Popular Tales Part 7

The older rural and popular forms of _Cinderella_, then, are full of machinery not only supernatural, but supernatural in a wild way: women become beasts, mothers are devoured by daughters (a thing that even Zulu fancy boggles at), life of beast or man is a separable thing, capable of continuing in lower forms. Thus we may conjecture that the a.s.s's skin worn by _Peau d'Ane_ was originally the hide of a beast helpful to her, even connected, maybe, with her dead mother, and that the a.s.s, like the cow, the calf, the sheep, and the doves of _Marchen_, befriended her, and clothed her in wondrous raiment.

For all these antique marvels Perrault, or the comparatively civilised tradition which Perrault followed, subst.i.tuted, in _Peau d'Ane_, as in _Cendrillon_, the Christian conception of a Fairy G.o.dmother. This subst.i.tute for more ancient and less _speciosa miracula_ is confined to Perrault's tales, and occurs nowhere in purely traditional _Marchen_. In these as in the widely diffused ballad of the _Re-arisen Mother_--

'Twas late in the night and the bairns grat, The Mother below the mouls heard that,--

the idea of a Mother's love surviving her death inspires the legend, and, despite savage details, produces a touching effect (Ralston, _Nineteenth Century_, Nov. 1879, p. 839).

Another notable point in _Cinderella_ is the preference shown, as usual, to the youngest child. Cinderella, to be sure, is a stepchild, and therefore interesting; but it is no great stretch of conjecture to infer that she may have originally been only the youngest child of the house.

The nickname which connects her with the fireside and the ashes is also given, in one form or another, to the youngest son (Sir George Dasent, for some reason, calls him 'Boots') in Scandinavian tales. Cinderella, like the youngest son, is taunted with sitting in the ashes of the hearth. This notion declares itself in the names Cucendron, Aschenputtel, Ventafochs, Pepelluga, Cernushka[86], all of them t.i.tles implying blackness, chiefly from contact with cinders. It has frequently been suggested that the success of the youngest child in fairy tales is a trace of the ideas which prevailed when _Jungsten-Recht_, 'Junior-Right' or Borough English, was a prevalent custom of inheritance[87]. The invisible Bridegroom, of the Zulu _Marchen_, is in hiding under a snake's skin, because he was the youngest, and his jealous brethren meant to kill him, for he would be the heir. It was therefore the purpose of his brethren to slay the young child in the traditional Zulu way, that is, to avoid the shedding of 'kindred blood'

by putting a clod of earth in his mouth. Bishop Callaway gives the parallel Hawaian case of Waikelenuiaiku. The Polynesian case of Hatupati is also adduced. In Grimm's _Golden Bird_ the jealousy is provoked, not by the legal rights of the youngest, but by his skill and luck. The idea of fraternal jealousy, with the 'nice opening for a young man,' which it discovered (like Joseph's brethren) in a pit, occurs in Peruvian myth as reported by Cieza de Leon (_Chronicles of the Yncas_, Second Part). The diffusion of _Jungsten-Recht_, or _Mainete_, the inheritance by the youngest, has been found by Mr. Elton among Ugrians, in Hungary, in Slavonic communities, in Central Asia, on the confines of China, in the mountains of Arracan, in Friesland, in Germany, in Celtic countries. In Scandinavia Liebrecht adduces the Edda, '_der jungste Sohn Jarl's der erste Konig ist_.' Albericus Trium Fontium mentions Prester John, 'qui c.u.m fratrum suorum minimus esset, omnibus praepositus est.' In Hesiod we meet _droit de juveignerie_, as he makes Zeus the _youngest_ of the Cronidae, while Homer, making Zeus the eldest, is all for primogeniture (Elton, _Origins of English History_, ch. viii. Liebrecht, _Zur Volkskunde_).

The authorities quoted raise a presumption that _Jungsten-Recht_, an old and widely diffused law, might have left a trace on myth and _Marchen_.

If _Jungsten-Recht_ were yielding place to primogeniture, if the elders were using their natural influence to secure advantages, then the youngest child, still heir by waning custom, would doubtless suffer a good deal of persecution. It may have been in this condition of affairs that the myths of the brilliant triumph of the rightful but despised heir, Cinderella, or Boots, were developed.

On the other hand, it is obvious that the necessities of fiction demand examples of _failure_ in the adventures, to heighten the effect of the final success. Now the failures might have begun with the youngest, and the eldest might be the successful hero. But that would have reversed the natural law by which the eldest goes first out into danger.

Moreover, the nursery audience of a _conte de nourrice_ is not prejudiced in favour of the Big but of the Little Brother.

These simple facts of everyday life, rather than some ancient custom of inheritance, may be the cause of the favouritism always shown to the youngest son or daughter. (Compare Ralston, _Russian Folk Tales_, p. 81.

The idea of jealousy of the youngest brother, mixed up with a miscellaneous a.s.sortment of _motifs_ of folk tales, occurs in _Katha-sarit-sagara_, ch. x.x.xix.)

Against the notion that the successful youngest son or daughter of the _contes_ is a descendant of the youngest child who is heir by _droit de juveignerie_, it has been urged that the hero, if the heir, would 'not start from the dust-bin and the coal-hole.' But if his heirs.h.i.+p were slipping from him, as has been suggested, the ashes of the hearth are just what he _would_ start from. The 'coal-hole,' of course, is a modern innovation. The hearth is the recognised legal position of the youngest child in Gavel-kind. 'Et la mesuage seit autreci entre eux departi, mes le ASTRE demorra al pune (ou al punee)[88].' In short, 'the Hearth-place shall belong to the youngest,' and as far as forty feet round it. After that the eldest has the first choice, and the others in succession according to age. The Custumal of Kent of the thirteenth century is the authority.

These rules of inheritance show, at least (and perhaps at most), a curious coincidence between the tales which describe the youngest child as always busy with the hearth, and the custom which bequeaths the hearth (_astre_) to the youngest child. To _prove_ anything it would be desirable to show that this rule of Gavel-kind once prevailed in all the countries where the name of the heroine corresponds in meaning to _Cendrillon_.

The attention of mythologists has long been fixed on the _slipper_ of Cinderella. There seems no great mystery in the Prince's proposal to marry the woman who could wear the tiny _mule_. It corresponds to the advantages which, when the hero is a man, attend him who can bend the bow, lift the stone, draw the sword, or the like. In a woman's case it is beauty, in a man's strength, that is to be tested. Whether the slipper were of _verre_ or of _vair_ is a matter of no moment. The slipper is of red satin in Madame d'Aulnoy's _Finette Cendron_, and of satin in _Ras.h.i.+n Coatie_. The Egyptian king, in Strabo and aelian, merely concluded that the loser of the slipper must be a pretty woman, because she certainly had a pretty foot. The test of fitting the owner recurs in _Peau d'Ane_, where a ring, not a slipper, is the object, as in the Finnish _Wonderful Birch tree_.

M. de Gubernatis takes a different view of Cinderella's slipper. The Dawn, it appears, in the Rig Veda is said to leave no footsteps behind her (_apad_). This naturally identifies her with Cinderella, who not only leaves footsteps, probably, but one of her slippers. M. de Gubernatis reasons that _apad_ 'may mean, not only she who has no feet, but also she who has no footsteps ... or again, she who has no slippers, the aurora having, as it appears, lost them.... The legend of the lost slipper ... seems to me to repose entirely upon the double meaning of the word _apad_, _i.e._ who has no foot, or what is the measure of the foot, which may be either the footstep or the slipper....' (_Zoolog.

Myth._ i. 31). M. de Gubernatis adds that 'Cinderella, when she loses the slipper, is overtaken by the prince bridegroom.' The point of the whole story lies in this, of course, that she is _not_ overtaken. Had she been overtaken, there would have been no need for the trial with the slipper (_op. cit._ i. 161). M. de Gubernatis, in this pa.s.sage, makes the overtaking of Cinderella serve his purpose as proof; on p. 31 he derives part of his proof from the statement (correct this time) that Cinderella is _not_ overtaken, 'because a chariot bears her away.'

Another argument is that the dusky Cinderella is only brilliantly clad 'in the Prince's ball-room, or in church, in candle-light, and near the Prince,--the aurora is beautiful only when the sun is near.' Is the sun the candle-light, and is the Prince also the sun? If a lady is only _belle a la chandelle_, what has the Dawn to do with that?

M. Andre Lefevre calls M. de Gubernatis's theory _quelque peu aventureuse_ (_Les Contes de Charles Perrault_, p. lxxiv), and this cannot be thought a severe criticism. If we supposed the story to have arisen out of an epithet of Dawn, in Sanskrit, the other incidents of the tale, and their combination into a fairly definite plot, and the wide diffusion of that plot among peoples whose ancestors a.s.suredly never spoke Sanskrit, would all need explanation.

In Perrault's _Cinderella_, we have not the adventure of the False or Subst.i.tuted Bride, which usually swells out this and many other _contes_, and which, indeed, is apparently brought in by popular _conteurs_, whenever the tale is a little short. Thus it frequently winds up the story which Perrault gives so briefly as _Les Fees_. Among the Zulus[89], the Birds of the Thorn country warn the bridegroom that he has the wrong girl,--she is a beast (_mbulu_) in Zululand. The birds give the warning in _Ras.h.i.+n Coatie_[90], and birds take the same part in Swedish, Russian, German, but a dog plays the _role_ in Breton (Reinhold Kohler, _op. cit._ p. 373). In a song of Fauriel's _Chansons Romaiques_ the birds warn the girl that she is riding with a corpse. Birds give the warning in Gaelic (Campbell, No. 14).

Perrault did more than suppress the formula of the False Bride. By an artistic use of his Fairy G.o.dmother he gave Cinderella her excellent reason for leaving the ball, not because _cupit ipsa videri_, but in obedience to the fairy dame. He made Cinderella forgive her stepsisters, and get them good marriages, in place of punis.h.i.+ng them, as even Psyche does so treacherously in Apuleius, and as the wild justice of folk tales usually determines their doom. An Italian Cinderella breaks her stepmother's neck with the lid of a chest. But Cendrillon 'douce et bonne au debut reste jusqu'a la fin douce et bonne' (Deulin, _Contes de Ma Mere l'Oye_, p. 286). These are examples of Perrault's refined way of treating the old tales. But in his own country there survives a version of _Cendrillon_ in which a _Blue Bull_, not a Fairy G.o.dmother, helps the heroine. From the ear of the Bull, as from his horn in Kaffir lore, the heroine draws her supplies. She is Jaquette de Bois, and reminds us of Katie Wooden cloak. Her mother is dead, but the Bull is not said to have been the mother in b.e.s.t.i.a.l form. (Sebillot, _Contes Pop. de la Haute Bretagne_, Charpentier, Paris, 1880, p. 15). In these versions the formula of _Cendrillon_ s.h.i.+fts into that of _The Black Bull o'

Norroway_.

[Footnote 68: H. H. Risley, _Asiatic Quarterly_, Number III. 'Primitive Marriage in Bengal.']

[Footnote 69: Demosth. _De Corona_, 313, Harpocration, apomattein.

Theal, _Kaffir Folk Lore_, p. 22.]

[Footnote 70: _Izinganekwane_, p. 1.]

[Footnote 71: Theal, p. 158.]

[Footnote 72: _Indian Evangelical Review_, Oct. 1886. The collector is Mr. A. Campbell.]

[Footnote 73: Maspero, _Contes Egyptiens_, p. 4.]

[Footnote 74: _Finnische Marchen_, ubersetzt von Emmy Schreck. Weimar, 1887.]

[Footnote 75: Gustav Meyer, _op. cit._ p. xix.]

[Footnote 76: Theal, _op. cit._ p. 3.]

[Footnote 77: Compare the revived Ox. Callaway, _Zulu Nursery Tales_, p.

230; The _Edda_, Mallet, p. 436; _South African Folk Lore Journal_, March, 1880; Aschenputtel (The Dove and the Hazel tree), Grimm, 21.]

[Footnote 78: In the Catalan version _Ventafochs_, fire-lighter, Italian _Cenerentola_. Deulin _Contes de Ma Mere l'Oye_, pp. 265, 266. In Emmy Schreck the Finnish girl is _Aschenbrodel_, and foul with ashes.]

[Footnote 79: Exophagy.]

[Footnote 80: This is the _Mouton_ of Madame D'Aulnoy, but _he_ is a prodigiously courtly creature, and becomes the _Beast_ who half dies for love and is revived by a kiss. 'Un joli Mouton, brebis doux, bien caressant, ne laisse pas de plaire, surtout quand on scait qu'il est roi, et que la metamorphose doit finir.' But the heroine came too late, and the gallant _Mouton_ expired.]

[Footnote 81: _Revue Celtique_, vol. iii. p. 365.]

[Footnote 82: In the Scandinavian _Katie Wooden cloak_ the buried bull does all for Katie that the Ram, or Cow, or Calf, or Fairy G.o.dmother does for the other Cinderellas.]

[Footnote 83: Herr Kohler quotes M. Luzel's _Chat Noir_, a Breton tale, in which a stepmother kills a cow that befriends Yvonne. Within the dead cow were found two golden slippers. Then comes in the formula of the False Bride (_Rev. Celtique_, 1870, p. 373).]

[Footnote 84: Among the Basutos this happens in 'The Murder of Maciloniane.' Casalis, p. 309: 'The bird was the heart of Maciloniane.']

[Footnote 85: Apoll. Rhod. i. 256. The story of Athamas is an ingenious medley of _Marchen_, including, as will be shown, part of _Hop o' my Thumb_.]

[Footnote 86: Gubernatis, _Zoolog. Myth._ ii. 5.]

[Footnote 87: A Zulu tale in Callaway, pp. 64, 65, is proof that this was once the Zulu custom.]

[Footnote 88: Elton, _op. cit._ p. 190.]

[Footnote 89: Callaway, p. 121.]

[Footnote 90: _Revue Celtique_, Jan., Nov. 1878, p. 366.]

RIQUET a LA HOUPPE.

_Riquet of the Tuft._

Of all Perrault's tales _Riquet_ is the least popular. Compared with the stories of Madlle. L'Heritier or of the Comtesse de Murat, even _Riquet_ is short and simple. But it could hardly be told by a nurse, and it would not greatly interest a child. We want to know what became of the plain but lively sister, and she drops out of the narrative unnoticed.

The touch of the traditional and popular manner in the story is the love of a woman redeeming the ugliness of a man. In one shape or another, from the Kaffir _Bird who made Milk_, or _Five Heads_, to what was probably the original form of _Cupid and Psyche_, this is the fundamental notion of _Beauty and the Beast_[91]. But Perrault hints that the miracle was purely 'subjective.' 'Some say that the Princess, reflecting on the perseverance of her lover, and all his good qualities, ceased to see that his body was deformed, and his face ugly.' There is therefore little excuse for examining here the legends of ladies, or lords, who marry a Tick (in Portugal), a Frog (in Scotland and India), a Beaver (in North America), a Pumpkin (in Wallachia), an Iron Stove (in Germany), a Serpent (in Zululand), and so forth. These tales are usually, perhaps, of moral origin, and convey the lesson that no magic can resist kindness. The strange husbands or wives are enchanted into an evil shape, till they meet a lover who will not disdain them. Moral, don't disdain anybody. Some have entertained angels unawares. But this apologue could only have been invented when there was a general belief in powers of enchantment and metamorphosis, a belief always more powerful in proportion to the low culture of the people who entertain it. In the Kaffir tale, where the girl disenchants the Crocodile by _licking_ him (kissing, perhaps, being unfamiliar), the man who comes out of the crocodile skin merely says that the girl's 'power' (her native magical force) is greater than that of 'the enemies of his father's house,' who had enchanted him (Theal, _The Bird who made Milk_). This idea may and does exist apart from the notion, which so commonly accompanies it, of a taboo, or prohibition on freedom of intercourse between the lover and the lady, either of whom has been disenchanted by the other.

If the original and popular basis of this kind of story was moral, the moral was strangely coloured by the fancy of early men. In Perrault little but the moral, told in a gallant apologue, remains. It may be compared with a Thibetan story, a.n.a.lysed by M. Gaston Paris[92].

[Footnote 91: Theal's _Kaffir Folk Lore_, p. 37.]

[Footnote 92: _Revue Critique_, July, 1874.]