Popular Tales Part 5

The Master-Cat probably never made any child a rogue, but no doubt his conduct was flagrantly immoral. And this brings us to one of the problems of the science of nursery tales. When we find a story told by some peoples _with_ a moral, and by other peoples _without_ a moral, are we to suppose that the tale was originally narrated for the moral's sake, and that the forms in which there is _no_ moral are degenerate and altered versions? For example, the Zulus, the Germans, the French, and the Hindoos have all a nursery tale in which someone, by a series of lucky accidents and exchanges, goes on making good bargains, and rising from poverty to wealth. In French Flanders this is the tale of _Jean Gogue_; in Grimm it is _The Golden Goose_; in Zulu it is part of the adventures of the Hermes of Zulu myth, Uhlakanyana. In two of these the hero possesses some trifling article which is injured, and people give him something better in exchange, till, like Jean Gogue, for example, he marries the king's daughter[53]. Now these tales have no moral. The hero is thought neither better nor worse of because of his series of exchanges. But in modern Hindostan the story _has_ a moral. The rat, whose series of exchanges at last win him a king's daughter, is held up to contempt as a warning to bargain-hunters. He is not happy with his bride, but escapes, leaving his tail, half his hair, and a large piece of his skin behind him, howling with pain, and vowing that 'never, never, never again would he make a bargain[54].' Here then is a tale told with a moral, and _for_ the moral in India, but with no moral in Zululand and France. Are we to suppose that India was the original source of the narrative, that it was a parable invented for the moral's sake, and that it spread, losing its moral (as the rat lost his tail), to Europe and South Africa? Or are we to suppose that originally the narrative was a mere _Schw.a.n.k_, or popular piece of humour, and that the mild, reflective Hindoo moralised it into a parable or fable? The question may be argued either way; but the school of Benfey and M.

Cosquin, holding that almost all our stories were invented in India, should prefer the former alternative.

Now _Puss in Boots_ has this peculiarity, that out of France, or rather out of the region influenced by Perrault's version of the history, a moral usually does inform the legend of the Master-Cat, or master-fox, or master-gazelle, or master-jackal, or master-dog, for each of these animals is the hero in different countries. Possibly, then, the story had originally what it sadly lacks in its best-known shape, a moral; and possibly _Puss in Boots_ was in its primitive shape (like _Toads and Diamonds_) a novel with a purpose. But where was the novel first invented?

We are not likely to discover for certain the cradle of the race of the Master-Cat--the 'cat's cradle' of _Puss in Boots_. But the record of his achievements is so well worth studying, because the possible area from which it may have arisen is comparatively limited.

There are many stories known all the world over, such as the major part of the adventures of _Hop o' My Thumb_, which might have been invented anywhere, and might have been invented by men in a low state of savagery. The central idea in _Hop o' My Thumb_, for example, is the conception of a hero who falls into the hands of cannibals, and by a trick makes the cannibal slay, and sometimes eat, his own kinsfolk, mother, or wife, or child, while the hero escapes. This legend is well known in South Africa, in South Siberia, and in Aberdeens.h.i.+re; and in Greece it made part of the Minyan legend of Athamas and Ino, murder being subst.i.tuted for cannibalism. Namaquas, in Southern Africa; Eskimo, in Northern America, and Athenians (as Aeschylus shows in the _Eumenides_, 244), are as familiar as Maoris, or any of us, with the ogre's favourite remark, 'I smell the smell of a mortal man.'

Now it is obvious that these ideas--the trick played by the hero on the cannibal, and the turning of the tables--might occur to the human mind wherever cannibalism was a customary peril: that is, among any low savages. It does not matter whether the cannibal is called a _rakshasa_ in India, or an _ogre_ in France, or a _weendigo_ in Labrador, the notion is the same, and the trick played by the hero is simple and obvious[55]. Therefore _Hop o' My Thumb_ may have been invented anywhere, by any people on a low level of civilisation. But _Puss in Boots_ cannot have been invented by savages of a very backward race or in a really 'primitive' age. The very essence of _Puss in Boots_ is the sudden rise of a man, by aid of a cunning animal, from the depths of poverty to the summit of wealth and rank. Undeniably this rise could only occur where there were great differences of social status, where rank was a recognised inst.i.tution, and where property had been ama.s.sed in considerable quant.i.ties by some, while others went bare as lackalls.

These things have been of the very essence of civilisation (the more's the pity), therefore _Puss in Boots_ must have been invented by a more or less civilised mind; it could not have been invented by a man in the condition of the Fuegians or the Digger Indians. Nay, when we consider the stress always and everywhere laid in the story on sn.o.bbish pride and on magnificence of attire and equipment, and on retinue, we may conclude that _Puss in Boots_ could hardly have been imagined by men in the middle barbarism; in the state, for example, of Iroquois, or Zulus, or Maoris. Nor are we aware that _Puss in Boots_, in any shape, is found among any of these peoples. Thus the area in which the origin of _Puss in Boots_ has to be looked for is comparatively narrow.

_Puss in Boots_, again, is a story which, in all its wonderfully varying forms, can only, we may a.s.sume, have sprung from one single mind. It is extremely difficult to a.s.sert with confidence that any plot can only have been invented once for all. Every new successful plot, from _Dr.

Jekyl_ to _She_, from _Vice Versa_ to _Dean Maitland_, is at once claimed for half a dozen authors who, unluckily, did not happen to write _She_ or _Dr. Jekyl_. But if there can be any a.s.surance in these matters, we may feel certain that the idea of a story, wherein a young man is brought from poverty to the throne by aid of a match-making and ingenious beast, could only have been invented once for all. In that case _Puss in Boots_ is a story which spread from one centre, and was invented by one man in a fairly civilised society. True, he used certain hereditary and established _formulae_; the notion of a beast that can talk, and surprises n.o.body (except in the Zanzibar version) by this accomplishment, is a notion derived from the old savage condition of the intellect, in which beasts are on a level with, or superior to, humanity. But we can all use these _formulae_ now that we possess them.

Could memory of past literature be wholly wiped out, while civilisation still endured, there would be no talking and friendly beasts in the children's tales of the next generation, unless the children wrote them for themselves. As Sainte-Beuve says, 'On n'inventerait plus aujourd'hui de ces choses, si elles n'avaient ete imaginees des longtemps[56].'

If we are to get any light on the first home of the tale--and we cannot get very much--it will be necessary to examine its different versions.

There is an extraordinary amount of variety in the incidents subordinate to the main idea, and occasionally we find a heroine instead of a hero, a Marquise de Carabas, not a marquis. Perhaps the best plan will be to start with the stories near home, and to pursue puss, if possible, to his distant original tree. First, we all know him in English translations, made as early as 1745, if not earlier, of Perrault's _Maitre Chat, ou Chat botte_, published in 1696-7. Here his motives are simple fun and friendliness. His master, who owns no other property, thinks of killing and skinning puss, but the cat prefers first to make acquaintance with the king, by aid of presents of game from an imaginary Marquis de Carabas; then to pretend his master is drowning and has had his clothes stolen (thereby introducing him to the king in a court suit, borrowed from the monarch himself); next to frighten people into saying that the Marquis is their _seigneur_; and, finally, to secure a property for the Marquis by swallowing an ogre, whom he has induced to a.s.sume the disguise of a mouse. This last trick is as old as Hesiod[57], where Zeus persuades his wife to become a fly, and swallows her.

The next neighbour of the French _Puss in Boots_ in the north is found in Sweden[58] and in Norway[59]. In the Swedish, a girl owns the cat.

They wander to a castle gate, where the cat bids the girl strip and hide in a tree; he then goes to the castle and says that his royal mistress has been attacked by robbers. The people of the palace attire the girl splendidly, the prince loses his heart to her, the queen-mother lays traps for her in vain. Nothing is so fine in the castle as in the girl's chateau of Cattenburg. The prince insists on seeing that palace, the cat frightens the peasants into saying that all the land they pa.s.s is the girl's; finally, the cat reaches a troll's house, with pillars of gold.

The cat turns himself into a loaf of bread and holds the troll in talk till the sun rises on him and he bursts, as trolls always do if they see the sun. The girl succeeds to the troll's palace, and nothing is said as to what became of the cat.

Here is even less moral than in _Puss in Boots_, for the Marquis of Carabas, as M. Deulin says, merely lets the cat do all the tricks, whereas the Swedish girl is his active accomplice. The change of the cat into bread (which can talk), and the bursting of the ogre at dawn, are very ancient ideas, whether they have been tacked later on to the _conte_ or not. In _Lord Peter_ the heroine gives place to a hero, while the cat drives deer to the palace, saying that they come from Lord Peter. The cat, we are not told how, dresses Lord Peter in splendid attire, kills a troll for him, and then, as in Madame d'Aulnoy's _White Cat_, has its head cut off and becomes a princess. Behold how fancies jump! All the ogre's wealth had been the princess's, before the ogre changed her into a cat, and took her lands. Thus George Cruikshank's moral conclusion is antic.i.p.ated, while puss acts as a match-maker indeed, but acts for herself. This form of the legend, if not immoral, has no moral, and has been mixed up either with Madame d'Aulnoy's _Chatte Blanche_, or with the popular traditions from which she borrowed.

Moving south, but still keeping near France, we find _Puss in Boots_ in Italy. The tale is told by Straparola[60]. A youngest son owns nothing but a cat which, by presents of game, wins the favour of a king of Bohemia. The drowning trick is then played, and the king gives the cat's master his daughter, with plenty of money. On the bride's journey to her new home, the cat frightens the peasants into saying all the land belongs to his master, for whom he secures the castle of a knight dead without heirs.

Here, once more, there is no moral.

In a popular version from Sicily[61], a fox takes the cat's place, _from motives of grat.i.tude_, because the man found it robbing and did not kill it. The fox then plays the usual trick with the game, and another familiar trick, that of leaving a few coins in a borrowed bushel measure to give the impression that his master does not _count_, but measures out his money. The trick of frightening the peasants follows, and finally, an ogress who owns a castle is thrown down a well by the fox.

Then comes in the new feature: the _man is ungrateful and kills the fox_; nevertheless he lives happy ever after.

Now, at last, we have reached the moral. A beggar on horseback will forget his first friend: _a man will be less grateful than a beast_.

This moral declares itself, with a difference (for the ingrate is coerced into decent behaviour), in a popular French version, taken down from oral recitation[62].

Here, then, even among the peasantry of Perrault's own country, and as near France as Sicily, too, we have _Puss in Boots_ with a moral: that of human ingrat.i.tude contrasted with the grat.i.tude of a beast. May we conclude, then, that _Puss in Boots_ was originally invented as a kind of parable by which this moral might be inculcated? And, if we may draw that conclusion, where is this particular moral most likely to have been invented, and enforced in an apologue?

As to the first of these two questions, it may be observed that the story with the moral, and with a fox in place of a cat, is found among the Avars, a Mongolian people of Mussulman faith, on the northern slopes of the Caucasus. Here the man is ungrateful, but the fox, as in Sicily, coerces him, in this case by threatening to let out the story of his rise in life[63]. In Russia, too, a fox takes the cat's _role_, and the part of the ogre is entrusted to the Serpent Uhlan, a supernatural snake, who is burned to ashes[64].

It is now plain that the tale with the moral, whether that was the original motive or not, is more common than the tale without the moral.

We find the moral among French, Italians, Avars, Russians; among people of Mahommedan, Greek, and Catholic religion. Now M. Emmanuel Cosquin is inclined to believe that the moral--the ingrat.i.tude of man contrasted with the grat.i.tude of beasts,--is Buddhistic. If that be so, then India is undeniably the original cradle of _Puss in Boots_. But M. Cosquin has been unable to find any _Puss in Boots_ in India; at least he knew none in 1876, when he wrote on the subject in _Le Francais_ (June 29, 1876).

Nor did the learned Benfey, with all his prodigious erudition, know an Indian _Puss in Boots_[65]. Therefore the proof of this theory, that Buddhistic India may be the real cat's cradle, is incomplete; nor does it become more probable when we actually do discover _Puss in Boots_ in India. For in the Indian _Puss in Boots_, just as in Perrault's, _there is no moral at all_, and the notion of grat.i.tude, on either the man's side or the beast's, is not even suggested.

There could scarcely be a more disappointing discovery than this for the school of Benfey which derives our fairy tales from Buddhism and India.

First, the tale which we are discussing certainly did not find a place in the _Pantschatantra_, the _Hitopadesa_, or any other of the early Indian literary collections of _Marchen_ which were translated into so many Western languages. Next, the story does not present itself, for long, to European students of living Indian folklore. Finally, when puss _is_ found in India, where the moral element (if it was the original element, and if its origin was in Buddhist fancy) should be particularly well preserved, there is not any moral whatever.

The Indian _Puss in Boots_ is called _The Match-making Jackal_, and was published, seven years after M. Cosquin had failed to find it, in the Rev. Lal Behari Day's _Folk Tales of Bengal_ (Macmillan). Mr. Day, of the Hooghly College, is a native gentleman well acquainted with European folklore. Some of the stories in his collection were told by a Bengali Christian woman, two by an old Brahman, three by an old barber, two by a servant of Mr. Day's, and the rest by another old Brahman. Unluckily, the editor does not say which tales he got from each contributor. It might therefore be argued that _The Match-making Jackal_ was perhaps told by the Christian woman, and that she adapted it from _Puss in Boots_, which she might have heard told by Christians. Mr. Day will be able to settle this question; but it must be plain to any reader of _The Match-making Jackal_ that the story, as reported, is too essentially Hindoo to have been 'adapted' in one generation. It is not impossible that a literary Scandinavian might have introduced the typically Norse touches into the Norse _Puss in Boots_, but no illiterate woman of Bengal could have made Perrault's puss such a thoroughly Oriental jackal as the beast in the story we are about to relate.

There was once a poor weaver whose ancestors had been wealthy men. The weaver was all alone in the world, but a neighbouring jackal, 'remembering the grandeur of the weaver's forefathers, had compa.s.sion on him.' This was pure sentiment on the jackal's part; his life had not been spared, as in some European versions, by the weaver. There was no grat.i.tude in the case. 'I'll try to marry you,' said the jackal, off-hand, 'to the daughter of the king of this country.' The weaver said, 'Yes, when the sun rises in the west.' But the jackal had his plan. He trotted off to the palace, many miles away, and on the road he plucked quant.i.ties of the leaves of the betel plant. Then he lay down at the entrance of the tank where the princess bathed twice a day, and began ostentatiously chewing betel-leaves. 'Why,' said the princess, 'what a rich land this jackal must have come from. Here he is chewing betel, a luxury that thousands of men and women among us cannot afford.'

The princess asked the jackal whence he came, and he said he was the native of a wealthy country. 'As for our king, his palace is like the heaven of Indra; your palace here is a miserable hovel compared to it.'

So the princess told the queen, who at once, and most naturally, asked the jackal if his king were a bachelor. 'Certainly,' said the jackal, 'he has rejected princesses from all parts.' So the queen said _she_ had a pretty daughter, still _zu haben_, and the jackal promised to try to persuade his master to think of the princess. The jackal returned on his confidential mission, telling the weaver to follow his instructions closely. He went back to court, and suggested that his master should come in a private manner, not in state, as his retinue would eat up the substance of his future father-in-law. He returned and made the weaver borrow a decent suit of clothes from the washermen. Then he made interest with the king of the jackals, the paddy-birds, and the crows, each of whom lent a contingent of a thousand beasts or birds of their species. When they had all arrived within two miles of the palace, the jackal bade them yell and cry, which they did so furiously that the king supposed an innumerable company of people were attending his son-in-law.

He therefore implored the jackal to ask his master to come quite alone.

'My master will come alone in undress,' said the jackal; 'send a horse for him.' This was done, and the jackal explained that his master arrived in mean clothes that he might not abash the king by his glory and splendour. The weaver held his tongue as commanded, but at night his talk was of looms and beams, and the princess detected him. The jackal explained that his philanthropic prince was establis.h.i.+ng a colony of weavers, and that his mind ran a good deal on this benevolent project.

Here the _Puss in Boots_ character of the tale disappears. The weaver and the princess go home, but the jackal does _not_ cajole anyone out of a castle and lands. He has made the match, and there he leaves it. The princess, however, has fortunately a magical method of making gold, by virtue of which she builds the weaver a splendid palace, and 'hospitals were established for diseased, sick, and infirm animals,' a very Indian touch. The king visits his daughter, is astonished at her wealth, and the jackal says, 'Did I not tell you so?'

Here, as we said, there is no moral, or if any moral, it is the grat.i.tude of man, as displayed in founding hospitals for beasts, not, as M. Cosquin says, 'l'idee toute bouddhique de l'ingrat.i.tude de l'homme opposee a la bonte native de l'animal.' Plainly, if any moral was really intended, it was a satire on people who seek great marriages, just as in the story of _The Rat's Wedding_, the moral is a censure on bargain-hunters.

The failure of the only Indian _Puss in Boots_ we know to establish a theory of an Indian origin, does not, of course, prove a negative. We can only say that puss certainly did not come from India to Europe by the ordinary literary vehicles, and that, when he is found in India, he does not preach what is called the essentially Buddhist doctrine of the ingrat.i.tude of man and the grat.i.tude of beasts.

There remains, however, an Eastern form of the tale, an African version, which is of morality all compact. This is the Swahili version from Zanzibar, and it is printed as _Sultan Darai_, in Dr. Steere's _Swahili Tales, as told by Natives of Zanzibar_ (Bell and Daldy, London, 1870).

If a tale first arose where it is now found to exist with most moral, with most didactic purpose, then _Puss in Boots_ is either Arab or Negro, or a piece in which Negroes and Arabs have collaborated. For nowhere is the _conte_ so purposeful as among the Swahilis, who are by definition 'men of mixed Negro and Arab origin.' There may be Central African elements in the Swahili tales, for most of them have 'sung parts,' almost unintelligible even to the singers. 'I suppose,' says Dr.

Steere, 'they have been brought down from the interior by the slaves, and perhaps corrupted by them as they gradually forgot their own language.' Thus Central Africa may have contributed to the Swahili stories, but the Swahili _Puss in Boots_, as it at present exists, has been deeply modified by Mussulman ideas.

_Sultan Darai_, the Swahili _Puss in Boots_, really contains two tales.

The first is about a wicked step-mother; the second begins when the hero, losing his wife and other kinsfolk, takes to vicious courses, and becomes so poor that he pa.s.ses his time scratching for grains of millet on the common dustheap. While thus scratching he finds a piece of money, with which he buys a gazelle. The gazelle has pity on him, and startles him by saying so: 'Almighty G.o.d is able to do all things, to make me to speak, and others more than I.' The story comes, therefore, through narrators who marvel, as in the fairy world n.o.body does marvel, at the miracle of a speaking beast.

The gazelle, intent on helping the man, finds a splendid diamond, which he takes to the sultan, just as puss took the game, as 'a present from Sultan Darai.' The sultan is much pleased; the gazelle proposes that he shall give his daughter to Sultan Darai, and then comes the old trick of pretending the master has been stripped by robbers, 'even to his loin-cloth.' The gazelle carries fine raiment to his master, and, as in the French popular and traditional form, bids him speak as little as may be. The marriage is celebrated, and the gazelle goes off, and kills a great seven-headed snake, which, as in Russia, is the owner of a rich house. The snake, as he travels, is accompanied (as in the Kaffir story of _Five Heads_) by a storm of wind, like that which used to shake the 'medicine lodges' of the North American Indians, puzzling the missionaries. The snake, like the ogre in all _Hop o' My Thumb_ tales, smells out the gazelle, but is defeated by that victorious animal. The gazelle brings home his master, Sultan Darai, and the Princess to the snake's house, where they live in great wealth and comfort.

Now comes in the moral: the gazelle falls sick, Sultan Darai refuses to see it, orders coa.r.s.e food to be offered it; treats his poor benefactor, in short, with all the arrogant contempt of an ungrateful beggar suddenly enriched. As the ill-used cat says in the _Pentamerone_--

De riche appauvri Dieu te gard'

Et de croquant pa.s.se richard!

Finally the gazelle dies of sorrow, and Sultan Darai dreams that he is scratching on his old dustheap. He wakens and finds himself there, as naked and wretched as ever, while his wife is wafted to her father's house at home.

The moral is obvious, and the story is told in a very touching manner, moreover all the world takes the side of the gazelle, and it is _mourned with a public funeral_.

Here, then, in Zanzibar we have decidedly the most serious and purposeful form of _Puss in Boots_. It is worth noting that the animal hero is _not_ the Rabbit who is the usual hero in Zanzibar as he is in Uncle Remus's tales. It is also worth noticing that a certain tribe of Southern Arabians do, as a matter of fact, honour all dead gazelles with seven days of public mourning. 'Ibn al-Moghawir,' says Prof.

Robertson-Smith, in _Kins.h.i.+p in Early Arabia_ (p. 195), 'speaks of a South Arab tribe called Beni Harith or Acarib, among whom if a dead gazelle was found, it was solemnly buried, and the whole tribe mourned for it seven days.... The gazelle supplies a name to a clan of the Azd, the Zabyan.' Prof. Robertson-Smith adds (p. 204), 'And so when we find a whole clan mourning over a dead gazelle, we can hardly but conclude that when this habit was first formed, they thought that they were of the gazelle-stock' or Totem kindred.

It is quite possible that all these things are mere coincidences.

Certainly we shall not argue, because the most moral form of _Puss in Boots_ gives us a gazelle in place of a cat, and because a certain Arab clan mourns gazelles, while the gazelle hero is found in the story of a half-Arab race, that, therefore, the Swahili gazelle story is the original form of _Puss in Boots_, and that from Arabia the tale has been carried into Russia, Scandinavia, Italy, India, and France, often leaving its moral behind it, and always exchanging its gazelle for some other beast-hero.

This kind of reasoning is only too common, when the object is to show that India was the birthplace of any widely diffused popular fiction. In India, people argue, this or that tale has a moral. Among Celts and Kamschatkans it has _no_ moral. But certain stories did undeniably come from India in literary works, like the stories of Sindibad. Therefore this or that story also came from India, dropping its moral on the way.

Did we like this sort of syllogism, we might boldly a.s.sert that _Puss in_ _Boots_ was originally a heroic myth of an Arab tribe with a gazelle for Totem. But we like not this kind of syllogism. The purpose of this study of _Puss in Boots_ is to show that, even when a tale has probably been invented but once, in one place, and has thence spread over a great part of the world, the difficulty of finding the original centre is perhaps insuperable. At any time a fresh discovery may be made. Puss _may_ turn up in some hitherto unread ma.n.u.script of an old missionary among Mexicans or Peruvians[66].

[Footnote 52: George Cruikshank had also turned _Hop o' My Thumb_ and _Cinderella_ into temperance tracts. See Cruikshank's _Fairy Library_, G. Bell and Sons.]

[Footnote 53: The French version is in M. Charles Deulin's _Contes du Roi Gambrinus_. The German (Grimm, 64) omits the story of the exchanges, but ends like _Jean Gogue_. The Zulu is in Dr. Callaway's _Inzinganekwane_, pp. 38-40.]

[Footnote 54: _Wide-awake Stories._ A collection of tales told by little children, between sunset and sunrise, in the Punjaub and Kashmir. Steel and Temple, London, 1884, p. 26.]

[Footnote 55: Andree, _Die Anthropophagie_, 'uberlebsel im Volksglauben.' Leipzig, 1887.]

[Footnote 56: _Causeries du Lundi_, December 29, 1851.]