had taken to wife, whereas they had
intended her for their son. Peace was established on the terms of
making over to them daily a human victim. When it came to the turn of
the king’s own son he was fortunately rescued by a stranger-prince,
named Mahâbala. The demon, who expected a good meal, was overcome and
made to swear that he would henceforth protect brahmans and never
again set foot in the city. In contrast, however, to the generous
Hatim Taï, Mahâbala was dissatisfied with the rewards offered him,
and allowed the demon to return to his evil {32} ways. This of course
resulted in a fresh application to the deliverer, who made the monster
renew his oath. He had no cause for dissatisfaction a second
time.[32.1]

It will have been observed that the stories cited in the present
chapter, like those mentioned in the first volume as embodying more
complete versions of the Perseus legend, present in the majority of
cases the curious incident of the impostor. Concerning this personage
I shall have more to say hereafter. We have found him in the story,
from Quilimane, of _Rombao and Antonyo_. He is equally popular among
the Omahas and Ponkas of North America, where the tale of the Rescue
is so thoroughly domesticated, as to be considered by authorities
familiar with the customs and modes of thought of the aborigines as
for the most part “of Indian origin.” Two versions have been recorded
differing only in details. An outline of one of them will enable the
reader to judge of their “Indian origin.” An orphan, we are told, who
lives with his grandmother, is possessed of a gun of unerring aim. He
exchanges it for a magical sword and two hounds which always find and
kill game at their master’s command. The villagers are heard
lamenting; and the old woman tells him it is because the water-monster
with seven heads has asked for the chief’s daughter, and in case of
refusal has threatened to devour the whole tribe. The orphan
determines to deliver her. He finds her bound by the stream, unties
her and sends her home. With his dogs and sword he overcomes {33} the
monster, cuts off his heads and takes the tongues. A black man finds
the heads, pretends to be the victor and claims the chief’s daughter
in marriage, in accordance with an offer her father has previously
made. The maiden denied that he was her deliverer; but the chief
decided against her and “they cooked for the marriage.” The orphan
became aware by supernatural consciousness of what was going on. He
sent one of his dogs to steal one of the best slices of the meat. The
dog was pursued, and the orphan discovered. He justifies having sent
the dog, for he it is who has killed the water-monster and taken his
tongues. On this being reported to the chief he sends for the orphan
and confronts him with the black man. After the orphan has told his
story, “Come, black man, confess!” he says. “‘Hold on! I wish to go
outside,’ said the black man. ‘Take hold of him,’ said the orphan. The
black man did not tell the truth, therefore they burnt him. And thus,
after all, the orphan married the chief’s daughter.”[33.1]

The most hardened believer in the possibility of the independent
origin of folktales having a similar plot will scarcely refuse to
admit that this tale at least must have come to the Sioux from a
European source--probably through French trappers or missionaries. It
may be true, as the translator tells us, that only two words in it
(namely, those for _gun_ and _sword_) are of foreign origin. This is a
fact of no importance against the multifarious coincidences of plot
and idea with those of the Old World summarised in the present and
previous chapters: it is only an additional testimony to the
completeness with which the mind of the barbarous Ponka has absorbed
the story. When an alien people thus receives and assimilates a tale,
{34} it is because the tale is suited to the alien digestion. The
mental growth it indicates is the same on the part of the people
giving and the people acquiring it. It satisfies the imaginative
instincts of both. But though accepted among the traditions of the
Cegiha-speaking tribes, the tale of the Rescue has not received that
final seal of adoption which identifies the action, or some of the
actors, with the mythical history of the race: it has not attained to
the dignity of a saga, such as we are about to examine in the next
chapter.

In the Ponka and Omaha variants the black man is burnt in accordance
with Christian precedents; and this is one of the notes of their
European origin. A Tuscan story, linked to the ancient mythology by
the use of what seems to be a veritable tree-spirit who has survived
in rustic belief to the present day, confers a very different reward
on the impostor. A poor but handsome youth goes to cut wood. To him
appears Vira, the forest-sprite, and comforts him. If he will do as
she tells him he need not despair of making his fortune. She directs
him to a district near Benevento, whose king has a daughter. This
damsel has been given to a seven-headed ogre to devour; and the king
has offered her in marriage to any one who will slay the ogre and
bring him his heads. Signore Slaniani has conquered the monster and
put his heads on a wagon to carry them to the king. But the reward is
not for him. When the wagon was being loaded Vira secretly took the
tongues, and she now gives them to the youth. “Carry these tongues to
the king, and say that thou didst slay the ogre, and that thou dost
wish for his daughter.” The tale is told with snatches of verse, which
are some evidence of its antiquity. The youth readily falls into the
plot.

{35}

 “And thus did Vira;
 The youth was clad in splendid attire,
 He too was very beautiful,
 Boldly he went to the king,
 Boldly he claimed to have slain,
 Single-handed, the ogre,
 And asked for the beautiful princess
 As a reward for his valour.
 ‘It may not be,’ said the king;
 ‘He who slew the monster
 Has brought with him its heads,
 No better proof can be found.’
 ‘A better proof is the tongues,’
 Answered the youth, undaunted,
 ‘And I can show all the seven.’”

To the amazement of the true victor, who had never let the heads go
out of his sight, the tongues are no longer in them.

 “Therefore it came to pass
 That the poor youth who was favoured
 By the help of the fairy
 Carried away the reward.
 So it often goes in this world--
 He who does the hard work
 Often misses his pay,
 When some one more favoured by fortune
 Steps in and secures the prize.
 Higher beings than man
 Play with us like toys.
 The youth was as nothing in this;
 All that he won he owed
 To the loving spirit Vira.”[35.1]

A moral amply justified, no doubt, by the Italian peasant’s experience
of life.




 CHAPTER XVII.
 THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA IN SAGAS.

{36}

How far the tale of the loving spirit, Vira, is accepted by the
Tuscan peasant as a recital of facts may be disputed. We have little
but internal evidence to guide us; and that hardly seems conclusive.
It may perhaps be regarded as a saga once inspired by faith in the
powers of a supernatural being, but now the subject of more or less
scepticism. The effect of doubt on a story would be to sever its
moorings and set it free on the vague waters of tradition, unhampered
by any names of known persons or places, or to which a serious credit
is intended to be attached. The tale, as it was found by Mr. Leland,
had not yet reached entire freedom. It is therefore a convenient link
between the true _märchen_ and the true saga,--neither wholly
believed, nor recognised as merely told for pleasure.

That the story of the conquered dragon was believed, at least in
classical times, we have already seen. Perseus, the slayer of the
dragon and of Medusa, was one of the minor divinities of Greece; and
the rescue of Hesione by Herakles seems to have been admitted among
the achievements of a personage even more renowned and more generally
worshipped than Perseus. Nor were these heroes alone in ancient
Hellas. The Athenians honoured Theseus for a similar {37} deed. Minos,
who reigned at Gnossos in Crete, having desolated Attica with war to
avenge the treacherous death of his son Androgeos, made peace at last
for an annual tribute of seven young men and seven virgins, chosen
from the most illustrious families of Athens, to be thrown as victims
to the Minotaur, a monster half-bull and half-man, the issue of
Pasiphae, the queen of Crete. Theseus volunteered as one of the
victims. When the devoted band arrived at Crete, Ariadne, Minos’
daughter, fell in love with Theseus, and furnished him with a sword to
kill the monster, and a clew of thread to enable him to find his way
out of the labyrinth wherein it was kept. The city of Thespia at the
foot of Mount Helicon rejoiced in a legend which bears a somewhat
closer resemblance to Herakles’ adventure. By command of Zeus certain
youths were every year exposed to a dragon. The lot fell on one
occasion on Kleostratos. Clad in brazen armour set with hooks he went
boldly forth; and though he lost his own life, he proved the monster’s
bane.[37.1]

{38}

In later times the most famous name to which the exploit has been
attributed is that of Saint George. Some versions of the legend
reproduce one or other of the classical stories with more or less
fidelity. Saint George is one of that numerous class of saints about
whom nothing whatever authentic is known. It is indeed “very
improbable that such a person ever lived.”[38.1] So much the greater
scope has there been for the exercise of the pious imagination. The
horrible details of his martyrdom, a subject on which ecclesiastical
writers have expatiated with congenial extravagance and delight, have
been grafted on those of the Rescue of Andromeda; and the Church may
be congratulated on having converted and baptized the pagan hero,
Perseus. The story of his fight with the dragon, as found at large in
the _Golden Legend_ of Jacob à Voragine, relates that a great swamp
or pool near the town of Silena in Libya, was the lurking-place of a
dragon, against which the people had often taken arms, only to be
driven back. When it approached the city walls its pestiferous breath
poisoned every one. Rather than suffer these visits, the citizens gave
two sheep every day to appease it. After a while their flocks began to
fail; and to meet the deficiency it was determined to offer for the
future one sheep and a human being. The children, sons and daughters
of the citizens, were chosen for the purpose by lot, and none were
exempted from the chance. Almost all had been thus sacrificed when the
lot fell upon the king’s only daughter. Her afflicted father offered
his treasures of gold and silver and half his {39} kingdom to purchase
her exemption from so terrible a death. In vain. The people angrily,
though justly, replied: “Thou thyself, O king, didst issue this edict;
and now all our children are dead, and dost thou wish thy daughter to
be saved? Unless thou obey the commands thou hast enforced upon
others, we will deliver thee and thy house to the flames.” A delay of
eight days, on the pretext of lamenting her fate, was all the monarch
was able to obtain. At the end of that time the populace returned and
said: “Why lose thy subjects for the sake of thy daughter? Lo! we are
all dying from the breath of the dragon.” Then the king, seeing that
there was no escape, caused the maiden to be clad in royal garments,
and, folding her in his arms, bewailed her fate. At last, kissing her,
he sobbed: “Would, my daughter, that I had died before thee, rather
than to have lost thee thus!” She fell at his feet and besought his
blessing, which, when he had bestowed amid his tears, she rose and
went forth to the lake. Now it happened that the blessed George, a
Cappadocian by birth, and a tribune, was passing by at that very time,
and seeing her weeping he stopped and asked what was the matter. She
replied: “Good youth, mount thy horse quickly and fly, lest thou die
as well as I.” But the stranger answered: “Fear not, maiden, but tell
me what thou awaitest here, with all the people looking on.” And she:
“Thou hast a noble heart, good youth, I see, but why wilt thou die
with me? Flee quickly.” “I will not stir a step,” quoth George, “until
thou tell me what is the matter.” Then she explained it all to him.
“Fear not, maiden,” he cried, “for in Christ’s name I will help thee.”
“Good soldier, save thyself rather, lest thou perish too. Enough that
I perish alone; for thou canst not deliver me--thou wouldst only die
with me.” While they were thus {40} talking, the dragon, approaching,
lifted his head above the water. The maiden, trembling, cried: “Fly,
sir, fly quickly!” But George mounted his horse, and, fortifying
himself with the sign of the cross, he boldly advanced to meet the
monster. Brandishing his lance, and commending himself to God, he
pierced it with a mighty wound and threw it to the ground. Then he
called to the damsel: “Pass thy girdle round its neck, nothing
doubting.” When she had done so the dragon followed her like a gentle
hound; and she led it to the city. The people fled in terror; but the
blessed George signalled to them to stop, saying: “Fear not, for the
Lord sent me unto you for this very thing, that I should deliver you
from the torment of the dragon. Wherefore believe in Christ, and let
every one of you be baptized, and I will slay the monster.” Then the
king and all the people were baptized, to the number of twenty
thousand men, beside women and children. The blessed George unsheathed
his sword, slew the dragon; and four pairs of oxen were required to
take it out of the city. The king built in honour of the blessed Mary
and the blessed George a great church, from beneath whose altar a
living fountain flowed for the healing of all who were sick. Moreover
the king offered the victor an immense sum of money; but _he_
commanded it to be given to the poor, and instructed the king in these
four precepts (and here comes the moral), namely, to take care of the
Church, to honour the priests, diligently to attend divine worship,
and to be ever mindful of the poor. Then, having embraced the monarch,
he departed.[40.1]

Such is the legend in its ecclesiastical shape; and in this edifying
guise (though not to the same length) it seems to {41} have been
given, at least in England, together with some equally valuable
details of the saint’s martyrdom, every year by the priest at the
proper moment during divine service, on the Sunday preceding the
saint’s festival, as part of the notice of the feast. It thus came to
the people stamped with the authority of the Church.[41.1] The
Christian nations of the Balkan peninsula have preserved it in popular
tradition, with some circumstances which more nearly recall the
classic saga. The name of the city desolated by the dragon is given as
Troyan. Its inhabitants were given up to various kinds of sin. The
blessed Virgin, having paid a visit to the place, returns to heaven
bathed in tears, and recites in an assembly of the saints a dreadful
catalogue of iniquities whereof she declares the inhabitants are
guilty. The thundering Elijah advises that God send them terrible
maladies, the plague, the typhus and the small-pox, to convert them
from their evil ways. After seven years, however, they are still
unconverted. Unseasonable and severe frost and snow are then tried for
seven years, and after that seven years of drought; but all in vain.
Then God made a lake beside the city; and in it He placed an
insatiable dragon, which entered the town thrice a day, and devoured
on every visit three hundred of the people. Over and above these
hearty meals the monster every night exacted a fair maiden from the
white city of Troyan; and soon the whole place was depopulated. The
turn of Sava, the king’s daughter, came at last. She was conducted by
the nobility of Troyan to the cold waters of the lake, and there
abandoned to her fate. Suddenly a youth appeared {42} upon a dappled
courser, brandishing his mortal lance. Advancing to the shore, he
greeted the maiden with the name of God; and she politely returned the
salutation: “Life and health to thee, O hero on the dappled steed!” He
goes on to inquire what she is doing there alone by the water; and she
tells him her story. Then he catechises her as to her morals. Has her
heart been always pure? Has she always been obedient to her parents?
Has she ever adored the god of silver, or the god of gold, to which
her people are in the habit of bowing down? When this highly orthodox
knight has been satisfied on these points, he dismounts from his
dappled steed, plants his lance in the grass, and says to the
princess: “Pray examine my head a little, for I feel strangely
sleepy.” Whereupon he lays his head in her lap, and she proceeds to
perform for him a service doubtless highly appreciated by the peasants
who sing the ballad. Under the soothing influence of her gentle
fingers he falls asleep; and while he rests the lake rises in waves
and the dragon emerges. The bashful maid was ashamed to awaken her
deliverer; but her tears rolled down upon his face, and he leaped up
like one possessed. He tore out the lance from the earth, and pricking
his steed forward until it stood up to its knees in the lake, struck
the monster in the jaw with his lance, dragged it ashore, bound it
with a silken girdle, and put the girdle into the princess’ hand. He
directed her to conduct it through the city, in the hope that the
sight would at last convert the inhabitants, that they might desist
from their infinite wickednesses, destroy the god of silver, worship
the true God, and venerate himself, Saint George, as their patron. “If
they will not be converted, set free,” he says, “the insatiable
dragon, and he will devour the people of Troyan.” {43} The argument
thus presented on his behalf by the princess was irresistible. The
city was converted, and its harvests of corn and wine thenceforward
prospered. Its patron, Saint George, became an object of reverence, as
he is to this day; but whether the dragon also became a reformed
character, or was put to death, the ballad omits to inform us.[43.1]

The Bosnian folk-song I have here summarised reappears with little
change, both in Servia and in Bulgaria.[43.2] In the island of Lesbos,
on the other hand, it has greater affinities to the _märchen_
discussed in previous chapters. A monster, having established himself
near a fountain, is propitiated with a human being every morning and
evening, otherwise he would stop the flow of water. The lot fell in
due course on the king’s daughter. On one side wept the king; on the
other wept the queen. They wept and cried: “Alas, our only daughter!”
Saint George heard their lamentations, and drew nigh to save her. He
did not stop to put her through her catechism; but having learnt in
the briefest words from the maiden that the dragon was to eat her, he
hurriedly called to her: “Come here, my dear; sit down and louse me;
and when the water foams, then awaken me!” The abrupt transitions of a
traditional ballad do not enable us to judge whether the damsel was
long occupied in removing the consequences of his saintly disregard of
cleanliness; for her next exclamation is: “Rise up, rise up, O
conqueror! The water foams, and the dragon is sharpening his teeth for
me!” Her tears flowed like an impetuous river, and wetted the saint in
his {44} armour of gold. He sprang at the winged monster, and with a
thrust of his javelin stretched him dead. The king in his gratitude
offered him his daughter in marriage. “Instead of marrying thy
daughter,” the holy and unambitious man replied, “instead of calling
me thy son-in-law, build a church in the name of Christ. In the midst
of the church erect a knight; write on the knight this one word:
_Saint George_, that all the world may come and pay him homage.”[44.1]

The name and legend of Saint George are known in Abyssinia, where the
story is perhaps told in a fashion as pious as the foregoing.
Unfortunately I am unable to give the edifying details. But at the
Exhibition at Palermo a few years ago, some pictures were shown as
specimens of native art. One of them represented Saint George on
horseback, and another was thus described by an interpreter: “There
was a dragon that slew all the virgins; Saint George killed it. Near
the place where the dragon died was a euphorbia tree, wherein a virgin
who was afraid of the beast had taken refuge. The virgin did not
believe that the dragon was dead, and Saint George gave her the cord,
saying: ‘Pull it, and thou wilt see that it does not move.’”[44.2]

We are not immediately concerned with the revolting legend of the
saint’s martyrdom. It may be well, however, to point out that this
appears to be the oldest part of the story. Mr. Baring-Gould, indeed,
conjectures that the incident of the Rescue of Andromeda attached
itself to his name in consequence of a misunderstanding--on whose part
he does not specify--of the concluding words of {45} an encomium on
the saint made by Metaphrastes, a Byzantine writer of the early part
of the tenth century, in which he ascribes to his hero the feat of
confounding and making a mock of the cunning dragon, meaning of course
the Devil.[45.1] Such misunderstandings are not unknown in the legends
of the saints. M. Maury enumerates forty-two saints, not including
Saint George, to whom a victory over a dragon has been ascribed by a
similar blunder; and it {46} would not be surprising to find that his
list is far from complete.[46.1] Whatever may have been the cause of
the appropriation of the incident to Saint George, it is certain that
the belief in the story is to be found everywhere in Europe. In some
places it has even been localised, as at Mansfeld, where the saint is
declared to have been a knight named George, who was Count of
Mansfeld, and whose own daughter was the damsel rescued from the maw
of the dragon. His statue as he slew the monster stands over the
church-door; and there can be little doubt that the statue, whether
intended for Saint George or any other person, has caused the
localisation of the tradition.[46.2]

The islanders of Sardinia have a Saint George of their own, who was
bishop of Suelli. In the commune of Sant’ Andrea Frius, a village in
the province of Cagliari, is a {47} tract called “the Plain of Blood,”
where grew a reddish plant, said to have been tinged by the blood of
the dragon, whom this very saint slew there.[47.1] This is an instance
in which coincidence of name has been the cause of confusion.

Outside the legends of the saints, the deliverance of a maiden is,
with one exception, hardly found in modern Europe. Tales of the
conquest of a dragon or other monster are common enough, both in this
island and on the Continent; but since there is no lady in the case it
is needless to refer here more particularly to any save the remarkable
story of the Pollard Worm. The tradition is that long ago a huge and
savage wild boar--not a serpent--infested the woods of Bishop
Auckland, and every effort to destroy it failed, the adventurers who
had undertaken the achievement having all perished in the attempt. At
length both the king and the prince-bishop of Durham, whose favourite
residence was at Auckland Castle, offered rewards for its destruction.
A member of the Pollard family, already an honourable and ancient one,
rode forth in search of the monster, and after a desperate struggle
succeeded in severing its head from the trunk. Having done this he cut
out the tongue, which he placed in his wallet, and then, overcome with
weariness (for he seems to have fought during the night), he stretched
himself on the ground and fell fast asleep. Now the terms of the
king’s proclamation were such that the reward was due to any one who
would bring him the boar’s head to his palace at Westminster. While
the victor slept, the lord of Mitford Castle, near Morpeth, {48} rode
by on his way to London, and seeing the slaughtered boar and the
sleeping man, he could not be in any doubt as to what had happened. So
he played the charcoal-burner’s part, and stealthily dismounting took
up the head, slung it at his saddle-bow, leapt again upon his steed,
and made all haste to London, where he showed the head and won the
reward. When Pollard awoke, to his dismay the head had disappeared.
However, he made the best of his way to Auckland Castle, where he
arrived at an unseasonable moment, for the bishop was just sitting
down to dinner. When the message was brought to his lordship, he “sent
the champion word that he might take for his guerdon as much land as
he could ride round during the hour of dinner. Weary as he was,
Pollard had all his wits about him. He turned his horse’s head and
rode round Auckland Castle, thus making it, and all it contained, his
own. The bishop could not but acknowledge his claim, and gladly
redeemed castle, goods, and chattels on the best terms he could. He
granted the champion a freehold estate, still known as Pollard’s
Lands, with this condition annexed: the possessor was to meet every
bishop of Durham on his first coming to Auckland Castle, and to
present him with a falchion, saying, ‘My lord, I, on behalf of myself,
as well as several others, possessors of Pollard’s lands, do humbly
present your lordship with this falchion at your first coming here,
wherewith as the tradition goeth he slew of old a mighty boar which
did much harm to man and beast, and by performing this service we hold
our lands.’ It may be added that the crest of the Pollard family is an
arm holding a falchion.” Pollard’s next business was to go to London
and urge his claims there. He pleaded that the head Mitford had
brought was without {49} a tongue, but to no purpose. Mitford had
fulfilled the terms of the royal proclamation, and to Mitford the
reward had already been given.[49.1]

Before leaving the subject of European sagas one important Rescue
story must, however, be mentioned. It forms part of the Irish tale of
_The Wooing of Emer_, and is to this effect: Cuchulainn, coming to the
house of Ruad, king of the Isles, on Samuin night (Hallowe’en), hears
wailing in the dun of the king. Inquiring the cause of the
lamentations, he is told that Devorgoil, the king’s daughter, has been
taken as tribute to the Fomori, a monster race dwelling beneath the
sea, and she is exposed on the sea-shore that they may fetch her. He
goes down to the strand and there finds the maiden. “He asked tidings
of her. The maiden told him fully. ‘Whence do the men come?’ said he.
‘From that distant island yonder,’ said she; ‘be not here in sight of
the robbers.’ He remained there awaiting them and killed the three
Fomori in single combat. But the last man wounded him at the wrist.
The maiden gave him a strip from her garment round his wound. He then
went away without making himself known to the maiden. The maiden came
to the dun and told her father the whole story.… Many in the dun
boasted of having killed the Fomori, but the maiden did not believe
them.” So the king prepared a bath, to which every one was brought
separately. Cuchulainn came, like everybody else, and the maiden {50}
recognised him--doubtless by the strip of her garment on his wound.
The king offered him the damsel to wife, but he said: “Not so. Let her
come this day year to Erinn after me, if it be pleasant to her, and
she will find me there.” “He ought of course to have married her,” as
Mr. Nutt, commenting on the story, remarks; “but this would have
conflicted with the purpose of the tale… which is to celebrate the
heroic loves of Cuchullainn and Emer.” So the marriage is prevented by
a device mentioned in one of our earlier chapters. Devorgoil came with
her handmaid in bird-form, and Cuchulainn, not recognising her, struck
her with a stone from his sling, which he afterwards sucked from the
wound, thereby becoming her blood-brother.[50.1] Here it is plain, as
has been noted by both Professor Rhys and Mr. Nutt, that we have a
variant of the incident under consideration. The manuscript containing
the story was compiled in A.D. 1300; and there are reasons for
thinking that in its present form the story is at least as old as the
early part of the eleventh century. It is probable that the incident
is “a folktale arbitrarily altered in order to be introduced into the”
saga of Cuchulainn. This at least is Mr. Nutt’s acute conjecture; and
I scarcely know how else to account for the resemblance the incident
bears to that found in stories of the _Herdsman_ type. The _Herdsman_
type, as we have seen, appears to have originated among the Celts, or
rather perhaps among that Iberian race which overspread in far
prehistoric times the whole of the west of Europe, and after the
Celtic conquest of these islands formed the substratum of the
population. We shall hereafter see the bearing of this fact on the
question of origin. Meanwhile, we may turn to other variants.

{51}

The tale of the Rescue of Andromeda is known to the farthest limits of
Asia. Mr. J. F. Campbell describes a picture he saw in a temple at
Shimonoshua in Japan. “A man with long black hair and a hooked nose,
and a long straight sword, loose red trousers, a flowered white cloak,
and curled-up shoes, like those of the Mikado and Laplanders. Eight
round China vases, breaking waves and the sea; a weird tree, and a
storm of wind and rain driving at the man; eight heads, like the head
of the dragon of the fountain [previously described]. A woman crouched
in a cago, behind the warrior, dressed in Japanese draperies; a great
deal of unpainted wood to make the background of this curious old
sketch by a very clever hand; a lot of Japanese writing, and a black
frame which had remnants of gilding. That was the picture. The whole
was much weathered and battered and in a bad light. It is at least
three hundred years old.”[51.1] Mr. Campbell was not the man to look
at such a picture without having his curiosity aroused to know its
meaning; and he learned from Massanao, his youthful squire at
Shimonoshua, a story substantially identical with the account I follow
derived from a different source. Susa No, the tricksy son of Isanagi,
the Japanese Creator, being forbidden to return to heaven after his
exploits there, and reluctant to turn his steps to the Underworld,
which he had of his own free choice inherited as his abode, wandered
through the earth. From Corea he crossed the strait and landed at
Idzumo in Japan. As he trod the shore eager to know who dwelt in that
strange country he heard the sound of weeping and wailing. Passing
onwards in the direction of the sound, he beheld in a little glen an
old man and woman, and {52} between them was seated a lovely maiden
whose bitter sighing and tears they were striving in vain to still.
Susa No quickened his steps towards the group, and gently inquired the
reason of this grief. “I am Ashinadzutchi, the god of this country,”
said the old man, rising and bowing low before the stranger.
“Peacefully I and mine tend the cultivation of rice; and there were
nothing left for us to wish if only we were freed from one frightful,
indescribably cruel calamity. Seven daughters have already been
devoured by a hideous sea-monster. The creature came hither when my
daughters were in the very flower of their beauty. It was incapable of
compassion; it regarded not their screams of agony, but devoured them.
This is the last of our daughters, our beautiful and good Inada; and
of her too the monster will rob us; we know it only too well; and that
is why we are mourning and weeping with our dear child.” The astounded
Susa No inquired more particularly about the monster, and learned that
it was a terrible dragon with eight heads, whose glowing eyes shone
afar and were red as red berries. Its back was overgrown with
downright forests; its belly was blood-red, and continually bedabbled
in blood; its whole coiling length was as long as some winding valley.
Undaunted, however, he promised help against the oppressor; only he
prayed the old man and his wife to give him the fair Inada to wife if
he succeeded in rescuing her from the dragon’s maw. His measures were
soon taken. He requested Ashinadzutchi to prepare a great quantity of
saki. He himself the while built eight small rooms or enclosures, open
above; and in each room he put a large vat of saki. When the monster
drew nigh he threw a woman’s robe around him and placed himself so
that his reflection fell into the first vat. The hungry {53} dragon,
seeing it, plunged its first head into the vat, deeming that its prey
was there. With headlong speed it drained the saki to reach the
maiden, but found her not. Her image was shimmering and beckoning from
the second vat; and rashly and greedily it plunged another head into
that. In vain it emptied the second vat; in vain it pursued the same
false image into the depths of the remaining vats one after the other.
By the time the eight vats were emptied the monster rolled over on the
earth in a drunken sleep. Then Susa No stepped forward, flung off his
disguise, drew his sword, smote off the heads of the ungainly brute,
and hewed his mighty body into small pieces. But when he came to the
tail his good sword was notched and blunted with the blows. Then he
discovered in the dragon’s tail a sword even better than his own. He
took the prize, called it Cloud-sword, because the dragon was ever
girt with dense clouds, and sent it as a gift to his sister Amaterasu,
the sun-goddess, up yonder in heaven. She held it ever in high esteem,
and in after-days gave it to her grandson, the ancestor of the Mikado.
By him it was bequeathed to his descendants, and it is still, if
report lie not, among the most precious treasures of the imperial
crown. Inada was not unwilling to be bestowed upon a wooer who had won
her so nobly. They dwelt long and happily together in Idzumo, and
became the parents of a race of heroes and rulers renowned in story.
And Susa No made upon his conquest of the dragon and his marriage the
oldest poem in the Japanese tongue, whence he is honoured as the
inventor of the art of poetry.[53.1]

{54}

I may pause here to observe that the device of rendering the dragon
torpid by gorging it is not unknown in Western tales. To give a single
example, it shall be one that Sir Robert Atkyns turns aside from his
dreary genealogies and heraldic studies to mention, because the hero
was the traditional founder of one of those innumerable county
families whose exciting chronicle of births, marriages, and deaths is
of such vast importance to the local historian, and of none whatever
to the rest of the world. The story is that the neighbourhood of
Deerhurst, in Gloucestershire, was plagued by “a serpent of prodigious
bigness,” which poisoned the inhabitants and slew their cattle. The
people petitioned the king; and a proclamation was issued in response,
offering an estate, then belonging to the Crown, on Walton Hill in the
parish of Deerhurst to any one who should kill the serpent. This was
accomplished by one John Smith, “a labourer.” He put a quantity of
milk in a place frequented by the monster; and the brute, having
swallowed the whole, “lay down in the sun with his scales ruffled up.
Seeing him in this situation, Smith advanced, and striking between the
scales with his axe, took off his head. The family of the Smiths
enjoyed the estate when Sir Robert compiled this account, and Mr.
Lane, who married a widow of that family, had then the axe in his
possession.”[54.1] Here for saki we have milk; and the Mikado’s sword
is replaced by Mr. Lane’s axe. The church {55} at Deerhurst is one of
the most ancient in the country. Its tower in particular is of
singular interest; and it has been assigned to a date as early as the
eighth century. Beyond doubt it witnessed the Norman Conquest, and was
probably by no means a new building then. Immediately over the door
projects a broken stone, roughly carved into the shape of a dragon’s
head; and above a window higher up is a second stone of a similar
form. It is quite likely that, as in the case of the statue at
Mansfeld, so here, the carving on the church has caused the
localisation of the legend.[55.1]

These examples stand by no means alone. The carving at Brent Pelham,
referred to in a note on a previous page, appears to be the origin of
a similar story. In the church of Mordiford, in Herefordshire, is a
painting representing a winged serpent about twelve feet long, with a
large head and open mouth. The tradition is that a dragon infested
{56} the neighbourhood, and a condemned malefactor was promised pardon
if he would destroy the creature. He fought and killed it in the river
Lug, but fell a victim to the poison of its breath. Here again the
representation probably suggested the tradition as a special
appurtenance of the village; and among others of which we may suspect
the same are the famous worms of Lambton in Durham, and Linton in
Roxburghshire.[56.1] The dragon held a prominent place in the
mythology of the northern nations, as it has done in many others, and
was a favourite subject of both Teutonic and Celtic Art. To trace its
somewhat complex artistic history is foreign to my purpose; but the
briefest notice of local traditions could hardly be considered
complete without some mention of the influence of sculptures and
pictures whose meaning had been lost.

We may now return to sagas more properly coming within our ken. From
Candahar is reported a Mussulman legend, which relates that in pagan
times the king of Candahar found himself compelled to promise a young
girl every day to a dragon. Accordingly a maiden mounted on a camel
was daily sent to the monster. As soon as the camel arrived within a
certain distance of the cavern where the dragon dwelt, the latter
inhaled its breath with such force that its prey was inevitably drawn
into its throat. One day the lot fell on the fairest maid of Candahar,
when Ali, “the sword of the faith,” happened to pass through the
country, and saw the victim in tears. Learning the cause of her
distress, he placed himself in her stead on the camel, and at the
moment of being drawn into the monster’s throat he cut off its head
with his irresistible blade.[56.2] In Abyssinia {57} the tale is told
with variations, due to Christian and Jewish influences. Axum, we
learn, was the seat of a serpent-king, for whose appetite a virgin was
daily provided. When it came to the turn of Saba, a virgin of high
birth and pure spirit, she was rescued by a “celestial warrior in
earthly form,” but not before the serpent’s saliva had fallen on her
foot, causing her thereafter incurable ulcers and lameness. She was
acclaimed queen; but her disease marred her joy. Wherefore she crossed
the seas to seek for healing at the hands of the renowned King
Solomon, from whom she obtained not only restoration to health but
also a son, born after her return to Abyssinia. He was named Menelek,
and to him the kings of Gondar have ever since traced their
ancestry.[57.1] In the basin of the Upper Niger, the story concerns
not the beginnings of a royal race but the destruction of a
kingdom--that of the Bakiris whose capital was called Wagadu. It was
said to be colossally rich; the kings possessed an immense treasure;
but they owed their fortune to the protection of a serpent which dwelt
within a well near the king’s village. Every year, by lot, one of the
loveliest maidens of the country was chosen, and, arrayed like a
bride, she was conducted to the well, when the serpent would come
forth and, rolling his scaly folds around her, would carry her off to
his den. Now, one year the lot fell on a damsel betrothed to the
bravest warrior of the land, who, besides, was the king’s cousin. He
swore to save her, and mounted on his steed, which he had tethered
near the well, he awaited the dragon’s coming. Twice the serpent put
forth his head, and twice drew back. {58} But the third time, the
moment he stretched out to seize the prey the warrior lunged forward,
cut the brute in two with a single blow of his sabre; and seizing his
beloved he carried her off with all the speed of his courser, which no
horse has ever surpassed. As he disappeared, a voice was heard from
the well denouncing seven years of drought and every evil a country
could suffer. The king sought his cousin and would have put him to
death; but he could not be caught. Soon the predicted woes were
accomplished; and forced by drought and sickness the population
deserted the capital in a body for other lands. It is even said that
the king, unable to carry off his riches, buried them, and that no man
since has been able to find them, for the soil burns and bursts into
flame beneath the hardy treasure-seeker. Certain it is that scourges
of various kinds, which transformed the country into desert, caused
the emigration of a once numerous people.[58.1]

Variants in east and west represent the maiden as her own deliverer.
In the _Golden Legend_ of à Voragine we read that Saint Margaret was
flung into a dungeon, after tortures of the kind that churchmen, with
equal piety and delight, ascribed to their martyrs and inflicted on
their opponents. In her cell she prayed to the Lord that the Enemy
with whom she was fighting might appear to her in visible form. A huge
dragon instantly assailed and attempted to devour her; but she made
the sign of the cross, and it vanished. It is elsewhere stated, we are
told, that the dragon had actually got her into its mouth and was
about to swallow her, when she fortified herself with the sign of the
cross: the dragon forthwith burst asunder {59} and the virgin came
forth unharmed. Here, however, the pious author becomes critical. It
was not incredible that the Devil should come in the shape of a dragon
and should seek to devour her, nor that she should repulse him unaided
save by the sign of the cross. But that he should have got her between
his jaws, and that he should have burst asunder, was apocryphal and
frivolous.[59.1] Obviously it would never have done to let people
believe that the Devil had come to an end in this way: it would be
killing the goose that laid the golden eggs.

In Germany the maiden’s victory is localised on the far-famed
Drachenfels. While Rome was yet mistress of the left bank of the
Rhine, and Christianity under her power had established itself there,
the heathen hordes on the right bank continued to assert their
independence, and made constant raids on the opposite side. On one of
these freebooting excursions they captured a Christian king’s
daughter. The son of the ruler of the Löwenburg fell in love with
her, and would have wedded her had she not refused to give her hand to
a worshipper of false gods. Whereupon it was decreed in a council of
the chiefs that the damsel should be offered up to a ferocious dragon
dwelling in a cave on that one of the Seven Mountains whose steep top
looked down into the green waves of the surging Rhine. Early on the
morrow, while the dragon yet slept, she was accordingly dragged up the
rock and fettered to a tree near the cavern. At the foot of the
mountain gathered an expectant crowd--among them her {60} heathen
lover, who longed to hasten up and shield the maiden’s life with his
own; but she was condemned to death by the nobles, and he durst not
interfere. Meanwhile she stood unterrified; and as she quietly awaited
the dragon, she drew from her bosom a crucifix and fixed her trustful
gaze upon it. Out came the monster from his hole, and, catching sight
of the sacrifice provided for him, he rushed upon her. The crucifix,
however, proved too much for him. When he beheld it in her hands
terror and stupefaction seized him; he fell down in the most natural
way and rolled from the precipitous cliff right into the foaming flood
below, there to find a watery grave. Nothing more of course was wanted
to convert the heathen; and the legend winds up, in a manner somewhat
more idyllic than orthodox, with the wedding of the pious maiden to
the king’s son after he had received “the bath of regeneration.”[60.1]
The story has clearly been provided with a religious and literary
gloss; but there is no reason why in substance it may not be of
traditional origin, and the conclusion indicates a strong probability
that as originally told it was the king’s son who effected the
maiden’s deliverance. The _Kwang-po-wu-chih_, a compilation of the end
of the sixteenth century, furnishes a Chinese version also literary in
appearance, the popular provenience of which cannot be doubted. “In
the eastern regions of Yueh Min (the present Fuhkien) there exists a
range of mountains called the Yung Ling, many tens of _li_ in height,
in the north-western recesses of which there abode a mighty serpent,
seven or eight _chang_ (seventy or eighty feet) in length and ten feet
in circumference, which was held in great awe by the people of the
country. At a certain time it signified, {61} either to some person in
a dream or to those versed in the art of divination, that it lusted to
devour a maiden of the age of twelve or thirteen; and the governors
and men in authority of that region, equally alarmed respecting the
monster, sought out female bond-servants and the daughters of
criminals to satisfy the serpent’s appetite. In the morning of the day
in the eighth moon, after offering sacrifices, the victim was taken to
the mouth of the serpent’s cavern, and at night the serpent suddenly
issued forth and devoured its prey. Year after year this happened,
until at length nine maidens in all had been offered up; and a fresh
demand was being made but no victim could be obtained. At this time Li
Tan, Magistrate of Tsing Lo, had six daughters and no sons. His
youngest daughter, named Ki, responded to the call and was ready to
proceed (to the cavern), but her parents refused consent. She urged,
however, that she was unable to be of use to her parents, as was Ti
Ying (the faithful daughter of olden times), and being a mere source
of useless expense might as well bring her life to a speedy close, and
only requested to be supplied with a good sword and a dog that would
bite at snakes. In the morning of the day of the eighth month she
visited the Temple with the sword beside her and the dog provided. She
had also previously prepared several measures of boiled rice mixed
with honey, which she placed at the mouth of the cavern. At night the
serpent came forth, its head as large as a rice stock and its eyes
like mirrors two feet across--when, perceiving the aroma of the mess
of rice, it began to devour it. Ki forthwith let loose her dog which
seized the serpent in its teeth, and the maiden hereupon hacked the
monster from behind, so that after dragging itself to the mouth of its
cave it died. The {62} maiden entered the cavern and recovered the
skeletons of the nine previous victims, whose untimely fate she
bewailed. After this she leisurely returned home, and the Prince of
Sueh, hearing of her exploit, raised her to be his Queen.”[62.1]

In the last chapter I summarised several _märchen_ wherein Andromeda
was replaced by a youth of the opposite sex. Such examples are rare
among sagas. Beside the cases of Kleostratos and Theseus already cited
I am only aware of one other, which indeed appears to be merely one of
the _märchen_ from the Panjáb with its hero identified as the
celebrated Râjâ Rasâlu. The râjâ comes with his pet parrot of
supernatural wisdom to Nîlâ City and finds an old woman, six of
whose seven sons have been already sent by the king to feed a certain
giant. It is now her seventh son’s turn, and he is to be sent that day
for the giant’s dinner, together with a basket of bread and a buffalo.
The râjâ offers himself in place of the youth. It turns out that
there are in all seven giants, who are fated to be overcome by Râjâ
Rasâlu. They candidly tell him, as these stupid monsters are
accustomed to do, how to perform the feat. Taught by them, he looses
the heel-ropes from his horse and drops the sword out of his hand. The
ropes tie up the giants and the sword cuts them in pieces. But this is
not enough to satisfy the conditions; and the giants, still living,
are obliging enough to put seven frying-pans, one behind the other,
and behind the frying-pans to arrange themselves one behind the other,
so that their antagonist may conveniently loose an arrow from his bow
to pierce them all through the frying-pans, and slay them at one blow
in the predestined manner. A giantess, {63} their sister, however,
escaped to a cave. The hero pursued her, and placed a statue of
himself at the mouth of the cave, so that, being afraid to venture
forth again, she was starved to death within.[63.1]

A few variants are also found, in which the maiden is rescued, not
from death by the dragon, but only from thraldom. Such is the tale of
Ragnar Lodbrog as developed in his _Saga_. As told by Saxo, Herodd,
king of the Swedes, found some snakes in the woods and gave them to
his daughter Thora to bring up. They grew and became such a nuisance
to the whole country-side that at last the king was forced to issue a
proclamation, offering his daughter in marriage to any one who would
remove the pest. Ragnar procured a woollen mantle and thigh-pieces
thick with hair that would protect him from snake-bites. To make
assurance doubly sure he plunged into water on a frosty night and
froze his clothing stiff. Thus defended, and armed with his sword and
spear, he attacked and killed two serpents; the courtiers, meanwhile,
flying from the struggle and hiding like frightened little girls.
After the combat the king, laughing at his uncouth garb, nicknamed him
Lodbrog, or Shaggy-brogues.[63.2] The _Saga_, however, gives a
somewhat different version. It only mentions one worm, found when
quite small in a vulture’s egg which Thora’s father had brought to her
as a gift from Bjarmeland. She took a fancy to the creature and made a
bed of gold for it in a little box. There it grew, and the gold with
it, until at length it lay coiled round the house and allowed no one
{64} to approach except the man who brought its daily food. The Jarl
Herraud was moved to offer his daughter and the dragon’s hoard to any
one who would kill it. Ragnar’s shaggy mantle and leggings were boiled
in pitch and then rolled in sand. He attacked the monster with his
lance early in the morning while all men yet slept, and drove the
weapon home. So mighty were the worm’s death-struggles that the
building shook with them and Thora was awakened. She cried out,
inquiring the hero’s name. He replied by singing some verses in which
he hardly gave her more than his age, and hastened away, leaving the
iron spear-head imbedded in the carcase, but carrying the shaft with
him. The Jarl forthwith summoned an assembly and passed round the
spear-head, that it might be found who owned the shaft it would fit
and who was entitled to the reward.[64.1] Note here the inveterate
habit of the adventurer in these tales: the habit of running away
after performing the deed and thus necessitating his discovery by a
token. This is wanting in Saxo’s account; but we cannot infer that it
was unknown to him. A careful examination of his narrative shows, in
more than one place, evidence of omissions not unconnected, probably,
with his purpose of turning popular traditions into serious
history.[64.2]

A story of the deliverance of a maiden imprisoned by a dragon, still
current in the mouths of the people, places the scene of the captivity
on a little island, called Lindwerder, in the Lake of Dratzig, in
Pomerania. After many knights had essayed the task in vain one came
who, with a song, {65} threw a spell over the monster and slew him.
The lady, however, refused marriage with her deliverer, having vowed
her life to God; and she became a nun.[65.1] I might refer to other
cases of rescue from the toils of a serpent or some such monster, but
it is needless to pursue this form of the tale, since it seems
connected rather with the myth of the Enchanted Princess, which I have
studied elsewhere,[65.2] than with that of Perseus and Andromeda.




 CHAPTER XVIII.
 THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA: ITS RELATION TO HUMAN SACRIFICES.

{66}

Popular as the story of the rescue of the devoted maiden is, and
appealing as it does to the imagination, it is not a little remarkable
that it appears to be indigenous only in the Old World. Legends of the
slaughter of a destructive monster are by no means so confined in
their range, where there is no specific human being to deliver; and
not infrequently they form part of the cosmogony of peoples alien in
race and occupying distant portions of the globe. Few of them exhibit
any details in common with those of the Perseus cycle. I have already
mentioned some, and to others I shall have occasion to refer
hereafter. The rest it would little avail us to analyse. Enough to
note that the thought underlying them all is that the monster slain is
preternatural and hostile to mankind. The suggestion has often been
made that these stories are traditions of the saurians which abounded
in geologic times. Of this, not a particle of evidence has been
adduced; and it is in itself so wildly improbable as hardly to deserve
notice. None of the giant reptiles of the secondary period were
contemporary with man. The process of evolution was still far short of
that consummation. And when man {67} appeared in the Quaternary, or
perhaps at an advanced stage of the Tertiary, period, the remains of
iguanodons and pterodactyles had long been peacefully fossilised
beyond his reach. It is true that he made war on the mammoth and the
woolly rhinoceros; but these could have furnished no hints for the
construction of the winged dragon or the _lindwurm_. We may indeed
reasonably ask what hints were needed beyond the existence of snakes
and birds or bats? The conscious weakness of humanity, the mystery of
serpentine motions, the magnifying, the combining and the distorting
powers of human imagination, amply account for the result. The hero
who is believed to have succeeded in vanquishing a monster thus
created, is regarded as somewhat more than man; he is frequently
worshipped as a god. This, however, we know, was comparatively late in
civilisation. There was a time when gods, in the sense of beings
distinct from and above man, though human in their passions, and more
or less human in their proper form, did not exist in the belief of
mankind. The worship of confessedly human ancestors, totemism, and
other and ruder superstitions preceded them. Science has not yet
determined the exact relations of ancestor-worship and totemism. But
it is at least certain that the dead were constantly held to assume
animal shape. Multitudes of the lower animals--even noxious and
repulsive creatures like snakes--were venerated as totems. Veneration
grows easily into worship; the totem-feast develops into what we
understand by a sacrifice. That many of the classical deities
themselves emerged into anthropomorphism from an earlier and less
advanced existence is probable from the tales which represented them
on various occasions and for various purposes “disguised in brutish
forms,” and from {68} the wolves, the horses, the swine, the dogs, the
mice and even the flies associated with them, or dedicated to them in
the ordinary offerings of the temples or in the more secret and solemn
cult of the Mysteries. Egypt, down to the latest moment of its
independence, in spite of the political vicissitudes of its long and
splendid history, and the consequent evolution of its manifold
religious faith, never got beyond its zoomorphic deities. The
crocodile and the goose, the ibis and the ram, the jackal, the cat and
the bull, decorated with divine names, received in their proper
bestial persons the adoration of their worshippers. To living gods
like these food was a daily necessity; and for such as were
carnivorous flesh, doubtless part of the daily sacrifices, must have
been provided. A savage nation on days of festival, or under stress of
some great impending calamity, would not hesitate to give human flesh.
If, by the concurrence of an advance in civilisation and a political
revolution, the worship of any such divinity were suppressed, he would
become in tradition a deadly monster; and the milder divinity who
succeeded to his place in popular regard would be credited with his
conquest and destruction.

The hypothesis I venture to put forward to explain the incident of the
Rescue of Andromeda is, that it is the record of some such religious
reformation. In dealing with the previous incidents I was able to show
that they were founded on beliefs, which, if we may not call them
primitive, at least go down very deep into savage life. Here it is
different. Considerable progress in civilisation must have been made
before such a reformation could have been effected, though it would
still be compatible with the continuance of a vast amount of wilful
and deliberate {69} cruelty constantly inflicted on human beings in
the service of the gods. The Church, that zealously propagated the
legend of Saint George, regarded the tortures inflicted on the hero as
highly improper for an orthodox knight, but quite suitable for a
heretic. Even the polished Greeks occasionally offered human
sacrifices--if we may trust some of the reports, with torments which
would have done no dishonour to the genius of Saint Dominic or the
most amiable of his “sons.” But the practice of presenting such
offerings to wild beasts in their capacity as gods had been abandoned;
and the story of the Slaughter of the Dragon would seem to be the mode
wherein tradition preserved the effect upon the collective mind, not
indeed of a specific event, so much as of the total result. Tradition
loves to be pictorial, dramatic. While its presentations are usually
wide of the actual series of occurrences, they often embody in
imaginative shape some genuine memory; and it is the task of the
historian or the scientific student to bid them render up the secrets
they enclose.

The traces of human sacrifice among the Egyptians are faint and
uncertain. Classical writers, indeed, alleged it; but they brought
forward hardly any tangible evidence, beyond the statement of
Plutarch--and that at second-hand--that the engraving on the seals of
the Sphragistai, whose business it was to seal the beasts intended for
the offerings, was a man bound and kneeling, with a knife at his
throat.[69.1] Nor is there reason to suppose that in any case men or
women were given during historical times to their sacred animals. We
must turn to a lower range of culture for such a custom. At Bonny, on
the West Coast of Africa, a virgin was bound to a stake on the
sea-shore at the first {70} low water of every spring-tide, and left
there as a sacrifice to the shark-god.[70.1] In the East Indies we
find many traditions of such practices. “It has been somewhere related
that the Rájá of Kupang, on the island of Timor, formerly sacrificed
a young virgin of royal descent to the Alligator, by throwing her into
the sea in order to be swallowed by that monster.”[70.2] Dr. Pleyte,
the friend and pupil of the late Professor Wilken, relates “how in
Boeroe at sunset, after the day’s work, the notables of the island
would gather round him [Professor Wilken] and go down to the cool
sea-shore, where he would sit on a rock in the midst of an improvised
assembly, and the old men would tell traditions of past glories in the
days when every year a maiden, chosen for her beauty, was led down to
the sea as a sacrifice to the crocodile-god for the prosperity of the
people.”[70.3] In the seventeenth century, Gautier Schouten, a medical
man in the service of the Dutch East India Company, heard a story on
the same island, which discloses a somewhat different motive for the
sacrifice. A holy crocodile, it runs, having fallen in love with one
of the daughters of the king of the island, who was very beautiful,
ravaged the coast every day, carrying off and devouring men, women,
and children. The inhabitants assembled in arms to surprise the brute
and to kill it. The crocodile was prepared for this, and cried out to
them in their own tongue that they should beware of insulting him, for
he was mighty enough to destroy them and all their island; and that he
would do so unless they delivered up to him the {71} king’s daughter;
but, on the other hand, if they did this he would become the protector
of the island and would load it with benefits. The islanders could not
resist these promises and threats. They led the princess to the beach,
and bound her to a pillar, whence the crocodile carried her off in due
course, and by her became the parent of all crocodiles; on which
account they are honoured as gods.[71.1] If Archdeacon Gray’s
information is to be trusted, the Shurii-Kia-Miau, one of the
aboriginal tribes of China, still offer human sacrifices to their
canine deity, though not exactly to a living dog. They possess a large
temple in which is an idol in the form of a dog. There they hold an
annual religious festival, when the wealthy members of the tribe
“entertain their poorer brethren at a banquet given in honour of one
who has agreed, for a sum of money paid to his family, to allow
himself to be offered as a sacrifice on the altar of the dog idol. At
the end of the banquet, the victim, having drunk wine freely, is put
to death before the idol.” And the people “believe that, were they to
neglect this rite, they would be visited with pestilence, famine, or
the sword.”[71.2] Among the South Sea Islanders, themselves cannibals,
human offerings were frequent. Their idols, it is true, were roughly
human in form; yet the divinities often took the shape of other
animals. Ellis relates that “birds resorting to the temple were said
to feed upon the bodies of the human sacrifices, and it was imagined
that {72} the god approached the temple in the birds, and thus
devoured the victims placed upon the altar. In some of the islands
‘man-eater’ was an epithet of the principal deities.” To the king, who
was a sacred being descended from the gods, and who often personated
the god, the eye, as the most precious part of the victim, the organ
or emblem of power, was presented. He feigned to eat it; the
simulation being, there can be little doubt, a relic of a former
period when he actually did eat the eye and probably other parts of
the body. Portions of some of the victims were also eaten by the
priests, who of course were also representatives of the gods.[72.1]
The legends of the Greeks and Romans afford us glimpses of a belief
like that of the Polynesians. How else may we interpret the stories,
reported by Plutarch, of Helena, a noble virgin of Lacedæmon, who, in
obedience to an oracle, was prepared for sacrifice, but was saved by
an eagle carrying away the sword and laying it upon a heifer; and of
Valeria Luperca, a maiden of Falerii to whom a similar adventure
happened--an adventure commemorated still by a yearly ceremony in the
days of Plutarch, or at least of Aristides, the author whom he
cites?[72.2] The tradition of Lycaon points in the same direction. He,
having offered an infant to Zeus, was changed into a wolf; and it was
believed that any one who imitated his example would share his fate,
though with the chance of regaining his own form if for ten years he
abstained from human flesh.[72.3]

{73}

Several of the foregoing examples exhibit the being to whom the
sacrifice is offered as a crocodile, or some analogous inhabitant of
the waters. Nor will it pass unnoticed that many of the tales of the
Rescue of Andromeda represent the dragon as inhabiting a spring or
lake, or keeping the waters and giving them only in exchange for the
victim. A shark- or crocodile-god has, it would seem, a natural
tendency to pass into a purely mythical being. Such is Ju-ju, an
object of worship in the delta of the Niger, to which a young girl is
commonly sacrificed in the way already described as customary at Bonny
in sacrificing to the shark-god.[73.1] To this origin we may probably
ascribe the numerous Eastern tales of dragons and evil spirits taking
possession of rivers, lakes and tanks, and demanding sacrifices to
induce them to release the water. The Chinese annals of Khotan, a city
in Cashgar, have preserved a legend concerning a river that dried up,
to the injury of the inhabitants of the city. The king, having
consulted his ecclesiastical advisers, was informed that the
river-dragon had interrupted the current, and advised to mollify him
by a sacrifice. No sooner was the sacrifice offered than a lady came
(so we are told, if the translation be accurate) out of the waters,
though it is hard to know how she could do this when the river-bed was
dry. But whencesoever she may have come, she declared that her husband
had prematurely died, and that his demise had stopped the flow. And
she required of the monarch one of his grandees as a new husband, so
that the stream might resume its course. One of the nobles, named
Mieou, offered himself to supply the place of the late lamented
he-dragon. Mounted on a white steed, he rode into the river-bottom,
{74} and boldly advanced till he met the returning waters. Nor then
did he hesitate, but opening a passage amid them with his whip, he
entered and was seen no more. The horse in a short time reappeared, on
his back a drum of sandalwood and a letter assuring the king that
Mieou had been elevated to the rank of a god, and would thenceforth
watch over the prosperity of the realm. Meanwhile, the new deity
begged his majesty’s acceptance of the accompanying magical drum,
which, if suspended at the south-eastern gate of the city, would give
warning in case of any hostile attack. Since that time the people of
the city have had no cause to complain of deficiency in their
water-supply.[74.1] A somewhat different cause for the human sacrifice
is alleged in the following Hindu story. The Talao Lake was made by a
Bargújar rajah named Menh or Mehan. When it was finished the water
all became blood-red. The pandits, consulted by the rajah, declared
that the water had become impure, because the work had been done by
low-caste labourers; and the only way of purifying it was by
sacrificing the rajah’s son, Chattar-bhuj, with his wife, his horse,
and his servants, in the lake. With the consent of the principal
victim the foul water was drained off, and a room was built in the
floor of the lake for the reception of Chattar-bhuj and his household.
They accordingly entered it, provided with six months’ food. The room
was then closed, and a temple built over it. The result was
satisfactory, for when the pool was filled at the next rainy season
the water remained pure. “It is the universal belief that whenever the
lake overflows,” the rajah’s son “is seen by night riding down the
hill from the {75} highest point on a blue horse. Some say that two
torches are carried before him, and that his servants follow behind,
until all disappear into the lake. Others say that his appearance on
the blue horse precedes the fall of rain.”[75.1] Both these cases look
like legends which have grown up, in consequence of a change of
population or religion, to account for an ancient worship, and for a
divinity still believed to haunt the spot, and still regarded with
awe, though no longer the object of the special honours at one time
rendered to him.[75.2] In the latter story, as it reaches us, there is
no mention of a dragon or other supernatural being. It would seem,
however, to be implied in the sacrifice, as well as in the temple
erected by the rajah.

But, though this may be a true explanation of the story of the Talao
Lake, it will generally be agreed that the legend could not have
assumed its present form had not human sacrifices to water and
water-gods been familiar to the natives of India. The sacred books of
the Aryans prescribe human sacrifices on divers occasions to various
deities; and it is doubtful whether even yet British rule has entirely
extinguished them. Among the aboriginal tribes they have been put down
with extreme difficulty. All over India the folktales are full of
them; and many are the sagas relating to the consecration of tanks in
this way. I need only add two instances. “At Ahmadábád, by the
advice of a Brahman, a childless Ványa was induced to dig a tank to
appease the goddess Sítalá. The water refused to enter it without
the sacrifice of a man. As soon as the victim’s blood fell on the
ground the tank filled, and the {76} goddess came down from heaven to
rescue the victim. The Vadála lake in Bombay likewise refused to hold
water till the local spirit was appeased by the sacrifice of the
daughter of the village headman.”[76.1] Among the records of actual
sacrifices to water, the author of the treatise on the names of rivers
and mountains attributed to Plutarch cites Archelaus (a philosopher of
the fifth century before Christ, whose works have perished) for the
statement that virgins were nailed to wooden crosses and flung into
the Hydaspes, one of the five great rivers (tributaries of the Indus)
from which the Panjáb takes its name. These offerings were
accompanied by hymns addressed to a goddess called by the writer
Aphrodite--probably Párvatí, to whom in her character of Kálí
there is reason to suspect that human victims are still presented in
remote places.[76.2] As Párvatí, however, she is still, with her
husband Siva, the joint object of an instructive rite in the Kánagrá
district during some part of March and April. The girls of the village
procure two clay images, the one of Siva and the other of Párvatí,
which they marry together with full ceremonial. A feast follows; and
on the Sankránt of Baisákh (in April) “they all go together to the
riverside, throw the images into a deep pool, and weep over the place,
as though they were performing funeral obsequies. The boys of the
neighbourhood often annoy them by diving after the images, bringing
them up, and waving them about while the girls are crying over them.”
The custom is called _Ralí Ka melá_ or the Fair of Ralí, “the
_Ralí_ being a small painted earthen image of Siva or Párvatí”; and
its object is said to be to {77} secure good husbands.[77.1] “Until
the beginning of the present century,” says Mr. Crooke, “the custom of
offering a first-born child to the Ganges was common”; and he goes on
to suggest that “akin to this is the Gangá Játra, or murder of sick
relatives on the bank of the sacred river, of which a case occurred
quite recently at Calcutta.” However this may be, the natives are
still suspicious when a bridge is built. “The Narbadá, it was
believed, would never allow herself to be bridged until she carried
away part of the superstructure and caused the loss of lives as a
sacrifice.” And the rumours that a victim was required when the
Hooghly Bridge at Calcutta was built, and when the waterworks of
Benares were constructed, point to a wide prevalence of the
superstition that these and other great public works demand a human
sacrifice.[77.2]

On the western continent there lingers among the Zuñi, one of the
four stocks of Pueblo Indians in Arizona and New Mexico, a tradition
pointing to the prevalence at one time of human sacrifices to water.
Zuñi is built upon a knoll in a broad valley walled by picturesque
mesas or tablelands, of red and white sandstone. The waters of the
valley once rose in a flood and compelled the inhabitants to flee to a
mesa several hundred feet high for safety. And {78} still the waters
rose, threatening to submerge the mesa itself, until the priests
determined to sacrifice a youth and a maiden to propitiate them. The
two were dressed in their most beautiful clothes, adorned with many
necklaces of turquoise and other precious beads, and cast into the
flood. The offering stayed the calamity; and the victims, turned to
stone, are yet to be seen in a columnar rock broken near the top into
two parts, which are capped with head-like forms and called by the
people the father and mother rocks.[78.1]

Europe furnishes numerous remains of human sacrifice to water. At
Rome, during historical times, the Vestal Virgins threw from the
Sublician bridge into the Tiber, every year on the Ides of May, thirty
human effigies formed of rushes. We cannot doubt that at an earlier
period living men were hurled into the flood. This was the opinion
entertained by the Romans themselves, who held that it was Hercules
who first substituted images of straw.[78.2] A similar substitution is
practised in India by the Gonds in their offerings to Burha deo; and,
we are told, they find it answers the purpose;[78.3] as did the
Romans.

Human sacrifices to water were certainly not unknown among the ancient
Greeks. I need not cite more than two examples. Athenæus quotes
Anticlides, an Athenian writer, as recording that certain colonists of
Lesbos were directed {79} by an oracle to throw a virgin into the sea
as an offering to Poseidon. This was accordingly done; but Enalos, one
of the chiefs of the expedition, being in love with the maiden, leaped
after her to save her, and disappeared with her in the depths. The
colonists founded Methymna; and in later years when the town had grown
populous he was said to have shown himself to them again, swimming to
land on a great wave with a wondrous cup of gold in his hand, and to
have related that the lady was dwelling beneath the sea with the
Nereids, while he himself had become Master of the Horse to
Poseidon.[79.1] Such a legend as this could only have arisen where
sacrifices of the kind had been practised. In historical times the
Greeks performed the rites of Adonis, originally, it would seem, a
Semitic cult. Adonis, the beloved of Aphrodite, according to his
story, was slain by a boar. “His death was annually lamented with
bitter wailing, chiefly by women; images of him, dressed to resemble
corpses, were carried out as to burial, and then thrown into the sea
or into springs; and in some places his revival was celebrated on the
following day.”[79.2] If not in Greece, at all events in Syria, whence
perhaps it was borrowed, the ceremony here described was doubtless
performed with a human being. Mr. Frazer, from whom I take the
foregoing description, has made a large collection of cases in which
an effigy is prepared and, after the performance of certain rites, is
slain and buried, or thrown into the water. We may put aside the
instances of burial, only noting them as evidence that the intention
is to put some living victim, represented by the effigy, to death. At
Altdorf and Weingarten, {80} villages of Swabia, a straw man is made
on Ash Wednesday and called the “Carnival Fool.” He is carried round
and then thrown with mournful music into the water.[80.1] At Balwe, in
Westphalia, on the contrary, the straw-man is thrown into the river
Hönne with shouts of joy on Shrove Tuesday. In both instances the
ceremony is called “burying the Carnival.”[80.2] In the Thuringian
villages of Oberhain and Maukenbach the children used to “carry out
Death” in the shape of a puppet of birchen twigs, on Mid-Lent Sunday,
and throw it into a pool.[80.3] “At Tabor, in Bohemia, the figure of
Death is carried out of the town and flung from a high rock into the
water, while” the following song is sung:

 “Death swims on the water,
 Summer will soon be here,
 We have carried Death away for you,
 We have brought the Summer.
 And do thou, O holy Marketa
 Give us a good year
 For wheat and for rye.”[80.4]

Passing over a number of similar observances in German and Slavonic
lands, I need only mention the “Funeral of Kostroma” as celebrated in
Russia on Saint Peter’s day, the 29th June. “In the Murom district,
Kostroma was represented by a straw figure dressed in woman’s clothes
and flowers. This was laid in a trough and carried with songs to the
bank of a lake or river. Here the crowd divided into two sides, of
which the one attacked and the other defended the figure. At last the
assailants gained the day, stripped the figure of its dress and
ornaments, trod the straw of which it was made under foot, and flung
it into {81} the stream, while the defenders of the figure hid their
faces in their hands, and pretended to bewail the death of Kostroma.”
Elsewhere a maiden plays the part of Kostroma. She is treated with
reverence, carried to the brink of a stream and there bathed.[81.1] In
some Swabian villages, where the Carnival Fool is represented by a
living man, he is treated less gently, being at last thrown into the
water.[81.2]

All these customs are perfectly unambiguous. Whatever their
agricultural significance (and I see no reason to doubt that the sense
attached to them by Mannhardt and Frazer is accurate) they are
unquestionably relics of human sacrifice to water. The victim may have
been identified with the spirit of vegetation or with some more
concrete expression of the same idea, and the ceremonies themselves
may have been dramatic in character; but that is in no way
inconsistent with their being also sacrificial. Moreover, we have
other traces of the same kind of oblation, in the superstition so
widely prevalent in this island, as well as in Germany, of the
periodical victim demanded by a river or lake. On the banks of the
Saal in Thuringia, especially among the fisher-folk of Jena, it is
even yet believed that the Saal-nixe requires a sacrifice every year;
and the lake at Salzungen boils with rage unless it obtain its yearly
offering.[81.3] On the island of Rügen there is a vague tradition of
a lake which would rise and overwhelm the entire {82} country, unless
a maiden were offered to it every year. At Trampke in Pomerania a
peasant was once ploughing near the Lake of Madüe, when he heard a
voice out of the pool cry: “Now, come! Now is the time!” He looked
around him puzzled, and again the voice exclaimed in more imperious
tones: “Now, come! Now is the time!” Thereupon, mastered by an
uncontrollable impulse, he left the plough, rushed to the mere and
flung himself in. His farm-servant, who was spreading manure, ran to
his assistance and drew him out of the water; but an instant later he
plunged in again and was dragged by the water-maiden down to the
bottom.[82.1] Always before anybody is drowned in the Lahn near
Giessen there is heard--the millers and bleachers engaged on the river
are ready to vouch for it--between eleven and twelve o’clock in the
day a loud cry: “The time is here, the hour is here; where is the
man?” It is said that two lads were one evening by the Mümmling, not
far from Michelstadt, when a voice called from under the bridge: “The
hour is here, but not the man!” At that moment a man hurried down the
hill and was about to jump into the river. The lads caught him, held
him back, and spoke to him; but he answered never a word. They took
him to the inn and pressed some wine upon him. His head, however, sank
forward on the table; and he was dead. Among other German rivers which
demand an annual human victim are the Fulda and the Neckar.[82.2] The
Lorelei is a nixe of the Rhine, famous for the number of her slain.
Nor is she alone in her misdeeds; but the legends of sirens haunting
German rivers are too numerous and too well known to require
illustration. {83} An old spring at Friedberg used every year to
require an offering, and if it happened that no one fell in during the
year, it cried out: “Come down, come down!” and anybody who was in the
neighbourhood and heard the voice would be irresistibly drawn into the
fountain.[83.1] The Drome in Normandy, according to a local proverb,
has every year horse or man.[83.2] Peg Powler, Nanny Powler, Peg o’
Nell, and Jenny Greenteeth, are spirits that haunt various rivers and
pools in the north of England; and they are not less
bloodthirsty;[83.3] while in Scotland, the kelpie and his congeners
are familiar.

Among Europeans the superstition seems in this form to belong
especially to Teutonic peoples. In other parts of the world, however,
not a few examples are to be gleaned. The Indians of Guiana “firmly
believe in the reality of” certain “mermaids, or ‘water māmās,’ as
they are called in Dutch-creole; and where they are supposed to have
their caves or nests, there great danger awaits the traveller. Some
are related to be extremely beautiful and possessing long golden hair,
like the Lorelei, and whoever casts his eye on them is seized with
madness, jumps into the deep water, and never returns. Others are
hideous, snakes being twined about them, and with their long white
talons they drag boats under the surface and devour their occupants.
On the Orinoco and Amazon similar creatures are supposed to exist; but
these are capable of drawing their prey into their mouths at a
distance of a hundred yards. In order to avoid such a calamity, the
natives always blow a horn before entering a creek or lagoon in {84}
which one of these monsters may be living; if it happens to be there,
it will immediately answer the horn, and thus give warning to the
intruder.”[84.1] The people of Guiana having come under the influence
of the Dutch, may be supposed to have learned the superstition from
them; but this can hardly be thought of the natives of the banks of
the Orinoco and the Amazons. In like manner the belief in South Africa
that rivers call their victims, who cannot resist the fascination, may
be attributed to the Dutch colonists. Here again the ascription of
such an origin must be very doubtful, though it is perhaps right to
take note of the same intrusive Teutons. The Rev. James Macdonald, who
laboured for twelve years among various Bantu tribes, says that “to
the Bathlapin the crocodile is sacred, and by all it is revered, but
rather under the form of fear than affection”; and he regards the
superstition (which reigns even where there are no crocodiles) as “the
survival of an ancient recollection of the time when the ancestors of
the present Kaffirs dwelt on the margin of rivers infested by these
murderous brutes, and where they often saw their women drawn
underneath when going to the river to fetch water.”[84.2] There may be
some reason for this conjecture. It probably expresses, however, only
half the truth, since if the crocodile were revered, offerings would
naturally be made to it, as in fact we have seen to be the case in
other parts of Africa. In Senegal the water-spirits {85} appear in
crocodile form. A legend is told of a girl to whom the spirit
presented himself as a fair youth; but when she listened to his
overtures he turned into a horrible cayman.[85.1] The Bantu tribes are
believers also in a mysterious being called an “incanti” which often
inhabits rivers, and whose glance is fatal. “While we were living at
Duff,” says the writer just cited, “a man was found dead one morning
close by the river’s bank, not far from the mission. It was clearly a
case of suicide by poisoning, but our native neighbours regarded it as
a case of having seen an incanti, and no one would approach the spot
for months. The pools were bewitched, haunted, bedevilled.”[85.2] The
Zulus tell of a bloated, squatting, bearded monster dwelling in
rivers. It steals the clothing and ornaments of girls who come to
bathe, and is capable of swallowing men and beasts. Happily, however,
it is amenable to prayers.[85.3] Another “imaginary amphibious
creature, mostly abiding in the deep portions of the rivers,” is the
subject of Zulu superstition. It is universally believed that “aided
by some mysterious and evil influence, the nature of which no one can
define or explain, bad persons may enter into a league with” it, as
they can also with {86} wolves, baboons, and jackals.[86.1] On the
whole it is impossible in the present state of our knowledge to lay
much emphasis on the superstitions mentioned in the present paragraph,
since we lack the independent evidence which we have concerning the
Teutons and Slavs, of customs pointing to human sacrifices to water.

The ancient Mexicans, however, were innocent of Dutch influence. Yet,
if we may believe Sahagun, they had their water-monsters as malignant
as those of the Bantus. Among these monsters, and by no means the only
one, was the Ahuizotl, pictorially represented as a smooth, rat-like
animal with a long prehensile tail, accompanied by the sign for water.
The tail was believed to be furnished at its extremity with a hand,
wherewith it dragged down into the depths of the pool where it abode
any person who approached the banks. A few days afterwards, the body
was cast up again, and then found to be deprived of eyes, teeth, and
nails. No one dared to touch it, but the priests, who, when informed
of its presence, would fetch it “on a litter with great reverence and
bury it in one of the oratories called Ayauhcalco--literally house in,
or surrounded by, water. For it was said that the Tlalocs (or
rain-gods) had sent his soul to the terrestrial paradise. They adorned
the litter with mace-reeds, and it was preceded by musicians playing
on flutes.” The reasons assigned for such a death were that “either
the deceased had been very good, and therefore the rain-gods desired
his company in the terrestrial paradise; or he had perchance certain
precious stones in his possession. This would give offence to the
rain-gods, who do not wish that persons should {87} possess precious
stones, and for this reason they may have killed him in anger, but
nevertheless taken him to the terrestrial paradise.” His relatives
found consolation, not merely in the belief that he was with the gods
in paradise, but also that through him they themselves would become
rich and prosperous.[87.1] Here the sacred character of the corpse,
its place and manner of burial, and the superstitions concerning the
departed point with tolerable certainty to a religious offering; and
the conclusion is altogether in harmony with what we know of the
bloodthirsty Aztec rites.

Passing with these illustrations away from sacrifices to water, and
from legends of water-monsters, we may note that another object with
which the sagas of dragons are connected is a hill, often shown as the
creature’s resting-place. He lies curled upon it, or around it, or
dwells in a cave or den. Thus the Lambton Worm lay coiled thrice about
the base of an oval hill on the northern bank of the Wear. I am not
aware what this oval hill may be; but some of the hills mentioned in
these stories are prehistoric barrows. Mr. Andrew Lang published some
years ago a story from Galloway of a snake that used to lie twined
round the tumulus at Dalry. “In colour it was snow-white, and the
thickest part of its body was as thick as three bags of meal. This
creature was a terror to all the neighbourhood, as it not only
destroyed cattle and men, but had an ugly habit of going at night to
the neighbouring churchyard, digging up coffins with its claws, and
devouring the newly dead.” The Lord of Galloway offered a reward for
its destruction. But one of his knights was swallowed up by the
serpent, horse and armour and all; and another was {88} deterred by
evil omens. The adventure was then undertaken, as at Deerhurst, by a
smith, who devised a suit of armour for himself covered with long
sharp spikes which could be drawn in or thrust out at the wearer’s
will. Scarcely was his armour completed when the smith’s young and
beautiful wife died, and was buried in the churchyard. The night after
the funeral the smith came upon the brute scraping the earth from the
newly-made grave, and attacked it vigorously. The snake swallowed him
whole; but as he slipped down its throat he suddenly shot out his
spikes, rolling about violently inside. This was more than the
creature had bargained for; and in a short time the smith by strenuous
efforts tore his way through his enemy’s carcase. There lay the
serpent quite dead, and for three days following the river Ken ran red
with its blood. “Here,” says Mr. Andrew Lang, “the story should
properly end; but a later and more romantic fancy has added that at
the very moment of victory the second knight arrived on the spot, and,
in a fury of disappointed ambition, attacked the smith, who of course
was as victorious in the second fight as he had been in the
first.”[88.1] With all deference to Mr. Lang’s great authority, I
venture to think that the second knight’s attack was part of the
original story, embodying as it seems to do the germ of the Impostor
incident so common in Rescue tales. Be this, however, as it may, the
point whereto I desire to direct attention is that the connection of
the snake with a prehistoric tumulus, and that of other dragons with
hills or mounds, both in this country and on the Continent, is
probably not without its significance. {89} There, if anywhere,
sacrifices would have been offered in early times; and their memory,
transformed by the popular imagination into the form of a dragon with
a propensity for human flesh, may have lingered for many a century
after their abolition. But to raise this beyond the value of a
conjecture careful inquiry and comparison of instances, for which I
have no opportunity at present, would be required. I may point out,
however, that the conjecture is countenanced by analogous legends of
dragons haunting other sacred spots. At Aarhuus in Denmark, for
instance, bodies placed overnight for the funeral solemnities in the
cathedral frequently disappeared by the morning. A dragon whose lair
was near the cathedral had eaten them. At length a strolling glazier
devised a coffin of mirrors, pierced by one hole just large enough to
thrust a sword through; and he caused himself to be laid within it in
the cathedral. Around the coffin stood four tapers, which he lighted
at midnight. When the prowling dragon beheld its reflection in the
mirrors it drew nigh, deeming the image to be its mate. The glazier
instantly thrust his sword through the hole of the coffin into his
enemy’s throat; but he himself perished in the floods of blood and
venom that spouted from the body of the dying monster. An ancient
image in the church is said to preserve the memory of the heroic act,
as at Mansfeld, Deerhurst, and elsewhere.[89.1]

It is hardly necessary for the completion of the argument to enumerate
any stories of rescue of human sacrifices to beings confessedly
worshipped as divine, or at least superhuman. Yet one or two specimens
may not be without interest. They cannot be numerous, because the
rescue {90} itself implies an insult to, and almost a denial of, the
divinity. Wherefore we must look for them only, or chiefly, among
races who practise a tolerant religion like the Buddhist, which
whithersoever its conquests extended, permitted the continuance of
offerings to the overshadowed and indigenous gods. We will begin with
Japan, where we have already found legends corresponding to that of
Andromeda. A young warrior wandering in the northern province one
evening lost his way in the mountains; and reaching at length a small
secluded shrine, where there was only just room for him to lie down,
he took shelter within it and soon fell fast asleep. About midnight he
was awakened by a noise. Peeping through the interstices of the timber
walls of his refuge, he espied a troop of cats engaged in a wild,
unnatural dance by the light of the moon, and yelling in fiendish
tones. As he kept perfectly still in his hiding-place and listened, he
could distinguish, incessantly repeated amid their shrieks, the words:
“Don’t tell Shippei Taro! Keep it secret! Don’t tell Shippei Taro!”
The midnight hour passed away, and with it the mysterious cats,
leaving him in peace for the rest of the night. In the morning he
found a path leading to a village. As he drew near he heard a sound of
weeping, and entering the nearest hut, he inquired what was the
matter. He was told that the mountain-spirit required the sacrifice of
a maiden every year, and the very next night was the appointed time.
On further inquiry he learnt that the shrine he had just left was the
scene of the offering, and that it was customary to place the victim
in a cage in the immediate neighbourhood. Recalling the incidents of
the past night he next inquired who Shippei Taro was, and was told
that Shippei Taro was the name of the great dog belonging {91} to the
chief officer of the prince who lived not very far away. To this
personage accordingly he went, and asked for the loan of the dog for
the following night. After hearing his story the dog’s master
consented and handed over Shippei Taro to the stranger. To arrange
with the girl’s parents to keep her safely at home, and to put Shippei
Taro into the cage in her stead was the next business. Having
accomplished these things the youth betook himself to the shrine and
awaited what would happen. At midnight when the moon had risen over
the mountains the cats returned in full cry led by a gigantic black
tom-cat, in whom our adventurer without difficulty recognised the
dreaded mountain-spirit. The tom-cat approached the cage with hideous
shrieks of delight and danced around it. At length he opened it and
peered in, searching for his victim. In an instant Shippei Taro leaped
upon him and held him with his teeth, while the warrior with one
well-aimed blow put an end to the brute. Turning then on the other
cats, hound and man speedily put them to flight and destroyed not a
few. The rout was complete; and from that time no more human
sacrifices have been offered to the mountain-spirit.[91.1]

{92}

One of the aboriginal tribes of India, now Buddhist, has preserved a
somewhat similar instance of the abolition of these offerings. “The
early religion of Láhaul is still known under the name of _Lung pe
Chhoi_, that is, the religion of the valley. When it was flourishing
many bloody, and even human, sacrifices seem to have been regularly
offered up to certain _Chá_, that is, gods or evil spirits residing
in or near old pencil cedar-trees, rocks, caves, etc. This cruel
custom disappeared gradually after the doctrine of the Buddhists had
influenced for a time the minds of the people. There is a story which
I shall relate, as it seems to show that this was the case. Near the
village of Kailang a large dry pencil cedar-tree was standing till
last year, when we felled it for firewood: the story goes that before
this tree in ancient times a child of eight years old was annually
sacrificed to make the spirit who resided in it well disposed towards
the inhabitants of Kailang. The children seem to have been supplied in
turn by the different families of the village. It happened one year to
be a widow who had to give up an only child of the required age of
eight years. The day before her only one was to be taken from her, she
was crying loudly, when a travelling Láma from Tibet met her, and
asked the cause of her distress. Having heard her story, the Láma
said: ‘Well, I will go instead of your child.’ He did so, but did not
allow himself to be killed. ‘The spirit must kill me himself if he
wants human flesh,’ said he: so saying, he sat down before the tree
and waited for a long time, but as the demon made no attack on him he
became angry, took down from the tree the signs and effigies, and
threw them into the Bhága river, telling the people not to sacrifice
any more human beings, which advice was followed from that {93} time
forward. The demon fled and settled on the top of the Koko Pass, where
it still dwells under the name of _Kailang Chá_, or god of Kailang,
getting now only the annual sacrifice of a sheep supplied by the
shepherds.” The writer from whom I quote goes on to state that
(contrary to the principles of Buddhism) sheep and goats are yearly
killed near not a few villages in Láhaul, and offered up to the Chá,
and he hazards the opinion these animals have taken the place of
men.[93.1] I am not aware what evidence there may be for this
substitution beyond the foregoing tradition. At Manáli in Kúlú,
also in Northern India, is a temple of some antiquity to Manú Rikhi.
In front of it stands an altar of stone, supporting a pile of spruce
logs, which are replaced, three at a time, every three years. An
annual fair is held on the spot, at which a _keprá_ (literally, evil
form) or mask of Tundi is carried about. Tundi Bhút was a local
_dait_ or demon who conquered the _deotas_ or gods, and demanded one
of their sisters in marriage. Manú in turn vanquished him at Khoksar
in Lahul and compelled him to marry instead “the daughter of a Tháwi
or mason, named Túnar Sháchká, who appears in other stories as a
Rakhsháin.” The temple was erected to commemorate Manú’s success;
but the tale does not account for the spruce logs. To explain these it
is popularly said that Tundi devoured men and that Manú, having
conquered him, put the logs into his mouth and killed him.[93.2]
Whatever the real significance of the logs may be, it is probable that
we have here a legend of the suppression of human sacrifice. Other
stories of substitution have been mentioned in the {94} course of the
foregoing pages. And the legend of Abraham, which will occur to every
reader, points back to a period when the fathers of the Hebrew nation,
in common with the surrounding peoples, practised human sacrifices.
But with substitution, as distinguished from rescue, we are hardly
concerned.

Still less need we discuss the revolting subject of human sacrifice in
general. The stories I have cited (and they could easily be
multiplied) are intended to confirm the hypothesis that we have in the
incident of the Rescue of Andromeda a reminiscence of the abolition of
human sacrifices to deities in the shape of the lower animals. I have
shown that in certain stages of civilisation sacrifices of the kind
are practised, and that they are frequently offered to water-spirits
conceived in animal form. In offerings to water, and in traditions of
water-spirits, we have the product of savage animism. And it may, of
course, be that the monster sent to devour Andromeda, and that which
appears so often in the legend of Saint George, are to be regarded
simply as the personification of water, or of specific rivers and
pools, in their sinister aspect. Strictly speaking, however,
personification belongs to a higher plane of thought than that which
finds the spirit embodied as an actual living creature. Moreover, the
dragon is by no means invariably connected with water; and in
estimating the probability of this explanation we must not overlook
the tales which represent it as having its abode on a hill or mound,
or in a cave.




 CHAPTER XIX.
 THE MEDUSA-WITCH IN MÄRCHEN.

{95}

The stories analysed in the first three chapters are abundant
evidence that the form assumed by the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head in
modern _märchen_ is that of a sojourn in a witch’s dwelling,
resulting in death or petrifaction by enchantment, followed by rescue
and the annihilation of the witch. This incident is not confined, any
more than the others with which we have dealt, to tales of the Perseus
cycle--that is, to tales wherein one or more of the other three
principal incidents of the Perseus _märchen_ occur. In company with
the incident of the Life-token it is frequently found in stories
belonging to the type of _The Two Sisters who envied their
Cadette_.[95.1] From many of such stories, however, the Life-token
appears to have dropped. The Greek _märchen_ of _The Tzitzinæna_ is
an example. There, as in the _Arabian Nights_, a king overhears three
maidens boasting what they could do if they could only marry the royal
confectioner, the royal cook, and the king himself respectively. The
boast of the youngest sister is that she would bear her lord three
children--Sun, Moon, and Star. The king gratifies their desires, to
the annoyance of his mother, who plays the part of the envious sisters
in {96} Galland’s tale. She so arranges matters that when the children
(two fair boys and a girl) are born they are thrown into the sea; and
after the third abortion, as the king is led to believe, the
unfortunate queen is shut up in a foul and noisome prison. The
children are found by a solitary monk, and brought up until they are
old enough to shift for themselves. He then gives them money and sends
them into the world. They settle in the town; and there the eldest
buys from a Jew a mysterious casket which contains a green, winged
horse. The midwife who had been charged with the destruction of the
children now discovers them still living; and in order to put an end
to them, she excites in the maiden a desire to possess the golden
apple watched in a certain garden by forty dragons. With his enchanted
horse the eldest brother obtains for her not only the golden apple,
but also, on a second journey, a golden bough on which all the birds
of the world gather to sing. He is then sent for the Tzitzinæna to
explain what the birds say. On arriving at the Tzitzinæna’s house the
horse directs him to call it. The creature replies, “Marble”; and the
youth is petrified to the knees. The calls are exchanged until he
becomes marble to the girdle. He then remembers that on bidding
himself and his brother and sister farewell the monk had given him
some hairs from his beard, with directions to burn one of them when in
need. He burns one accordingly; and the monk appears, and calls the
Tzitzinæna, compelling it to bring a bottle of water of immortality
and sprinkle the youth and his steed. By the power of this water they
are loosed from the spell. But they have not been the Tzitzinæna’s
only victims. In obedience to the monk it delivers them all, and among
them the hero’s brother, who had been lost. {97} The Tzitzinæna, thus
captured, like the Talking Bird, is the means of revealing the truth
to the king and restoring to him his wife and children.[97.1] The
story is obviously imperfect, whole episodes, like the loss of one of
the brothers, being referred to but not detailed. Hence there can be
little doubt that it once contained the Life-token. It is doubtless a
waif from the coffee-houses of the Levant stranded on Hellenic shores.
In a variant from Epirus the errands are to obtain the Flying Horse of
the Plain and the Beauty of the Land. The latter had turned many men
into stone; but she goes with the hero, becomes his wife, and
contrives the solution of the plot, as in the typical tale.[97.2]

In the former of these two cases the transformation is effected by the
witch’s word; in the latter we are left in doubt. A German tale from
the Odenwald brings us nearer to Galland’s version in this respect.
There, as in the Greek stories, a king, to his mother’s disgust,
marries beneath him, with the usual catastrophe. The children are two
girls and a boy. A branch of the Tree with Golden Fruits is the object
of desire. The hero takes it; but on his way back he hears some one
calling him, and turning to reply he is changed into a pillar of salt.
This fate also befalls the elder sister on seeking the Talking Bird in
the same garden where the Tree grew. The younger, fetching the Leaping
Water, resists the temptation, and by sprinkling the water on the two
pillars recovers her brother and sister.[97.3] A Swabian tale
belonging to the same cycle presents the task as the disenchantment of
a castle in the {98} forest by fetching thence a certain blackbird in
a cage. This could only be done between eleven and twelve at noon. The
first of the princes having entered the castle allows the precious
hour to pass while he is listening to the lovely music that resounds
through the ensorcelled chambers. Noon strikes, the doors close, and
he is caught fast in the trap. The second prince fares no better; but
their sister finds the bird and hastens out before the fatal hour,
thus undoing the spell and restoring to their proper human form a
lion, a bear, and a number of apes which inhabited the building.[98.1]

The villain of a Catalonian variant is no less a personage than the
Devil himself, to whom the heroine had been given by her father. A
king found her in the Devil’s den, and stole her away, to marry her.
It is the Devil who arranges the catastrophe by means of forged
letters to and from her husband when she gives birth to twins, a boy
and a girl. The secondary villain is a witch bribed by “the ladies of
the people” to excite the maiden’s longing, first, for a tree bearing
leaves of all colours, next, for water of all colours, and lastly, for
a bird with plumes of all colours, which sings all songs. These are to
be found in the garden of the Castle of Go-and-not-return. The
maiden’s brother, by the help of the wise Solomon, who dwells in a
castle on the way, succeeds in the quest of the first two; but
disregarding the counsels which have been given him, he takes the
wrong bird on his third journey and remains enchanted at the gate,
until rescued by his sister. The bird, here also, once captured,
becomes the means of retrieving the happiness of the family.[98.2]

The Kabyle tale of _The Children and the Bat_ makes the {99} villain
out of the heroine’s barren fellow-wife. The children are seven sons
and a daughter. They are carried by the envious woman into the forest
one after another as they are born. An old woman induces the maiden to
ask her brothers to get a bat; and an old man directs the brothers one
after another to a certain date-palm on the sea-shore. “What wild
beast comes here?” asks the bat from the top of the tree. “Go to
sleep, old head,” answers the lad. The bat changes the adventurer’s
gun into a bit of wood, and renders the adventurer himself
“microscopic.” When she has thus lost all her brothers the maiden goes
to seek the bat. She does not answer the creature, but waits until it
is asleep. Then she climbs the tree, seizes the bat, and compels it to
restore her brothers, promising in return to clothe it in silver and
gold. The bat conducts the band of children back to their father,
saves them from partaking of the poison offered to them by their
stepmother, and reunites them to their parents. The stepmother is
bound to a horse’s tail and dragged to death, while the bat is
returned to its tree and clad in silver and gold.[99.1] A version from
Mirzapur comprises the Supernatural Birth. The children are three in
number, two lovely boys and a girl, born of the king’s favourite wife,
in consequence of eating three fruits given by a fakir. Their mother’s
fellow-wives play the usual treacherous part at their birth. When,
years after, the wicked queens find out that the children are still
alive and dwelling in a miraculous palace, the gift of the friendly
fakir, they send to persuade the maiden (it is always the woman) to
ask for a nightingale that dwelt in a certain jungle, could sing a
thousand notes, and could talk like a man. The fakir warns the elder
brother not to {100} answer when the bird cries out to him, else he
will be turned into stone. The youth succeeds; and as in the other
variants, the evil devised by the wicked queens recoils on their own
heads, for it is by means of the bird that the truth is brought to
light and punishment inflicted.[100.1]

A Lesbian tale looks like an ill-remembered variant of the Perseus
group. A king, we are told, who had thirty-nine sons, longed for a
daughter. A son, however, was born, and at the same time his favourite
mare foaled, and the colt was allotted to the boy. When he was sixteen
the brothers all set out together to seek their fortune. The youth,
while his brothers slept, conquered forty dragons which had come to
draw water at a spring where they were reposing. The next night he
slays a seven-headed beast at another fountain, and cuts out its
tongues. The following day the band of brethren separated, and the
youngest pursued his way alone. A sorceress advises him how to pass a
monster whom he will meet in the way, and warns him that he will reach
the castle of another witch, who will offer him all sorts of fruits,
of which he may partake with safety, but he must beware of drinking
the wine she will present, otherwise she will petrify him. Instead, he
is to give it to his dog, and he will see it instantly changed to
marble. The witch, however, will have power to recall the animal to
life. The youth follows her directions, and finds his brothers already
turned to statues in the witch’s palace. He compels her to restore
them as well as his dog, and having put her to death leads his
brothers back to their father.[100.2]

We may reasonably suspect that the Life-token has originally been part
of all these variants, as in Galland’s {101} tale. It is needless to
follow the instances where it still remains an integral portion of the
narrative. Another point is worthy of notice. In most cases the object
of search is a bird. So in a tale told by the Armenian immigrants of
the Land beyond the Forest a king’s three sons set out to obtain a
wonderful nightingale, the only thing wanting to complete the beauty
of a church that he has built. The eldest son, however, settles down
comfortably as the husband of a king’s daughter, and shirks the quest.
The second is found by a gigantic Moor stretched at rest in a grassy
glade of the forest, and asked: “What do you want here?” On his
replying, “Nothing,” the Moor spits upon him and turns him to stone.
The youngest son, returning successful with the nightingale, comes to
the same spot, and is confronted by the Moor with the same question.
He asks in turn, What are all these many stones he sees around him?
The Moor answers that they were men whom his spittle had turned into
stone, and threatens him with the same fate. Thereupon the nightingale
began to sing, and the Moor fell down upon the ground, a heap of
ashes. The stones promptly became men once more, the king’s second son
among them. It is sad to relate that in the sequel, in spite of this
deliverance, the second son joined his elder brother in betraying the
youngest, and leaving him to perish in the depths of a fountain, while
they hurried home with the prize. Fortunately the youth found his way
out, vindicated his claims, married the fairy to whom the nightingale
belonged, forgave his brothers, and they all lived happy ever
after.[101.1]

In the romance of _Hatim Taï_ the enchantment is caused by failing to
kill the bird, and dissolved by its death. The {102} renowned
Kaiumarath, when hunting, found a diamond weighing three hundred
miskals. To preserve it in safety he founded the bath of Bagdad, where
he placed the stone in the body of a caged parrot. On the chair within
the hall was laid a bow with arrows. Every visitor was allowed to
shoot three arrows at the parrot, and if he hit it right through the
head he would break the enchantment; otherwise he would become a
marble statue. The mysterious mansion was uninhabited save by those
statues; and the foregoing information was conveyed by an inscription
over the door. Hatim failed twice, and became stone to his middle.
Persevering, however, he put his trust in God, took aim, and shutting
his eyes let fly the third arrow. It pierced the parrot’s brain, when
the whole enchantment disappeared amid thunder, lightning, and
whirlwinds. All the marble statues started into life, and falling at
Hatim’s feet, vowed to serve him. He took the diamond, which was the
object of his search, and thus accomplished the last of his seven
adventures.[102.1]

The search is not always for a bird. The hero of a Gipsy tale from
Transylvania undertakes to deliver the daughter of a good _urme_ from
a wicked _urme_ who has carried her off. In the wicked _urme’s_
service he has to perform a number of tasks: among them to find a ring
which has been dropped into a fountain and hang it up below a round
mirror in the large hall. The water in the fountain is boiling hot;
but he plunges without harm, having previously bathed in the milk of
the _urme’s_ cow. The real danger was a voice that sounded in his ear
as he hung up the ring: “Thou art a handsome youth, a handsome youth.
Only look in the glass!” Had he complied {103} with this flattering
suggestion he would have been turned into stone. He resisted it,
however, to encounter the still more flattering offer from the _urme_
to wed him. It was necessary before doing this that he should cut her
up and throw the pieces into a Medean kettle, whence she would issue
the most beautiful woman on earth, and they would then live happy and
contented together. But he had already seen too much of this lady to
trust himself with her; so having obeyed her instructions to cut her
up, he threw the pieces into the boiling fountain instead of the
kettle, thus destroying her and the enchanted castle with her. The
maiden whom he came to free drew from her head some hairs, and letting
them fly in the wind, she sang:

 “Ye who have been changed to stone,
 Beast or human creature’s son,
 Hither, hither, every one!”

At once all the stones which had been men and beasts, but had had the
misfortune to look in the magical mirror, returned to their proper
forms and danced around the maiden for joy. It remained to obviate the
only other danger. The _urme_ had left a son, a dragon who was to have
wedded the maiden. He was luckily absent; but before he went away his
mother had cut his hair and thrown the pieces among the stones. These
they gathered up and burnt. The maiden then prevailed on her deliverer
to come home with her and be her husband. They therefore all returned
to the good _urme_ in the speediest manner by swallowing the ashes of
the dragon’s hair and wishing themselves at their destination.[103.1]

This of course is the ordinary bride-quest of fairy tales. {104} The
destined lady is in the power of a magician, who may be her father or
merely her master. The hero, usually by her help, performs various
tasks, which end in his winning her and destroying, or foiling, the
magician. The transformation by the magician of his captives is not,
perhaps, a very common incident in the plot. More frequently they are
slain and their heads adorn in truly savage fashion the palisades of
his dwelling. In a story from the neighbourhood of Bologna, they are
turned into statues of salt.[104.1] Elsewhere, as in a Breton tale,
they are changed into trees.[104.2]

The incident of the Medusa-witch in the foregoing stories, while in
some cases it approaches more closely to the classical saga, lacks the
special development gained in the modern Perseus-_märchen_. Tales,
however, are not wanting in European tradition where the incident in
that form appears divorced from the other incidents of the complete
_märchen_. The Portuguese tale of _The Tower of Ill Luck_ is an
example. A boy sets forth on adventures accompanied by a horse and a
lion, and arrives at the Tower of Ill Luck whence no one ever returns.
An old woman within tells him to put his animals in the stable, and
gives him a fine hair to tie them up with by rolling it round their
necks. When he has done this she challenges him to wrestle. Finding
himself overpowered he calls his beasts. But the hag cries out: “Be
thickened, thin hair, into a strong coil, binding your horse and
lion!” Immediately the hair becomes a thick iron chain which
effectually prevents the animals from rescuing their master; and he is
at length killed. The same result attends the second brother’s
venture. The third is too clever. He cuts up the hair {105} into
little bits and throws them into the sea. Hence, when he calls, his
animals are free to help him. He compels the witch to give him a salve
to anoint his brothers’ bodies and a scent for them to smell. The
salve and the scent revive them; and they feel no compunction in
burying the hag alive.[105.1] A story obtained in the Orkney Islands
gives the three animals as a hound, a hawk, and a horse. The lad finds
a castle, blows the horn, and the door opens. He walks in, but meeting
with no one, he sits down by the fire and eats a good supper, which is
already prepared. At midnight in comes the Dräglin’ Hogney. “He sat
down over against the young man and glowered at him. Then said the
Dräglin’ Hogney: ‘Does yer horse kick ony?’ ‘Ou ay,’ said the young
man. ‘There’s a hair to fling ower him.’ The young man flung it over
his horse. ‘Does yer hound bite ony?’ ‘Ou ay,’ said the young man.
‘There’s a hair to fling ower him.’ Again, ‘Does yer hawk pick ony?’
‘Ay, ay,’ said the young man. ‘There’s a hair to fling ower him.’ With
that the Dräglin’ Hogney _whiecked_ (whisked) frae the tae side to
the tither, till he fell upon the young man and killed him.” His next
brother fares no better. But the third brother throws the hairs on the
fire. “What’s that crackin’?” asks the Dräglin’ Hogney each time as
he hears the hair in the fire. “It’s the craps o’ the green wud come
yer waysay,” replies the lad. When by the help of his animals he has
slain the Dräglin’ Hogney he “ransacks the castle, finds the
enchanter’s wand, disenchants his two brothers, their horses, hawks
and hounds, divides the spoil, sends for their father, and, in the old
wind-up of a Scotch fairy tale, they live happy, and dee happy, and
never drink {106} out of a dry cappy.”[106.1] A Slavonic story in
which the two elder brothers, serving at a certain castle and warned
against entering the forest, successively persist in doing so, seems
to belong to this type. Both youths are petrified, with their dogs,
but are rescued by their youngest brother.[106.2]

In Buddhist literature the story takes a much more civilised shape.
The Bodisat is the eldest of three brothers, sons of Brahmadatta, king
of Benares. The mother of the two elder was dead; and the mother of
the youngest having plotted to secure the succession for her son, the
two elder, by their father’s counsel, withdrew from the city. Their
brother, however, joined them, being unwilling to be left behind. In
the course of their wanderings they came into the Himalayas. While
resting one day the Bodisat sent the youngest down to a pool near at
hand for water. “Now that pool had been delivered over to a certain
water-sprite by Vessavana, who said to him: ‘With the exception of
such as know what is truly godlike, all that go down into this pool
are yours to devour. Over those that do not enter the waters, you have
no power granted to you.’ And thenceforth the water-sprite used to ask
all who went down into the water what was truly godlike, devouring
every one who did not know.” He put the question to Prince Sun, the
Bodisat’s younger brother, who replied: “The sun and moon.” “_You_
don’t know,” said the monster, and pulled him down into the depths of
the water. Prince Moon, the Bodisat’s elder brother, being sent after
the first, makes the equally foolish answer: “The four quarters of
heaven,” and {107} is likewise imprisoned in the water-sprite’s abode.
The Bodisat himself then suspecting the truth, girt with his sword and
armed with his bow, tracked his brothers’ footsteps to the water and
waited beside the pool. Finding that he did not enter it the demon
appeared in the shape of a forester to the Bodisat and inquired why he
did not bathe. But the Bodisat recognised him and charged him with
seizing his brothers. The demon explained that he had done so because
they did not know what was godlike. Subsequently the Bodisat declares
that they only are godlike “who shrink from sin, the white-souled,
tranquil votaries of Good.” The demon, pleased with this, offers to
give up one of his brothers; and the Bodisat chooses the younger. When
taken to task for this choice by the ogre, he justifies it on the
ground that it was on this boy’s account that they had sought refuge
in the forest, and that not a soul would believe him if he were to
give out that the child had been devoured by a demon. The water-sprite
admits his wisdom; and “in token of his pleasure and approval he
brought forth the two brothers and gave them both to the” Bodisat.
Then the latter undertook the demon’s conversion, which happily
effected, he continued to dwell at that spot under the reformed
monster’s protection, until one day he read in the stars (a primitive
but accurate kind of court journal) that his father was dead. “Then
taking the water-sprite with him, he returned to Benares and took
possession of the kingdom, making Prince Moon his viceroy, and Prince
Sun his generalissimo. For the water-sprite he made a home in a
pleasant spot and took measures to ensure his being provided with the
choicest garlands, flowers and food,” so that he was under no
temptation to return to his evil courses. The Bodisat {108} “himself
ruled in righteousness until he passed away to fare according to his
deeds.”[108.1]

It is abundantly clear that the European tales I have cited cannot
have been derived from this highly moral _Játaka_, in which nobody is
punished, but on the contrary things are made comfortable all
round--even for the demon. The story must have been found in a more
savage form, and fashioned by the early teachers--perhaps by Gautama
himself--into an apologue that would have done no dishonour to a
Christian apostle.

To examine every kind of enchantment current in _märchen_ would be an
endless task. In the classical story, as well as in a large number of
modern _märchen_, petrification is the result of the evil spell. This
is softened in the _Játaka_, and in some other tales, to mere
imprisonment; while metamorphosis into trees or into brute forms is
the result in other cases. Petrifaction, or change into stones or
rocks, is a fate whereto not merely human beings are liable at the
hands of supernatural powers: with the hero his horse and other
animals undergo this misfortune. In a totally different cycle of
stories--that of _The Magical Steed_--petrifaction is occasionally
practised on the horse only. It is then done as a means of
preservation for use when wanted. In the intervals between the hero’s
tasks his enchanted pony vanishes, sometimes of its own accord,
sometimes also by the hero’s appointment. “Now,” said the pony in an
Irish tale cited in a previous chapter, “strike a blow with your rod
of druidism upon me, and make of me a rock of stone, and whatever time
at all you are in need of me, you have nothing to do but strike
another {109} blow on me, and I am up as I was before.”[109.1]
Everything in the world is according to savage belief subject to the
mysterious energies of the wizard. In the remains of prehistoric
superstition imbedded in the Irish folktales we get a truer view of
Druidism than that conveyed to us by classical writers, who
interpreted the religion of the Celts by their own more advanced
polytheism. The Druids were in fact shamans, innocent, as I have
already pointed out, of any systematic philosophy.

Lastly, we may notice one of the most interesting “properties”
possessed by the Medusa-witch, namely, the hair she gives the hero to
bind his dogs withal. It appears in many of the tales, though it is
not always used in the same way. A Russian story, whether strictly
belonging to the Perseus cycle I am not able to say, relates that
“Ivan Dévich (Ivan the servant-maid’s son) meets a Baba Yaga, who
plucks one of her hairs, gives it to him, and says: ‘Tie three knots
and then blow.’ He does so, and both he and his horse turn into stone.
The Baba Yaga places them in her mortar, pounds them to bits, and
buries their remains under a stone. A little later comes Ivan
Dévich’s comrade, Prince Ivan. Him also the Yaga attempts to destroy,
but he feigns ignorance, and persuades her to show him how to tie
knots and to blow. The result is that she becomes petrified herself.
Prince Ivan puts her in her own mortar, and proceeds to pound her
therein, until she tells him where the fragments of his comrade are,
and what he must do to restore them to life.”[109.2]

In the glorious _mabinogi_ of _Kulhwch and Olwen_ the hair {110} is
put to its more ordinary use. Among the tasks laid upon Kulhwch as a
condition precedent to his marriage with Olwen, the fair daughter of
Yspaddaden Penkawr, is that of procuring a leash made from the beard
of Dillus Varvawc, the son of Eurei, for Drudwyn, the cub of Greid,
the son of Eri. No other leash in the world would hold the cub; and
for this purpose it was to be plucked with wooden tweezers while
Dillus Varvawc was yet alive, otherwise it would be brittle. The
episode of the quest of this leash furnishes an explanation of a
snatch of song, probably an old popular rhyme, imbedded in the tale
and attributed to King Arthur.[110.1] Here it is the supernatural
strength of the hair which constitutes its value, as in the stories
already passed in review in this and earlier chapters. So too Kerza,
in a Slavonic tale, takes a hair from the long white beard of a dwarf
magician and therewith binds the magician’s wicked wife, who has taken
the form of a wooden pillar the better to carry out her evil ends, and
binds her so effectually that she is thenceforth unable to resume her
proper shape, or to use her magical powers.[110.2]

A different example of the power of a hair is found in the _Arabian
Nights_, where the king’s daughter in defence of the Second Calendar
draws a hair from her head, and waving it in the air mutters over it
for a while, until it becomes a trenchant sword-blade, with which to
cut in twain the Ifrit.[110.3] The Princess Labám in a Hindu tale
pulls out a hair from her head and gives it to the hero. Her father
has imposed on him the task of dividing a thick tree-trunk with a
waxen hatchet. “To-morrow,” she said, {111} “when no one is near you,
you must say to the tree-trunk, ‘The Princess Labám commands you to
let yourself be cut in two by this hair.’ Then stretch the hair down
the edge of the wax hatchet’s blade.” And we are told that “the minute
the hair that was stretched down the edge of the hatchet blade touched
the tree-trunk, it split into two pieces.”[111.1] A similar quality is
that of the hair of the Giant of the Mountain, as related on the
island of Zante. By its means, on touching the mountain it opens and
admits the Giant into his own kingdom.[111.2]

The hair, of course, in all these tales, though severed from the
person of the magician, is still in invisible union with him, and is
the depositary of his undivided might. Its relation to its original
owner is made clear in another story from Zante where the king’s son
finds two hairs from the three-headed snake he is destined to subdue.
At the proper moment he binds them on his hands, and they draw him
direct to the sea-shore over-against an island on which the monster
has made his lair. The youth crosses the water, slays and flays the
dragon, and brings its hide and horns to the Lady of Earth and Sea,
thus completing his tasks and winning her as his bride: an unhappy
match, for the masterful dame ends by calling the waters upon the land
and drowning every human creature, while she hovers aloft in the air
looking on. She then, by sowing stones, creates a new race of men,
whom she rules, mistress of the whole world, from her hereditary
throne.[111.3]




 CHAPTER XX.
 THE MEDUSA-WITCH IN SAGA AND SUPERSTITION.

{112}

Belief of a more or less serious character in the power of the
witch’s hair is one for which readers who have followed the arguments
and illustrations of previous chapters will not have been wholly
unprepared. If a belief not very often exhibited in sagas, it is yet,
as we might anticipate, not wholly absent. The Goodwife of Laggan, a
Highland witch, one day showed herself in the form of a shivering,
weather-beaten cat to a hunter, who was warming himself during a storm
in his hunting-hut, in the forest of Gaick in Badenoch. His hounds
were stretched by his side, his only company. As the cat entered they
bristled up and rose to attack her. There is no record that the hunter
was astonished when the terror-stricken cat addressed him with a human
voice and the rhetoric of a century ago: “Great hunter of the hills, I
claim your protection. I know your hatred to my craft, and perhaps it
is just. Still spare, oh spare a poor jaded wretch, who thus flies to
you for protection from the cruelty and oppression of her sisterhood!”
On the contrary, he pacified his dogs, and invited her to come forward
to the fire and warm herself. “Nay,” she replied, if we are to believe
the grandiloquent reporter of the interview, “in the first place you
will please bind with {113} this long hair those two furious hounds of
yours, for I am afraid they will tear my poor hams to pieces. I pray
you, therefore, my dear sir, that you would have the goodness to bind
them together by the necks with this long hair.” Here the hunter smelt
mischief; so, instead of binding his dogs, he threw the hair across a
beam of wood which connected the couple of the bothy. Supposing the
dogs bound, the cat then drew near to the fire and sat down to dry
herself. In a few minutes she began to grow. “A bad death to you, you
nasty beast,” exclaimed the hunter jocosely, “you are getting very
large.” “Ay, ay,” answered the cat, “as my hairs imbibe the heat they
naturally expand.” But she grew bigger and bigger, until in the
twinkling of an eye, she transformed herself into her proper likeness
of the Goodwife of Laggan, and thus addressed the man: “Hunter of the
hills, your hour of reckoning is arrived. Behold me before you, the
avowed champion of my devoted sisterhood, of whom Macgillichallum of
Razay and you were always the most relentless of enemies. But Razay is
no more. His last breath is fled. He lies a lifeless corpse on the
bottom of the main; and now, Hunter of the hills, it is your turn.”
With these words the witch made a terrific spring at the hunter; and
the dogs in their turn leaped up at her. A tremendous conflict ensued.
“Fasten, hair, fasten,” she cried repeatedly, thinking the dogs were
bound by it. The hair, obediently coiling round the beam, fastened so
effectually that at last it snapt the timber in twain. Finding herself
overmatched, she tried to flee. But the hounds had fixed themselves in
her breasts; nor did they loose their hold as she trailed them after
her, until she had all-to broken every tooth in their heads. Then
changing herself into a raven she flew {114} away over the mountains,
while the bleeding dogs crept back to their master’s feet to die. When
the hunter returned to his home, the Goodwife of Laggan was found sick
unto death. I spare my readers the edifying scene wherein she most
properly acknowledged her crimes in the presence of the hunter and all
her neighbours, before breathing her last. It is written by Mr.
Stewart in the purest Johnsonese he could command, together with the
further narrative of the apparition which announced that the Evil One
had finally seized her soul before it had time to reach the protection
of the sacred precincts of the churchyard of Dalarossie.[114.1]

The Eskimo have a tradition pertinent to our present point. Off the
southernmost part of Greenland was an island to which many of the
inhabitants of the mainland objected, because it cut them off from the
open sea. Two of them accordingly went in their kayaks and, fastening
a hair from the head of a little child to the far side of the island,
pulled away to the north, chanting a magic lay. Another old man,
however, desired to retain the island; and he from the main shore held
it by a thong of sealskin. The contest lasted for a while; but at
length the hair and the magical song prevailed. The island was floated
off and planted in front of Ilulissat, where it is now known as Disco
Island.[114.2] Similarly, the people of the Lewis aver that their
island once formed part of France. The Wickings having conquered a
province of that country determined to carry it to Norway. They,
therefore, made a cable of four strands, one of heather, one of hemp,
another of wool, and another of woman’s hair, and fixed it to the
cliffs. For a time their enterprise promised success. But a large
piece, {115} now called Ireland, broke off and sank. A storm came on;
and one portion after another broke away to form the Hebrides.
By-and-bye their cable itself snapped, and they were forced to leave
the Lewis and adjacent islands in the situation they at present
occupy. On the western side of the Butt of Lewis is a fine natural
arch, called the _Suil an Rodh_, “the eye of the butt.” This was the
hole drilled through the cliff in days of yore by the Wickings to hold
their cable; and it is the best proof of the truth of the
tradition.[115.1]

Allied to the enchanted hair of these tales is the fetter that binds
Fenri the wolf. It is spun from the sound of a cat’s footsteps, a
woman’s beard, the roots of a stone, a bear’s sinews, a fish’s breath,
and a bird’s spittle; and it is as soft and smooth as a silken
string.[115.2] So likewise when Finn MacCumhail hunted in high
Keshcorran, Conaran, son of Imidel, a chief of the Tuatha De Danann,
bade his three daughters, that were full of sorcery, take vengeance
upon the hero. Accordingly the beldams went and sat in the entrance of
a cave. “Upon three crooked and wry sticks of holly they hung as many
heathenish bewitched hasps of yarn, which they began to reel off
lefthandwise in front of the cave.” The attention of Finn and his
companion, Conan Mael MacMorna, was attracted; they approached to view
the women, and passed through the hasps; “whereupon a deadly tremor
occupied them, and presently they lost their strength, so that by
those valiant hags they were fast bound indissolubly. Another pair of
the Fianna came, and with them the sons of Nemhuann: through the yarn
they passed to where Finn and Conan {116} were; they too lost their
power, and by the same hags were lashed down in rigid bonds. These
warriors then they carried away into the cave.” Oscar and MacLugach,
and in short “the children of Smól and the Fianna all” were drawn to
the spot, and when they saw the yarns their pith and valour departed:
“there was not in any one man of them all so much as a newly delivered
woman’s strength.” Both gentle and simple, they were bound, “so that
as helplessly pinioned and tightly tethered culprit-prisoners the hags
transported them into black, mysterious holes, into dark, perplexing
labyrinths.” When the witches could find no further straggler of the
Fianna, they were about to hew their prisoners to pieces. The
great-souled Goll MacMorna, however, was yet at large. He attacked and
destroyed two of the hags; the third he spared in consideration of her
setting the prisoners free. But when another sister appeared to avenge
those who were slain, he fought her also, and drove his sword through
her heart.[116.1]

The story of the Enchanted Cave of Keshcorran is perhaps dangerously
near the border line of sagas and _märchen_. But it is difficult to
say that the Irish had entirely abandoned their belief in the real
truth of the adventures attributed to the Fianna. Nations, especially
nations involved in a struggle for national existence, do not easily
part with a literal interpretation of traditions which are their
birthright. The Iroquois likewise held to the actual existence of the
supernatural personages of the following tale; but how far they
credited the adventures of the human beings may admit of a difference
of opinion. Ten brothers whose parents were dead resided with their
uncle. One by one the elder ones, going out to hunt, failed to {117}
return, until at last only the youngest was left. He and his uncle
found in the woods and befriended a strange man, who turned out to be
a brother of the Great Head, a creature consisting simply of a head,
made terrific with huge eyes and long hair. The Great Head had his
home upon a rock over which his hair streamed in shaggy fierceness;
and when the hurricane swept across the land it was his voice that was
heard howling through it. One day the Great Head came to the lodge.
Aided by his brother, the uncle and nephew succeeded in conciliating
him, and induced him to take the youth to the witch who had fordone
his elders, and revenge their deaths. They heard the witch crooning
her magical song. When she uttered the word _Schis-t-ki-añ_, the
objects of her spells turned to dry bones. The Great Head said to the
youth: “I will ask the question, ‘How long have you been here?’ and
the hair will fall from my head and you must replace it, and it will
grow fast; and then I will bite her flesh and pull it from her, and as
it comes off you must take it from my mouth and throw it off, saying,
‘Be a fox, a bird, or anything else,’ and it will then run off never
to return.” The young man obeyed these instructions; and the witch was
soon brought to sue for mercy. But the Great Head replied: “You had no
mercy; see the dry bones; you must die.” In this way they slew her;
her flesh was turned into beasts and birds and fish; her bones they
burnt to ashes. Then they sought for the bones of her victims, and
placed together in rows the bones of the nine elder brothers. The
Great Head flew over them on a tempest, and called out of the wind to
the nine brothers to awake. They heard his voice, and arose to life,
shouting for joy at seeing each other and their youngest brother
again.[117.1]

{118}

The instrument of enchantment in this Iroquoian tradition is not the
magical fetter, but the magical word; whereof we seem to find a
reminiscence (perhaps of the fetter also) in the sequel of Thorkill’s
second voyage as recounted in the veracious pages of Saxo. Gorm
Haraldson, king of Denmark, having grown old, was tormented with the
question that still troubles mankind of the immortality and fate of
the soul. Wherefore he sent Thorkill, who had in former days led him
and three hundred of his warriors through mysterious regions, for
certain information to Utgard-Loki, his god. On the hero’s return it
was prophesied to Gorm that he would suddenly die if he learnt the
tidings Thorkill had brought. Men were accordingly hired by the king’s
command to put the adventurer to death. But he foiled the design and
reproached his master for the ingratitude he displayed. The king,
then, overcome by curiosity, bade Thorkill relate in order what had
happened to him. Thorkill had such unfavourable revelations to make of
Utgard-Loki that Gorm Haraldson could not endure to hear them. “His
very life could not brook such words, and he yielded it up in the
midst of Thorkill’s narrative. Thus,” piously adds the chronicler,
“whilst he was so zealous in the worship of a false god, he came to
find where the true prison of sorrows really was. Moreover, the reek
of the hair, which Thorkill plucked from the locks of the giant,” and
brought back with him, “to testify to the greatness of his own deeds,
was exhaled upon the bystanders, so that many perished of it.”[118.1]

The truth is that in the lower stages of culture supernatural power is
ascribed, not merely to special words, but {119} to any curses.
Illustrations of this attitude of mind are needless; for in the horror
with which even the least superstitious of us listen when we are by
some accident compelled to hear an outburst of imprecation, we may
trace more than mere revulsion from the spirit of vulgar hatred and
anger dictating it: our revulsion bears at least a tinge of fear and
ghastly anticipation of doom upon him who dares to call down evil, if
not upon the object of his wrath. Properly performed, however, by the
priest on the first day of Lent, and uttered in merely general terms
“gathered out of the seven-and-twentieth chapter of Deuteronomy and
other places of Scripture,” we devoutly repeat Amen to every clause,
and make believe that we desire to escape “the dreadful judgment
hanging over our heads and always ready to fall upon us,” by thus
transferring the weight of condemnation to sinners worse than
ourselves. Originally special virtue was doubtless attached, as it
still is by savages, to the proper sequence of words and the suitable
accompaniment of rites. In a Chaldean conjuration the effect is thus
described:

 “The malicious imprecation acts on man like a wicked demon,
 the voice which curses has power over him;
 the voice which curses has power over him;
 the malicious imprecation is the spell [which produces] the disease of his head.
 The malicious imprecation slaughters this man like a lamb;…
 the voice which curses covers him and loads him like a veil.”[119.1]

Nor is it altogether improbable that certain of the Psalms which are
such a stumblingblock to Christians may have been held, when correctly
chanted, to have a direct influence over the objects of the psalmist’s
holy ire? When a {120} native of Borneo has planted fruit-trees, and
they are bearing, he places some round stones in cleft sticks near the
trees, and then proceeds to curse anybody who may venture to steal the
fruit, calling on the stones to witness the anathema. The curse is to
this effect: “May whoever steals my fruit suffer from stones in the
stomach as large as these stones, and, if necessary, become a figure
of stone!” And woe betide the man who in defiance of this curse dares
to pluck the fruit![120.1]

But neither the form of the malediction nor the accurate performance
of a ceremony is an invariable requirement. A few illustrations of the
petrifying potency of curses, oftentimes the more awful because
uttered in mere carelessness or wantonness, may be given from peoples
on different levels of civilisation. An Altaic tale relates that
Sartaktai was building a stone bridge over the Katunya; and in order
to complete it by the following day it was necessary that his son
should preserve continence. The young man, however, disregarded his
father’s taboo, and frustrated the work. Wherefore the old man cursed
his daughter-in-law, so that she stands, a white rock on one side of
the river, and cursed and spat upon his son, so that he remained on
the other side, the mountain called to-day Täldäkpän.[120.2] A
local legend concerning the fort of Jangada, in India, attributes its
erection to Râjâ Kesari, who built it of lac, or sealing-wax, in
order that missiles discharged against it should be held by its
natural tenacity. The secret was betrayed to a besieging army by an
old woman; and the walls began to melt under the power of the fire and
bellows she advised the soldiers to use. The râjâ, as he died in the
trench with sword in hand, cursed the traitress to be turned into
stone. {121} The curse was immediately fulfilled, as witness the satti
pillar outside the fort, regarded as her image to this day.[121.1] At
a certain farmhouse in Iceland it befell that several years
successively the inmates who were left to take care of the house while
their fellows went to church on Christmas Eve were found the next
morning either stark mad or dead. Naturally nobody cared to stay in
the place; but at last a young girl was found brave enough to do so.
During the night something came to the window, and began to praise her
hands. She was ready at once with a spirited retort. Her eyes and her
feet were then made the subject of eulogy by the mysterious visitor,
who got from the maiden each time a proper answer. By-and-bye the
creature mentioned the dawn standing ready to appear. “Stand thou,
too, and become stone, and hurt no one!” exclaimed the girl. And when
the people returned from church in the morning they were astounded to
see a big stone standing before the window; and there it remains ever
since.[121.2] There is a hill on the boundary of the manor of Bagdad
near Wirsitz, in the province of Posen, surmounted by a great stone of
a reddish colour, somewhat in the form of a gravestone. This was
formerly a girl who went out with her mother to gather wild
strawberries in the pine-wood which then covered the height. The
mother wandered off in another direction, and lost her daughter. Not
being able to find her, she angrily shouted: “As you are not coming,
turn to stone!” Her prayer was instantly answered, as in a similar
case at Strelno, in the same province, where a lazy slut going with
her pitcher to the spring, and being unconscionably long on the
errand, was cursed by a fellow-servant, {122} under whose orders she
was, and transformed into stone. The block is shown at the village of
Mlyny, near the town; and at a distance it is said to bear some
resemblance to a girl with a pitcher. Nor is this the only tale of the
kind current in Posen. A great stone, whose top was not unlike a roof,
lay several years ago on the boundary between Czempin and Piechanin,
and was held to be the roof of a castle, enchanted by a wizard who had
begged a night’s lodging there in vain. His curses buried the castle
in the earth, and turned its inhabitants and dependants into a number
of smaller stones which lay around the large one.[122.1] Near Gbel, in
Bohemia, is a stone called The Enchanted Huntsman. A luckless hunter,
we learn, pursued and shot at a roe, which thereupon changed into an
old hag, and cried out: “How dare you shoot at me? I am the witch
Nera! But you with your pack shall be turned into stone and guarded
for ever with invisible flames!” Since that hour none dares to go near
the stone at midnight, lest he be consumed by the flames.[122.2] A
witch is likewise the agent of evil in the Rollright legends. The
King-stone at Rollright was once a king indeed, who was bent on the
conquest of all England. He had got as far as the hill on which
Rollright stands when the witch appeared. From the crest of the hill
the village of Long Compton is visible in the combe below. The king
was approaching the top when the witch addressed him: “Seven long
strides shalt thou take, and--

 If Long Compton thou canst see,
 King of England thou shalt be.”

{123}

The king, now certain of success, exclaimed:

 “Stick, stock, stone,
 As King of England I shall be known!”

But as he took the seven strides forward there rose before him the
long mound of earth which crowns the hill, and prevented him from
seeing Long Compton. The witch then cried:

 “As Long Compton thou canst not see,
 King of England thou shalt not be.
 Rise up, stick, and stand still, stone,
 For king of England thou shalt be none;
 Thou and thy men hoar stones shall be,
 And I myself an eldern-tree.”

Forthwith “the king and his army were turned into stones where they
stood, the king on the side of the mound and his army in a circle
behind him, while the witch herself became an elder-tree. But some
day, they do say, the spell will be broken. The stones will turn into
flesh and blood once more, and the king will start as an armed warrior
at the head of his army to overcome his enemies and rule over all the
land.”[123.1]

In the last tradition the witch’s words fell upon her own head, as
well as upon her foes. Incautious or wicked words often have this
effect in European folklore; and I strongly suspect they owe their
origin to Christian teaching. Tales of imprecations fulfilled upon the
perjurer pervade English history from the great, and probably
innocent, Earl Godwin downwards. Joan Flower, not more guilty,
mentioned in an earlier chapter, is another example. The case of
Dorothy Mately of Ashover, related with all circumstance {124} by the
master-pen of John Bunyan, is more famous. In fact, the tales are
endless; but I must limit my illustrations to two or three of such as
account for stones and rocks.

On the island of Sardinia, near the village of Tresnuraghes, in the
district of Oristano, are two stones, once a peasant and his ox. This
unhappy man was ploughing on the vigil of Saint Mark, and neglected to
doff his cap when the saint’s colossal statue was carried by in
procession. Being remonstrated with by one of the confraternity, he
answered that he did not worship a piece of wood. What could be
expected after such profanity, but that he and his ox should be turned
to stone? A similar judgment is recorded as the origin of a monolith
standing near the church of Saint Constantine, on the side of a hill
in the district of Sedilo, on the same island. It is the custom there
to perform a ceremony called _S’ardia_, or the Guard, which consists
in a cavalcade of about a hundred persons running at full speed thrice
around the church, and then flinging themselves down the valley upon a
sacred enclosure containing a cross. This enclosure they encompass in
the same manner. The spectacle, considered as a religious rite, is
doubtless grotesque enough; and a woman who once witnessed it was
profane enough to burst out laughing. She stands there still, never to
laugh again.[124.1] A bridal train on the Frisian island of Sylt once
met an old woman who recognised the bride as a witch, and called out
to warn the party. The leader replied: “If our bride be a witch, I
would that we might all sink down here and rise up again grey stones.”
No sooner said than done; and the identical stones were on view up to
the early years of {125} this century.[125.1] So it is related of an
unwilling bride from the village of Bonese, in Altmark, that when she
arrived with her cavalcade on the boundary of the district of Markau,
where she was to wed the son of a rich magistrate, she sprang from her
seat after an altercation with her kinsmen and exclaimed: “Rather will
I be turned to stone than overstep the boundary of Markau!” and she
alighted on the ground a stone. Round that stone at midnight, when the
full moon sheds her rays, the many-coloured bridal ribbons gleam even
yet.[125.2] Sometimes the catastrophe is occasioned by the mere breach
of a taboo. Such is the case in a story told by the Lapps concerning
the origin of the Aniov Islands. Three giants who were shamans
determined to cut a piece of land off Norway and bring it away with
all its reindeer and other wealth in order to increase their own
stores. They succeeded in doing so, and were conveying it round to its
destination, when their mother dreamed she saw them returning. She ran
out of the hut and, hearing a noise, cried: “See! my children are
coming, they bring goods, oxen, reindeer; they spoke truth.” But she
thus violated the rule of strict silence during the performance of
magical rites, and was punished by being turned, together with the
whole parish, into stone, while her sons and the reindeer they had
stolen were drowned, and the land they had cut off became two
islands.[125.3] Another woman underwent the like transformation in the
island of Coll, off the western coast of Scotland. She was gathering
shellfish when the tide rose, and “finding no other means of escape
made a last effort by climbing {126} the rocks. When at the top, and
almost out of danger, she said: ‘I am safe now, in spite of God and
men!’” Her blasphemy was immediately avenged by her conversion into a
stone, which now forms part of the rock whence the headland of
Cailleach Point (the Old Wife’s Headland) takes its name.[126.1]

Often, however, the Deity himself, or some holy man endowed with a
portion of divine power, by curses or prayers effects the
metamorphosis. Thus, it is believed in Bombay that the moon once
became enamoured of Ahalyá, the wife of the Rishi Gautama, and
visited her in her husband’s absence. Unluckily the Rishi returned and
found the guilty pair together. His wife was turned into stone as the
effect of his curses; and the moon bears, and will bear for ever, the
black mark of the blow he received from the Rishi’s well-aimed
shoe.[126.2] So, too, when Ino fleeing from Juno’s wrath flung herself
into the sea, and was made immortal by Neptune at the prayer of Venus,
her attendants, as Ovid tells us, reproaching the vengeful goddess,
were metamorphosed. Juno exclaimed: “I will make you terrible
monuments of my displeasure.” As she uttered the words, some of the
women, attempting to follow their mistress into the water, were
stiffened in the various attitudes of the moment into rocks on the
shore, while others were transformed into seabirds that now stretch
their wings over every wave of the Ionian sea.[126.3] The kind of
superstition here portrayed has of course survived into Christianity.
It is partly the superhuman might of the priest as such, and partly
the strength of his incantations, which nobody but he knows so well
how to perform that {127} gives effect to his words when, like the
Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims, and other priests before and
since, he calls for his candle, his bell, and his book. It was the
superhuman might of the shaman that was acknowledged by Balak in the
Hebrew saga, when he sent for Balaam to come and curse Israel; “for I
know that he whom thou blessest is blessed, and he whom thou cursest
is cursed.” Balaam, indeed, performed his function with due solemnity
and order; yet the ceremonies, however valuable in themselves, would
hardly have been effectual if performed by a lesser man. This belief
has constantly tended, in all religions alike, to invest the lightest
word of a saint with efficacy graduated according to his sanctity.
Take the following Christian examples out of many. Saint Constant,
pursued by a party of heathen up a hill in the neighbourhood of
Deonero, in the Italian province of Cuneo, launched his maledictions
upon them with such effect that they were changed into stones, many of
which are still to be seen on the spot. His potency must have been
exhausted by the effort; for he had scarcely reached the top when
another band of persecutors seized and put him to death. But the night
fell murky and wet; and a labourer, going home after an evening’s
enjoyment, beheld the saint toiling up the steep laden with stones. In
the morning the Church of Villar San Costanzo stood on the place of
the martyrdom, built by the saint’s own hands out of some of the very
men whom he had conveniently petrified; and there it is to be seen at
the present day. Strangely enough, his holiness did not avail to
procure him mortar. Nor was it needful, for the stones, whether
naturally or supernaturally fitted together, stand perfectly well
without it. When his work was done, his body, which had been left by
his murderers {128} where it fell, disappeared. Some say that it was
transported by angels into heaven; and there can be no more difficulty
in crediting this than the rest of the story.[128.1] In the Isle of
Man Saint Patrick cursed a sea-monster, which was following to devour
him, and turned it into a solid rock at the foot of Peel Hill.[128.2]
According to Sardinian belief a greater than Saint Constant, or even
Saint Patrick, inflicted the same vengeance for a smaller crime. One
day Our Lord and Saint Peter presented themselves at a threshing-floor
near Mores, and prayed for alms, but were denied. Thereupon Jesus
Christ uttered an imprecation; and in a moment the corn became sand,
while the guilty farmer and his innocent workmen were alike
transformed into stones.[128.3] Judging doubtless by their own unhappy
experience, the greater the personage the more trifling is the
occasion to which the peasants ascribe his wrath. On the right-hand
side of the road from Flatow to Lobsens, in the province of Posen,
about half a German mile from the latter place, is a great stone,
formerly a landed proprietor, who, being out hunting, put his horse to
jump a ditch at that spot. The horse refused, perhaps for some similar
reason to that which animated Balaam’s talking donkey, since we are
told that the Lord flew into a passion and cried, “Become stone!”
Forthwith horse and rider were turned into a stone which is alive at
this day to testify to the truth of the story, though many have been
the attempts to destroy it.[128.4]

So far the power of words. Another magical power {129} which appears
in the _märchen_ is that of a blow. Nor is it absent from sagas told
to explain the origin of rocks whose form has appealed to the
imagination of uncultured peoples. The story of the discovery of
Inishbofin, an island off the coast of Galway, relates that two
fishermen lost in a fog landed on an unknown shore. When the fog
lifted they found themselves on what is now called the north Beach of
Inishbofin.

 On one side lay the ocean, and on one
 Lay a great water;

and close at hand they beheld an old woman driving a white cow down to
the lake. She drove the cow right into the water, and struck her with
a stick, whereupon the cow was metamorphosed into a rock. One of the
fishermen got so angry at the sight that he struck the woman; and both
he and she were turned into stones. The rock and stones are still to
be seen. “The cow used to rise up out of the lake and walk about the
island when any great event was about to happen; but it is now more
than thirty years since she was last seen.” From this cow the island
takes its name (Inis-bo-finne, the Island of the White Cow).[129.1] In
the south-west of Ireland is a cliff called Fail Mahisht, once the
daughter of the king of the White Nation and wife of Finn MacCumhail,
whom she won by playing at chess with him for a wager. The condition
was that he was to be her husband until he had seven shovelfuls of
earth put on his head. After various adventures Diarmaid fulfilled the
condition, and with a blow of his fist sent the lady spinning through
the air until she fell at the water’s edge, where she now stands, and
from that day to this gives {130} food to the people of Erin from the
limpets and periwinkles that cluster upon her beyond any other cliff
in Ireland.[130.1] The heroic cycle of Ireland as now found in the
mouths of the people is full of tales of petrifaction from a
blow;[130.2] but how far they are now believed as records of fact must
be regarded as more than doubtful, whatever might have been the case
at the time the legend of the Enchanted Cave, already mentioned, was
written. No such uncertainty seems to rest on the Sardinian tale
concerning a stone on the side of the Montesanto of Mores. It is
called Saint Elisha’s Stone, and was once a man whom the saint threw
from the top of the mountain and, when he saw him fast below, called
out: “Dost thou stand well?” “Yes, sir,” replied the stone; and there
it remains immovable.[130.3]

The mixed population of Missouri tell a story, probably of Indian
origin, about a beautiful but mysterious witch, who seduced the young
braves, and with a touch from her right hand turned their hearts into
stone. The people, fearful of attacking her, waited long for vengeance
from on high to repay her iniquities. She used to feed on fish that
came out of the river in response to her call. One day she went down
to the water and summoned the fish in vain. At last, after she had
uttered in her rage and impatience words that would dismay devils,
there came up a little fish like silver. She essayed to swallow it;
but it swelled and {131} stuck in her throat, and at length stiffened
into stone. In her agony she clutched her throat and beat her breast
with the fatal hand. So now she stands upon, and part of, the rocky
bluff on the banks of the Missouri.[131.1]

At Jaunpur, in India, is the shrine of Kerárbír, where a great stone
is the object of worship. The stone in question is part of the body of
the giant-demon Kerar, slain by Rámchandra for his wickedness.[131.2]
Two rocks observed in descending the pass of Markundi into the valley
of the Son, in Mirzapur, are worshipped and connected with the flight
of two lovers from a barbarian king who ruled at the fort of Agori.
One of these rocks was cloven by a blow of the fugitives’ sword; the
other is the pursuer’s elephant, decapitated by the same means.[131.3]

Divine vengeance, without any visible or audible intervention, has
often been invoked in various parts of the world to account for the
existence of rocks and stones. Niobe, weeping for her children slain
by Apollo, was turned to stone, as anybody, says Pausanias, may
reasonably be persuaded. She stood, a rock, on Mount Sipylos in
Bœotia, and in summer-time was reported to weep.[131.4] Such, too,
was the fate which overtook Lot’s wife. Her legend doubtless grew up
to account for some prominent pile on the cliffs overlooking the Dead
Sea; and perhaps the archæologists who are now striving to
rehabilitate the writings of Moses will point out the crag and prove
the truth of the story. Of course they will be equally ready and
willing to prove a thousand other tales. Let me mention a few equally
authentic.

{132}

I pass over instances like those of the Stone-woman near the village
of Moras in the department of Isère, France, manifestly a mere
transplantation of the Biblical tradition.[132.1] There are cases,
however, in which the crime of looking back in disobedience to an
express taboo has been punished by petrifaction, and where the
connection with Lot’s wife is by no means so easily proved. Once upon
a time the Hindu saint, Sri Dharamnathji, was doing penance in the
jungle near Pattan. His disciple Gharibnáthji used to beg alms in the
city, but as the people were not charitable he was obliged to maintain
himself by carrying bundles of firewood and selling them in the town.
From the proceeds he purchased flour, which a shepherd’s wife baked
for him, adding a loaf from herself. The sage, “observing the bald
patch on his disciple’s head caused by the loads he carried, cursed
the city to be swallowed up. He had previously warned the shepherd’s
wife to leave the place and not look back. The city was swallowed up;
and the woman, disobeying the saint’s command, was turned into a
stone.”[132.2]

Here the destruction of the city was caused by niggardliness towards a
personage of supernatural power. Another Indian saga shows us this
crime punished by petrifaction. Near the village of Dudhi, in South
Mirzapur, are two stones, once a bride and bridegroom who were thus
transformed by an angry bhút, or malevolent spirit. His proper
offerings had been forgotten, and he wrought his vengeance in this
way.[132.3] Sometimes the fault is breach of tribal custom or social
convention. When a rajah’s daughter made a rash vow only to wed him
who could count the palm-trees {133} within view of her father’s
palace, and a low-born wizard fulfilled the condition, the earth
herself interfered and, rather than allow so shameful a marriage to be
accomplished, she turned the princess into a stone, which now lies
within the ruined fort of Rájá Sahay, protected from human touch by
a number of enormous snakes.[133.1] Among the Gonds of Central India,
the bride goes in procession to the bridegroom, instead of his coming
to her, as is usual among the Hindus. It is intended in this way to
prevent the repetition of the catastrophe which overtook a luckless
pair who were about to be married in the ordinary way. The youth,
borne on his uncle’s shoulders in the procession, came within sight of
his bride, and unable to restrain his impatience he leaped to the
ground and looked with all his might to the place where he expected to
see her. She felt no less eager, and their eyes met. In a moment not
only the young couple but also the bridegroom’s uncle were turned into
sandstone spires yet visible on the road in descending into the valley
of the Narbada over the Vindhyan range from Bhopál.[133.2] The same
cause may perhaps be understood in an Enganese tale accounting for a
block of coral and a rock bearing some resemblance to human form off
the coast of the island, near the anchorages of Baraháu and
Kai-Kokoh. The one represents a husband who was deserting his wife
because he found she had a disgusting malady, and the other the
deserted wife.[133.3] It is more obvious in the case of two stones in
the tanks near the temples at Arang, in the Ráepur district of India,
and at Deobáluda. The erection of the pinnacle of a temple is {134}
the act of completion; and it seems that it is necessary to be
performed naked. These two temples were built simultaneously. When
they were ready to receive their pinnacles the mason and his sister
agreed to put them on at the same auspicious moment. Stripping
themselves according to custom, they climbed to the top. As they
reached it, each could see the other, and each through shame jumped
down into the tank beneath and was changed into stone. Both stones are
visible in seasons of drought, when the water in the tanks is
low.[134.1]

Petrifaction in the traditions of Christian Europe, when directly
inflicted by divine intervention, is usually the punishment of a
serious infraction of the divine law, often amounting to
_lèse-majesté_. Various stone circles in Cornwall, such as the
Hurlers, the Nine Maids and the Merry Maidens, were once human beings
transformed for Sabbath-breaking by hurling or dancing.[134.2] Stories
of this kind are commonplace all over Europe. We will be satisfied
with the following samples taken from Germany and Bohemia. The legend
of the two stone Jews at Ottorowo on the crossroad to Krzeszkowice, in
the province of Posen, relates that these culprits suffered
metamorphosis for profaning a crucifix.[134.3] In the neighbourhood of
the town of Gabel in Bohemia stand three blocks of stone surmounted by
crosses. They were girls who went to work in the fields on Easter
Sunday. They carried their disregard of holy things so far as to mock
when the sanctus bell sounded at the completion of the sacred rite;
and each time it rang they threw up to heaven the sickles they were
using to cut the grass. The third time the sickles fell not down
again, {135} and the girls were turned into stone. Near Commotau, in
the same country, lie seven great stones, once girls who led an evil
life, and were therefore transformed.[135.1] In Styria the same
penalty fell on a maiden who would spin on Sundays. A violent storm
destroyed the hut wherein she dwelt and transported her to the top of
a neighbouring rock, where she stands for ever, a warning against
blasphemy and greed.[135.2] On some pasture lands not far from
Jevenstedt stands a stone circle with two larger stones in the midst.
These were a bridal party who danced on Sunday during divine
service.[135.3] Bridal parties in the West as in the East seem
specially obnoxious to the displeasure of the higher powers. In
Altmark, near Dahrendorf, not far from the Hanoverian border, is a
large piece of granite surrounded by smaller stones, formerly a bride,
named Lene, from the state of Hanover, who with her attendants was
changed, no one knows why, into stone. We have already met with
several other instances. A circle of stones near Wirchow, in Neumark,
was a party of persons who added to their scorn of Whitsunday the
shameless eccentricity of dancing naked, and are now called the Adam’s
Dance. It has ever been held by the folk a grave misdemeanour to treat
with wanton disrespect the necessaries of life; and singular judgments
have, both in this country and elsewhere in Europe, fallen on such as
have dealt improperly with bread and other common kinds of food. Seven
boys were thus turned into stone, and are still to be seen near the
little town of Morin in Neumark.[135.4] Let us hope that the children
of the district are duly impressed by their awful doom.

{136}

Similar to the fate of the Styrian maiden was that of a pair of lovers
in Sardinia, who in consequence of the opposition of their families to
their union entered, the one a monastery, and the other a nunnery. But
love triumphs over even the vows of celibacy. The young monk escaped
from his convent, carried off his sweetheart and lived with her in the
wilds. The infraction of their vows could not, however, be passed
over. God raised one day an impetuous wind, which transported the
lovers to the top of Monte Ruju, where they rest changed into
stone.[136.1]

On the western continent are to be found many legends accounting for
rocks of peculiar form as human victims of supernatural caprice. The
Zuñi tradition mentioned in a previous chapter is but one example of
many. Mrs. Stevenson, who reports this tale, also records the
tradition of an allied people, the Sia, concerning two brothers of
ancient days, the culture-heroes of their tribe, renowned for
giant-slaying and other feats. On two occasions they went disguised as
poor, dirty, beggar-boys to villages of the Oraibi and the Katsuna
where feasts were being held. They were refused food save by one
family at each place; and the people were in consequence turned into
stone.[136.2] {137} More frequently, perhaps, in aboriginal folklore
the metamorphosis is suffered by a fugitive. In such cases it seems a
little doubtful whether the pursuers are thus foiled or satiated of
their revenge. The story of the Peruvian goddess, Cavillaca, will be
remembered in this connection.[137.1] “There is a Winnebago tradition
that a woman carrying her child was running from her enemies, so she
jumped down a steep place and was turned into a rock. And now when
they [the Winnebagoes] pass that place they make offerings to
her.”[137.2] A similar saga of the Nasqually Indians of British
Columbia is told to account for an isolated rock on the coast.[137.3]
Many other instances are to be found.

Among savages, however, it hardly seems necessary for their
fore-elders to render themselves obnoxious to superior beings as a
cause of this transformation. The natives of North Australia have
tales of persons, some good and others bad, who were turned on death
into stones or trees.[137.4] A Chinese legend, descending doubtless
from a more barbarous period, explains the existence of three rocks in
the Yang-tsze river and the Poyang lake, through which it runs. A boat
containing a man, his wife and their two children was capsized on the
river during a storm. The man and woman perished at once; but the lads
were assisted by a compassionate frog, which took them on its back and
made for their home on the banks of the lake. The younger boy,
grieving at his parents’ death, threw himself off and was drowned,
reappearing shortly after in the {138} form of a bold limestone rock,
now known as the Little Orphan, situate in the middle of the river
about twenty miles below the egress of the lake. The surviving orphan
held on until the frog had entered the lake, when he fell
broken-hearted into the water and became the large rock, surmounted in
later ages by a Buddhist monastery and pagoda, and called the Great
Orphan. The frog, in the bitterness of grief at his unsuccessful
efforts, also yielded up his life, and in due course emerged from the
waves as the Frog Rock.[138.1] In Japan the peasants discern high up
on the weatherworn cliffs of Matsura, “the figure of a lady in long
trailing court-dress with face and figure eagerly bent over the
western waves.” It is Satyohimé, the wife of Saté-hiko, petrified
while gazing to catch the last glimpse of the sails that bore her
husband away to Corea, as one of the Mikado’s body-guard, sent to
assist the Japanese allies at Hiaksai, in the year 536 A.D. Her sad
fate has rendered her name the symbol in Japanese literature of
devoted love.[138.2]

I have left to the last the Gorgonian power of petrifying with a look.
The fatal head was regarded, we know, as the most powerful of Athene’s
weapons. As a single illustration we may take a curious case mentioned
by Pausanias. Describing the temple of Athene near Coronea, in
Bœotia, where the Panbœotian festival was held, he says that a
priestess named Iodamia coming into the temple once at night was
confronted by the goddess herself armed with Medusa’s head, and was
turned into stone. An altar called by the unfortunate priestess’ name
seems to have stood in the temple when Pausanias wrote; and a woman
daily put fire thereon, saying in the language of the country that
{139} Iodamia was living and demanded fire.[139.1] The memory of
Medusa yet lingers, as we have seen, in Seriphos, where her head on
the coinage of the island seems to have preserved it. If we may trust
mediæval writers like Walter Map, Gervase of Tilbury and Roger of
Hoveden, a more definite recollection, though still confused and
distorted, formerly remained in the Levant. Gervase tells us that
between Rhodes and Cyprus are the Syrtes, commonly called the Gulf of
Satalia, where the Gorgon’s head was said to have been thrown into the
sea. They are opposite the town of Satalia, claimed by the Sultan of
Iconium. The Gorgon was held to have been a prostitute whose beauty
drove men out of their wits, until Perseus threw her head into the
deep. This of course was a piece of euhemerism on the part of the
Marshal of Arles or his informants, whoever they may have been. He
goes on, however, to say that the natives report that a soldier fell
in love with a certain queen, and not being able to obtain her during
her life, he secretly violated her sepulchre. From his posthumous
embraces the corpse bore a monstrous head, which, the soldier was
warned by a voice in the air at the moment of his crime, would by its
mere look destroy all things that it beheld. Accordingly at the proper
time he opened the tomb and found the head, carefully averting himself
from its gaze. Whenever he exhibited it to his foes they and their
cities were destroyed. Afterwards he found another love; and one day,
while sailing the sea he was sleeping peacefully in her lap, when she
took the opportunity to steal the key and open the casket wherein the
head was kept. Her curiosity proved her bane. Her lover awoke and,
plunged in grief at the catastrophe, he took out the {140} fatal head,
stuck it up and perished with his ship from its glance. Every seven
years, it was believed, the head rose to the surface of the sea and
imperilled the safety of all who navigated those waters.[140.1] Map’s
account is that the hero was a cordwainer of exceeding great skill,
who flourished at Constantinople in the time of Gerbert, that is to
say, about a hundred and fifty years before his own time. Falling in
love with a noble maiden whose naked foot he had been called upon to
clothe in the course of business, he sold everything and took service
in the army, in order to rise in the world and become worthy of her.
She, however, died in his absence. The violation of her tomb follows.
The Gorgonian head is expressly declared to have _stiffened_ the
wretches upon whom its gaze was brought to bear. The soldier at length
weds the daughter and heiress of the Emperor. She gives him no peace
until he tells her the contents of his casket; and having learnt the
secret she tries the effect of the head upon her husband as he wakes
from sleep. Having thus fordone him by her wiles, she orders his body
and the instrument of his enormities to be cast together into the
Grecian Sea. A terrific storm arose when her command was fulfilled;
and on its subsiding a vast and destructive whirlpool remained ever
thereafter, called Satalia, or more commonly, the Gulf of Satalia,
from the maiden’s name.[140.2]

More nearly akin to the classical myth is a Danish tradition that in
former days a troll who dwelt in the Issefiord was accustomed to stop
every passing vessel and take a man by way of toll. At last it became
known that the troll’s power would endure until the head of Pope
Lucius, {141} who had suffered decapitation in Rome ages before,
should be shown him. Some monks were accordingly despatched to Rome
for the head. “When the ship returned and was about to run into the
fiord the troll made his appearance; but as soon as they held forth
the head and the troll got a sight of it, he with a horrid howl
transformed himself into a rock.” Representations in Roeskilde
Cathedral commemorate the event.[141.1] One of the commonest of
Scandinavian sagas is that which attributes the power of transforming
trolls and giants to the sun. The earliest mention of it is in the
Helgi poems, which are only known to us in a single manuscript, the
Codex Regius at Copenhagen, but which probably date from the tenth
century. In one of these poems, Rimegerd, the giantess, whose father
Helgi has slain, appears by night and calls on the hero to recompense
her for her father’s slaughter. Helgi and Atli his warder detain her
in a war of words until the sun rises, when Atli exclaims: “Look
eastward now, Rimegerd! Helgi hath stricken thee with the wand of
Death.… It is day, Rimegerd! Atli has lured thee to deadly delay. It
will be a laughter-moving harbour-mark, methinks, that thou wilt make
now thou art turned to stone!” The same catastrophe is implied in the
_Alvíssmal_, also found only in the Codex Regius, but at least as old
as the Helgi poems. Allwise the dwarf has come to fetch Freya, whom he
has entrapped the Anses into a promise to give him as wife. He comes
by night; and one of the Anses detains him with questions calculated
to bring out his extensive cosmological knowledge, until the day
breaks and the hall is full of sunshine. We are then to understand,
from the triumphant expressions of his interlocutor, that the power
{142} of the sun effects his petrifaction.[142.1] In a Norwegian
ballad of _Hermod the Young_ the hero rescues a beautiful maiden from
a giantess, riding off with her on Christmas Day. The giantess pursues
all night, and is on the point of catching the fugitives, when the sun
arises and she is changed to a stone.[142.2] Two tall isolated cliffs
lift themselves out of the sound between Eysturoy and Streymoy, two of
the Færoe Islands. They were a giant and his wife who had been sent
from Iceland to drag the Færoe Islands nearer to that island. It was
at night. The giant stood in the sea while the giantess took the other
end of the rope, and after an ineffectual attempt made it fast to the
top of one of the hills. She saw the glimmering of dawn and hastened
down; but too late. Before she and her husband could wade back to
Iceland with their charge the sun came up out of the sea and they were
instantly turned to stone, to stand there for ever looking northward
but unable to move from the spot.[142.3] These are sufficient as
samples of the Scandinavian belief in the transforming influence
exercised by the gaze of the sun upon the evil powers of darkness. The
incident has passed into a Lapp _märchen_ from Tanen, where a king’s
son, by the help of a friendly fox, has stolen a maiden called
Evening-glow, the sun’s sister, from some giants who held her captive.
The fox leads the pursuing giants astray until the dawn, when he
exclaims: “See, there comes the sun’s sister!” They raise their eyes
to the morning glow, and are forthwith changed into stone
pillars.[142.4] The incident here probably owes its origin to the
adjacent Norsemen; the Quiché {143} saga of the three tribal gods,
Tohil, Avilix, and Hacavitz is, however, quite independent.
Originally, we learn, there was neither sun, moon, nor star. When for
the first time the sun rose, it petrified these and other ferocious
deities, but without taking away from them the power of changing their
forms and resuming mobility when they pleased.[143.1] According to the
story of the inhabitants of Hispaniola, men came out of two caves. A
giant, Machakael, was set to guard these caves and prevent mankind
from looking upon the light of the sun. One night he wandered from his
post, and could not return before sunrise. The sun rose out of the sea
and looked with anger upon the giant, who was forthwith turned into a
rock called Kauta.[143.2]

The power of petrification is, however, usually regarded as equivalent
to that of striking dead with a glance. This is expressed, as we have
already seen,[143.3] in the case of Balor of Tory Island. A long list
of stories wherein a glance is credited with this terrible might could
be culled from every nation, beginning with that of Isis punishing at
Byblos an unlucky boy who disturbed her in her grief.[143.4] In some
cases, as in a variant of the tale of Balor, the baleful eye not only
slays but reduces its victim to ashes.[143.5] The elephant head of the
Hindu god, Ganesa, is a substitute for his original head burned to
cinders by the gaze of Sani. Nor is the murderous property confined to
supernatural beings. Witches, who of course partake of more than {144}
ordinary human qualities, are credited with it. Men of special
holiness have sometimes the fatal gift, like Rabbi Juda in rabbinical
tradition, who thus killed four-and-twenty of his scholars in a single
day;[144.1] or a Samoan high-priest of the heavenly gods, whose very
look was poison; “if he looked at a cocoa-nut tree it died, and if he
glanced at a bread-fruit tree it also withered away.”[144.2] Various
writers, classic and mediæval, have told us of the women of a certain
Scythian tribe, of the Sardinians, or of a remote island in the ocean,
whose glance is death.[144.3] To such writers we owe the fable of the
Catoblepas, or Downlooker, an animal “so wicked and so venomous that
no man may behold it right in the face, but he die anon without
remedy.” Some of the soldiers of Marius in his expedition against
Jugurtha, not knowing the creature and attacking it incautiously, were
slain by the eye of this terrible beast.[144.4] In various parts of
Asia and Africa serpents also have naturally been reputed to possess
the same horrible gift; while countries like Spain have not yet parted
with the belief in the basilisk.[144.5] Among American tribes the
superstition and the stories of the deadly glance are found in similar
terms to those of the Old World. I have already mentioned the Quiché
gods petrified by the sun. The Cegihas have a tale of a mysterious
being called Two Faces that slew every one {145} who looked at
it.[145.1] The Ts’ets’āut of British Columbia account for the
prohibition to a man to look at his adult sister by a legend of one of
their fore-elders who married his sister. Their brothers were ashamed,
tied them together by way of punishment, and deserted them. But the
man broke the ropes; and having killed a ram, an ewe and a kid of the
mountain-goats, he clad himself, his wife and their child in the
skins, and they assumed the shape of goats. “He had acquired the power
of killing everything by a glance of his eyes. One day his tribe came
up the river for the purpose of hunting, and he killed them. Then he
travelled all over the world, leaving signs of his presence
everywhere, such as remarkable rocks.”[145.2] Iroquois traditions tell
of an Onondaga chief, named Tododäho, whose head was covered with
tangled serpents, and whose angry look sufficed to strike the
beholders dead. He submitted, however, to be tamed, and to have the
serpents combed out of his locks.[145.3] But the saga which presents
the closest parallel to the incident of the Slaughter of the Gorgon
comes to us from Brazil, and comes with every mark of indigenous
growth. Some of the Brazilian tribes tell of a bird which kills with a
look. The story goes that a hunter succeeded in slaying one, and cut
off its head, without the dreadful eye being turned upon him. Like
Perseus, he killed his game thenceforward by turning the eye upon it.
“His wife, not dreaming of its destructive power, however, once turned
it toward her husband and {146} killed him, and then accidentally
turned it toward herself and died.”[146.1]

The truth is that we are here in presence of the worldwide belief in
the Evil Eye: one more demonstration of the inseparable connection
between tale, superstition, and custom. The awful weapon of the
mythical Brazilian bird was Medusa’s power, the same as is to-day the
terror of the Italian peasant, and is not yet regarded with
indifference even in lands, like our own, which boast of being in the
van of civilisation. From all parts of the world we read of the
superstition that certain persons wield, intentionally or
unintentionally--as often the latter as the former--the power of
blasting others by their look. This power was dreaded in Palestine
from time immemorial. The maxim, “Eat thou not the bread of him that
hath an Evil Eye” is found among the Hebrew proverbs; and Jesus Christ
alludes to the superstition, though only to warn the Pharisees against
“an Evil Eye” as a moral quality proceeding out of the heart.[146.2]
The superstition has left its traces in language. To the ancient Roman
“Envy, eldest born of Hell,” was really _Invidia_, the Evil Eye; and
the English rustic still speaks of being “overlooked.” Wizards and
witches are thus gifted, of course: the Evil Eye is amongst their
mightiest weapons. But it is by no means theirs alone. Innocent women,
according to many nations, are periodically cursed with it. In fact,
anybody may have an Evil Eye, even without knowing it; the most sacred
personages are not exempt. The Samoan high priest and the Rabbi Juda
are examples from the opposite ends of the {147} earth. Pius the
Ninth, infallible head of the church as he was, vicar of Christ and
what not, was afflicted with the Evil Eye. There was nothing so fatal
as his blessing; and the flock he tended cowered and quailed before
their shepherd’s sight.[147.1]

So much has been written of late on the Evil Eye that it is enough to
mention in these general terms a superstition at once much less
complex and much more fully known to anthropological students than
some of those investigated in other chapters of these volumes. Its
origin is doubtless to be sought in the evil passions of which the
human countenance is so admirable and so terrible an exponent,
striking inevitably with horror and awe even beholders who are not the
object of the resentment or the jealousy expressed--much more,
fascinating and paralysing with fear the unhappy victims, as a bird is
said to be fascinated by a snake.[147.2]




 CHAPTER XXI.
 THE STORY AS A WHOLE. THE PROBLEM OF ITS PLACE OF ORIGIN. CONCLUSION.

{148}

My task draws towards its close. We have now examined the four
leading trains of incident as developed in modern folktales belonging
to the Perseus cycle. We have found the Supernatural Birth, the
Life-token, and the Medusa-witch founded on superstitions common to
all mankind and arising in the depths of savagery. The Rescue of
Andromeda, on the other hand, appears to be restricted to nations
which have attained a certain grade of civilisation, and to spring out
of the suppression of human sacrifices to divinities in bestial form.

We have now to return to the story as an artistic whole, and to
inquire where and when it originated.

In seeking the origin of the story as a whole it is well to begin with
a caution, to which I have alluded in a note to an earlier chapter,
namely, that it is dangerous in these matters to assert that a story
or a custom is not found outside a given area. Anthropological
research is so modern that much material is certain to have already
perished unrecorded, and much that still exists as yet is unrecorded,
either because {149} it has been overlooked, or because scientific
observers have not yet reached it. All assertions or assumptions,
therefore, of a negative character must be taken with the limitations
imposed by this condition of things. They can only be provisional, for
they may, any of them, be upset by further research. Moreover, the
mass of anthropological data is already so great, and is growing with
such rapidity, that nothing is easier than for a single inquirer, how
diligent soever he may be, to overlook facts duly recorded which may
be in conflict with his conclusions. To assert, for example, and to
base any portion of an argument upon the assertion, that tales of the
group under consideration are not found in Hindustan in anything like
the shape wherein we find them in Europe, would be to run the risk of
having to revise the argument in the face of new discoveries, or of
old records which have not been brought to the writer’s knowledge.

Thus much premised, let us turn to the facts so far as we know them.
The geographical boundaries within which the story, as a whole, may be
found, are the geographical and ethnical boundaries of that stage of
culture which forms the seed-plot of the incident of most restricted
range. We can only look for it among nations who have approached and
passed the level of barbarism where human sacrifices are offered to
brutes; for it is only among such that the Rescue of Andromeda can
have been conceived. This excludes races like the Australians, who
seem never to have practised sacrifices of the kind referred to, even
if their country were infested with beasts or reptiles addicted to
such food. It does not exclude peoples like the ancient Quiché, who
assuredly offered human sacrifices, and whose legend, partly cited in
the last chapter, looks back to a {150} time when such offerings were
made to wild animals. Among the ferocious gods petrified by the sun
when it rose upon the primeval darkness, we are told, were those
“connected with the lion, the tiger, the viper, and other fierce and
dangerous animals. Perhaps we should not be alive at this moment,”
continues the chronicler, “because of the voracity of these fierce
animals, had not the sun caused this petrifaction.” But this did not
end the mischief; for these gods could recover life and mobility when
they pleased. And the four Quiché patriarchs were impelled,
apparently by a supernatural vision, to wet their altars with the
blood of human victims. Wherefore they watched in their mountain
stronghold for lonely travellers belonging to the neighbouring tribes,
and, having seized and overpowered them, slew them for a sacrifice;
and wherever the blood of a victim was found, there also were always
found the tracks of many tigers. This was the craft--so the tale
says--of the priests; but at last the tribes that suffered thus found
out that the loss of their friends was due not to attacks of wild
animals but to the desire of the Quiché patriarchs to provide
offerings for their gods; and they made war upon the aggressors. They
were beaten by the aid of a miraculous horde of wasps and hornets; but
their lives were spared and they became tributaries to the Quiché for
ever.[150.1] The legend records, in traditional form, the change from
the worship of living creatures to that of gods of stone. But it does
not record the abandonment of human sacrifices, for that never took
place; and being told from the point of view of the conquerors it
contains no rescue-incident. What the subject-nations may have had to
say upon the matter we do not know. Inasmuch, {151} however, as they
probably continued to furnish the victims from time to time, we may
assume that no rescue-incident was included in their folklore. At all
events the incident has not been recorded among any people on the
Western Continent, save in circumstances pointing to importation since
the days of Columbus.[151.1]

In the eastern world it is found from Ireland to Japan, from
Scandinavia to Quilimane. If we set aside the story from
Quilimane[151.2] as sporadic, and introduced by the Portuguese, the
southern limit of the extension of the Perseus group may perhaps be
fixed on the shores of the Red Sea, where, Ælian tells us, in ancient
times Perseus, the son of Zeus, was honoured, and where we may be
allowed to indulge the hope that our archæological explorers will
sooner or later recover some trace of the tale. Eastward, a variant
embodying the incidents of the Life-token, the Rescue of Andromeda,
and the Medusa-witch, has been found in Cambodia; and the Rescue of
Andromeda has been found alone in Japan. The area, therefore, within
which the place of origin is to be sought may roughly be said to
include the whole of Europe and Asia, and the parts of Africa which
lie to the north and east of the Great Desert.

Comparing the classical version of the legend, as it has come down to
us in the writings chiefly of Ovid and Lucian, with what may be
regarded as the typical shape of the {152} modern _märchen_, we are
struck by a number of differences, among which we may reckon the
difference in the mode of the supernatural conception; the absence
from the ancient tale of the Life-token and of the impostor who
pretends to have slain the dragon; the displacement of the incident of
the Medusa-witch and its elevation in the classical story to a more
prominent position than it usually occupies elsewhere; the
substitution in modern tales of the Helpful Beasts for the divine gift
of weapons; and lastly the enthralling power of Fate, supplying the
artistic motive for the romance of Perseus, but absent from most of
the folktales gathered in later times. Some of these differences of
detail, however, are more apparent than real. In Phineus, who,
according to Ovid, invades the wedding banquet, we have an analogue of
the impostor. Too cowardly to fight the monster and save his
betrothed, he comes forward with a posse of friends to take her by
force from the victor, and is only vanquished when Perseus exhibits
the Gorgon’s head. It is tempting to suggest that in the prototype of
the story Perseus attacked and slew the monster on his outward
journey, that he passed on to the slaughter of Medusa before
celebrating his union with Andromeda, and that meanwhile Phineus laid
claim to the victory and its guerdon, and was confounded on the hero’s
return, either by production of the Gorgon’s head, as in Ovid’s text,
or by proof in the shape of the dragon’s head or tongue, as in the
more modern tales. This conjecture might be supported by the fact that
Perseus is represented by Ovid[152.1] as using only his sword in the
combat with the {153} monster, as well as by the consideration that it
supplies a motive for the inexplicable desertion by the victor of the
lady whom he has saved from the dragon’s maw, which occurs in so large
a number of variants. The order in question does occur, though rarely,
in modern stories;[153.1] but, as we shall see hereafter, there is a
decisive reason against supposing it ever to have formed part of the
classical legend.

The versions preserved by the author of the _Metamorphoses_ and in a
more fragmentary way by Lucian are substantially similar. That other
versions were current in antiquity we know from many sources. I have
already in the opening chapter given several instances of inconsistent
statements pointing unmistakably to this conclusion. The most
important of them for this inquiry are derived from Ælian. Writing in
the third century after Christ, he tells us of a fish found in the Red
Sea and called after Perseus, who was honoured by the Arabs dwelling
on the shore. If the modern _märchen_ did not refer to a fish as the
source of life of the twin-heroes this would be puzzling, since no
reference is made in the classical saga to a fish. But in face of the
facts it seems to show, not merely that the literary form of the saga
is only one of two or more current in antiquity, but that one at least
of the popular and unrecorded variants included a version of the
Supernatural Birth which was allied to that in the Breton tale of _The
King of the Fishes_. The same writer in a later passage associates a
marine crustacean with Perseus. Many persons abstained from eating it,
because they deemed it sacred. This I understand to be an assertion of
a practice not {154} confined to the island of Seriphos; whose
inhabitants, Ælian goes on to say, if they found it dead would bury
it, if they caught it alive would not keep it in their nets, but
returned it to the sea. They would even weep over dead specimens, for
they held these creatures to be dear to Perseus, the son of
Zeus.[154.1] The custom of solemnly burying, and mourning for, dead
animals is very widespread, and is connected with totemism.[154.2] We
are probably right in believing that in the first instance the
crustacean referred to was the totem of some of the inhabitants of
Seriphos, that the national hero was either identified with it or held
to be its offspring, and that in process of time this hero was either
accepted and glorified as Perseus, the son of Zeus, by the more
polished Greeks of the mainland, or from the similarity of his birth
and exploits became merged in the hero of Argos and Mykene. Doubtless
in the ruder ages tales common in their origin but independent in
their development were told both at Seriphos and on the mainland. As
intercourse increased, the tales of Argos and Mykene would become
known to the people of Seriphos, and _vice versâ_, their similarity
would be recognised and their heroes identified. If the Seriphiote
saga connected its hero with the rock-lobster, which was regarded as a
totem, as the triplet boys are connected in the Breton _märchen_ with
the King of the Fishes, all the conditions would be fulfilled to
account for the Seriphiote practices. We seem here, therefore, to have
a third version of the story. The two versions which did not reach
literary immortality both brought the hero into close relations with a
marine animal. We can hardly doubt that in both {155} cases those
relations were such as described in so many of the modern variants.

The next question to consider is that of the relation between the
ancient and modern variants of the story. If it were confined to that
between the ancient variants and the variants current to-day in Italy
and Greece, it would be comparatively simple. The problem is, in fact,
much larger; for we have to take into account variants found all over
the area, already described, within which the place of origin is to be
sought. We cannot conclude, I need hardly say, that the first-recorded
version of a tale is the parent of all the rest, or of any of them.
Our scepticism must go much further. It often happens that the
first-recorded version is one current in a higher grade of
civilisation, and therefore more refined and artistic, than a version
subsequently gathered from oral tradition. Emphatically is this the
case with classical stories and Buddhist parables, as writers on
folklore have often observed. But what has not been equally insisted
on is, that the reason why these classic stories and Buddhist parables
have found their way into literature is because they are the more
refined and artistic versions. It is quite certain that if Ovid had
had to choose between the picturesque narrative of the shower of gold,
with the parentage of the highest god of Olympus, on the one hand, and
a totemistic tale about a fish or a rock-lobster on the other hand, he
could not have hesitated to which of these sources he should, for
literary purposes, assign the begetting of Perseus. So, to take an
instance outside the range of the present study, if the compilers of
the _Jātaka_ could have chosen between the Tar-baby of Negro
story-tellers and the Demon with the matted hair, they would have
preserved in their collection the story in {156} the form which
actually appears.[156.1] Probably neither alternative was actually
offered, the causes which would have operated in the mind of the poet
or the parable-writer having already wrought, less consciously indeed,
but not less effectively, in the popular mind, so as to render, by a
process, analogous with that of natural selection, which we may call
traditional selection, the version that has reached us predominant
over all others. For æsthetic and ethical development speedily
outstripped that of abstract thought and criticism. Savages often
attain a high degree of taste and skill in the production and
ornamentation of their utensils and weapons. The beauty of mediæval
architecture has rarely been approached and never been surpassed,
though the generations which built the great cathedrals of Europe were
under bondage to one of the most cruel and extravagant systems of
superstition that the wit of man has elaborated. At the same time in
many directions, and at all events theoretically, they had attained a
comparatively advanced moral elevation. The arts of poetry and
story-telling come to maturity later than the material arts, because
they are dependent upon the critical sense; but even they are quite
compatible with very gross credulity. No people has displayed a finer
critical sense than the ancient Greeks; yet no people has told more
absurd stories about its divinities or practised sillier customs; and
that, even in the age which produced their most finished sculptures
and their most exquisite poems. The unbelief of the philosophers was
confined to a small class; and the populace that applauded the verses
and appreciated the art of Euripides pinned its faith to omens, {157}
found presages in the flight of birds, and gave implicit credence to
the magical effect of incantations, to say nothing of the ridiculous
and impossible tales about the gods which were part of its religious
faith, and as such were literally and devoutly accepted. Yet even
among these a process of selection was going forward, tending to
eliminate the ruder and coarser, preserving and refining, not
necessarily the more credible, but the more artistic. From the more
cultured cities of Greece a literary and æsthetic influence was
diffused throughout all Greek-speaking communities. To this aggressive
influence local beliefs and local customs gradually yielded. They were
either identified and amalgamated with the beliefs and customs to
which it gave a continually wider and wider currency, gaining in the
process a less barbarous exterior; or, if too stubborn for
identification and amalgamation, they were thrust aside bit by bit and
left to rustics and to slaves. The same process, repeated in the
modern world, has caused the powers and distinguishing marks of the
ancient superseded deities to be attributed to the Madonna and the
saints, and many of the heathen shrines and superstitions to be
baptized into the Christian Church. The rest have been relegated to
the peasantry, and driven into more and more remote districts by the
continual pressure, direct and indirect, of the triumphant religion
and the increasing civilisation. So it has been everywhere, not only
in Europe, but wherever in the whole world a higher has been carried,
either by arms, commerce or persuasion, across the frontiers of a
lower culture. We may conclude, therefore, that the story of Danae
made its way throughout the Eastern Mediterranean, to the disadvantage
of the stories told in various places of the birth of a hero similar
{158} in the rest of his life to Perseus, because of its own æsthetic
qualities, and because it was accepted by the most intellectual
peoples of Greece. These two causes, it will be seen, are at bottom
one. For it was precisely the intellectual characteristics of the
polished peninsular Greeks which had given the tale its artistic form,
and thus fitted it for prevailing over its competitors. Traditional
selection, first in the inhabitants of Argos and the neighbourhood,
and afterwards in all those with whom they and their allies and
fellow-countrymen came into contact, determined its shape and secured
its victory.

But though Ovid may have been ignorant of other versions of the story,
it is manifest that others existed. And here it is material to observe
that the incident of the Rescue of Andromeda stands in the poet’s
account on a very different footing from that of the remaining
incidents. Though it is now (perhaps by virtue of the Christian
symbolism read into it from early days of Christianity) the incident
which first springs into the mind on mention of the name of Perseus,
in the _Metamorphoses_ it is a mere episode, not organically connected
with the hero’s story. The encounter with Andromeda is represented as
fortuitous. It is not led up to by the previous narrative. It affects
the after-incidents in no way. The dragon is not even petrified by the
Gorgon’s head. On the other hand, the fatal prophecy is the foundation
of all the rest of the saga, from which nothing could be omitted
(save, it may be, the visit to Atlas) without impairing the natural,
the inevitable, development of the legend as an artistic whole. We
must infer that the Rescue is an intrusive episode, and that, as in
many modern variants, the tale comprised at first only the other two
trains of incident, already characterised as {159} the Birth and the
Quest of the Gorgon’s Head. The remaining versions current in
antiquity, or some of them, probably omitted Andromeda with all her
picturesque possibilities; and it may be permitted to conjecture that
the story we regard as classical may have been formed by the imperfect
fusion of a legend consisting of the Birth and the Quest of the
Gorgon’s Head, with one recognised for some reason as kindred, and
consisting only of the Birth and the Rescue of Andromeda. The Albanian
_märchen_, related in our opening chapter, may represent the latter
by direct transmission, while the sagas involved in Ælian’s
allusions--perchance also as known to Herodotus--may have been
guiltless of the fight with the Dragon.

We cannot pursue the conjecture into the region of probabilities,
because of the obvious confusion of the Albanian tale, and of the
imperfect state of our knowledge with regard to local legends not
taken up into Greek and Roman literature, and with regard to Egyptian
and Babylonian cults. The Tuscan tale from Pratovecchio[159.1] seems,
however, to have descended in right line from the familiar version of
Ovid and Lucian--not, that is to say, from their writings, but from
the oral sources whence they drew--though on its way to us it has not
passed wholly uncontaminated by other streams. But can we venture to
assert the same either of the Irish, German, Swedish, and Russian
tales which I have assigned to the _Danae_ type; or of the various
modern Italian and Greek stories wherein the hero’s birth is ascribed
to entirely different causes? Of the latter, some are perhaps derived
from local variants current in antiquity. Yet even to assume this will
carry us but a little way towards the solution of the problem {160} of
origin of a _märchen_ told as far afield as Ireland and Cambodia.

The legend in classical literature is the product of a comparatively
high stage of civilisation. In proof of this, it is only necessary to
refer to the divine gift of weapons. The helmet, the shield of metal,
brightly polished as a mirror, the sword, are not the weapons of the
unsophisticated savage. They are replaced in a large number of modern
variants by the gift of Helpful Animals. Now, everywhere in the lowest
planes of culture we find stories of birds, beasts, reptiles, and even
insects, talking and acting in human fashion, sometimes hostile, more
usually perhaps helpful to man. It would seem as though man, at
variance with his fellow-man, and therefore having unintermittent
reason to suspect him, beset, too, by the awful supernatural powers of
his imagination, turned for sympathy, perforce, and consolation to his
fellow-creatures of a different shape, whom he credited with ability
to aid him in his need. No line was drawn between nature and that
which was beyond or above nature. But while he imagined in his own
form the powers whose enmity he dreaded, he sought, of necessity, his
allies among those of other forms. He observed their characteristics;
he experienced their usefulness in supplying his wants; he felt
himself akin to them; out of them he framed totems, and ultimately
gods. The modern incident, therefore, of the Helpful Animals cannot be
derived from the classical gift of weapons; for not only is it utterly
different in character, but it comes up from a deeper depth of
barbarism. Thus it constitutes a strong presumption that the stories
wherein it occurs, however they may have been modified in the course
of ages, are not to be traced back to the classic literary saga. Still
less can {161} we venture to assert that they are derived from the
local variants of antiquity. They would be likely to owe their origin
rather to a tale already common property, than to one merely local.
And of the local variants we only know that Perseus was connected in
one of them with a fish; whereas the corresponding heroes of modern
variants are frequently so connected, while they are never connected
with a crustacean, but often with other artificial means of
generation, not noticed in any of the hints that have reached us from
ancient times.

To elucidate the matter, I have compiled and placed in an Appendix
tables of the variants accessible to me. I do not, of course, pretend
that they are complete. Statistics of the kind never are; and they
must not be taken for more than they are worth. Still, I have no
reason to think that they would be seriously modified by the addition
of other variants. If we glance at Table A we shall see that out of
110 examples (comprising stories properly belonging to the cycle, and
also stories wherein the Rescue of Andromeda is the only incident
belonging to the Legend of Perseus) forty-four represent the Helpful
Beasts as congenital with the heroes, while four others represent some
of the Beasts as congenital, the rest of them being obtained in
another way. By _congenital_ I mean born of the same material which
causes the birth of the heroes, as in the case of the fish, where one
part given to the woman originates the children, and another given to
a mare or a bitch originates the foals or the puppies. This, the most
savage conceit of the manner in which the Helpful Beasts were
obtained, is thus found in more than forty-one per cent. of the
stories. They are told throughout the whole of Europe, from Donegal to
Georgia, from Sweden to Greece. One {162} of them, indeed, has been
carried, as we may assume, from Portugal to Quilimane, where the
origin of the Helpful Beasts is reproduced by the natives in the most
intensely savage form of all; for the woman gives birth not only to
the heroes but to their dogs, and even their spears and their guns. In
ten cases in the table the Beasts are given by their parent animals,
while in ten others (or eleven, if we add, as we probably may, the
Servian case[162.1]) they attach themselves to the heroes out of
gratitude.[162.2] The total percentage of stories in which the Beasts
attach themselves, or are given by the parent animals out of
gratitude, to the heroes is thus nearly twenty. In sixteen cases, less
than fifteen per cent., they are obtained by exchange of some other
animals, or of arms or corn. In nine cases, or little more than eight
per cent., they are acquired from conquered foes; while in only eight
cases, a still smaller percentage, they are obtained in the classical
way from a mysterious personage. If we add the two classes of exchange
and gift by a mysterious personage together, we obtain twenty-four
cases, or a little under twenty-two per cent., of which three alone
properly belong to the Perseus group: that is, contain more than one
of the four chief trains of incident which compose it. One of these
three is the Tuscan story I have already indicated as probably a
direct descendant of the classical tale. The rest of the twenty-four
come from different parts of European Russia, Transylvania, Bohemia,
{163} Germany, Italy, the Celtiberian Peninsula, Brittany, and Achill
Island, two variants having been carried to North America, possibly by
the French.

If we turn to Table B, relating to the Gift of Weapons, we find
results not very different. Out of a total number of seventy-two
stories, twenty-two (or thirty per cent.) represent the Weapons as
congenital. These are all from Central Europe, Sweden, Denmark, Italy,
Sicily, Spain and Portugal, including the story from Quilimane; and
they all belong to the Perseus group. Then we have twelve, or, if we
add the Lithuanian tale in which the Weapons are taken from an
uninhabited house, thirteen variants, or eighteen per cent., in which
the Weapons are obtained from conquered foes. None of these thirteen
stories contain any other of the four chief trains of incident than
the Rescue of Andromeda. They are more widely spread than the former,
ranging from the west of Ireland to Lithuania and the Levant. There
are next seven instances (just under ten per cent.) in which the
Weapon is forged to order or bought by the hero. Of these, three come
from Scotland, one from Brittany, one is Basque, one is found in the
island of Syra, and one in Georgia. Lastly, we have ten cases in which
the Weapons are given by a mysterious person without any
consideration, two in which they are given to redeem stolen eyes, five
in which they are given out of gratitude, two in payment for services
rendered or in exchange, and one in which they are given by a fish: in
all, twenty cases, or not quite twenty-eight per cent.

This class of stories, embracing nearly one-third of those represented
in Table B, is much the most interesting, not only as scattered over a
far wider area than the others, but also, made up as it is partly of
stories within the true Perseus {164} cycle, and partly of stories
beyond it, because several of the stories present problems of
difficulty and importance. The direct derivation of the Tuscan tale
already referred to from the classical legend may be assumed. In it
the mirror, replacing the classical shield, is given by two old women,
who are the degraded representatives of the Graiai. The same incident
is found in another form in a Norwegian tale given by Asbjörnsen,
where the hero steals the single eye of each of three one-eyed hags
successively, and thus succeeds in wresting from them a magical sword,
a magical ship, and the art, equally magical, of brewing one hundred
lasts of malt in one brew. It is curious that this highly barbarous
incident has not been recovered elsewhere. We cannot suppose the
direct descent of the Norwegian tale from the classical, since the
remaining incidents are so different. But it is, of course, possible
that during the numerous Norse raids in the Middle Ages the incident
may have been picked up by Wicking adventurers, and carried home from
the Mediterranean shores with other spoils to Scandinavia, where it
became imbedded in a native tale recognised in other respects as
similar, and there replaced some equivalent incident. The conjecture
cannot be rated very highly; and alternative modes of transmission
will naturally present themselves to the reader. On the whole,
however, transmission of the incident, not of the entire story, seems
best to account for the facts.[164.1]

{165}

The only two variants of the Perseus group recovered from the East
belong to this class. Somadeva’s tale of Indívarasena has already
been abstracted at length.[165.1] Its divergencies from the type to
which it belongs are striking--so striking that we cannot postulate
transmission from Europe without conceding such alterations on the way
as almost to disguise it out of all recognition. On the other hand, it
is even harder to suppose that any European version can derive its
origin from either the _Kathá-sarit-Ságara_ or from the oral
narrative worked up into Somadeva’s rhetorical periods. Let us examine
the other Eastern variant. It is found in Cambodia, and has been
published since the first volume of this inquiry was issued. Its
heroes are not described as twins, though children of the same
parents, and nearly of the same age. From their childhood they were,
like the heroes of many Western _märchen_, incurably idle. To avoid
being put to work, they left home together. A magician gives them two
enchanted sabres, either of which will vanquish a whole army.
Moreover, if one of the youths die, the sabre of the other will rust;
and by means of it the dead youth can be brought back to life. These
gifts they accept, though almost too lazy to carry them. They reach a
city in mourning on account of the depredations of two yaks, winged
monsters which have devoured already more than twenty of the king’s
children, and have now demanded the last of them, {166} his beautiful
daughter, Neang (Miss) Pou. In vain the king had kindly offered them
the daughter of one of his subjects in her place. They insisted on
having Pou, and threatened terrible misfortunes on both the people and
the king if he refused. Compelled by the prayers of his subjects, he
had therefore caused poor Pou to be conducted to the house where the
ogres were wont to hold their banquets of royal flesh. The brothers,
passing through the city, arrived at the yaks’ house, and lay down to
sleep away the heat of the day, in spite of the princess’ warnings.
While they were talking to her the yaks drew nigh, and the whirr of
their enormous wings resounded above the house. The princess fainted
from terror, while the brothers addressed themselves to the fight, and
with their enchanted weapons speedily laid the monsters low. After the
fight they took the trouble to restore the princess to consciousness,
but, too lazy to take her home, rambled forth again. The king,
meanwhile, sent two officers to gather up her bones for burial. These
men, finding the yaks dead, dipped their staves in the blood, reported
to their master that they had slain the monsters, and demanded a
reward. Two other mandarins were then sent to find the lady’s bones
and tresses; and after some search they found her alive, and hidden in
the brushwood beside the road. She refused to return to a father who
had so cruelly given her up to be eaten, until he went himself mounted
on the royal elephant, and forced her into the palanquin he had
brought for the purpose. The king then proposed to give her in
marriage to one of the mandarins who pretended to have killed the
yaks; but when she told her father the facts, he sent to find the
brothers, who were her true deliverers. They refused to go back with
the messengers; they were too lazy; {167} and, armed as they were,
they repudiated allegiance to the king, and laughed at the threat of
compulsion. However, the bodies of the yaks were unburied; they
poisoned the air; and even a thousand men were unable to remove them.
Nay, all the inhabitants were requisitioned, and an attempt with ten
thousand proved unsuccessful in stirring one of the corpses. The
brothers had not left the country, and they were incommoded by the
terrible odour. Wherefore at last they offered their services, which
were gladly accepted. A single touch of their sabres made a great hole
in the earth, into which they pushed the yaks, and with another touch
threw back the soil and covered them over. The elder brother then weds
the princess, while the other sets forth on his travels again, taking
the precaution, at his brother’s request, to sow along his path the
seeds of a certain rare tree, to show the way he has gone. The
adventurer arrives at a depopulated city, where he is attacked by a
troop of gigantic birds, and overcomes them only after a fearful
fight. Then he sat down to rest on a gong which he found lying in an
inner court of the palace, and from a hole in which an agreeable
perfume arose. He had not sat there more than an instant, when he was
pricked from beneath. He jumped up and examined his seat, but could
find nothing but the small hole he had noticed before. So he sat down
again. Again he was pricked. He jumped up once more, and taking his
sabre he clove the gong in two, when to his astonishment a lovely girl
emerged, magnificently clad, and shedding around her a delicious
perfume. This leads to explanations. She is called the Maiden of the
Scented Locks, and is the king’s daughter. The dreadful birds he had
slain had devastated the kingdom, and her father had shut her up in
the gong to carry {168} her away to a place of safety. She excused
herself for pricking her deliverer because he had sat down on the hole
which gave her air, and she was being stifled. The people, who had
fled away, by-and-by returned--all save the maiden’s father. He had
deserved the misfortunes and desolation of the country, and he
returned no more. The younger brother accordingly married the Maiden
of the Scented Locks, and they became king and queen. One day the
queen’s favourite waiting-woman was carried away by the current of the
river while bathing. She was not, however, drowned; and ultimately she
was made attendant on the leprous king of a neighbouring country. From
her the leper learns about her mistress of the Scented Locks. Here we
have, in a rationalistic form, the incident familiar to us in the
Egyptian tale of _The Two Brothers_. The leprous king offers to make
his attendant (woman though she was) viceroy if she will only get him
the Lady of the Scented Locks. The temptation was too great for her.
She returned to her former mistress; and, received by her with joy,
she watched her opportunity to murder the king by touching him with
his own enchanted sabre. To divert the widow from her grief, she
induces her to walk along the river-bank, and to board a trading junk
for the purpose of looking at the silks and other merchandise it
contains. But the trade was a sham; and before she knew it, the
hapless queen was far away down the river, in the hands of the
servants of the leprous king. All this time the elder brother was
often wondering what had become of his cadet since he departed. One
day he found the blade of his sabre rusted, and knew that his brother
was dead. Setting out in search of him, he soon found his realm and
his tomb. With his magical sabre he opened {169} the tomb, and brought
his brother back to life. Then both, disguising themselves with long
beards and old garments, set out for the capital of the leprous king.
Announcing themselves as able to cure leprosy, they are conducted to
the monarch. The treacherous favourite has extorted a promise from the
widowed Lady of the Scented Locks to yield to the desires of the king
if his leprosy be cured; for leprosy is well known to be an incurable
disease. By directions of the pretended physicians a house is built
right in the middle of the river; and there they induce the king to
put himself under a shower-bath, with which they are to mingle some
drops from a bottle containing an infallible remedy. Instead of curing
him, they scald him to death. They fling off their disguise, deliver
the younger brother’s queen, and conquer the kingdom by means of their
sabres. The treacherous favourite is not put to death, but simply
banished; and the others live happy ever after.[169.1]

This tale presents more than one point of interest. Save that the
brothers are two (instead of three, as in so large a number of
European variants), and that the magical weapon is a sword, it bears
hardly any material resemblance to Somadeva’s tale. It comprises three
out of the four cardinal incidents of the cycle (though the
Medusa-witch appears much modified), as well as the secondary
incidents of the Gift of Weapons and the Impostor; yet without
attaining any very close similarity in the manner of its telling to
the European tales. To its most striking peculiarity I have already
referred, namely, the incorporation of an incident found in the tale
of _The Two Brothers_. The form of the incident in the Cambodian is
obviously much later than in {170} the Egyptian story. The comic scene
of the Lady in the gong is a tolerably good guarantee that, by
whatever route the incident arrived in Cambodia and became annexed to
the tale, it was conveyed not by literary means, but by oral
tradition. Other parts of the story betray Indian influence;[170.1]
but so far as I know, the Lady of the Scented Locks has never yet been
discovered in Hindustan. A near kinsman, however, appears in a
_märchen_ told by the Santals, where the hero has hair twelve cubits
long. He sat down one day to dress it on the river-bank. “In combing
his tangled tresses a quantity was wrenched out; this he wrapped up in
a leaf and threw into the stream. It was carried by the current a
great distance down to where a raja’s daughter and her companions were
bathing. The raja’s daughter saw the leaf floating towards her, and
ordered one of her attendants to bring it to her. When the leaf was
opened it was found to contain hair twelve cubits in length.
Immediately after measuring the hair the raja’s daughter complained of
fever, and hasted home to her couch.” The long and short of the
matter, of course, was that she had fallen in love with the unseen
owner of the hair; and her father was compelled to search all over the
world for him that she might marry him.[170.2] Upon this it is to be
observed that the story, {171} of which I have given only a single
incident, is, as we should expect, much more savage than the Cambodian
tale, and that it could not have influenced the latter. But it points
to some such incident as that of the lost lock being, like the lost
slipper, part of the story-plasm out of which the folk-tales of the
eastern world have been evolved. The special form of the incident in
M. Leclère’s tale renders probable its transmission somehow from
Egypt--in the absence, that is, of any evidence of a more archaic
shape from which alike the Egyptian and the Cambodian incidents with
their peculiarities could have been derived. This does not necessarily
involve the transmission of the entire story from Egypt, where neither
in ancient nor in modern times have we found any variant from which it
could have been descended. But it does smooth the way for us to accept
the probability that the entire tale was transmitted from the West;
and so far as it goes it is evidence against its oriental origin.

Hitherto we have not reached any very definite results in our quest.
In Tables A and B I have exhibited the distribution of the stories
containing either the Helpful Animals or the Magical Weapons. If these
tables establish anything, it is that the greater number of the modern
members of the Perseus group are independent of the classical legend.
In an overwhelmingly large proportion of cases the Helpful Animals and
the Magical Weapons are obtained in some other than the classical way,
and usually they are congenital. In the tables account is taken not
only of stories including two or more of the chief incidents, and
therefore reckoned as properly members of the cycle, but also of those
which only contain the incident of the Rescue of Andromeda. If we
reckon the former alone, {172} the proportion is greatly increased.
The total number of cases in Tables A and B respectively will then be
reduced to 65 and 39; while of these, the cases in which the Helpful
Animals and the Weapons are respectively congenital will be 42 and 22,
or 65 and 56 per cent. Both the Helpful Animals and the Weapons are
indeed subordinate incidents in the story; but they are incidents,
especially when congenital, which are important enough to influence
its entire development. The stories in which horses, dogs, and lances
are congenital with the heroes cannot be derived from the classical
legend; and although some of the ancient variants are known to connect
a fish with the demi-god, Perseus, we have no means of ascertaining
whether anything corresponding to these animals and weapons was
included in any of them.

The independence of the classical legend and most of the modern
variants is confirmed by another test. There is no feature more marked
in the modern stories than that of the Impostor and the Tokens. Of the
Impostor we find a trace in antiquity, but none of the Tokens. It is
true that another classical story, located at Megara, mentions both.
It is preserved by the scholiast upon Apollonius Rhodius, who
attributes it to Derichidas, the historian of Megara. Alkathoos, the
son of Pelops, we are told, having been exiled for the murder of
Chrysippe, encountered on the territory of Megara a lion which
desolated the country, and which the king had commissioned some of his
subjects to destroy. Alkathoos after a fight succeeded in killing the
animal. Thereupon he cut out its tongue, which he placed in his
wallet, and proceeded to Megara. But the men whom the king had sent
against the brute claimed the honour of the victory; nor were they
convicted of the imposture {173} until Alkathoos in the king’s
presence drew forth the tongue. The king offered the tongue in
sacrifice to the gods, and gave his daughter Euaichme in marriage to
Alkathoos, who ultimately succeeded him upon the throne.[173.1] Now it
is fairly certain that this striking incident could never have been
part of the ancient legend of Perseus, otherwise it would have come
down to us in one or other of the classical writers. But not only is
it absent from the versions of Ovid and Lucian; another account,
mentioned by the mythographer Hyginus, points in a diametrically
opposite direction. He calls the betrothed of Andromeda, Agenor, and
declares that when Perseus wished to take Andromeda away, her father,
Cepheus, and Agenor, attempted secretly to murder him, and were turned
with their followers to stone by the exhibition of the Gorgon’s
head.[173.2] This is more inconsistent with the modern variants than
Ovid’s narrative.

So far, then, our results are the same; and it can only be claimed
that the modern stories are at most (with the exception of a few
variants) derived from a common stock with the classical legend. But
it may be suggested that the former have been contaminated by the
local tradition of Megara. The possibility of such contamination
cannot be denied. An examination, however, of Table C fails to
disclose any sure ground for believing it probable. For it will be
observed that of the stories properly belonging to the cycle, upwards
of fifty-two per cent. give the tongues alone {174} as the tokens of
identity; while, if we reckon the tales wherein the tongues are found,
either alone or in combination with other tokens, we reach more than
seventy per cent. And they are by no means confined to countries and
nationalities which have come directly under classical influence, but
seem to be scattered impartially over the whole of Europe. A less
certain mark of contamination, but not without some value, is the
character of the impostors. In the Megaran tradition they were the men
whom the king had commissioned to slay the lion; therefore of the
class of warriors or nobles. In stories properly belonging to the
cycle less than thirty-two per cent. of the impostors come under this
description, including all cases where vague description may mean any
servant of the king other than menial, whereas fifty per cent. are
charcoal-burners, coachmen, gipsies, and members of other despised
classes. What is most remarkable is that an overwhelming proportion of
the cases in which the impostors may be considered as of the class
indicated in the Megaran tradition are found in lands beyond the
direct classical influence. In the Balkan peninsula and the Greek
islands, in Italy, Spain, and France, the all but invariable impulse
of the story-teller is to degrade the impostor in rank and to render
him physically, as well as morally, repellent. If all the stories,
both within the Perseus group and beyond it, be taken into the
calculation, the results will not be found very different. It would
seem, therefore, that, to whatever cause we must ascribe the
remarkable uniformity of the incident in the folk-tales of Europe, the
evidence hardly warrants us in attributing it to contamination by the
one local legend of Megara.[174.1]

{175}

Turning for a moment to the saga forms assumed by the Rescue incident,
there is one instance wherein contamination by a local legend may have
taken place, though to an altogether smaller extent. All our
information points to an eastern origin for the legend of Saint
George. I have already discussed the cause of the appropriation of the
Rescue incident to the Christian martyr; and I need not repeat what
was then said. Mr. Baring-Gould’s theory ascribes the tale to a
misunderstanding of the words of a definite hagiologist. Whether we
accept that theory or not, the only difference will be one of date at
which the legend became current; it will not alter the geographical
direction in which we must look for its origin. As preserved in some
of the songs and legends of the Balkan peoples, it shows traces of
being affected by the story, handed down to us by Diodorus Siculus and
by Tzetzes the scholiast, of the Rescue of Hesione by Herakles.
“Troyan, the white city” of the Bosnian ballad, inevitably recalls to
us the Troy of Laomedon. Diodorus knew nothing of the version
preserved by Tzetzes, which represents the slaughter of the monster as
effected from the inside; or, if he did, he suppressed it, either as
less probable or less artistic. It is clear from the story of
Kleostratos recorded by Pausanias, and from the ancient vase referred
to in a note on an earlier page,[175.1] that the incident of a
dragon-slaughter was current {176} in antiquity in both forms. It may
be suggested that, with growth in civilisation, the fight face to face
gradually superseded the ruder notion of the hero being swallowed and
fighting his way forth from the serpent’s belly. Probably, therefore,
the feat ascribed to Saint George in Bosnian song and Bulgarian legend
is that of Herakles, rather than that of Perseus contaminated by that
of Herakles. The tale of Troy was, like the story of Perseus, much
more than a local legend. It was the common property of the classical
world, and may well have formed part of the inheritance of all the
Balkan nations. The intrusive barbarians who settled from time to time
during the decadence of the empire about the Danube and the Balkans,
must also have had their legends of dragon-slaying, whose essential
identity with those of the original population would be recognised.
The confusion thus caused would render it all the easier to substitute
a new hero consecrated by religion, and consequently having claims
upon belief which the older heroes had ceased to wield. Yet the
previous details would not be all effaced; and in such as were
preserved we should find evidence of the double procession. Thus the
interference of “the thundering Elijah” bears witness to Slavonic
influences, for Elijah as a saint is but a Christian disguise of the
pagan Slavonic thunder-god. In the same way the name of Troyan enables
us to say which of the classical Rescue legends it is that has been
worked up, with the Slavonic tradition, into the ballad of Saint
George. The names and special details connected with the feat of
Perseus are conspicuously absent.

We need not, however, conclude that everywhere the legends and songs
concerning Saint George embodied the saga of Hermione rather than that
of Andromeda. The {177} generally accepted ecclesiastical version laid
the scene of the conflict at a town of Libya, which would assuredly
point to the latter; while the local traditions whereof the martial
saint is hero indicate anything but descent from a story told of so
famous a city as Troy. Nor must we leave out of view the probability
that in antiquity, as in modern times, beside the sagas fitted with
names of heroes and of places, there was current a variety of
_märchen_, similar in plot, and to some extent in detail, ready to be
adapted to any names which might happen to lay hold of the popular
fancy. Such might easily infect the legend of Saint George while it
was taking shape among the folk, and as yet no version had acquired
preponderant authority, and thus form variants either of local, or, if
fortune smiled upon them, of more than local, acceptance.

But this christianised saga was not quite the only form of the Rescue
story known during the Middle Ages. Cuchulainn’s fight with the Fomori
was told as early as the legend of Saint George, if not indeed
earlier. I have already noted its remarkable resemblance to the
corresponding incident in _märchen_ of the _Herdsman_ type--a highly
specialised type, differing considerably from any form of the
classical story, and peculiar to the west of Europe. We have no direct
evidence as to the date when the stories of the _Herdsman_ type arose;
but it will be recollected that there is reason to think the type
belongs to the Celto-Iberian race, and therefore is of prehistoric
age. Nor will the reader fail to note that the Rescue of Devorgoil
from the Fomori appears to be an offshoot of the same type, that it is
found among one of the branches of the same Celto-Iberian race, and
that it is one of the oldest--nay, perhaps, the oldest--post-classical
variant in Europe of the Perseus {178} group. All these considerations
make for its independence of the classical tale; and their cumulative
weight may fairly be called decisive.

It has been contended, and it may be thought, that we should look for
evidence of transmission rather to the general identity and sequence
of the main incidents than to the recurrence of trivial details. An
able and well-known writer, criticising M. Bédier’s use of special
accessories as a test of transmission, has lately traversed its
validity as applied to folklore. “It is obviously derived,” he says,
“from considerations current in literary criticism, as might be
expected from M. Bédier’s training. His method is exactly the process
by which literary critics prove the derivation of one species of
mss. from an archetype, or affiliate a translation in one language
to its original in another. Minute and unimportant accessories, _e.g._
the form of a proper name, are just the tests in such cases. But with
oral tradition, with transmission in folklore, I would exactly reverse
the process and adopt M. Bédier’s test”--namely, similarity in the
general idea--“as a proof of such transmission.”[178.1]

If Mr. Jacobs be a disciple of M. Cosquin, he here diverges widely
from his master, who has rightly insisted on the value of trivial
details in proving the connection between two folktales belonging to
the same cycle. His opinions on this point are gathered up in a small
compass in a paper contributed to the International Folklore Congress
of 1891, where he examines a number of stories of the rescue of a
maiden from the monster, with a view to showing the repetition of
minute details.[178.2] One of the most {179} curious and important of
these details is the lousing of the hero by the maiden.[179.1] In
Table D I have brought together as many of such tales as I could find.
Under the lady’s gentle fingers the hero usually falls asleep; and M.
Cosquin points particularly to the fact that when the dragon comes on
the scene the deliverer is in many variants aroused by the damsel’s
tears. The table shows that this is, in fact, the usual method of
awakening him; for it occurs in no fewer than fifty per cent. of the
stories. But what will strike the reader is, that with the exception
of a Portuguese tale from Brazil, all the stories in which it occurs
are found within an area whose salient angles may be placed in
Georgia, Nubia, and Bosnia. In only one of the variants from that part
of the world can the mode of awakening be definitely said not to be by
a tear, while in one other it is left uncertain. Now, it is not
expressly said in every instance that the maiden performed the
delicate office of lousing the hero; but I think that where this
realistic trait has disappeared it has probably dropped out, in M.
Cosquin’s phrase, “by an excess of delicacy on the part of the
collector.” The trait is unquestionably a savage one. It is also one
well known both in real life and in other stories to the peasantry, at
all events of southern and eastern Europe, if not elsewhere. Outside
the sphere centring in the Levant it is, however, found attached to
the Rescue of Andromeda only in the Iberian peninsula, in Scotland,
Ireland, and Sweden, the most numerous instances having been recovered
in the west of Scotland. There, in four cases out of five, the lady
awakens the hero by inflicting personal mutilation or bestowing
personal adornments which afterwards serve to identify him, while in
the fifth case the mode of awakening is not {180} recorded. The
phenomena both in the Levant and in Scotland are thus entirely in
favour of the value of similar details as proving transmission. For,
as M. Cosquin says, it is evidently impossible to believe that these
details have been separately developed. The form under which the
savage idea is presented must have been imported already specialised.

We are not, however, left to seek all over the world for the place of
origin of either of these two modes of awakening the sleeping
deliverer. We are shut up in each case to a fairly defined area within
which the detail is found, and within which, therefore, it probably
originated. Something of the sort meets us in the case of the Impostor
and the Tokens. If we extend our view to include stories which
comprise the Rescue of Andromeda alone of the four cardinal incidents
of the Perseus group, we appear to find some geographical connection
in the tokens. Teeth, for example, are the tokens in Hungary and
Oldenburg, ears in the Caucasus and Armenia, mutilations of the hero’s
person in the Western Highlands. But we have no such guide where
tongues are the tokens; for their distribution, in Europe at all
events, is as wide as the story itself. In like manner, if we glance
over the other tables, or turn to the distribution of the various
types of the story as distinguished in the earlier chapters of this
work, we can undoubtedly find geographical limits for many, both of
types and of details. To discuss them individually after the examples
already given would be tedious; nor would it lead to any more assured
result. There are a few cases, like that of the Scented Locks, where
we think we can with tolerable certainty trace an accessory back to
its source. Even in such cases, however, we have no decisive evidence,
as in {181} literary questions, to fix the exact provenience. The
peculiarities of a manuscript are not quite parallel with those of a
tale. We cannot be positive that the incident in the Cambodian story
is derived from the Egyptian. We can only say that its form is later
in civilisation, and therefore perhaps in time. For aught we know the
incident in the Egyptian _märchen_ may in its turn be derived from an
earlier one, which may be the common parent of the incident in the
tale of _The Two Brothers_ and in the Cambodian variant of the Perseus
group. There is no record which will enable us to pronounce with
entire confidence an opinion on the point. Much more then in examples,
like those of the Deliverer’s Sleep, where the form discloses no
difference in civilisation or in manners, we are at a loss to say
whence the detail has come. We can put boundaries within which it has
probably arisen; but we have no means of tracing it from Syra to
Nubia, or from Nubia to Syra, from Bosnia to Georgia, or from Armenia
to Bulgaria. The form of the savage idea may have been imported, as M.
Cosquin says, already specialised; but imported whence, imported
whither? Those are questions too hard for us with our present means of
knowledge. And what is true of the detail is true of the type. We
cannot say, in more than a few isolated cases, whether a type has been
evolved from another type, either by development or decay. The modern
types of the story, we can indeed say, have not been derived from the
classical type. It is possible that they may have been derived from
some local variant of ancient Greece or the Red Sea shores, of which
we have no more than hints in classical writers. It is, at least,
equally possible that they and the local variants and the classic
legend all alike owe their origin to a common ancestor. Nor can we
{182} assign to the modern types any order of precedence among
themselves.

Our difficulty in solving these problems arises not merely, or
chiefly, from the want of records; still more does it issue from the
conditions of oral transmission. Narrative tradition is fluid and
changeable. It may be run into any mould, and from one mould to
another with equal ease. To change the figure, its constituents are,
like chemical elements, found in combinations which are sometimes
comparatively stable, at other times tending to change and the
formation of new combinations. The permanence of the new combinations
depends upon the stability and isolation of the culture-conditions,
upon the ability of the storytellers and the customs which bind them,
now encouraging invention, and anon imprisoning them with the chains
of verbal, if not literal, accuracy. This is not the place to consider
the conditions of conservation and of variation. Enough here to draw
attention to the reason of the difficulty which lies in the path of
him who would trace a folktale to its source.

The truth is that when we speak of a _märchen_ as an artistic whole,
we must be careful to guard ourselves against conveying a false
impression. Like every human work, there is, of course, a sense in
which it is true so to speak of it. Every tale-teller is more or less
of an artist, and every tale he tells is a work of art. It is formed
of his recollections of other tales told by other tellers, joined and
cemented together as best he can by the aid of his own invention. A
plot is composed of incidents cohering sometimes more firmly,
sometimes less. Often the tale-teller forgets one, patches the story
with another from his stock, or inserts an additional incident at
pleasure. The new element {183} thus introduced may or may not unite
with the old. The character of the tale will be modified, and may be
entirely changed, by the substitution or addition. As with the
incidents, so with the accessories. Every time the tale is passed
through the memory it is exposed to the risk of variation, not only in
its main lines, but also, and still more, in its details. Hence we can
speak of the story embodied in the Perseus cycle as an abstract ideal
whole with even less propriety than we can, by eliminating individual
peculiarities from the entire series of pictures of the Annunciation,
or the Marriage of the Virgin, from the earliest to the latest, speak
of the scene they present with so many variations as one abstract
ideal whole. The mediæval painters and the painters of the Renascence
developed and modified the traditional scene as they would, or as
their skill and circumstances dictated. But the limitations of the
limner’s art preserved a certain unity amid all changes. The art of
the story-teller is not thus circumscribed. He can run on from one
subject to another, as his memory or his imagination may prompt, for
the purpose of giving pleasure. He unites the incidents of the
Life-token, the Rescue of Andromeda, and the Slaughter of the Gorgon,
with that of the Fatal Bird whose flesh gives wealth or exalts its
eater to kingship; or he unwinds from the Supernatural Birth the
tangled skein of a Bluebeard story. But, save in rare examples, it is
impossible to predicate the order of succession, or to say why this
line of development has been followed rather than that.

Such may seem an impotent conclusion of the inquiry. Disappointing it
must be admitted to be; and, so far as the results of research as to
one story may enable us to forecast {184} the results of research as
to others, it favours the view of those students who declare that the
hope of tracking a folktale to its pristine home is illusory, and the
attempt a waste of time. If a story which must have taken up its
crucial incident so late in civilisation cannot be assigned to its
primitive tellers, how can we hope to find the birth-places of other
tales, all whose elements are rooted in a distant and dateless
savagery? Henceforth, if it be true, as Mr. Jacobs alleges, that “the
problem of diffusion is of prior urgency to that of
origin”[184.1]--that is to say, if we cannot employ the tales as
evidence of belief until we know whence they come--it seems likely
that we shall have to deny ourselves the use of this evidence, and
rely wholly upon evidence of a more direct character. But is the
contention true? I have elsewhere tried to give some grounds for
thinking that we need not wait to know where a tale was first
conceived ere we use it as evidence of the belief of the peoples who
tell it.[184.2] And I would fain hope that fresh and more cogent
reasons to the same effect may be gathered from the foregoing pages.
In this connection I should like to insist on the fact that these
evidences of belief are to be found, not in the tale as a whole, but
in the separate incidents of which it is composed. To such, and even
lesser details, our attention must be directed, if we would avail
ourselves of the full advantage which the study of folktales gives us
in investigating the early ideas of mankind.

The story of Perseus opens a thousand vistas to the student. In these
pages we have been content to follow only a few of them, though there
is not one but would have led us upon enchanted ground. It remains to
gather {185} up in a few words the results of our inquiry. After
reviewing and illustrating the principal types of the story, we took
its four leading incidents and sought for their distribution in other
combinations, or alone, and for their sources and meaning. The
Supernatural Birth we found related in various forms, not merely for
amusement, but as sober fact, over so large an area of the world as to
justify the belief that it was universal. Every nation has its heroes;
and in the popular mind the mightier the hero, the greater the need
for providing him with a worthy entrance upon his mortal existence.
Nay more. We found that the abnormal means of impregnation, to which
the heroes of the stories we examined owed their birth, were, and
still are, actually held capable of causing a similar result;
therefore were, and are, prescribed for, and used by, women who desire
children and are unable to obtain them in the natural way.

The Life-token presented other problems. Both in tale and in custom it
is not less generally known than the former incident. Its virtue is
derived from the belief that it is part of the substance of the
personage whose welfare it indicates. It is the converse and essential
correlative of the External Soul. At this point it became necessary,
for the elucidation of the idea at the root of both the External Soul
and the Life-token, to enter upon a discussion whose length I trust
the reader will hold fully excused by the importance of the subject;
for it involved nothing less than the savage conception of life in its
relation to personality: a conception that permeates savage society; a
conception without which it is impossible to understand savage
institutions or savage customs; indeed, a conception that underlies
much of our modern civilisation, {186} and from which the most sacred
act of Christian worship derives its meaning and its virtue.

Like the Supernatural Birth and the Life-token, the Medusa-witch is
widely famous, and the superstition out of which the incident of her
slaughter--at all events in its classical form--springs is universal.
It is that of the Evil Eye. Recent works by other writers rendered it
needless to examine this superstition at length.

The incident of the Rescue of Andromeda, though celebrated throughout
a large part of the Old World, is more limited in its range than the
others. It is based on the change of a horrible custom which has not
everywhere been practised, and where it has been practised has not
everywhere passed away in such circumstances as to leave behind it the
possibility of a Rescue myth. It is therefore the youngest of the four
chief incidents of the tale. This limitation of range of the Rescue
incident restricts the area within which to seek for the birthplace of
the tale as a whole. The search has been interesting; but while it has
produced some substantial results, it has failed in its main object.
On the causes of failure I have already sufficiently dwelt.

Yet the inquiry has not been wholly in vain, even in regard to
storyology pure and simple. We have seen that the classical form of a
tale distributed throughout a large part of the Old World owed its
peculiar features to the fact of its entrance into the higher
literature of the race at a period of relatively advanced
civilisation: a traditional selection had been established against the
ruder forms of the saga. That ruder forms existed is evident from the
hints and allusions preserved by classical writers. The classical
form, in spite of its acceptance and {187} of its literary handling by
some of the authors of antiquity most widely read, affected to a very
slight extent the versions current in tradition. The latter go back in
very few instances to the classical form; they frequently contain
important incidents--not mere episodes, but incidents of the fibre of
the narrative--such as that of the Helpful Beasts, far more barbarous
than the classical story; while they are further distinguished by the
remarkable peculiarity that they have preserved the cardinal incident
of the Life-token, which in the classical saga is entirely wanting. We
are bound, therefore, to postulate the existence in Greece, in an
earlier and more barbarous age than that which was familiar with the
legend in its classical shape, of a folktale substantially similar to
that recovered in the last hundred years from all parts of the area I
have described. For if the modern form of the tale be not derived from
the legend as found in classical literature, neither can it be
ascribed to derivation in post-classical days from the special
story-store of India. On the contrary, so far as derivation on either
side is considered necessary, we are compelled to treat the variants
from India and Further India as derivatives, and not as sources. To
establish, if not with mathematical, at least with reasonable
certainty, the prehistoric age of a famous _märchen_, as well as the
fact that the lower and ruder forms are not killed out by the higher
literary forms, but survive them, and to circumscribe the native
region of the tale by the limits of Europe, south-western Asia, and
northern Africa, may be considered worth the pains spent in the
investigation.

I have written of the Legend of Perseus with no polemical object. Yet,
valuing the science of folklore, as I do, chiefly for the light it
throws on the mental constitution {188} of mankind and the genesis of
ideas and of institutions, I cannot hide from myself the important
bearing that some of the subjects dealt with in these pages may have
upon matters of Christian controversy. Our illustrations of the
Supernatural Birth have been drawn entirely from certain forms of the
story, to the exclusion of other forms which, interesting as they are
in themselves, were for our purpose irrelevant. But sufficient has
been said to raise questions which may be summarily stated thus:--If
these legends be universal, if they must be rejected in every case but
one as the product of an inevitable tendency of human imagination,
then why not in that one case also? Assuredly that one case can be
regarded as exceptional, only if it stand upon historical evidence
totally different in kind from the others, and of inevitable cogency.
But can any one who sits down (as it is the duty at least of every
educated man to do) calmly and, so far as he can, with scrupulous
impartiality to weigh the evidence, say that the testimony of
ecclesiastical tradition, or even of our Gospels, is different in kind
from, or of greater cogency than, that which we reject, without
hesitation, in the case of Sákyamuni, or of Alexander the Great?
About ecclesiastical tradition I need say nothing. The records in the
two Gospels which bear the names of Saint Matthew and Saint Luke are,
carefully considered, irreconcilable. Both Gospels are now admitted to
be secondary documents. It is hardly claimed for either of them that
it was written less than sixty years after the event. It is by no
means certain that they were in existence, as we now have them, when
Justin Martyr wrote in the middle of the second century. Outside them
there is no record, no unambiguous allusion even, that can be dated
within one hundred and ten years {189} of the Birth, and then only if
we admit the genuineness of the questionable _Epistles_ of Saint
Ignatius, and the earliest possible date for his very doubtful
journey. Is this the testimony on which belief in so amazing an event
can be safely built?

Our researches into sacramental beliefs and practices, and the ideas
underlying them, must have suggested once and again the central rite
of Christianity. The institution of the Eucharist is not an event of
the same supernatural character as the Birth is alleged to be. Yet if
the difficulties of testimony be smaller, those of interpretation are
even greater. That sacramental superstitions were rife as well in
Judæa as elsewhere in the time of Jesus Christ is certain, though our
information concerning them is still lamentably deficient. The
influence of the Mysteries upon Christianity has been hitherto little
studied. But it is manifest that we cannot appreciate the intention of
the rite, or understand the course of its history, without a more
extended knowledge of these things.

Doubt is often a more imperative duty than belief. Nor is it the less
a duty because it is painful. To the priest, everywhere and in all
time, it is the gravest of sins; for the corporate interest of a
priesthood adds strength to the sincere belief of the individual, a
belief usually founded upon complete ignorance of all but his own side
of the question. Priests, therefore, always favour the growth of
beliefs of which they are the centre, so leading men deeper and deeper
into the slough of superstition. Pleading that it is safer to believe
too much than too little, they are not content with a ready-made
creed, imperfectly verified, if verified at all. Their inclination and
interest alike tend to its enlargement by continual additions, whose
only test is {190} consonance with the emotions awakened by something
previously accepted. They cannot away with reason, with patient
inquiry, and the judicial temper. They seek to prejudice the question
before it be tried. Hence they conspire with reactionary statesmen to
obtain, or to keep, the control of education. This treachery against
civilisation, against the public weal, against truth itself, may
succeed for a moment; but only to evoke a retribution which will be
strictly measured by its success. It is no light thing to divorce the
intellect of a nation from its religion; it is disastrous to attempt
to coop the intellect within the bounds of a religion which have
become too strait for it.

But abhorrent as doubt and inquiry may be to the priest, they are the
means whereby we have gradually reached a more correct and adequate
view of the universe, and of human history, than was formerly imposed
in the name of divine revelation. He who seeks truth by such means
bears a more devoted allegiance to himself and to humanity than he
who, for the sake of safety or of ease, flings himself into the lap of
a priesthood, which professes to assure to him in the next world
eternal salvation, and can certainly bestow upon him, in this, comfort
and social consideration and freedom from petty parochial persecution.
He will recognise it as a duty to withhold his assent from dogmas,
even though the most solemn articles of the Christian faith, until in
the open court of reason his objections have been answered and his
difficulties solved by sounder arguments and a deeper historical and
scientific knowledge than have yet been applied by apologists to the
issues.

 [The End]




 APPENDIX

{191}

 TABLE A.
 HELPFUL ANIMALS.

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Animals.
  How obtained.
 ===
  i. Campbell, 71
  Argyllshire
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Luzel, _Contes Bretons_, 63
  Brittany
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  i. Cosquin, 60
  Lorraine
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  i. Cosquin, 64
  Lorraine
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  ii. Cosquin, 56
  Lorraine
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Zéliqzon, 63
  Lorraine
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Bladé, _Agenais_, 9
  Gascony
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Webster, 87
  Basque Provinces
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Caballero, 27
  Spain
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  i. Gonzenbach, 269
  Sicily
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  xviii. Pitrè, 45
  Sicily
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  vii. Pitrè, 296
  Sicily (Albanian)
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  i. Finamore, pt. i., 105
  Abruzzi
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  iii. De Nino, 321
  Abruzzi
  Horse and dog
  Congenital
 ===
  Nerucci, 61; and Imbriani, 375
  Tuscany
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  De Gubernatis, 40
  Tuscany
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Visentini, 104
  Mantua
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Schneller, 186
  Tirol
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Schneller, 79
  Tirol
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===

{192}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Animals.
  How obtained.
 ===
  Zingerle, _K. und Hausm._, 122
  Tirol
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Wolf, _Deutsche M._, 134
  Germany
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Cavallius, 348
  Sweden
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Leskien, 385
  Lithuania
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 316
  Transylvania (Gipsy)
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Vernaleken, 193
  Lower Austria
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Leskien, 543 (from Jukié)
  Bosnia
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Leskien, 544 (from Valjavec)
  Croatia
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Leskien, 544 (from Mikuliĕié)
  Croatia
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Karajich, 174
  Servia
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  i. Von Hahn, 166; and Geldart, 74
  Epirus
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Legrand, 161
  Greece
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  *Leskien, 546 (from Afanasief)
  Russia
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  *Leskien, 546 (from Valjavec)
  Croatia
  Horses and dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 174
  Brittany
  Horses and dogs
  ?
 ===
  Coelho, 120
  Portugal
  Horses
  Congenital
 ===
  Grimm, i. _Tales_, 331
  Hesse
  Horses
  Congenital
 ===
  *Leskien, 546 (from Erlenvein)
  Great Russia
  Horses
  Congenital
 ===
  De Gubernatis, 41
  Tuscany
  Dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  ii. Von Hahn, 214
  Greece
  Dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  ii. Macdonald, 341
  Quilimane (probably from Portugal)
  Dogs
  Congenital
 ===

{193}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Animals.
  How obtained.
 ===
  Wardrop, 25
  Georgia
  Eight Dogs
  Congenital
 ===
  Leskien, 546 (from Vrána)
  Moravia
  Dogs
  ?
 ===
  v. _Folklore_, 156
  Donegal
  Horses, dogs, and hawks
  Congenital
 ===
  i. Grundtvig, 277
  Denmark
  Horses, dogs, and sparrowhawks
  Congenital
 ===
  Pedroso, 100
  Portugal
  Horses and lions
  Congenital
 ===
  Braga, i. _Contos_, 117
  Portugal
  Horses and lions
  Congenital
 ===
  i. Campbell, 93
  South Uist
  Horses and dogs / Lion, wolf, and falcon
  Congenital / Gratitude for dividing carcase justly
 ===
  Cavallius, 354
  Sweden
  Horses and dogs / Bears, wolves, and foxes
  Congenital / Given by parent animals
 ===
  Kuhn und Schwartz, 337
  North Germany
  Horses and dogs / Bears, wolves, and lions
  Congenital / Given by parent animals
 ===
  i. Comparetti, 126; and Crane, 30
  Pisa
  Horses and dogs / Lion, eagle, and ant / Dog-fish
  Congenital / Gratitude for dividing carcase / Gratitude for saving
    life
 ===
  Cavallius, 95
  Sweden
  Dogs / Bears, wolves, and foxes
  Given by mother / Given by parent animals
 ===
  *Cox, _Cinderella_, 450 (from iii. _Journ. Gipsy Lore Soc._, 208)
  England (Gipsy)
  Bull-calf
  Given by father
 ===
  *Zingerle, _K. und Hausm._, 35; and Busk, _Hofer_, 207
  Tirol
  Three dogs
  Left to hero by his father
 ===
  *Dennys, 110
  China
  Dog
  Supplied by heroine’s father
 ===
  Grimm, i. _Tales_, 244
  Hesse
  Hares, foxes, wolves, bears, and lions
  Given by parent animals
 ===
  Grimm, i. _Tales_, 419
  Hesse
  Bears, lions, and wolves
  Given by parent animals
 ===
  Stier, i.; and Jones and Kropf, 110
  Hungary
  Wolves, bears, and lions
  Given by parent animals
 ===

{194}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Animals.
  How obtained.
 ===
  Leskien, 544 (from Radostova)
  Bohemia
  Wolves, bears, and lions
  Given by parent animals
 ===
  Leskien, 389
  Lithuania
  Wolves, boars, foxes, lions, hares, and bears
  Given by parent animals
 ===
  Leskien, 544 (from Nowosielski)
  Little Russia
  Hares, foxes, wolves, bears, and lions
  Given by parent animals
 ===
  *Schott, 135
  Wallachia
  Fox, wolf, and bear
  Given by parent animals
 ===
  *i. _Mélusine_, 57
  Brittany
  Hare, fox, and bear
  Gratitude for sparing lives
 ===
  Meier, _Märchen_, 204
  Swabia
  Bear, wolf, and lion
  Gratitude for sparing their lives
 ===
  Zingerle, _K. und Hausm. aus Süddeutsch._, 260
  Tirol
  Fox, wolf, and bear
  Gratitude for sparing lives
 ===
  *Schleicher, 54
  Lithuania
  Hare, she-wolf and lioness
  Gratitude for sparing lives
 ===
  i. Campbell, 98
  Berneray
  Fox, wolf, and hoodie
  Gratitude for dividing carcase justly
 ===
  *Dasent, _Fjeld_, 237 (from Asbjörnsen)
  Norway
  Lion, falcon, and ant
  Gratitude for dividing carcase justly
 ===
  Carnoy, _Contes F._, 135
  Normandy
  Dogs
  Given by fish to father in gratitude for sparing life
 ===
  i. Gonzenbach, 272
  Sicily
  Horses
  Given by fish in gratitude for sparing life
 ===
  Denton, 256
  Servia
  Bears, wolves, dogs, and cats / Winged horse
  Bought from persons about to kill, or who were torturing them /
    Conquered
 ===
  Pitrè, _Toscane_, 1
  Tuscany
  Flying horse
  Given by an old man
 ===
  Leskien, 542 (from Afanasief)
  Russia
  Horses
  Given by an old man
 ===
  *Larminie, 196
  Achill Island
  Pony
  Given by Druid by means of magical bridle
 ===

{195}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Animals.
  How obtained.
 ===
  *Webster, 22
  Basque Provinces
  Horses and dog
  Given by Tartaro in gratitude for release
 ===
  Auning, 87
  Lithuania
  Horses and hounds
  Given by an old man
 ===
  *Bernoni, _Fiabe._ 50
  Venice
  Three dogs
  Given by priest
 ===
  *ii. Kirby, 6 (from Kreutzwald)
  Esthonia
  Three dogs
  Sold by one-eyed old man
 ===
  *Schleicher, 4
  Lithuania
  Three dogs
  Given by man in exchange for calves
 ===
  *Waldau, 468
  Bohemia
  Three dogs
  Given by butcher in exchange for sheep
 ===
  *Haltrich, 101
  Transylvania (Saxon)
  Three dogs
  Given by butcher in exchange for goat and cock
 ===
  *ii. Strackerjan, 330
  Oldenburg
  Three dogs
  Given by man in exchange for sheep left by hero’s father
 ===
  *ii. Strackerjan, 333
  Oldenburg
  Three dogs
  Given by man in exchange for cow left by hero’s parents
 ===
  *Pitrè, _Toscane_, 9
  Tuscany
  Three dogs
  Given by a fair gentleman in exchange for cattle
 ===
  *ii. _Rivista_, 28
  Maremma
  Three dogs
  Given by man in exchange for cattle
 ===
  *Visentini, 85
  Mantua
  Three dogs
  Given by man in exchange for corn
 ===
  *De Gubernatis, ii. _Zool. Myth._, 36 note
  Piedmont
  Three dogs
  Given by hunter in exchange for sheep
 ===
  *Coelho, 114 (English version, 61)
  Portugal
  Three dogs
  Given by Our Lord disguised as beggar in exchange for sheep
 ===
  *x. _Bibl. Trad. Pop. Españ._, 258
  Extremadura
  Three dogs
  Given by old man in exchange for cows
 ===
  *x. _Bibl. Trad. Pop. Españ._, 249
  Extremadura
  Three dogs
  ?
 ===
  *Dorsey, _Cegiha_, 114
  Omaha (N. A. Ind. Probably from France)
  Two white dogs
  Given by man in exchange for bow that never missed
 ===

{196}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Animals.
  How obtained.
 ===
  *Dorsey, _Cegiha_, 127
  Omaha (N. A. Ind. Probably from France)
  Two dogs
  Given by man in exchange for gun that never missed
 ===
  *_F. L. Andaluz_, 357
  Andalucia
  Five dogs, / Horse
  Given by man in exchange for goats / Came out of dung heap
 ===
  *ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 173
  Brittany
  Three dogs / White horse
  Obtained in exchange for cow / Found in castle of witch slain by
    hero
 ===
  *Grimm, i. _Tales_, 420
  Germany
  Dogs / Hare, deer, and bear
  Given by forester in exchange for goats / ?
 ===
  i. _F. L. Journ._, 54
  Tralee, Ireland
  Horse
  From castle of giant conquered by hero
 ===
  *Curtin, _Ireland_, 157
  West of Ireland
  Three horses
  Acquired by conquest of three giants
 ===
  *vi. _Folklore_, 309 (from O’Faherty, _Siamsa an gheimhridh_, 60)
  Connaught
  Horse
  Taken from giants killed by hero
 ===
  *i. Campbell, 97
  Argyllshire
  Horses
  Acquired from conquered giants
 ===
  *ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 280
  Brittany
  Three horses
  Taken from castle of foes slain by hero. [In the abstract of the
    tale given by M. Sébillot it is not explicitly said that hero made
    use of horses]
 ===
  *Romero, 129
  Brazil (Portuguese)
  Three horses
  Taken from palace of ogre
 ===
  *Vinson, 56
  Basque Provinces
  Three olanos (dogs)
  Taken from castle of ogre conquered by hero
 ===
  *Wolf, _Deutsche Hausm._, 369
  Odenwald
  Three horses
  Taken from uninhabited castle
 ===
  *Luzel, ii. _Contes Pop._, 296
  Brittany
  Horse
  Transformation of Murlu, a mythical creature (enchanted form of
    hero’s father’s first wife), released by hero from captivity
 ===

{197}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Animals.
  How obtained.
 ===
  *Vasconcellos, 274
  Portugal
  Two dogs
  Come out of eyes of witch destroyed by help of St. Antony
 ===
  *Romero, 83
  Brazil (Portuguese)
  Three dogs
  Issue from head of old woman slain by hero
 ===
  *Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 323
  Transylvania (Gipsy)
  Horse
  Transformation of horse’s head found by hero under a tree
 ===
  *_Roumanian F. T._, 48
  Roumania
  Bull
  Found in hole made in earth by hero’s arrow
 ===
  *Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 260
  Transylvania (Gipsy)
  Horse
  Sent by dead river-nymph
 ===
  *Leskien, 396
  Lithuania
  Lion, bear, boar, fox, and hare
  Caught
 ===
  Zingerle, _K. und Hausm. aus Süddeutsch._, 124
  Tirol
  Dancing bears
  Caught
 ===

* Stories thus marked do not belong to the Perseus cycle though
containing the incident of the Slaughter of the Dragon.




 TABLE B.
 WEAPONS.

{198}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Weapons.
  How acquired.
 ===
  i. Cosquin, 60
  Lorraine
  Lances
  Congenital
 ===
  i. Cosquin, 64
  Lorraine
  Lances
  Congenital
 ===
  Pedroso, 100
  Portugal
  Lances
  Congenital
 ===
  Braga, i. _Contos_, 117
  Portugal
  Lances
  Congenital
 ===
  Coelho, 120
  Portugal
  Lances
  Congenital
 ===
  i. Finamore, pt. i. 105
  Abruzzi
  Lances
  Congenital
 ===
  Nerucci, 61; and Imbriani, 375
  Tuscany
  Lances
  Congenital
 ===
  Schneller, 186
  Tirol
  Lances
  Congenital
 ===
  Leskien, 543 (from Jukié)
  Bosnia
  Lances
  Congenital
 ===
  Caballero, 27
  Spain
  Lances and shields
  Congenital
 ===
  Zéliqzon, 63
  Lorraine
  Sabres
  Congenital
 ===
  Cavallius, 348
  Sweden
  Swords
  Congenital
 ===
  i. Grundtvig, 277
  Denmark
  Swords
  Congenital
 ===
  Wolf, _Deutsche M._, 134
  Germany
  Swords
  Congenital
 ===
  Karajich, 174
  Servia
  Swords
  Congenital
 ===
  Visentini, 104
  Mantua
  Swords
  Congenital
 ===
  De Gubernatis, 41
  Tuscany
  Swords
  Congenital
 ===
  iii. De Nino, 321
  Abruzzi
  Sword
  Congenital
 ===
  i. Gonzenbach, 269
  Sicily
  Swords
  Congenital
 ===
  xviii. Pitrè, 45
  Sicily
  Cutlass
  Congenital
 ===
  Kuhn und Schwartz, 337
  North Germany
  Sabres, pistols, and guns
  Congenital
 ===
  ii. Macdonald, 341
  Quilimane (probably from Portugal)
  Spears and guns
  Congenital
 ===

{199}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Weapons.
  How acquired.
 ===
  Chambers, 89
  Scotland
  Magical wand
  Given by old woman
 ===
  Webster, 33
  Basque Provinces
  Stick
  Given by old woman
 ===
  Leskien, 542 (from Afanasief)
  Russia
  Sabres
  Given by old man
 ===
  i. _Zeits. f. Volksk._, 230
  Lithuania
  Bow and arrows
  Given by angel
 ===
  i. _Kathá_, 381
  India
  Sword
  Given by goddess Durgá
 ===
  Leclère, 112
  Cambodia
  Sabres
  Given by magician
 ===
  *Leskien, 404
  Lithuania
  Sword
  Given by old man
 ===
  *Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 260
  Transylvania (Gipsy)
  Silver sickle
  Given by river-nymph
 ===
  Cavallius, 78
  Sweden
  Knife
  Given by mother
 ===
  Cavallius, 95
  Sweden
  Spear
  Given by father
 ===
  Cavallius, 356
  Sweden
  Sword
  Given by a sister, who is married to a dragon
 ===
  *Dennys, 110
  China
  Sword
  Supplied by heroine’s father
 ===
  Thorpe, _Yuletide Stories_, 300; and Dasent, 131 (from Asbjörnsen)
  Norway
  Sword, ship, and art of brewing 100 lasts of malt
  Given by one-eyed hags whose eyes hero has stolen (Graiai)
 ===
  Pitrè, _Toscane_, 1
  Tuscany
  Mirror
  Given by two old women with one eye between them (Graiai)
 ===
  i. Gonzenbach, 272
  Sicily
  Defensive armour and swords
  Given by fish in gratitude
 ===
  Meier, _Märchen_, 101
  Swabia
  Magical pipe
  Given by princess whom hero has freed from giants
 ===
  *Luzel, ii. _Contes Pop._, 296
  Brittany
  Sword
  Given by Murlu, a mythical creature (enchanted form of hero’s
    father’s first wife), released by hero from captivity
 ===
  *Sébillot, i. _Contes Pop._, 172
  Brittany
  Consecrated stole
  Given by priest as reward for restoring treasures of chapel stolen
    by robbers
 ===

{200}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Weapons.
  How acquired.
 ===
  *Webster, 22
  Basque Provinces
  Sword and bottle of scented water
  Given by Tartaro, a mythical creature released by hero
 ===
  *ii. _Rivista_, 109
  Sardinia
  Consecrated stole
  Given by priest as reward for restoring treasures of chapel stolen
    by robbers
 ===
  Grimm, i. _Tales_, 420
  Germany
  Gun, powder-horn, and bag
  Given by huntsman who has already given dogs in exchange for goats
 ===
  *Dorsey, _Cegiha_, 114
  Omaha (N. A. Indian. Probably from France)
  Sword
  Given by a man in exchange for a bow that never misses
 ===
  *Grimm, ii. _Tales_, 102
  Hesse
  Air-gun that never misses
  Given by huntsman in payment for services during apprenticeship
 ===
  i. Campbell, 71
  Argyllshire
  Sword
  Forged by smith to order
 ===
  i. Campbell, 93
  South Uist
  Iron staff
  Forged by smith to order
 ===
  *MacInnes, 279
  Argyllshire
  Club
  Forged by smith to order
 ===
  *ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 172
  Brittany
  Club weighing 500 lbs.
  Forged by smith to order
 ===
  *ii. Von Hahn, 259
  Island of Syra
  Iron staff
  Forged by smith to order
 ===
  *Wardrop, 68
  Georgia
  Pair of shoes and bow and arrow
  Made by smith to order
 ===
  *Vinson, 56
  Basque Provinces
  Mace
  Bought by hero
 ===
  *Cox, _Cinderella_, 450 (iii. _Journ. Gipsy Lore Soc._, 208)
  England (Gipsy)
  Gut of bull-calf
  Bull-calf given by father
 ===
  *Von Wlislocki, _Armenier_, 3
  Transylvania (Armenian)
  Iron staff
  Made by hero out of golden bird which is the life of a giant
    destroyed by him
 ===

{201}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Weapons.
  How acquired.
 ===
  *vi. _Folklore_, 309 (from O’Faherty, _Siamsa angheimhridh_, 60)
  Connaught
  Sword of light
  Taken from giants killed by hero
 ===
  *Curtin, _Ireland_, 157
  West of Ireland
  Three swords / Brown apple
  Acquired by conquest of three giants / Given by third giant’s
    housekeeper
 ===
  *i. Campbell, 97
  Argyllshire
  Sword?
  Acquired from conquered giants
 ===
  *ii. Strackerjan, 333
  Oldenburg
  Ointment
  Taken from dwelling of robbers killed by hero
 ===
  *Haltrich, 101
  Transylvania (Saxon)
  Sword
  Taken from house of robbers conquered by hero
 ===
  *Schleicher, 54
  Lithuania
  Stick / Gun and sword
  Taken by hero from his father / Taken from dwelling of conquered
    robbers
 ===
  *iii. _Archivio_, 537
  Abruzzi
  Sword
  Taken from slaughtered giant
 ===
  *i. Gonzenbach, 299
  Sicily
  Sword
  Acquired by conquest of giant who held hero’s sister in thrall
 ===
  *ii. Von Hahn, 49
  Island of Syra
  Sword
  Taken from castle of ogre conquered by hero
 ===
  *Burton, vi. _Suppl. Nights_, 363 (from _Galland_ MSS.)
  Levant
  Sword
  Belonging to ogre killed by hero
 ===
  *Romero, 129
  Brazil (Portuguese)
  Arms not specified
  Taken from palace of ogre
 ===
  *Schleicher, 4
  Lithuania
  Gun, sabre, and bottle of oil
  Taken from uninhabited house
 ===
  Grimm, i. _Tales_, 244
  Hesse
  Sword
  Found buried before threshold of church on the dragon’s hill
 ===

{202}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Weapons.
  How acquired.
 ===
  *Wolf, _Deutsche Hausm._, 369
  Odenwald
  Sword and whistle
  Dug up by direction of a little grey dwarf at a crossway
 ===
  *_Roumanian F. T._, 48
  Roumania
  Sword which petrifies
  Found in hole in the earth made by hero’s arrow
 ===
  *Temple, i. _Leg. Panj._, 17
  Panjáb
  Sword, heel-ropes, and arrow
  Magical by inherent power of their owner, the hero
 ===
  *i. Cosquin, 18, 74 (from Schiefner)
  Avares of Caucasus
  Diamond sword
  ?
 ===
  *ii. Grässe, 29 (from Müller, _Siegburg und der Siegkreis_)
  Rhine Prov.
  Crucifix
  ?
 ===

* Stories thus marked do not belong to the Perseus cycle, though
containing the incident of the Slaughter of the Dragon.




 TABLE C.
 THE IMPOSTOR AND THE TOKENS.

{203}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Token of identity.
  Impostor.
 ===
  i. Cosquin, 60
  Lorraine
  Tongues
  Three charcoal-burners
 ===
  i. Cosquin, 64
  Lorraine
  Tongues
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  Zéliqzon, 63
  Lorraine
  Tongues
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  *Luzel, ii. _Contes Pop._, 296
  Brittany
  Tongues
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  *i. _Mélusine_, 57
  Brittany
  Tongues
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  *ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 172
  Brittany
  Tongues
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  *ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 173
  Brittany
  Tongues
  Thatcher
 ===
  *Sébillot, i. _Contes Pop._, 72
  Brittany
  Tongues
  A passing man
 ===
  *MacInnes, 478, citing the Tristan-saga
  France (12th century)
  Tongue
  Cook
 ===
  Bladé, _Agenais_, 9
  Gascony
  Tongues
  
 ===
  *Henderson, 285
  Co. Durham
  Tongue
  The lord of Mitford Castle. [He brings head and is successful]
 ===
  Grimm, i. _Tales_, 419
  Germany
  Tongues
  King’s marshal
 ===
  Kuhn und Schwartz, 337
  North Germany
  Tongues
  Coachman
 ===
  Meier, _Märchen_, 204
  Swabia
  Tongues
  Coachman
 ===
  Meier, _Märchen_, 306
  Swabia
  Tongues
  Cupbearer
 ===
  *Zingerle, _K. und Hausm._, 35; and Busk, _Hofer_, 207
  Tirol
  Tongue
  
 ===

{204}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Token of identity.
  Impostor.
 ===
  Zingerle, _K. und Hausm. aus Süddeutsch._, 260
  Tirol
  Tongues
  King’s servant
 ===
  i. Grundtvig, 277
  Denmark
  Tongues
  The Red Knight
 ===
  *_F. L. Andaluz_, 357
  Andalucia
  Tongues
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  *x. _Bibl. Trad. Pop. Españ._, 249
  Extremadura
  Tongues
  Negro
 ===
  *i. Braga, 125
  Portugal
  Points of tongues
  Not specified
 ===
  ii. Macdonald, 341
  Quilimane (probably from Portugal)
  Tongue
  Captain of soldiers
 ===
  *Romero, 83
  Brazil (Portuguese)
  Points of tongues
  Negro
 ===
  *Romero, 129
  Brazil (Portuguese)
  Points of tongues
  A prince
 ===
  *ii. _Rivista_, 109
  Sardinia
  Tongues
  A passing man
 ===
  *De Gubernatis, ii. _Zool. Myth._, 36 note
  Piedmont
  Tongues
  Chimney-sweeper
 ===
  *Andrews, 230
  Riviera
  Tongues
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  *Bernoni, _Fiabe_, 50
  Venice
  Tongues
  Chimney-sweeper. [Detected by not knowing the names of hero’s dogs]
 ===
  Pitrè, _Nov. Pop. Tosc._, 1
  Tuscany
  Tongues
  Cobbler
 ===
  De Gubernatis, 40
  Tuscany
  Tongues
  Woodcutter
 ===
  De Gubernatis, 41
  Tuscany
  Tongue
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  Nerucci, 61; and Imbriani, 375
  Tuscany
  Tongues
  Cobbler
 ===
  *Pitrè, _Nov. Pop. Tosc._, 9
  Tuscany
  Tongues
  An ugly Moor
 ===
  *Leland, _Etr. Rom._, 109
  Tuscany
  Tongues
  A poor youth. [He is successful]
 ===
  *_Tuscan F. T._, 21
  Tuscany
  Tongues
  
 ===
  iii. De Nino, 321
  Abruzzi
  Tongues
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  *iii. _Archivio_, 537
  Abruzzi
  Tongues
  Hero’s two comrades (soldiers)
 ===

{205}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Token of identity.
  Impostor.
 ===
  i. Finamore, pt. i., 105
  Abruzzi
  Tongues cut out and thrown away
  
 ===
  i. _Pentamerone_, 90; and i. Basile, 87
  South Italy
  Tongues
  Peasant
 ===
  *i. Gonzenbach, 299
  Sicily
  Tongues
  Slave
 ===
  Legrand, 161
  Greece
  Tongues
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  *Maury, _Croy. et Lég._, 196, quoting a scholion on Apollonius
    Rhodius
  Megara, Ancient Greece
  Tongue
  King’s men
 ===
  *Carnoy et Nicolaides, 75; and Garnett, i. _Wom._, 165
  Lesbos
  Tongues
  Charcoal-burners
 ===
  *Georgeakis, 84
  Lesbos
  Tongues
  
 ===
  *Schott, 135
  Wallachia
  Tongues
  Gipsy
 ===
  *iii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 628
  Roumania
  Tongues
  Gipsy, the emperor’s cook
 ===
  Leskien, 385
  Lithuania
  Tongues
  Coachman
 ===
  *Leskien, 396
  Lithuania
  Tongues
  Coachman
 ===
  *Leskien, 404
  Lithuania
  Tongues
  Coachman
 ===
  *Schleicher, 54
  Lithuania
  Tongues
  King’s servant
 ===
  Auning, 79
  Lettish
  Tongues
  Coachman
 ===
  Auning, 87
  Lettish
  Tongues
  Coachman
 ===
  Auning, 92
  Lettish
  Tongues
  Soldier
 ===
  *Waldau, 468
  Bohemia
  Tongues
  Coachman
 ===
  *Dorsey, _Cegiha_, 114, and 127 (variant)
  Omaha (N. Am. Indian. Probably from France)
  Tongues
  Black man
 ===
  Thorpe, _Yuletide Stories_, 300; and Dasent, 131 (from Asbjörnsen)
  Norway
  Tongues and lungs
  The Red Knight. [He takes the tokens: hero recognised by bringing
    contents of the slain trolls’ ships]
 ===
  Meier, _Märchen_, 101
  Swabia
  Tongues and eyes
  Nobleman
 ===
  Grimm, i. _Tales_, 244
  Hesse
  Tongues; and handkerchief given by princess
  King’s marshal
 ===
  *x. _Archivio_, 316
  Dalmatia
  Tongues wrapt in lady’s handkerchief
  An old hunchbacked porter
 ===

{206}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Token of identity.
  Impostor.
 ===
  i. Gonzenbach, 272
  Sicily
  Tongues wrapt in lady’s handkerchief
  Slave
 ===
  *Haltrich, 101
  Transylvania
  Tongues; and lady’s handkerchief and silken band bound by her round
    each of hero’s dogs’ necks
  Coachman
 ===
  Zingerle, _K. und Hausm._, 122
  Tirol
  Tongues; and lady’s veil
  Lamplighter
 ===
  Webster, 87
  Basque Provinces
  Tongues; and seven pieces cut by hero from lady’s robes
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  *Webster, 22
  Basque Provinces
  Tongues; and 42 pieces cut by hero from lady’s robes
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  *Webster, 33
  Basque Provinces
  Tongues; and seven pieces of silk cut by hero from lady’s robes
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  *Vinson, 56
  Basque Provinces
  Tongues wrapt in seven pieces of silk cut by hero from lady’s robes
  Charcoal-burner
 ===
  *Vasconcellos, 274
  Portugal
  Tongues wrapt in lady’s robe
  “Um curioso”
 ===
  *Leskien, 407
  Lithuania
  Tongues; and lady’s clothes
  Three generals
 ===
  *Grimm, ii. _Tales_, 102
  Hesse
  Tongues; corner of lady’s handkerchief, her slipper, and piece cut
    from her nightdress
  One-eyed captain
 ===
  Pröhle, _K. und Volksm._, 20
  Germany
  Tongues; ring, and handkerchief given by lady
  Servant
 ===
  Zingerle, _K. und Hausm. aus Süddeutsch._, 217
  Tirol
  Tongues; ring, chain, and handkerchief given by lady
  King’s servant
 ===

{207}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Token of identity.
  Impostor.
 ===
  *Cox, _Cinderella_, 450 (from iii. _Journ. Gipsy Soc._, 208)
  England (Gipsy)
  Tongue; and lady’s ring, and hero’s first finger bitten off by
    dragon
  Gentlemen from all over England
 ===
  *x. _Bibl. Trad. Pop. Españ._, 258
  Extremadura
  Tongues; and lady’s ring
  Negro
 ===
  *Coelho, 114 (Eng. version, 61)
  Portugal
  Tongues; and lady’s ring
  Negro
 ===
  *ii. Von Hahn, 49
  Island of Syra
  Tongues; and lady’s ring
  Moor
 ===
  *vi. _Folklore_, 309 (from O’Faherty, _Siamsa an gheimhridh_, 60)
  Connaught
  Tongue; and hair cut by lady from hero’s head
  Courtiers
 ===
  ii. Cosquin, 56
  Lorraine
  Heads
  Hero’s brothers
 ===
  Auning, 91
  Lettish
  Heads
  
 ===
  *Steel and Temple, 143
  Panjáb
  Ogre’s head
  Scavenger. [He produces the head, and is successful; but the hero is
    subsequently recognised]
 ===
  *Day, 64
  Bengal
  Rakshasi’s head
  Woodcutters
 ===
  Cavallius, 78
  Sweden
  Troll’s eyes
  Courtier
 ===
  Stier, 1 (from Erdelyi); and Jones and Kropf, 110
  Hungary
  Tooth from each head of dragon
  The Red Knight
 ===
  *ii. Strackerjan, 330
  Oldenburg
  Some of dragon’s teeth
  Coachman
 ===
  *Kirby, ii. _Hero of Esthonia_, 6 (from Kreutzwald)
  Esthonia
  Horns and tusks (or claw)
  Coachman
 ===
  *i. Cosquin, 18, 74
  Avares of the Caucasus
  Ears
  
 ===
  *x. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 193
  Armenia
  Ears
  [A feminin deliverer]
 ===
  *i. Cosquin, 76 (from xxiv. _Asiatic Journ._, N.S., 196)
  Hala Canara (India)
  Lion’s tail
  King’s washerman
 ===

{208}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Token of identity.
  Impostor.
 ===
  Cavallius, 95
  Sweden
  Ring fastened by lady in hero’s hair
  Coachman
 ===
  Cavallius, 348
  Sweden
  Ring fastened by lady in hero’s hair
  Coachman
 ===
  *Dasent, _Fjeld_, 261 (from Asbjörnsen)
  Norway
  Ring fastened by lady in hero’s hair
  A man named Glibtongue
 ===
  Leskien, 389
  Lithuania
  Lady’s ring and half her handkerchief
  Coachman and lackey
 ===
  *_Roumanian F. T._, 48
  Roumania
  Lady’s ring and handkerchief
  Gipsy
 ===
  i. Campbell, 71
  Argyllshire
  Lady’s rings; only hero can take the beast’s heads off the withy on
    which he has bound them
  General
 ===
  *i. _Archæol. Rev._, 303
  Ireland
  Strip from lady’s garment bound on hero’s wounded wrist
  Many
 ===
  *Schleicher, 4
  Lithuania
  Lady’s handkerchief
  Coachman
 ===
  i. Campbell, 93
  South Uist
  Scratch on hero’s forehead made by lady; only he can untie the
    beast’s heads off the withy
  
 ===
  *i. Campbell, 97
  Argyllshire
  Joint bitten off hero’s little finger by damsel, patch cut by her
    from top of his head, and notch from his ear; only he can untie
    heads from withy
  A red-headed lad
 ===
  i. Campbell, 98
  Berneray
  Joint bitten off hero’s little finger by lady, patch cut by her from
    top of his head, and notch from his ear
  Many who counterfeited the marks
 ===

{209}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Token of identity.
  Impostor.
 ===
  *MacInnes, 279
  Argyllshire
  Point of hero’s little finger cut off by lady
  Cook
 ===
  *Larminie, 139
  West of Ireland
  Piece of hero’s coat and lock of his hair, both cut by lady; and his
    shoe
  Son of King of Prussia
 ===
  *Curtin, _Ireland_, 157; Larminie, 196; and i. _F. L. Journ._, 54.
    [_Cf._ Curtin, _Ireland_, 114, where hero conquers giants and
    proves his victory by their tongues, while the son of the King of
    Tisean has brought their heads]
  Ireland
  Blue glass boot of hero
  Many
 ===
  *Wolf, _D. Hausm._, 369
  Odenwald
  Hero wounded in leg at subsequent tournament
  
 ===
  *De Rochemonteix, 25
  Nubia
  Lady’s thigh marked by hero with his hand dipped in monster’s blood
  
 ===
  *Edwards, 90
  Bahama (Negro)
  Only hero can take out red stain he has made on lady’s handkerchief
  All the high people of the place [Relic of Coachman]
 ===
  *Bérenger-Féraud, _Sénég._, 39
  Senegambia
  Only hero can untie a dog, brandish a lance and put on a sandal
  Warriors
 ===
  *Auning, 96
  Lettish
  Hero’s beasts
  King’s servant
 ===
  *ii. Strackerjan, 333
  Oldenburg
  
  Charioteer
 ===
  Leclère, 112
  Cambodia
  
  Two Mandarins
 ===

{210}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  Token of identity.
  Impostor.
 ===
  Ovid, _Metam._, iv.
  Greece (ancient)
  
  Lady’s betrothed attacks wedding party, claiming bride
 ===
  Grimm, i. _Tales_, 420
  Germany
  
  Lady’s betrothed tries to kill hero
 ===
  *ii. _Rivista_, 28
  Maremma
  
  King endeavours to wed lady to a rich baron instead of hero
 ===

* Stories thus marked do not belong to the Perseus cycle, though
containing the incident of the Slaughter of the Dragon.




 TABLE D.
 THE DELIVERER’S SLEEP.

{211}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  How hero awakened.
 ===
  *De Rochemonteix, 25
  Nubia
  Lady drops tear into hero’s face
 ===
  *ii. Von Hahn, 49
  Island of Syra
  Lady drops tear on hero’s cheek
 ===
  *ix. _Archivio_, 484
  Bosnia
  Lady’s tears fall on hero’s face
 ===
  *Ralston, _Russian F. T._, 347
  Bulgaria
  Lady’s tears fall on hero’s face
 ===
  *Schott, 135
  Wallachia
  Lady drops tears on hero’s face
 ===
  *Burton, vi. _Suppl. Nights_, 363 (from _Galland MSS._)
  Levant
  [No lousing.] Lady drops tear on hero’s face
 ===
  *Wardrop, 68
  Georgia
  [No lousing.] Lady drops tear on hero’s cheek
 ===
  *_Roumanian F. T._, 48
  Roumania
  [No lousing.] Lady drops tears on hero’s face
 ===
  *Romero, 83
  Brazil (Portuguese)
  [No lousing.] Lady drops tear into hero’s face
 ===
  *Georgeakis, 256
  Lesbos
  Lady calls hero
 ===
  *_F. L. Andaluz_, 357
  Andalucia
  [No lousing.] Lady calls hero
 ===
  *Curtin, _Ireland_, 157
  W. of Ireland
  [No lousing.] Roused by lady
 ===
  *MacInnes, 279
  Argyllshire
  Lady cuts off joint of little finger of hero’s right hand
 ===
  i. Campbell, 97
  Argyllshire
  Lady cuts (1) joint from hero’s little finger, (2) patch from top of
    his head, (3) notch from his ear
 ===

{212}

 ===
  Authority.
  Country.
  How hero awakened.
 ===
  i. Campbell, 98
  Berneray
  [No lousing.] Lady cuts (1) joint from hero’s little finger, (2)
    patch from top of his head, (3) notch from his ear
 ===
  i. Campbell, 71
  Argyllshire
  [No lousing.] Lady puts (1) ring from her finger on hero’s finger,
    (2) her earring in his ear, (3) her other earring in his other ear
 ===
  i. Campbell, 93
  South Uist
  ?
 ===
  *Denton, 309
  Servia
  ?
 ===
  Cavallius, 95
  Sweden
  
 ===
  Cosquin, in _Congress Report_ (1891), 70, citing Chalatiauz
  Armenia
  [No lousing.] Lady drops tear (?)
 ===

* Stories thus marked do not belong to the Perseus cycle, though
containing the incident of the Slaughter of the Dragon.




 SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF WORKS REFERRED TO

Addy. Household Tales with other Traditional Remains. Collected in
the Counties of York, Lincoln, Derby, and Nottingham, by Sidney Oldall
Addy, M.A. London, 1895.

Ainsworth. A Personal Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition. By
William Ainsworth. 2 vols. London, 1888.

_Am Urdsbrunnen._ Am Urdhs-Brunnen. Organ des Vereins für Verbreitung
volksthümlich-wissenschaftlicher Kunde. 6 vols. 1881-89. [Printed at
Lunden in Holstein. The latter vols. appeared under the title of Am
Urds-Brunnen. Mittheilungen für Freunde
volksthümlich-wissenschaftlicher Kunde.]

Andree, _Anthropophagie_. Die Anthropophagie. Eine ethnographische
Studie von Richard Andree. Leipzig, 1887.

----_Ethnog. Par._ Ethnographische Parallelen und Vergleiche von
Richard Andree. First series, Stuttgart, 1878; second series, Leipzig,
1889.

Andrews. Contes Ligures. Traditions de la Rivière recueillies entre
Menton et Gênes, par James Bruyn Andrews. Paris, 1892.

Anrich. Das antike Mysterienwesen in seinem Einfluss auf das
Christentum. Von Lic. Gustav Anrich. Göttingen, 1894.

_Anthropologia._ Anthropologia: in which are included the Proceedings
of the London Anthropological Society. Vol. I., 1873-5. [All
published.] London.

_Anthr. Rev._ The Anthropological Review. 8 vols. London, 1863-70.

_Antigua._ Antigua and the Antiguans: a full account of the Colony and
its Inhabitants from the time of the Caribs to the present day. 2
vols. London, 1844.

Arber, _Eng. Garner._ An English Garner. Ingatherings from our
History and Literature. By Edward Arber, F.S.A. 7 vols. 1877-83.

_Arch. Camb._ Archæologia Cambrensis, the Journal of the Cambrian
Archæological Association. 51 vols. London, 1846-95. [Still
proceeding.]

_Archæologia._ Archæologia: or Miscellaneous Tracts relating to
Antiquity, published by the Society of Antiquaries of London. 54 vols.
London, 1770-1895. [Still proceeding.]

Arnason, _Sagen._ Isländische Volkssagen. Aus der Sammlung von Jón
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Lehmann-Filhés. 2 vols. Berlin, 1889-91.

_Asiatic Q. Rev._ The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review and
Oriental and Colonial Record. 5 vols. 1891-95. Woking. [Still
proceeding.]

Atkinson. Forty Years in a Moorland Parish. Reminiscences and
Researches in Danby in Cleveland by Rev. J. C. Atkinson, D.C.L.
London, 1891.

Aubrey, _Gentilisme._ Remaines of Gentilisme and Judaisme. By John
Aubrey, R.S.S., 1686-87. Edited and annotated by James Britten, F.L.S.
London, 1881. [Folklore Society.]


Backhouse. A Narrative of a visit to the Australian Colonies. By
James Backhouse. London, 1843.

Barbosa. A Description of the coasts of East Africa and Malabar in
the beginning of the sixteenth century, by Duarte Barbosa. Translated
by the Hon. Henry E. J. Stanley. London, 1866.

Baring-Gould, _Curious Myths._ Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, by
S. Baring-Gould, M.A. London, 1869.

Bartels. Die Medicin der Naturvölker. Ethnologische Beiträge zur
Urgeschichte der Medicin. Von Dr. Max Bartels. Leipzig, 1893.

Barthol. Angl., Steele. Medieval Lore: an epitome of the Science,
Geography, Animal and Plant Lore and Myth of the Middle Age: being
classified gleanings from the Encyclopedia of Bartholomew Anglicus on
the Properties of Things. Edited by Robert Steele. London, 1893.

Bartsch, _Sagen._ Sagen, Märchen und Gebräuche aus Meklenburg.
Gesammelt und herausgegeben von Karl Bartsch. 2 vols. Wien, 1879-80.

Basset. Contes Populaires Berbères recueillis, traduits et annotés
par René Basset. Paris, 1887.

Batchelor. The Ainu of Japan. The Religion, Superstitions, and
General History of the Hairy Aborigines of Japan by the Rev. John
Batchelor. London, 1892.

Bellew. A General Report on the Yusufzais, in six Chapters, with a
Map. By H. W. Bellew. Lahore, 1864.

Bent. The Ruined Cities of Mashonaland by J. Theodore Bent, F.S.A.,
F.R.G.S. London, 1892.

Bérenger-Féraud, _Sénég._ Recueil de Contes Populaires de la
Sénégambie recueillis par L. J. B. Bérenger-Féraud. Paris, 1885.

----_Superstitions._ Superstitions et Survivances étudiées au point
de vue de leur Origine et de leurs Transformations, par L. J. B.
Bérenger-Féraud. 2 vols. Paris, 1896.

Bernau. Missionary Labours in British Guiana; with remarks on the
Manners, Customs, and Superstitious Rites of the Aborigines. By the
Rev. J. H. Bernau. London, 1847.

Bernoni, _Fiabe._ Fiabe e Novelle Popolari Veneziane raccolte da
Dom. Giuseppe Bernoni. Venezia, 1873.

_Bib. Trad. Pop. Españ._ Folklore. Biblioteca de las Tradiciones
Populares Españolas. 11 vols. Sevilla, Madrid, 1883-86.

Biddulph. Tribes of the Hindoo Koosh, by Major J. Biddulph, B.S.C.
Calcutta, 1880.

Binger. Du Niger au Golfe de Guinée par le pays de Kong et le Mossi
par le Capitaine Binger. 2 vols. Paris, 1892.

Black. Folk-Medicine; a chapter in the History of Culture. By
William George Black, F.S.A. Scot. London, 1883. [Folklore Society.]

Bleek, _Report._ Cape of Good Hope. Second Report concerning Bushman
Researches, with a short account of Bushman Folk-lore, by W. H. I.
Bleek, Ph.D. Cape Town, 1875.

Blunt. Vestiges of Ancient Manners and Customs, discoverable in
Modern Italy and Sicily. By the Rev. John James Blunt. London, 1823.

Boddam-Whetham. Roraima and British Guiana, with a glance at
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Bodin. Joannis Bodini, Andegavensis, De Magorum Dæmonomania, seu
detestando Lamiarum ac Magorum cum Satana commercio, libri iv.,
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Bourke. Scatologic Rites of all Nations. By Captain John G. Bourke.
Washington, D.C., 1891.

Brand. Observations on Popular Antiquities. By John Brand, M.A., F.
and Sec. S.A., arranged and revised, with additions, by Henry Ellis,
F.R.S., Sec. S.A. 2 vols. London, 1813.

Brauns. Japanische Märchen und Sagen gesammelt und herausgegeben
von David Brauns. Leipzig, 1885.

Brayley. The Graphic and Historical Illustrator: an original
Miscellany of literary, antiquarian, and topographical information.
Edited by Edward W. Brayley, Esq., F.S.A., M.R.S.L., etc. London,
1834.

Brinton. _Amer. Race._ The American Race; a linguistic
classification and ethnographical description of the native tribes of
North and South America. By Daniel G. Brinton, A.M., M.D. New York,
1891.

----_Cakchiquels._ The Annals of the Cakchiquels. The Original Text,
with a translation, notes, and introduction. By Daniel G. Brinton,
A.M., M.D. Philadelphia, 1885.

Budge, _Saint George._ The Martyrdom and Miracles of Saint George of
Cappadocia. The Coptic Texts edited with an English Translation by
Ernest A. Wallis Budge, M.A. London, 1888.

Burton, _Sindh._ Sindh, by Richard F. Burton. London, 1851.

Busk, _F. L. Rome._ The Folklore of Rome, collected by word of mouth
from the people, by R. H. Busk. London, 1874.

----_Hofer._ Household Stories from the Land of Hofer; or Popular
Myths of Tirol, including the Rose Garden of King Lareyn. By the
Author of “Patrañas, or Spanish Stories,” etc. London, 1871.


Caballero. Cuentos, Oraciones, Adivinas y Refranes Populares é
Infantiles recogidos por Fernan Caballero. Madrid, 1878.

Campbell, _Circ. Notes._ My Circular Notes, by J. F. Campbell. 2
vols. London, 1876.

Campbell, _Clan Traditions._ Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition.
Argyllshire Series, No. v. Clan Traditions and Popular Tales of the
Western Highlands and Islands, collected from oral sources by the late
Rev. John Gregorson Campbell. Edited by Jessie Wallace and Duncan
MacIsaac, with introduction by Alfred Nutt. London, 1895.

Campbell, _Khondistan._ A Personal Narrative of thirteen years’
service amongst the Wild Tribes of Khondistan for the suppression of
Human Sacrifice. By Major-General John Campbell, C.B. London, 1864.

Carnoy et Nicolaides. Traditions Populaires de l’Asie Mineure par E.
Henry Carnoy et Jean Nicolaides. Paris, 1889.

Casati. Ten Years in Equatoria and the Return with Emin Pasha, by
Major Gaetano Casati, translated by the Hon. Mrs. J. Randolph Clay,
assisted by Mr. J. Walker Savage. 2 vols. London, 1891.

Castrén, _Vorlesungen._ M. Alexander Castrén’s Vorlesungen über
die Finnische Mythologie. Aus dem Schwedischen übertragen und mit
Anmerkungen begleitet von A. Schiefner. St. Petersburg, 1853.

Catlin. Illustrations of the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the
North American Indians. With letters and notes. By George Catlin. 2
vols. London, 1876.

Caxton, _Recuyell._ The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, written
in French by Raoul Lefevre, translated and printed by William Caxton.
Reproduced by H. Oskar Sommer, Ph.D. 2 vols. London, 1894.

Chatelain. Folk-tales of Angola. Collected and edited by Heli
Chatelain. Boston, 1894. [Amer. F. L. Soc.]

_Churchill’s Voyages._ A Collection of Voyages and Travels, some now
first printed from original manuscripts, others now first published in
English. In 6 volumes. Third Edition. London, printed by assignment
from Messrs. Churchill, 1744.

Clouston, _Lands Squire’s Tale._ John Lane’s Continuation of
Chaucer’s ‘Squire’s Tale.’ Edited from the original MS. by Fred. J.
Furnivall, M.A., Hon. Doc. Phil., with notes by W. A. Clouston.
London, 1888-90.

----_Pop. Tales._ Popular Tales and Fictions; their Migrations and
Transformations, by W. A. Clouston. 2 vols. Edinburgh, 1887.

Cooper. Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce in Pigtail and Petticoats:
or an Overland Journey from China towards India. By T. T. Cooper.
London, 1871.

_Corp. Poet. Bor._ Corpus Poeticum Boreale. The Poetry of the Old
Northern Tongue from the earliest times to the thirteenth century.
Edited, classified, and translated, with introduction, excursus, and
notes by Gudbrand Vigfusson, M.A., and F. York Powell, M.A. 2 vols.
Oxford, 1883.

_County F. L., Gloucestershire._ County Folklore. Printed Extracts,
No. I., Gloucestershire. Edited by Edwin Sidney Hartland, F.S.A.
London, 1892. [Folklore Soc.]

Crawfurd. History of the Indian Archipelago, by John Crawfurd,
F.R.S. 3 vols. Edinburgh, 1820.

Crooke. An Introduction to the Popular Religion and Folk lore of
Northern India. By W. Crooke, B.A. Allahabad, 1894.

Curr. The Australian Race: its origin, languages, customs, place of
landing in Australia, and the routes by which it spread itself over
that continent. By Edward M. Curr. 4 vols. Melbourne, 1886-7.

Curtin, _Hero-Tales._ Hero-Tales of Ireland, collected by Jeremiah
Curtin. London, 1894.

----_Ireland._ Myths and Folklore of Ireland, by Jeremiah Curtin.
London, 1890.

_Cymru Fu N. and Q._ Cymru Fu: Notes and Queries relating to the past
History of Wales and the Border Counties. 2 vols. Cardiff, 1887-90.


Dalpatrám Dayá. Bhut Nibandh: an Essay, descriptive of the
Demonology and other Popular Superstitions of Guzerat. By Dalpatrám
Dayá. Translated by Alexander Kinloch Forbes. Bombay, N.D.

Dalyell. The Darker Superstitions of Scotland. By John Graham
Dalyell, Esq., F.A.S.E. Glasgow, 1835.

D’Arbois, _Droit Celt._ Études sur le Droit Celtique, par H.
D’Arbois de Jubainville, avec la collaboration de Paul Collinet
Docteur en Droit. Tome I. Paris, 1895.

Darwin, _Journ._ Journal of Researches into the Natural History and
Geology of the Countries visited during the voyage of H.M.S. _Beagle_
[etc.]. By Charles Darwin, M.A., F.R.S. London, 1876.

Dasent, _Fjeld._ Tales from the Fjeld. A Series of Popular Tales
from the Norse of P. Ch. Asbjörnsen, by Sir George Dasent, D.C.L.
London, 1896.

Dawson. Australian Aborigines. The Languages and Customs of several
tribes of Aborigines in the western district of Victoria, Australia,
by James Dawson. Melbourne, 1881.

De Acosta. The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, by Father
Joseph De Acosta. Reprinted from the English translated edition of
Edward Grimston, 1604. And edited by Clements R. Markham, C.B., F.R.S.
2 vols. [paged continuously]. London, 1880. [Hakluyt Soc.]

De Charencey, _Folklore._ Comte H. De Charencey. Le Folklore dans
les deux Mondes. Paris, 1894.

De Groot. The Religious System of China, its Ancient Forms,
Evolution [etc.]. By J. J. M. De Groot, Ph.D. [2 vols. paged
continuously, only published yet.] Leyden, 1892-94.

De Gubernatis, _Myth. Plantes._ La Mythologie des Plantes ou Les
Légendes du Règne Végétal par Angelo de Gubernatis. 2 vols. Paris,
1878-82.

----_Usi Nuz._ A. de Gubernatis. Storia Comparata degli Usi Nuziali in
Italia e presso gli altri popoli indo-europei. Milano, 1878.

De Mensignac. Recherches Ethnographiques sur la Salive et le
Crachat. Par Camille de Mensignac. Extrait des Bulletins de la
Société d’Anthropologie de Bordeaux et du Sud-ouest. Bordeaux, 1892.

_Denham Tracts._ The Denham Tracts. A Collection of Folklore by
Michael Aislabie Denham, and reprinted from the Original Tracts and
Pamphlets printed by Mr. Denham between 1846 and 1859. Edited by Dr.
James Hardy. 2 vols. London, 1892-95. [Folklore Soc.]

Denton. Serbian Folklore. Popular Tales selected and translated by
Madam Csedomille Mijatovics. Edited by the Rev. W. Denton, M.A.
London, 1874.

Domenech. Seven Years’ Residence in the Great Deserts of North
America, by the Abbé Em. Domenech. 2 vols. London, 1860.

Doolittle. Social Life of the Chinese: with some account of their
Religious [etc.] Customs and Opinions. With special but not exclusive
reference to Fuhchau. By Rev. Justus Doolittle. 2 vols. London, 1866.

Dobrizhoffer. An Account of the Abipones, an equestrian people of
Paraguay. From the Latin of Martin Dobrizhoffer. 3 vols. London, 1822.

Dorsey, _Cegiha._ The Cegiha Language, by James Owen Dorsey.
Washington, 1890.

----_Omaha Soc._ Omaha Sociology. By J. Owen Dorsey. Washington, 1884.

Douglas. Scottish Fairy and Folk-Tales, selected and edited, with an
introduction, by Sir George Douglas, Bart. London, N.D.

Dozon. Contes Albanais recueillis et traduits par Auguste Dozon.
Paris, 1881.

Du Chaillu, _Ashangoland._ A Journey to Ashangoland: and further
Penetration into Equatorial Africa. By Paul B. Du Chaillu. London,
1867.

----_Equat. Afr._ Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa. By
Paul B. Du Chaillu. London, 1861.

----_Midnight Sun._ Land of the Midnight Sun; Summer and Winter
Journeys through Sweden, Norway, Lapland, and Northern Finland. By
Paul B. Du Chaillu. London, 1881.

----_Viking Age._ The Viking Age. By Paul B. Du Chaillu. 2 vols.
London, 1889.

Dyer. English Folklore. By the Rev. T. F. Thiselton Dyer, M.A.
London, 1880.


_Early Ideas._ Early Ideas. A Group of Hindu Stories. Collected and
collated by Anaryan [F. F. Arbuthnot]. London, 1881.

Edwards, _Bahama._ Bahama Songs and Stories. A Contribution to
Folklore. By Charles L. Edwards, Ph.D. Boston, 1895. [Amer. F. L.
Soc.]

Ellis, _Land of Fetish._ The Land of Fetish. By A. B. Ellis. London,
1883.

Ellis, _Tour._ Narrative of a Tour through Hawaii or Owhyhee; with
remarks on the History, Traditions [etc.] of the Inhabitants of the
Sandwich Islands. By William Ellis. London, 1826.

Elworthy. The Evil Eye. An Account of this ancient and widespread
Superstition. By Frederick Thomas Elworthy. London, 1895.

Erman. Travels in Siberia: including excursions northwards, down the
Obi [etc.]. By Adolph Erman. Translated from the German by William
Desborough Cooley. 2 vols. London, 1848.


Favre, _Wild Tribes._ An Account of the Wild Tribes inhabiting the
Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and a few Neighbouring Islands. By the Rev.
P. Favre. Singapore, 1848. [Reprinted from the _Journ. Ind. Arch._]

Fison and Howitt. Kamilaroi and Kurnai: Group Marriage and
Relationship, and Marriage by Elopement. Drawn chiefly from the usage
of the Australian Aborigines [etc.]. By Lorimer Fison, M.A., and A. W.
Howitt, F.G.S. Melbourne, 1880.

_F. L. Andaluz._ El Folklore Andaluz. Organo de la Sociedad de este
Nombre. 1882 á 1883. Sevilla.

Forsyth. The Highlands of Central India. Notes on their Forests and
Wild Tribes, Natural History and Sports. By Captain J. Forsyth.
London, 1889.

Frazer, _Totemism._ Totemism, by J. G. Frazer, M.A. Edinburgh, 1887.

_Fur. Corresp._ Further Correspondence respecting British New Guinea.
Presented to Parliament, April 1891.


Gaidoz, _Vieux Rite._ Un Vieux Rite Médical. Par Henri Gaidoz.
Paris, 1892.

Garcilasso. First Part of the Royal Commentaries of the Yncas, by
the Ynca Garcilasso de la Vega. Translated by Clements R. Markham. 2
vols. London, 1869. [Hakluyt Soc.].

Geldart. Folklore of Modern Greece: the Tales of the People. Edited
by the Rev. E. M. Geldart, M.A. London, 1884.

_Gent. Mag. Lib._ The Gentleman’s Magazine Library: being a classified
collection of the chief contents of the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ from
1731 to 1868. Edited by George Lawrence Gomme, F.S.A. 20 vols. [not
numbered, but distinguished by their contents]. London, 1884-96.
[Still proceeding.]

Georgeakis. Le Folklore de Lesbos. Par G. Georgeakis et Léon
Pineau. Paris, 1894.

Georgi. Description de toutes les Nations de l’Empire de Russie.
Troisième Collection, contenant Les Nations Samoyèdes [etc.].
Traduite de l’Allemand. [By J. Georgi.] St. Petersbourg, 1777.

Gigli. Superstizioni Pregiudizi e Tradizioni in Terra d’Otranto, con
un’Aggiunta di Conti e Fiabe Popolari. Per Giuseppe Gigli. Firenze,
1893.

Gomme, _Ethn._ Ethnology in Folklore. By George Laurence Gomme,
F.S.A. London, 1892.

Gomme, Mrs. _Traditional Games._ The Traditional Games of England,
Scotland, and Ireland, with Tunes [etc.]. Collected and annotated by
Alice Bertha Gomme. [1 vol. only issued yet.] London, 1894.

Graf, _Roma._ Roma nella Memoria e nelle Immaginazioni del Medio Evo
di Arturo Graf. 2 vols. Torino, 1882-83.

Grässe. Sagenbuch des Preussischen Staats. Von Dr. J. G. Th.
Grässe. 2 vols. Glogau, [1867]-1871.

Gray. China. A History of the Laws, Manners, and Customs of the
People. By John Henry Gray, M.A., LL.D. Edited by William Gow Gregor.
2 vols. London, 1878.

Gregor. Notes on the Folklore of the North-East of Scotland. By the
Rev. Walter Gregor, M.A. London, 1881 [Folklore Soc.]

Griffis. Corea, the Hermit Nation. By William Elliot Griffis.
London, 1882.

Grimm, _D. Sagen._ Deutsche Sagen. Herausgegeben von den Brüdern
Grimm. 2 vols. Berlin, 1816-18.

Grohmann. Sagen aus Böhmen. Gesammelt und herausgegeben von Dr.
Josef Virgil Grohmann. Prag, 1863.

Guhl and Koner. The Life of the Greeks and Romans described from
Antique Monuments. By E. Guhl and W. Koner. Translated from the third
German edition by F. Hueffer. London, N.D.


Hansen. Sagen und Erzählungen der Sylter Friesen, nebst einer
Beschreibung der Insel Sylt als Einleitung. Von C. P. Hansen. Garding,
1875.

Harou. Le Folklore de Godarville (Hainault). Par Alfred Harou.
Anvers, 1893.

_Hatim Taï._ The Adventures of Hatim Taï, a Romance. Translated from
the Persian, by Duncan Forbes, A.M. London, 1830.

Hearn. The Aryan Household, its Structure and its Development. An
introduction to Comparative Jurisprudence. By William Edward Hearn,
LL.D. London, 1879.

_Heimskringla._ The Stories of the Kings of Norway, called the Round
World (Heimskringla). By Snorri Sturluson. Done into English out of
the Icelandic by William Morris and Eiríkr Magnússon. [3 vols. only
issued yet.] London, 1893-95.

Henderson. Notes on the Folklore of the Northern Counties of England
and the Borders. By William Henderson. London, 1879. [Folklore Soc.]

Hickson. A Naturalist in North Celebes. By Sidney J. Hickson, M.A.,
D.Sc. London, 1889.

Hillner. Volksthümlicher Brauch und Glaube bei Geburt und Taufe in
Siebenbürger Sachsenlande. Ein Beitrag zur Culturgeschichte von
Johann Hillner. Program des Evang. Gymnasium in Schässburg. 1877.

Hodgkinson. Australia, from Port Macquarie to Moreton Bay; with
Descriptions of the Natives, their Manners and Customs [etc.]. By
Clement Hodgkinson. London, 1845.

Hodgson. On the Aborigines of India, by B. H. Hodgson, Esq., B.C.S.
Essay the First; on the Kocch, Bódo, and Dhimál Tribes. Calcutta,
1847.

Hunt. Popular Romances of the West of England; or, the Drolls,
Traditions, and Superstitions of Old Cornwall, collected and edited by
Robert Hunt, F.R.S. London, 1881.

Hunter, _Captivity._ Memoirs of a Captivity among the Indians of
North America, from Childhood to the Age of Nineteen [etc.]. By John
D. Hunter. London, 1823.


Jahn, _Volkssagen._ Volkssagen aus Pommern und Rügen. Gesammelt und
herausgegeben von Dr. Ulrich Jahn. Stettin, 1886.

_Jātaka._ The Jātaka; or Stories of the Buddha’s Former Births.
Translated from the Pāli by various hands, under the editorship of
Professor E. B. Cowell. Vol. I. translated by Robert Chalmers, B.A.;
Vol. II. translated by W. H. D. Rouse, M.A. Cambridge, 1895. [Still
proceeding.]

Jeremias, _Höllenfahrt._ Die Höllenfahrt der Istar. Eine
altbabylonische Beschwörungslegende. Von Alfred Jeremias. München,
1886.

Jones and Kropf. The Folk-Tales of the Magyars. Collected by Kriza,
Erdélyi, Pap, and others. Translated and edited by the Rev. W. Henry
Jones and Lewis L. Kropf. London, 1889.

_Journ. Ethn. Soc._ The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London.
9 vols. London, 1848-56.

_Journ. Ind. Arch._ The Journal of the Indian Archipelago. 18 vols.
Singapore, 1847-59.

_Journ. Kilk. Arch. Soc._ The Journal of the Kilkenny and South-East
of Ireland Archæological Society. New Series. 6 vols., 1856-71.
Dublin.

Jülg. See _Siddhi-Kür_.


Kane. Wanderings of an Artist among the Indians of North America. By
Paul Kane. London, 1859.

Karajich. Volksmärchen der Serben. Gesammelt und herausgegeben von
Wuk Stephanowitsch Karadschitsch. Ins Deutsche übersetzt von dessen
Tochter Wilhelmine. Berlin, 1854.

Kerr. The Far Interior: a Narrative of Travel and Adventure from the
Cape of Good Hope across the Zambesi to the Lake Regions of Central
Africa. By Walter Montagu Kerr, C.E., F.R.G.S. 2 vols. London, 1887.

Kirby. The Hero of Esthonia, and other Studies in the Romantic
Literature of that Country. Compiled from Esthonian and German sources
by W. F. Kirby, F.L.S., F.E.S. 2 vols. London, 1895.

Knoop, _Posen._ Sagen und Erzählungen aus der Provinz Posen.
Gesammelt von Otto Knoop. Posen, 1893.

Kobert. Historische Studien aus dem Pharmakologischen Institute der
Kaiserlichen Universität Dorpat. Herausgegeben von Dr. Rudolph
Kobert. 4 vols. [still proceeding]. Vol. IV. Halle a S., 1894.

Kuhn, _Märkische Sagen._ Märkische Sagen und Märchen nebst einem
Anhange von Gebräuchen und Aberglauben gesammelt und herausgegeben
von Adalbert Kuhn. Berlin, 1843.

----_Sagen aus Westf._ Sagen, Gebräuche, und Märchen aus Westfalen
und einigen andern, besonders den angrenzenden Gegenden
Nordeutschlands. Gesammelt und herausgegeben von Adalbert Kuhn. 2
vols. Leipzig, 1859.


Laisnel. Croyances et Légendes du Centre de la France. Souvenirs du
Vieux Temps. Par Laisnel de la Salle. 2 vols. Paris, 1875.

Landor. Alone with the Hairy Ainu. Or, 3800 Miles on a Pack-Saddle
in Yezo and a Cruise to the Kurile Islands. By A. H. Savage Landor.
London, 1893.

Lang, _Myth R. and R._ Myth, Ritual, and Religion. By Andrew Lang. 2
vols. London, 1887.

Larminie. West Irish Folk-Tales and Romances. Collected and
Translated by William Larminie. London, 1893.

Leclère. Cambodge. Contes et Légendes, recueillis et publiés en
Français par Adhémard Leclère. Paris, 1895.

Lehmann-Filhés. _See_ Arnason.

Leland, _Etr. Rom._ Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition. By
Charles Godfrey Leland. London, 1892.

Lenormant. Chaldean Magic: Its Origin and Development. Translated
from the French. By François Lenormant. London, N.D. [1887.
Translated by W. R. Cooper.]

Letourneau, _L’Év. Rel._ L’Évolution Religieuse dans les diverses
races humaines. Par Ch. Letourneau. Paris, 1892.

Lewin. Wild Races of South-Eastern India. By Captain T. H. Lewin.
London, 1870.

Livingstone, _Miss. Travels._ Missionary Travels and Researches in
South Africa, including a Sketch of Sixteen Years’ Residence in the
Interior of Africa [etc.]. By David Livingstone, LL.D., D.C.L. London,
1857.

----_Zambesi._ Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its
Tributaries; and of the Discovery of Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa. By David
and Charles Livingstone. London, 1865.

Lloyd, _Report._ A Short Account of Further Bushman Material
collected. By L. C. Lloyd. London, 1889.

Lubbock. The Origin of Civilisation and the Primitive Condition of
Man. Mental and Social Condition of Savages. By Sir John Lubbock,
Bart., M.P., F.R.S., D.C.L., LL.D. London, 1889.

Lummis. The Man who Married the Moon, and other Pueblo Indian
Folk-Stories. By Charles F. Lummis. New York, 1894.

Luzel, _Le Magicien._ Le Magicien et son Valet (Métamorphoses). Par
F. M. Luzel. Extrait du Bulletin de la Société Archéologique de
Finistère. Quimper, 1885.


MacInnes. Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition. Argyllshire Series,
No. 11. Folk and Hero Tales. Collected, edited and translated by the
Rev. D. MacInnes. With notes by the Editor and Alfred Nutt. London,
1890.

Mackenzie. The Prophecies of the Brahan Seer. By Alexander
Mackenzie. Inverness, 1878.

MacLennan. Studies in Ancient History, comprising a Reprint of
Primitive Marriage: An Inquiry into the Origin of the Form of Capture
in Marriage Ceremonies. By the late John Ferguson McLennan. London,
1886. The Second Series, comprising an Inquiry into the Origin of
Exogamy. Edited by his Widow and Arthur Platt. London, 1896. 2 vols.

Mage. Voyage dans le Soudan Occidental (Sénégambie-Niger). Par M.
E. Mage. Paris, 1868.

Mallet. Northern Antiquities; or, an Historical Account of the
Manners, Customs, Religion [etc.] of the Ancient Scandinavians.
Translated from the French of M. Mallet by Bishop Percy. New edition,
by I. A. Blackwell, Esq. London, 1847.

Mannhardt, _Wald- und Feld-Kulte._ Wald- und Feld-Kulte. Von Wilhelm
Mannhardt. 2 vols. Berlin, 1875-77. Vol. I., Der Baumkultus der
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 ENDNOTES

 CHAPTER XVI NOTES

 [2.1]
 Basset, 72 (Story No. 35).

 [2.2]
 ii. Von Hahn, 259 (variant of Story No. 64).

 [3.1]
 ii. Von Hahn, 262.

 [3.2]
 Von Wlislocki, _Armenier_, 3 (Story No. 2).

 [4.1]
 MacInnes, 279 (Story No. 8).

 [4.2]
 i. Campbell, 97.

 [6.1]
 Curtin, _Ireland_, 157; Larminie, 196; i. _F.L. Journ._, 54; vi.
 _Folklore_, 309. In Larminie’s version, however, a new series of
 adventures follows the marriage.

 [7.1]
 Sébillot, in ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 280; Luzel, ii. _Contes Pop._,
 296.

 [7.2]
 Webster, 22. The story belongs to the _Outcast Child_ group (see iv.
 _F.L. Journ._, 308); and the hero’s reconciliation with his father
 takes place at the wedding.

 [8.1]
 Webster, 33.

 [9.1]
 Vinson, 56.

 [9.2]
 Wolf, _Deutsche Hausm._, 369.

 [10.1]
 _Suprà_, vol. i. p. 65.

 [11.1]
 Dasent, _Fjeld_, 261, from Asbjörnsen. The story is defective.

 [11.2]
 Edwards, _Bahama_, 90. This story likewise is the worse for wear.

 [12.1]
 Romero, 129 (Story No. 38).

 [14.1]
 Burton, iv. _Suppl. Nights_, 258.

 [14.2]
 Burton, iv. _Suppl. Nights_, 244, cited _suprà_, vol. i. p. 54.

 [15.1]
 Douglas, 58.

 [16.1]
 Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 323 (Story No. 55). In savage tales the
 attack on a monster from the inside is not very uncommon. See, for
 example, Riggs, _Dakota Grammar_, 91, 141; Edwards, _Bahama_, 72. The
 Quères Pueblos relate that the Coyote swallowed the Horned Toad. After
 being swallowed, the latter erected its spines, and so killed the
 Coyote. Lummis, 86. Cf. the story of the Lambton Worm (Henderson,
 288), the tale from Galloway given by Mr. Andrew Lang in the
 _Academy_, October 1885, the classic Saga of Kleostratos (_infra_, p.
 37), and others.

 [18.1]
 Schleicher, 54. Compare a tale from Oldenburg, ii. Strackerjan, 333
 (variant of Story No. 630).

 [18.2]
 Pitrè, _Toscane_, 9 (Story No. 2); _F.L. Andaluz_, 357; Romero, 83
 (Story No. 23).

 [18.3]
 De Gubernatis, ii. _Zool. Myth._, 36, note.

 [19.1]
 Waldau, 468; Haltrich, 101 (Story No. 25).

 [20.1]
 Bernoni, _Fiabe_, 50 (Story No. 10). We hear no more of the ring; and
 the lady plays no part in the final scene.

 [20.2]
 i. Gonzenbach, 299 (Story No. 44).

 [21.1]
 Wardrop, 68 (Story No. 12).

 [23.1]
 Burton, vi. _Suppl. Nights_, 363.

 [24.1]
 Carnoy et Nicolaides, 75; Garnett, i. _Wom._, 165. A shorter version
 in Georgeakis, 35. Substantially the same story is found in the island
 of Syra, in the Cyclades. ii. Von Hahn, 49 (Story No. 70).

 [24.2]
 i. Cosquin, 18, 74, citing Schiefner.

 [25.1]
 De Rochemonteix, 25 (Story No. 3).

 [25.2]
 Schott, 135 (Story No. 10). In a Lithuanian variant the maiden
 sacrificed to the dragon is confounded with one of the princesses
 carried captive by a dragon into the well. Leskien, 407.

 [26.1]
 Sébillot, i. _Contes Pop._, 72 (Story No. 11); ii. _Rivista_, 109.
 Two Breton variants, also collected by M. Sébillot, ix. _Rev. Trad.
 Pop._, 172, 173.

 [26.2]
 ii. Strackerjan, 330 (Story No. 630).

 [27.1]
 Dasent, _Fjeld_, 237, from Asbjörnsen.

 [28.1]
 Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 198 (Story No. 13). As to the Keshalyi’s
 hairs, see _suprà_, vol. i., pp. 124, 155.

 [29.1]
 Von Wlislocki, _Volksdicht._, 260 (Story No. 34). Compare the
 classical legend of Tiresias. In the Hindu mythology, the daughter of
 Manu changed her sex several times. So did Loki in the Scandinavian
 mythology. Change of sex is also, as I need hardly remind the reader,
 found in several classical stories.

 [29.2]
 Dozon, 109 (Story No. 14).

 [30.1]
 Steel and Temple, 138.

 [30.2]
 _Ibid._, 304.

 [31.1]
 _Siddhi-Kür_, 60 (Story No. 2). Miss Busk gives a free rendering,
 Sagas, 18.

 [31.2]
 _Hatim Taï_, 45.

 [32.1]
 V. Bettei, in xiii. _Archivio_, 543, translating the story. The
 incident of binding the dragon, whether by an oath or a more
 substantial bond, is of extreme rarity in _märchen_, but is by no
 means uncommon in sagas, as we shall find in the next chapter. See,
 however, the Greek _märchen_ cited _suprà_, p. 3; and a Russian tale,
 viii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 69.

 [33.1]
 Dorsey, _Cegiha_, 114. The other version follows it.

 [35.1]
 Leland, _Etr. Rom._, 109.




 CHAPTER XVII NOTES

 [37.1]
 Pausanias, ix. 26. Nor are the cases of Herakles and Kleostratos the
 only cases in antiquity of what I may call combat with a dragon from
 the inside. In the Vatican Museum is a beautiful Attic vase found at
 Caere, and probably imported into Etruria in the fifth century before
 Christ, which contains a representation of Jason vomited forth from
 the dragon’s maw. The hero is identified by name; and the Golden
 Fleece hangs on a tree in the background; while Athene, with owl and
 spear and Gorgon’s head, superintends the operation. The scene is
 reproduced by Roscher, _Lexikon, s.v._ Jason. This version of the
 story does not seem to have found its way into literature: a sample of
 the endless number of variants of the classical stories which have
 perished, or only lived on in tradition to give us at the end of the
 nineteenth century the chance of recovering them as _märchen_ from
 the mouths of the peasantry, ere they be finally swept away by the
 deluge of modern civilisation.

 [38.1]
 Budge, _Saint George_, xxxii. Yet the very arm that slew the dragon is
 preserved at Venice (Graf, ii. _Roma_, 30 note), and the cave which
 was the dragon’s lair is shown at Beyrout! Bérenger-Féraud,
 _Superstitions_, 216, citing Thévenot.

 [40.1]
 _Leg. Aur._, lviii.

 [41.1]
 Rudder, 461 note, prints the notice from a MS. of the time of Henry
 VI. I have reproduced it _verbatim et literatim_ in _County F.L.,
 Gloucestershire_, 48.

 [43.1]
 Dr. Krauss, in ix. _Archivio_, 484, translating a Bosnian ballad
 obtained by him from the mouth of an orthodox peasant at Vukasovci.

 [43.2]
 Denton, 309; Ralston, _Russian F.T._, 347.

 [44.1]
 Georgeakis, 256.

 [44.2]
 G. Ragusa-Moleti, in x. _Archivio_, 420.

 [45.1]
 Baring-Gould, _Curious Myths_, 301. The whole essay on Saint George
 ought to be read as an important contribution to the subject; though
 the sun-myth, by which the author explains the legend, is now as
 thoroughly exploded as Dr. Heylin’s identification, which he combats,
 of the saint with the Arian bishop of Alexandria. Mr. Budge, however,
 says: “The Coptic text shows us clearly that the dragon which George
 fought and overcame was none other than the impious Dadianus, and it
 proves, if further proof is needed, that George the martyr and George,
 the opponent of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, were two distinct
 persons; the fact being that Athanasius the Bishop has been confused
 with Athanasius the sorcerer, whom George the martyr overcame.” Budge,
 _Saint George_, xxxi. Mr. Baring-Gould, moreover, is certainly wrong
 in saying: “Hospinian, relating the sufferings of the martyr, affirms
 distinctly that his constancy was the occasion of the creation of the
 legend by Voragine.” Any affirmation by Hospinian on the subject
 would, of course, be of very little value; but all he says is that the
 saint’s fortitude and unshaken constancy gave occasion to the story,
 as it is to be read in Jacob à Voragine and Peter de Natalibus. His
 own interpretation is that the tale is a form under which the ancients
 figured the redemption of the human race. Thus, George is Christ, the
 Dragon is the Devil, the citizens of Silea (_sic_) are an image of the
 whole human race, a prey to the Devil, from whom the only power that
 can deliver them is Christ, for which we owe Him everlasting thanks
 and worship, etc., etc. _De Festis Christianorum, sub die_ 23rd April.
 Some countenance is given to the theory of misunderstanding by a
 Russian song which enumerates the conquests of a fiery dragon among
 the saint’s trials during his prolonged martyrdom. Ralston, _Songs_,
 232. I do not know whether this occurs elsewhere.

 [46.1]
 Maury, _Légendes Pieuses_, 144, 145.

 [46.2]
 i. Grässe, 460 (Story No. 502). There is a similar statue and
 tradition, but wanting the maiden, at Helmstedt. Voges, 194 (Story No.
 165). A monument in the church at Brent Pelham is thus described by
 Weever in his _Funerall Monuments_: “In the wall of this church lieth
 a most ancient monument: a stone whereon is figured a man, and about
 him an Eagle, a Lion, and a Bull, all having wings, and a fourth of
 the shape of an Angell, as if they should represent the four
 Evangelists: under the feet of the man is a crosse fleurie, and under
 the crosse a serpent. He is thought to have been some time the lord of
 an ancient decaied house, well moated, not farre from this place,
 called O Piers Shoonkes. He flourished _Ann. à conquestu vicesimo
 primo_.” In effect there seems to have been a family named Shonke
 resident at Pelham during the Middle Ages; and there is said to be a
 traditional tale current concerning the person buried beneath the
 stone, “which represents him as having so offended the devil by
 killing a serpent, that his Highness threatened to secure him, whether
 buried within or without the walls of a church; to avoid which he was
 deposited in the wall itself.” _Gent. Mag. Lib._, v. Topography, 223,
 quoting Weever, Brayley, and others.

 [47.1]
 i. _Rivista_, 748. Lilies of the valley which spring from the blood of
 Saint Leonard, another dragon-slayer, still reveal the scenes of the
 saint’s combats with the dragon of Saint Leonard’s Forest in Sussex.
 Henderson, 300.

 [49.1]
 Henderson, 285, citing a communication from “Col. Johnson, whose
 family have long been owners of a portion of the Pollard lands.” A
 similar legend accounts for the armorial bearings of the town of
 Bradford. ii. Parkinson, 165. Compare, too, the tenure of the manor of
 Sockburn, also in the bishopric of Durham. Henderson, 284.

 [50.1]
 Kuno Meyer, in i. _Arch. Rev._, 303, translating the saga; MacInnes,
 477. See also Rhys, _Hibbert Lectures_, 595.

 [51.1]
 Campbell, i. _Circ. Notes_, 326.

 [53.1]
 Brauns, 112. This should be compared with Campbell’s version, which
 is more directly from oral tradition, though probably affected by
 literary influences; and with Mr. Pfoundes’ version referred to
 further on (p. 91, note).

 [54.1]
 _The Ancient and Present State of Gloucestershire_, by Sir Robert
 Atkyns, knight, 2nd edition, London, 1768 (the original edition bears
 date 1712), 202; _A New History of Gloucestershire_, Cirencester:
 printed by Samuel Rudder (1779), 402. I quote Rudder. Atkyns, who
 neither describes the ancient nor any other state of Gloucestershire,
 omits the detail of the milk.

 [55.1]
 Readers who are unacquainted with this interesting church will pardon
 my mentioning that, among other curious relics of the past, it
 preserves the arrangement of seats around the Communion Table in the
 chancel, which was introduced after the Reformation, but which the
 reaction under Laud and at the Restoration in most cases destroyed.
 The Rev. George Butterworth, who was incumbent until three or four
 years ago, and who has written an excellent little book upon
 Deerhurst, kept with reverent care in its ancient situation the carved
 oaken Communion Table. But his successor has removed it as lumber to
 the north aisle, and replaced it by a brand-new deal altar and
 super-altar, with all the gewgaws of the present ecclesiastical
 fashion, to the disgust of his parishioners and of every one who
 values historical remains. It will hardly be believed that this
 gentleman bears the name and claims the blood of the antiquary Lysons.
 Is it not time that the nation took over every church with any
 pretensions to the character of an historical monument, and forbade
 under heavy penalties the injuries lately, and still, wrought all over
 England by fussy parsons and over-zealous architects? Or are we to
 wait until every genuine record of the past has been effaced?

 [56.1]
 _Ante_, p. 16, note; i. Henderson, 298, 292, 296.

 [56.2]
 i. Cosquin, 75, citing ii. _Orient und Occident_, 753.

 [57.1]
 Plowden, 84. The story of Menelek is interesting but irrelevant here.
 The name of the king’s daughter in the Bosnian ballad cited above (p.
 41) is a curious coincidence, if it be nothing more.

 [58.1]
 Mage, 672. A similar story is told in Senegambia. Bérenger-Féraud,
 _Sénég._, 185.

 [59.1]
 _Leg. Aur._, xciii. Such tales are told of several female saints. M.
 Maury mentions Saint Martha, Saint Veneranda and Saint Radegund. Saint
 Veneranda or Venera (Venus?) is a saint held in high honour in Sicily
 and Southern Italy. Her legend is given by Wirth, 24.

 [60.1]
 ii. Grässe, 29, citing Müller, _Siegburg und der Siegkreis_.

 [62.1]
 Dennys, 110, quoting translation by W. F. Mayers in i. _N. and Q. on
 China and Japan_, 148.

 [63.1]
 i. _Leg. Panjâb_, 17; Steel, 258. Compare the _märchen_ related,
 _ante_, p. 30. The legend seems to be localised at Poo in the Sutlej
 valley. Mrs. Murray-Aynsley, in iii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 431.

 [63.2]
 Saxo, 302; Elton’s version, 364.

 [64.1]
 Liebrecht, 66, referring to the _Saga_ and some other sources given by
 Uhland.

 [64.2]
 Some of these omissions, but not all, are indicated by Prof. York
 Powell, Elton’s version, xcii.

 [65.1]
 i. _Blätt. f. Pomm. Volksk._, 4, citing Dr. Zechlin, who gives it from
 the narration of a fisherman.

 [65.2]
 _Science of Fairy Tales_, 235. M. Teirlinck refers to several
 dragon-stories current in Flanders, whereof some at least belong to
 the Enchanted Princess group. The others would seem to be Rescue
 tales. But he gives no details. i. Teirlinck, 147.




 CHAPTER XVIII NOTES

 [69.1]
 _De Iside_, 31.

 [70.1]
 Zélie Colvile, in cliii. _Blackwood’s Mag._, 375 (March 1893).

 [70.2]
 ii. _Journ. Ind. Arch._, 174, translating _Tijds. v. Neerl. Ind._, 9th
 Jaarg., 10th Afl.

 [70.3]
 Dr. Tylor’s Presidential Address in xxi. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 408.

 [71.1]
 i. Schouten, 115. The islanders were grievously offended when the
 travellers caught any crocodiles, and attempted to prevent them from
 doing so. Compare a Tupi custom which, if accurately reported, looks
 like human sacrifice. Featherman, _Chiapo-Mar._, 346. I do not feel at
 liberty to do more than call attention to it here.

 [71.2]
 ii. Gray, 306.

 [72.1]
 Ellis, i. _Pol. Res._, 358, 357.

 [72.2]
 Plut. _Parallels_, 35.

 [72.3]
 Pausanias, viii. 2. See Mr. Lang’s comments, ii. _Myth, R. and R._,
 177. Another Greek vestige of human sacrifice to a bestial god seems
 to be the ceremony in the temple of Artemis Tauropolos at Halæ, in
 which blood was drawn from a man’s throat by the edge of a sword. See
 Lang, ii. _Myth, R. and R._, 216.

 [73.1]
 Ellis, _Land of Fetish_, 122.

 [74.1]
 ix. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 76, quoting Abel Rémusat, _Histoire de la
 ville de Khotan_.

 [75.1]
 ii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 27, quoting Cunningham, _Archæol. Rep._

 [75.2]
 Such legends are common in certain parts of Europe. See _Science of F.
 T._, ch. ix., where I have examined a number of them.

 [76.1]
 Crooke, 297. Compare the legend of the canal of Chamba, iv. _Ind. N.
 and Q._, 12; _Science of F. T._, 82.

 [76.2]
 Plutarch, _Rivers_, i.; Crooke, 296.

 [77.1]
 Frazer, i. _Golden Bough_, 276, citing Major Temple in xi. _Ind.
 Ant._, 297.

 [77.2]
 Crooke, 295, 297. This belief, Mr. Crooke points out, is among the
 difficulties constantly recurring at the census. Eusebius tells a
 curious tale of a victim thrown into a certain spring at Cæsarea
 Philippi, on the occasion of a festival, and disappearing by the power
 of the demon, until one day Astyrius, a Roman senator who had been
 converted to Christianity, was present at the rite and put an end to
 the pagan miracle by his prayers. But it does not appear that the
 victim was human. Eusebius, vii. 17.

 [78.1]
 Matilda C. Stevenson, in _Mem. Cong. Anthrop._, Chicago, 316.

 [78.2]
 Ovid, _Fasti_, v. 621; Dion. Halicarn. i. 38; Lactantius, _Inst._, i.
 12. See Mannhardt, ii. _Wald- und Feld-kulte_, 265; and Jevons, _Plut.
 R. Q._, lxxxi. With the Vestal Virgins were joined in the performance
 of the rite the Pontifices, the Prætors, and certain other of the
 citizens; but probably they only assisted in the sense of being
 present and performing some of the subordinate ceremonies.

 [78.3]
 Crooke, 296, 298.

 [79.1]
 Athenæus. xi. 15.

 [79.2]
 Frazer, i. _Golden Bough_, 279; and see the authorities there referred
 to.

 [80.1]
 Meier, _Sagen_, 373.

 [80.2]
 Kuhn, _Sagen aus Westf._, 130.

 [80.3]
 ii. Witzschel, 193.

 [80.4]
 Frazer, i. _Golden Bough_, 258.

 [81.1]
 Mannhardt, ii. _Wald- und Feld-kulte_, 414; Ralston, 244. I quote from
 Frazer, i. _Golden Bough_, 273, who follows Mannhardt. The authority
 both of Mannhardt and Ralston appears to be Afanasief.

 [81.2]
 Meier, _Sagen_, 374.

 [81.3]
 ii. Witzschel, 287, 293. I was not aware, or rather I had forgotten,
 when I wrote the above that Grimm had already pointed out that the
 common phrase: “The river-sprite demands his yearly victim,” pointed
 to actual human sacrifices in heathen times. Grimm, ii. _Myth._, 494.

 [82.1]
 Jahn, _Volkss. aus Pom._, 144, 150.

 [82.2]
 Wolf, _Hess. Sag._, 130, 129; Grimm, iv. _Teut. Myth._, 1430.

 [83.1]
 Wolf, _Hess. Sag._, 129.

 [83.2]
 Pluquet, 116.

 [83.3]
 ii. _Denham Tracts_, 42, 78; Henderson, 265; ii. Parkinson, 106;
 Burne, 79.

 [84.1]
 Boddam-Whetham, 210. Lander reports a similar custom on the part of
 the river-tribes of the Niger.

 [84.2]
 Rev. J. Macdonald, in iii. _Folklore_, 342. Among the Bechuana the
 water-snake, often found in fountains, is sacred; and it is believed
 that if one of them be killed the fountain will be dried up. Callaway,
 _Tales_, 290 note, quoting Philip, _Researches in S. Africa_.

 [85.1]
 Bérenger-Féraud, ii. _Superstitions_, 19. According to the Senephos
 of Kenedugu the aboriginal spirits of the country retired, on the
 Bambara conquest, to the depths of certain pools, where they drown any
 one whom they hear speaking a word of Bambara in the neighbourhood of
 their watery dwellings. But we are told nothing about the shape of
 these spirits. vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 761, quoting the report of Dr.
 Crozat on his mission to Mossi (French Soudan).

 [85.2]
 Rev. J. Macdonald in iii. _Folklore_, 342, 356. A story told at the
 last reference looks like the germ of a Rescue legend.

 [85.3]
 Callaway, _Tales_, 56, 86.

 [86.1]
 Callaway, _Tales_, 349 note, quoting Shaw _The Story of my Mission_.

 [87.1]
 Zelia Nuttall, in viii. _Journ. Am. F. L._, 123, quoting Sahagun.

 [88.1]
 _Academy_, October 1885, apparently from oral tradition at
 Balmaclenan. Compare the curious legend of the Senecas concerning a
 dragon which fed on corpses. ii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 54.

 [89.1]
 vii. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 590.

 [91.1]
 Brauns, 50; C. Pfoundes, in i. _F. L. Record_, 120. The latter relates
 that the rescued maiden married her deliverer, and contains some other
 unimportant variations. Both versions have been subjected to literary
 manipulation. The version of the tale of Susa No (_ante_, p. 51) given
 by Mr. Pfoundes (i. _F. L. Record_, 122) describes the maiden eaten by
 the serpent as “the yearly offering of a human sacrifice” to
 propitiate “the deity of the mountain.” But I hesitate to put this
 into the text, because Mr. Pfoundes does not give his authority,
 though I do not suggest it is not perfectly trustworthy. I am only
 anxious not to grasp too readily at evidence so exactly to my purpose.

 [93.1]
 i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 147, extracting a passage from the _Settlement
 Report_.

 [93.2]
 H. A. Rose, in iv. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 18.




 CHAPTER XIX NOTES

 [95.1]
 _Suprà_, vol. i. page 53.

 [97.1]
 Legrand, 77.

 [97.2]
 ii. Von Hahn, 287; cf. 40 (Story No. 69).

 [97.3]
 Wolf, _Deutsche Hausm._, 168.

 [98.1]
 Meier, _Märchen_, 246 (Story No. 72).

 [98.2]
 Maspons, i. _Rond._, 60.

 [99.1]
 Rivière, 71.

 [100.1]
 ii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 83.

 [100.2]
 Georgeakis, 84.

 [101.1]
 Von Wlislocki, _Armenier_, 27 (Story No. 14).

 [102.1]
 _Hatim Taï_, 211. A miskal is a dram and a half.

 [103.1]
 Von Wlislocki, _Zigeuner_, 24 (Story No. 12).

 [104.1]
 vi. _Archivio_, 196.

 [104.2]
 Luzel, ii. _Contes Pop._, 20.

 [105.1]
 Pedroso, 45 (Story No. 11).

 [106.1]
 i. _Folklore_, 310. Compare with this type of story those belonging to
 the _Fearless Johnny_ cycle.

 [106.2]
 Leskien, 546.

 [108.1]
 i. _Jātaka_, 24 (Story No. 6).

 [109.1]
 Larminie, 201. The power of a second blow to restore to life, or heal
 a mortal wound inflicted with the same instrument, is well known in
 folktales.

 [109.2]
 Ralston, _Russian F. T._, 147, citing Erlenvein.

 [110.1]
 _Mabinogion_, 241, 250; i. _Y Llyvyr Coch_, 124, 133.

 [110.2]
 Stokes, 269, citing Vogl’s _Volksmärchen_.

 [110.3]
 Burton, i. _Nights_, 134.

 [111.1]
 Stokes, 163 (Story No. 22). Other illustrations of the power of a hair
 are given, _ibid._ 269.

 [111.2]
 Schmidt, 101 (Story No. 13).

 [111.3]
 Schmidt, 79 (Story No. 7).




 CHAPTER XX NOTES

 [114.1]
 Stewart, 189.

 [114.2]
 Rink, 464.

 [115.1]
 Rev. M. MacPhail, in vi. _Folklore_, 162.

 [115.2]
 Mallet, 424; Thorpe, i. _N. Myth._, 51.

 [116.1]
 ii. _Silva Gad._, 343.

 [117.1]
 ii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 59.

 [118.1]
 Saxo, 292; Elton’s version (from which I quote), 352.

 [119.1]
 Lenormant, 64.

 [120.1]
 C. Hose, in xxiii. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 161.

 [120.2]
 i. Radloff, 188.

 [121.1]
 ii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 84, quoting _Archæol. Rep._

 [121.2]
 Maurer, 52, citing Arnason.

 [122.1]
 Knoop, _Sagen aus Posen_, 272, 277, 280.

 [122.2]
 Grohmann, 271.

 [123.1]
 Arthur J. Evans, in vi. _Folklore_, 18.

 [124.1]
 F. Corona, in i. _Rivista_, 750.

 [125.1]
 Pröhle, _D. Sagen_, 116 (Story No. 77); Hansen, 46 (Story No. 3).

 [125.2]
 Temme, _Altmark_, 39 (Story No. 48).

 [125.3]
 xxiv. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 150.

 [126.1]
 Campbell, _Clan Traditions_, 66.

 [126.2]
 Crooke, 8.

 [126.3]
 Ovid, _Metam._, iv. 543.

 [128.1]
 Adele Pellegrino, in i. _Rivista_, 332.

 [128.2]
 A. W. Moore, in xxxi. _Antiquary_, 73.

 [128.3]
 G. Calvia-Secchi, in i. _Rivista_, 426.

 [128.4]
 Knoop, _Sagen aus Posen_, 273.

 [129.1]
 Browne, _Ethnog. Inishbofin_, in iii. _Proc. Roy. Ir. Ac._, 3rd ser.,
 360.

 [130.1]
 Curtin, _Hero-Tales_, 437.

 [130.2]
 See Curtin, _op. cit._, 90, 208, 275, 433.

 [130.3]
 G. Calvia-Secchi, in i. _Rivista_, 427. The saint’s question is, of
 course, an equivocation. “Stai bene?” may be an ironical inquiry
 after the victim’s health. In Slavonic sagas it is occasionally the
 devil who is thus petrified. See Grohmann, 278, and ix. _Rev. Trad.
 Pop._, 505. But they cannot be true, as it is well known that he is
 still very much alive.

 [131.1]
 Owen, 297.

 [131.2]
 ii. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 1, citing the _Calcutta Rev_.

 [131.3]
 Crooke, 292.

 [131.4]
 Pausanias, i. 21; viii. 2.

 [132.1]
 x. _Rev. Trad. Pop._, 104. Cf. i. _Rivista_, 32.

 [132.2]
 i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 119, quoting Forbes, _Rás Mála_.

 [132.3]
 W. Crooke, in i. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 140.

 [133.1]
 Babu Rae Krishna Bahadur, in iv. _N. Ind. N. and Q._, 87.

 [133.2]
 Crooke, 76, quoting Gen. Sleeman’s _Rambles and Recollections_.

 [133.3]
 Modigliani, _Isola delle Donne_, 284.

 [134.1]
 Crooke, 42, quoting Cunningham, _Archæol. Reports_.

 [134.2]
 Hunt, 177.

 [134.3]
 Knoop, _Posen_, 276.

 [135.1]
 Grohmann, 273, 274.

 [135.2]
 Pröhle, _D. Sagen_, 194 (Story No. 141).

 [135.3]
 ii. _Am Urdsbrunnen_, 28.

 [135.4]
 Temme, _Altmark_, 38, 99, 100. In Upper Styria a grassy alp was
 covered with stones because some cowherds played at skittles with
 butter; but I do not understand that the cowherds themselves underwent
 transformation. i. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 215.

 [136.1]
 G. C. Secchi, in i. _Rivista_, 514. Bérenger-Féraud, ii.
 _Superstitions_, 286, 309, 322, 371, _et seq._, gives a number of
 instances analogous to those mentioned in the preceding paragraphs,
 too often without mentioning his authorities. As an example in the
 legends of the Church, take the unhappy shepherd who betrayed Saint
 Barbara to her father. Wirth, 13.

 [136.2]
 _Antè_, p. 77; xi. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 54. The similarity of this
 incident to those of European tradition where the mendicants are
 Christ and the Apostle Peter need hardly be pointed out.

 [137.1]
 _Suprà_, vol. i., p. 118.

 [137.2]
 Dorsey, in xi. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 425, quoting information supplied by
 a missionary, the Rev. W. Hamilton.

 [137.3]
 Kane, 250.

 [137.4]
 i. Curr, 253, 254; xxiv. _Journ. Anthr. Inst._, 191, 192.

 [138.1]
 ii. Gray, 346.

 [138.2]
 Griffis, 58.

 [139.1]
 Pausanias, ix. 34.

 [140.1]
 Gerv. Tilb., ii. 12.

 [140.2]
 Map, _De Nug. Cur._, iv. 12. Roger of Hoveden gives the name of the
 girl as Yse. Liebrecht, in Gerv. Tilb., 92, quotes the passage.

 [141.1]
 Thorpe, ii. _N. Myth._, 247, from Thiele.

 [142.1]
 i. _Corp. Poet. Bor._, 154, 81.

 [142.2]
 Rydberg, 573.

 [142.3]
 ii. _Zeits. des Vereins_, 15. Cf. Maurer, 51, 52, and many other
 stories.

 [142.4]
 Poestion, 227.

 [143.1]
 _Popol Vuh_, 243, 253.

 [143.2]
 Müller, _Amer. Urrel._, 179.

 [143.3]
 _Suprà_, vol. i. p. 15. Other modern versions of the tale have been
 more recently published by Curtin, _Hero-tales_, 283, 296.

 [143.4]
 Plutarch, _De Iside_, xvii.

 [143.5]
 Curtin, _Hero-tales_, 293, 309. If I do not misinterpret the scholiast
 a Pacceka-Buddha destroyed an insolent prince in this manner. See ii.
 _Jātaka_, 137 note.

 [144.1]
 Hertz, 19, citing Lightfoot.

 [144.2]
 Turner, _Samoa_, 23.

 [144.3]
 Hertz, 19. Compare the Bushman stories of men changed into stone by
 the glance of a maiden, “probably,” as Dr. Bleek remarks, “at a
 time when she would be usually kept in strict retirement.” Bleek,
 _2nd Report_, 14; Lloyd, _Report_, 10.

 [144.4]
 Pliny, _Nat. Hist._, viii. 32; Athenæus, v. 64; Barthol. Angl.,
 Steele, 76.

 [144.5]
 Instances are collected by Hertz, 21; Mestres, 226; Bérenger-Féraud,
 i. _Superstitions_, 253; Forsyth, 425.

 [145.1]
 Dorsey, _Cegiha_, 215.

 [145.2]
 Boas, _Report on N.-W. Tribes of Canada, Brit. Ass. Report_ (1895),
 565.

 [145.3]
 MacLennan, ii. _Studies_, 353, citing Morgan, _League of the
 Iroquois_.

 [146.1]
 Dorman, 284, citing Smith’s _Brazil_.

 [146.2]
 Prov. xxiii. 6; Mark vii. 22. See also Ecclesiasticus xiv. 8-10.
 Socrates alludes to the superstition, _Phaedo_, xlv.

 [147.1]
 A curious example of the prevalence of the superstition is to be seen
 in the Lateran museum. A painting by Crivelli, dated in 1482, of the
 Madonna surrounded by several saints, represents the Bambino as
 wearing a necklace of pearls, from which, inlaid into the picture,
 depends a common phallic amulet of coral. Even the Holy Babe, it
 seems, needed a magical protection against the Evil Eye.

 [147.2]
 Students desirous of pursuing the subject of the Evil Eye are referred
 to the elaborate compilation of M. Tuchmann on _La Fascination_ in
 _Mélusine_; Mr. F. T. Elworthy’s valuable work; Hertz, _op. cit._;
 Grimm, iii. _Teut. Myth._, 1099; and Andree, i. _Ethnog. Par._, 35.




 CHAPTER XXI NOTES

 [150.1]
 _Popol Vuh_, 243.

 [151.1]
 A curious tale is told by the Iroquois concerning the slaughter by
 their Thunder-God of a serpent which dwelt underground and fed upon
 human flesh. To increase its supply of food it poisoned the springs.
 But, whatever the story may mean, there is no exposure of victims, and
 consequently no rescue. ii. _Rep. Bur. Ethn._, 54.

 [151.2]
 _Suprà_, vol. i. p. 63.

 [152.1]
 Lucian, however (_Dial. Mar._, 14, and _De Œco_, 22), says expressly
 that Perseus used the sword in one hand and the Gorgon’s head in the
 other, at once killing the monster and turning it to stone.

 [153.1]
 _Suprà_, vol. i. p. 57.

 [154.1]
 _Suprà_, vol. i. p. 9.

 [154.2]
 Frazer, _Totemism_, 14.

 [156.1]
 iv. _Folklore_, 90.

 [159.1]
 _Suprà_, vol. i. p. 11.

 [162.1]
 Denton, 256.

 [162.2]
 In some cases they bestow the power of transformation, instead of
 accompanying the hero. In other cases they only come at call. I have
 treated these as equivalent; and I have included two cases of dogs and
 horses given by fish. Some of those taken from the castles of
 conquered giants ought perhaps to be added.

 [164.1]
 A similar incident is found elsewhere in Norway in quite a different
 connection. Dasent, _Fjeld_, 222, from Asbjörnsen. Æschylus, in a
 tragedy now lost, seems to have referred to the Graiai as the warders
 of the Gorgons. Hyginus, quoting this, goes on to say that Perseus,
 having possessed himself of their one eye, threw it into the Tritonian
 marsh, and the warders being thus deprived of sight, he easily slew
 Medusa while stupefied with sleep. _Poet. Astron._ ii. 12 (_Mythog.
 Lat._ 445). Æschylus also, in the _Prometheus_, represents the Graiai
 as in the form of swans, dwelling in perpetual darkness on the
 Gorgonian plains. These are versions, so far as I remember, not found
 in any modern _märchen_.

 [165.1]
 _Suprà_, vol. i. p. 44.

 [169.1]
 Leclère, 112 (Story No. 4).

 [170.1]
 The heroes’ names, for example, are Chan-Prea-Khat, and
 Son-Prea-Khat. Here Chan, the name of the elder, is that of the moon;
 Son, that of the sun. Khat is the Sanskrit Kshatriya, derived through
 the Pali Khattam. The names appear to mean Holy Warrior Moon and Holy
 Warrior Sun. The word _yak_ appears also to come from the Sanskrit;
 and there are other indications. They may, however, be all no more
 than signs of general Indian influence on the civilisation of
 Cambodia, without involving any evidence of the provenience of the
 tale.

 [170.2]
 Campbell, _Santal F. T._, 111.

 [173.1]
 Maury, _Croy. et Lég._ 196, citing the scholiast.

 [173.2]
 Hyginus, _Fab._ lxiv., in _Mythog. Lat._ 131. Euripides appears to
 have represented both Cepheus and Cassiopeia, his wife, as
 endeavouring to dissuade Andromeda from wedding Perseus. But this may
 be merely a poet’s licence. Hyginus, _Poet. Astron._ ii. 11 (_Mythog.
 Lat._ 444).

 [174.1]
 In fact, the cutting out of the tongues as proof of victory extends
 far beyond stories containing the Rescue incident. (See, among others,
 Denton, 150; i. _Rev. Celt._, 260; i. _Rivista_, 531.) Mr. Frazer, ii.
 _Golden Bough_, 129, note, has some observations upon it and the
 custom which it records, and which is found in both hemispheres. I
 gather, however, that he feels a little uncertain as to the true
 interpretation. It demands further inquiry, for which I have no room
 here. I only want to point out that the fact of the widespread custom
 makes decidedly against the theory of contamination by a merely local
 legend.

 [175.1]
 _Suprà_, p. 37.

 [178.1]
 Jacobs, in vii. _Folklore_, 63, reviewing Bédier, _Les Fabliaux_.

 [178.2]
 _Congress Report_ (1891), 68.

 [179.1]
 See _ante_, pp. 3, 42, 43.

 [184.1]
 ii. _Folklore_, 125.

 [184.2]
 _Congress Rep._ (1891), 19 _sqq._


 APPENDIX: TABLE A NOTES

 Cf. Day, 73, where there seems a relic of winged horses.




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