Popular Tales Part 3

Their wishes are fulfilled.

2. In German popular tales, this idea appears, with additions, in _Rich and Poor_ (Grimm 87). Here the virtue of the good is contrasted with the folly of the bad. The Poor man hospitably receives our Lord, and, for his three wishes, chooses eternal happiness, health and daily bread, and a new house. The Rich man rejects our Lord, but getting a second chance, loses his temper, wishes his horse dead, the saddle on his wife's back, and--the saddle off again!

Now popular fancy has been better pleased with the burlesque ideas in the second part of this fable, than with the serious moral; and most of the tales turn on burlesque wishes, leaving the virtuous wishers out of the story. The narrative also shews a Protean power of altering details, the wishes vary, the power who grants the wish is different in different _Marchen_, the person whose folly wastes the wish may be the husband, or may be the wife.

A very old form of the Wasted Wish, originally no doubt a popular form, won its way into literature in the _Pantschatantra_. The tale has also been annexed by Buddhism, as Buddhism annexed most tales, by the simple process of making Sakya Muni the hero or narrator of the adventures.

The _Pantschatantra_ is a collection of fables in Sanskrit. In its original form, according to Mr. Max Muller, its date can be fixed, by aid of an ancient Persian translation, as previous to 550 A.D. 'At that time a collection somewhat like the Pa_n_katantra, though much more extensive, must have existed[34].' By various channels the stories of the _Pantschatantra_ reached Persia, Arabia, Greece, and thence were rendered into Latin, and again, were paraphrased in different vernacular languages, by literary people. But when we find, as we do, a story in the _Pantschatantra_ and a similar or a.n.a.logous story in the Arabic _Book of Sindibad_ (earlier than the tenth century), and again in the Greek _Syntipas_ (eleventh and twelfth century), and again in Latin, or Spanish, or French literature, we cannot, perhaps, always be sure that the tale is derived from India through literary channels. Whoever will compare the _Wish_ story of the _Double-headed Weaver_ in the _Pantschatantra_[35] with _The Three Wishes_ in the _Book of Sindibad_ (Comparetti. _Folk Lore Society_, 1882, p. 147), and again, with Marie de France's twenty-fourth Fable (_Dou Vilain qui prist un folet_), and yet again with Perrault's _Trois Souhaits_, and, lastly, with the popular tales among Grimm's variants, will find many perplexing problems before him[36]. The differences in the details and in the conduct of the story are immense. Did the various authors borrow little but the main conception--the wasted wishes? Are the variations the result of literary caprice and choice? Has the story travelled from India by two channels,--(1) literary, in _Pantschatantra_, and _Syntipas_ with the translations; (2) oral, by word of mouth from people to people? Are the _popular_ versions derived from literature, or from oral tradition? Is the oldest literary version, that of the _Pantschatantra_, more akin to the _original_ version than some of the others which meet us later?

Finally, might not the idea of wasted wishes occur independently to minds in different ages and countries, and may not some of the versions be of independent origin, and in no way borrowed from India? Is there, indeed, any reason at all for supposing that so simple a notion was invented, once for all, in India?

It is easy to ask these questions, it is desirable to bear them in mind, so that we may never lose sight of the complexity and difficulty of the topic. But it is practically impossible to answer them once for all.

The nature of the problem may now be ill.u.s.trated by a few examples. In the story of the _Pantschatantra_, the granter of the wish (there is but one wish) is a tree-dwelling spirit. A very stupid weaver one day broke part of his loom. He went out to cut down a tree near the sh.o.r.e, meaning to fas.h.i.+on it for his purpose, when a spirit, who dwelt in the timber, cried, 'Spare this tree.' The weaver said he must starve if he did not get the wood, when the spirit replied, 'Ask anything else you please.'

The barber, being consulted, advised the weaver to wish to be king. The weaver's wife cried, 'No, stay as you are, but ask for two heads, and four hands, to do double work.' He got his wish, but was killed by the villagers, who very naturally supposed him to be a Rakshasa, or ogre.

The moral is enunciated by the barber, 'Let no man take woman's counsel.' The poor woman's lack of immoderate ambition might seem laudable to some moralists.

Here the peculiarities are: A tree-ghost grants the wish.

There is only one wish.

It is made on a woman's advice.

It causes the death of the wisher[37].

The story is next found in the various forms of the _Book of Sindibad_, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Arabic, and old Spanish, a book mentioned by all Arabic authors of the tenth century, and of Indian and Buddhistic origin[38]. As told in the various forms of _Sindibad_, the tale of _The Three Wishes_ takes this shape. A man has a friendly spirit (a she-devil in the Spanish _Libro de los Engannos_), who is obliged to desert his company, but leaves him certain formulae, by dint of repeating which he will have Three Wishes granted to him. The tree-spirit has disappeared, the one wish has become three. The man consults with his wife, who suggests that he should desire, not two heads and four hands, but an obscene and disgusting bodily transformation of another sort. He wishes the wish, is horrified by the result, and, on the woman's hint, asks to have all that embarra.s.ses him removed. The granting of the wish leaves him with 'a frightful _minus_ quant.i.ty,' and he expends the third wish in getting restored to his pristine and natural condition. The woman explains that she had not counselled him to desire wealth, lest he should weary of her and desert her. This, at least, is the conclusion in the Hebrew version, in the _Parables of Sandabas_ (Deulin, _Contes de Ma Mere L'Oye_, p. 71).

How are we to account for this metamorphosis of the story in the _Pantschatantra_? Is the alteration a piece of Arabian humour? Was there another Indian version corresponding to the shape of the tale in the _Book of Sindibad_? The questions cannot be answered with our present knowledge.

Another change, and a very remarkable one, occurs in the _Fables_ of Marie de France. Of Marie not much is known. In the _Conclusion_ of her Fables, she says--

'Au finement de cest escrit K'en Romanz ai turne et dit, Me numerai par remembraunce Marie ai num, si sui de Fraunce.

Pur amur le c.u.mte Willaume Le plus vaillant de cest Royaume, M'entremis de cest livre feire E de l'Angleiz en Roman treire, Ysopet apeluns ce livre Qu'il traveilla et fist escrire; De Griu en Latin le turna.

Li Rois Henris qui moult l'ama Le translata puis en Engleiz E jeo l'ai rime en Franceiz.'

That is to say, King Henry had translated into English a collection of fables and _contes_ attributed to aesop, and Marie rendered the English into French. Now aesop certainly did not write the story of _The Three Wishes_. The text before Marie was probably a mere congeries of tales and fables, some of the set usually attributed to aesop, some from various other sources. The Latin version, the model of the English version, was that a.s.signed to a certain, or uncertain Romulus, whom Marie, in her preface, calls an emperor. Probably he borrowed from Phaedrus, though he boasts that he rendered his fables out of the Greek.

M. de Roquefort thinks he did not flourish before the eleventh or twelfth century[39]. Who was _li rois Henris_ who turned the fables into Marie's English text? She lived under our Henry III. Perhaps conjecture may prefer Henry Beauclerk, our Henry I.

In any case Marie manifestly did render the fables, or some of the fables, in _Le dit d'Ysopet_ out of English. The presence of English words in her French seems to raise a strong presumption in favour of the truth of the a.s.sertion. One of these English words occurs in her form of _The Three Wishes_ (Fable xxiv), called _Dou Vilain qui prist un Folet_, also _Des Troiz Oremens_, or _Du Vileins et de sa Fame_. A Vilein captured a Folet (fairy or brownie?) who granted him Three Wishes. The _Folet_ resembles the tree-bogle of the _Pantschatantra_. The vilein gave two wishes to his wife. Long they lived without using the wishes.

One day, when they had a marrow bone for dinner, and found it difficult to extract the marrow, the wife wished that her husband had--

'tel bec came li plereit E c.u.m li Huite c.o.x aveit.'

The Huite c.o.x is an English word, woodc.o.c.k, in disguise. The husband, in a rage, wished his wife a woodc.o.c.k's beak also, and there they sat, each with a very long bill, and two wishes wasted. There Marie leaves them--

'Deus Oremanz unt ja perduz Que nus n'en est a bien venuz,'

'with two wishes lost, and no good gained thereby.' Manifestly the third wish was expended in a restoration of human noses to each of them. The moral is that ill befalls them--

'qui trop creient autrui parole.'

We naturally wonder whether this version was borrowed from one or other shape of _Syntipas_. If it was, did the change come in the Latin handling of it, or in the English? Or is it not possible that the version worked on by Marie had a _popular_ origin, whether derived by oral transmission from some popular Indian shape of the story, which had filtered through to the West, or the child of native Teutonic wit? There seems to be no certain criterion in a case like this. Certainly no mediaeval wag was likely to alter, out of modesty, the form of the tale in _Syntipas_ and its derivatives, though Marie would not have rhymed that offensive _conte_ if she had met with it in the English collection.

Unluckily one is not acquainted with any version of _The Three Wishes_ among backward and remote races, American or African. If such a version were known (and it may, of course, exist), we might argue that the tale was 'universally human.' There is nothing in it, as told in _Pantschatantra_, to make it seem essentially and peculiarly Indian, and incapable of having been invented elsewhere.

A fourteenth-century version (quoted by M. Deulin from _Fabliaux et Contes_ published by St. Meon, vol. iv. p. 386) amplifies all that is least refined in _Sendabar_ and in _Sindibad_. St. Martin grants the wishes, there are four of them, and n.o.body is one penny the better. With Philippe de Vigneules (1505-1514, the seventy-eighth of his hundred _Nouvelles_), G.o.d grants three wishes to a wedded pair. The woman wishes a new leg for her pot, the man wishes her _le pied au ventre_, and then wishes it back again. M. Deulin found this form in living popular tradition, at Leuze in Hainaut.

The _Souhaits_ of La Fontaine (_Fables_, vii. 6) has this peculiarity, that the giver of the wishes, as in Marie de France and in _Sindibad_, is a Follet or brownie, or familiar spirit, obliged to leave his friends. He offers them three wishes; first, they ask for wealth and are embarra.s.sed by their riches, then for a restoration of their mediocrity, then for wisdom.

'C'est un tresor qui n'embarra.s.se point.'

La Fontaine's source is obscure; had he known _Syntipas_, he might (or might not) have introduced the story among his _Contes_. Perhaps it was too rude even for that unabashed collection.

As for Perrault, he probably drew from a popular tradition his _Aune de Boudin_. Collin de Plancy (_OEuvres Choisies de Ch. Perrault_, Paris, 1826, 240) gives a curious rustic version. Three brothers dance with the Fairies, who offer them a wish apiece. The eldest, as heir of the paternal property, wants no more, but, as wish he must, asks that their calf may cure the colic of every invalid who seizes it by the tail. (How manifestly Indian in origin is this introduction of the sacred beast whose tail is grasped by the pious Hindoo in his latest hours!) The youngest brother wishes the horns of cow and calf on his brother's head, the second wishes a bull's head on his brother's shoulders, and the Fairies make these wild wishes of none avail.

Manifestly the fundamental idea is capable of infinite transformations, literary or popular: a good example is the play of _Le Bucheron_, by Guichard and Philidor, acted in 1763.

The story has no connection with the three successful wishes by aid of which the devil is defeated in a number of popular tales belonging to a different cycle. All these are inspired, however, by the great G.o.d Wunsch, who presides over Wis.h.i.+ng Gates.

'Would I could wish my wishes all to rest, And know to wish the wish that should be best,

says Clough, better inspired than Perrault's _Bucheron_.

[Footnote 34: _Selected Essays_, i. 504.]

[Footnote 35: Benfey, ii. 341.]

[Footnote 36: See _Poesies de Marie de France, Poete Anglo-Normande du xiiie Siecle_, vol. ii. p. 140. Paris, 1820.]

[Footnote 37: Benfey, _Pantschatantra_, ii. 341.]

[Footnote 38: Comparetti, _Book of Sindibad_, p. 3. Benfey, _Pantschatantra_, i. 38.]

[Footnote 39: _Poesies de Marie de France_, vol. ii. p. 53.]

LA BELLE AU BOIS DORMANT.

_The Sleeping Beauty._

The idea of a life which pa.s.ses ages in a secular sleep is as old as the myth of Endymion. But it would be difficult to name any cla.s.sical legend which closely corresponds with the story of the Sleeping Beauty. The first incident of importance is connected with the very widely spread belief in the Fates, or Moirai, or Hathors (in Ancient Egypt), or fairies, who come to the bedside of Althaea, or of the Egyptian Queen, or to the christening of the child in _La Belle au Bois Dormant_, and predict the fortunes of the newly born. In an Egyptian papyrus of the Twentieth Dynasty there is a tale, beginning, just like Perrault's, with the grief of a king and queen, who have no child, or at least no son.

Instead of going _a toutes les Eaux du monde_, they appeal to the G.o.ds, who hear their prayers, and the queen gives birth to a little boy.

Beside his cradle the Hathors announce that he shall perish by a crocodile, a serpent, or a dog. The story, in Egyptian, now turns into one of the common myths as to the impossibility of evading Destiny[40].

In Perrault's _Conte_, of course, fairies take the place of the Fates from whom perhaps _Fee_ is derived. When the fairies have met comes in another old incident--one of them, like Discord at the wedding of Peleus, has not been invited, and she prophesies the death of the Princess. This is commuted, by a friendly fay, into a sleep of a hundred years: the sleep to be caused, as the death was to have been, by a p.r.i.c.k from a spindle. The efforts of the royal family to evade the doom by proscribing spindles are as futile as usual in these cases. The Princess and all her people fall asleep, and the story enters the cycle of which Brynhild's wooing, in the _Volsung's Saga_, is the heroic type. Brynhild is thus described by the singing wood-p.e.c.k.e.rs,--

'Soft on the fell A s.h.i.+eld-may sleepeth, The lime-trees' red plague Playing about her.

The sleep-thorn set Odin Into that maiden For her choosing in war The one he willed not.'