Chapter I

THE LEGEND OF PERSEUS AS PRESERVED IN CLASSICAL WRITERS. ITS THREE TRAINS OF INCIDENT. THE DANAE TYPE OF THE STORY IN MODERN FOLKLORE.

In _The Earthly Paradise_ William Morris has made English the Doom of King Acrisius in such lovely wise, and in the main with such close adherence to the story as told by Ovid and other classical writers, as to render thankless the task of repeating it at length. But in undertaking an inquiry into the foundations and history of the legend of Perseus, it is needful to bear in mind its salient features. I shall therefore ask the reader’s patience for a summary of these.

Acrisius, the son of Abas and king of Argos, having been warned by an oracle that he should die by the hands of his daughter Danae’s son, built a tower of brass in which he imprisoned the maiden, that he might keep her celibate and so frustrate the oracle. Jupiter, however, visited her in a shower of gold; and she bore a son, Perseus. By the king’s orders, mother and babe were enclosed in a chest and cast into the sea. The chest came to land on the island of Seriphos, and was drawn ashore by a fisherman {2} named Dictys. Polydectes, the king of the island, took Danae under his protection, and in process of time desired to marry her. For this purpose he found it necessary first to get rid of her son. He accordingly set him the task of cutting off and bringing to him the head of Medusa, the only mortal of the three Gorgons, hoping, of course, that he would perish in the attempt. But the youth had friends in high places. Pallas provided him with a buckler brightly polished as a mirror, Pluto with a helmet of invisibility, Mercury with his own winged shoes, and Vulcan with a sword. Thus equipped, he set out on his adventure. Reaching the dwelling of the Graiæ, he possessed himself of the single eye which these three hideous sisters owned among them and passed from hand to hand, and thus compelled them to direct him where he might find the Gorgons. The chief danger of the expedition was Medusa’s power of turning to stone with a glance all who approached her. Perseus escaped this danger by coming upon her asleep, and by regarding her in his shield while he swept off her head with his sword. On his way back, with the prize deposited safely in his wallet, he visited Atlas, the giant king of Libya; but, receiving scant hospitality, he repaid it by trying the power of the Gorgon’s head on the king and his servants, and so converted them into the mountain range on whose huge top the heaven with all its stars (so the gods willed) has ever since reposed. Flying thence over land and sea, he descried Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus, king of Ethiopia, and of his wife, Cassiope, bound to the rock. He descended, and learned that she was thus exposed to a marine monster to be devoured, in obedience to an oracle of Jupiter Ammon. The monster had been sent by Neptune to ravage the country, in order to revenge {3} a boast by Cassiope that she herself was equal to the Nereids in beauty. Perseus fought and killed the instrument of divine vengeance, and wedded Andromeda. The wedding feast, however, was disturbed by Cepheus’ brother, Phineus, to whom Andromeda had been betrothed, and who, though he had stood by while she was being bound and made no effort to save her, now came with a band of followers to claim his bride from her deliverer. He attacked Perseus and broke up the banquet with a bloody fight, described in much detail by Ovid, which was only ended by the hero’s producing Medusa’s head and petrifying his foes. Perseus, with his bride, afterward sailed for Argos, where he restored his grandfather, who had been dethroned by Proetus, his own brother; and, passing on, he reached Seriphos just in time to save his mother, Danae, from Polydectes. He turned the tyrant to stone, and gave the realm to the faithful Dictys. The oracle in reference to Acrisius was fulfilled later, at Larissa, on the occasion of the funeral games celebrated by Teutamias, king of Thessaly, for his father. Perseus, throwing a quoit in one of the contests, accidentally struck his grandfather on the head and killed him.[3.1]

This is the substance of the story that engaged the genius of some of the greatest poets of antiquity. I have followed in the main Ovid’s narrative; but the only parts he deals with at length are the episodes of Atlas and Andromeda. The absurdities and impossibilities of the tale were as obvious as its beauties to the ancients themselves; and many were the attempts to rationalise it. We need not concern ourselves with these. For our immediate purpose {4} the interest lies in the localisation of the different scenes and the variations we can trace of its episodes.

Perseus, like other Greek national heroes, was the object of worship. The chief seat of his cult seems to have been the isle of Seriphos, where it was believed that not only Polydektes, but also most of the inhabitants with him, were petrified by the dead Gorgon’s glances. The later coinage of the island exhibited Medusa’s head; and the peasants, when they find such coins now, relate that they are the coins of the first queen of the island, who dwelt in the mediæval castle upon the scarped hill above the port of Livadhi.[4.1] Next to Seriphos, Argos and Mykene honoured, as was natural, the hero. He had ruled the one and founded the other. The name of Mykene was believed to record the place where he dropped the sheath of his sword; and a fountain, which bore his name, marked the spot where it fell. A different derivation of the name of Mykene is given in the lost work of Ctesias the Ephesian on Perseus. He there attributes it to the bellowing (μυκηθμὸς) made by Stheno and Euryale, the sisters of Medusa, in their impotent rage against the hero, whom they pursued as blood-avengers to this spot, and here finally abandoned the pursuit as hopeless.[4.2] At Argos his tomb was shown; and in the forum there, beneath a barrow of earth, it was claimed that the awful trophy of his victory over the Gorgon lay--the trophy which, according to another version of the legend, was for ever fixed in Athene’s shield, the most dangerous of her {5} weapons. Elsewhere the Argives showed a subterranean building containing a brazen bedchamber, said to have been that made by Akrisios for his daughter--a variation from the brazen tower of the story usually current.[5.1]

But Argos and Seriphos were not allowed to monopolise the sacred scenes of Perseus’ life. The city of Ardea in Latium disputed with Seriphos the honour of being the refuge of Danae ‘pregnant with almighty gold.’ From her, according to Vergil, Turnus, who competed with Æneas for Lavinia’s hand, derived his lineage.[5.2] Although Andromeda’s father is described as king of Ethiopia, the general consent of antiquity laid the scene of her rescue at Joppa. Near that town was a fountain wherein the hero washed away the stains of the combat, and whose water was coloured ever after by the monster’s blood.[5.3] Upon the rocks which bounded the haven were pointed out the marks left by the maiden’s chains; and Marcus Scaurus, when ædile, brought from Joppa, and exhibited at Rome, the bones of the monster. A rumour of this event seems to have reached the forger of Sir John Maundeville’s travels, for he relates that the place was still shown where the great giant Andromeda was fastened with chains before the Flood, and not only the place where he was confined, but one of his ribs measuring forty feet in length![5.4] It is evident that he took pains to ascertain the exact truth.

In Egypt and in Persia, the Father of History found traditions of a personage identified with Perseus. “According {6} to the Persian story,” he tells us, “Perseus was an Assyrian who became a Greek; his ancestors, therefore, according to them, were not Greeks. They do not admit that the forefathers of Akrisios were in any way related to Perseus, but say they were Egyptians, as the Greeks likewise testify.” And elsewhere he represents Xerxes as telling the Greeks that Perses, from whom he claimed descent, was the child of Perseus, the son of Danae, and of Andromeda, the daughter of Kepheus--a statement apparently accepted by the historian, as well as by other Greek writers.[6.1] Both these stories probably were Assyrian in origin, and obtained currency, first among the Persians and afterwards among the Greeks, from political causes. In the latter story Kepheus is presented as the son of Bel. It is unlikely that the Achæmenian kings of Persia would have claimed descent from him, had they not been conquerors of Babylon. The Assyrian hero equated with Perseus in the former story we are fortunately enabled by recent discoveries to identify. He is no other than Gilgames, whose name was at one time transliterated as Izdubar, the hero of the epos from the library of King Assurbanipal, preserved in an imperfect form in the British Museum. The fragments we have of the tablets do not include the hero’s birth. Upon this, however, the solution of the characters embodying his name has thrown unexpected light. For Ælian the rhetorician, writing in the third century of the Christian era, has transmitted to us an account of the birth of Gilgamos, whom he styles King of the Babylonians. According to this account, the Chaldeans predicted to a monarch, whose name is variously read as Sakchoros, Senéchoros and Enéchoros, that his daughter would have a {7} son who would deprive his grandfather of the kingdom. Fearing this, he ordered her to be kept in close confinement. His precautions were vain, for fate was cleverer than the Babylonian king. His daughter bore a son whose father was unknown. No sooner was the infant born than her guards threw it down, for fear of the king, from the citadel wherein she was immured. But an eagle, beholding the falling child, darted beneath it, and, receiving it on its back, bore it gently to the ground in a certain garden. The gardener found the boy, and adopted him for his beauty. “If anybody think this a fable,” says the rhetorician, eager to shuffle off all responsibility for it, “I admit I don’t believe it myself; yet I am told that Perses the Achæmenian, from whom the noble stock of the Persians is derived, was an eagle’s nursling.” On examining the epos of Gilgames we recognise none of the adventures as those of Perseus. This may be owing to its imperfect preservation, or to its being a literary recension wherein only those parts of the story proper to the writer’s purpose are combined. It can hardly be that the sole resemblance is in the circumstances of the hero’s birth. On the other hand, the career of Gilgames has many points of likeness to that of Herakles.[7.1] He rejoices in a divine origin and in the favour of the gods; he conquers lions and monsters; he triumphantly accomplishes a journey to the other world. Now, a story of the rescue of a maiden similar to that by Perseus was told of Herakles. When Laomedon, king of Troy, had bound his daughter Hesione to a rock, to be devoured by a sea-monster sent by Poseidon, Herakles undertook her deliverance, and sprang full-armed into the fish’s throat, whence {8} he hacked his way forth again after three days’ imprisonment, hairless.[8.1] We are left to conjecture that, if we had the traditions of Gilgames fully presented to us, we should not only have his birth as told by Ælian, but also some other features of his story linking it to that of Perseus--features that perhaps would at the same time explain why the king his grandfather is called an Egyptian.

Herodotus seems to have attached more credit to the tale he found in Egypt. He describes the temple to the hero at Chemmis in the canton of Thebes, and mentions the games celebrated in his honour. The Chemmites, he says, claimed Perseus as Chemmite by descent, and related that on his way from the slaughter of the Gorgon he paid a visit to their city, acknowledged them for his kinsfolk, and instituted the games. They declared that he was in the habit of appearing to them, sometimes in his temple, at other times in the open country, and that one of the sandals he had worn was often found, measuring two cubits in length; and it was a sign of prosperity to the kingdom. There was also a watch-tower called by the name of Perseus near the Canopic mouth of the Nile.[8.2]

But, with regard both to the Persian and to the Egyptian tales, it must be borne in mind that all classical writers had a light-hearted way of calling foreign gods and heroes by the names of their own divinities, whenever they could get an excuse for so doing in the resemblances they traced, or fancied, either in attributes or legends. This practice has introduced endless confusion into their accounts, perfunctory {9} at the best and often contemptuous, of the mythologies of other nations. If we learn little from the historian’s references to the Persian, or Assyrian, tradition, we know less of that of the Egyptians; and, with all our discoveries, we have yet to find the clew to the object of veneration at Chemmis, and the legends clustered about him.

Coming down to a later period, Ælian makes mention of a fish caught in the Red Sea, and called Perseus equally by the dwellers on the shore, by the Greeks, and by the Arabs. He informs us that the latter honoured Perseus, the son of Zeus, and declared that it was from him this fish derived its name. He also describes a gigantic marine cricket, something like a rock-lobster, which many persons abstained from eating, because they deemed it sacred. The inhabitants of Seriphos, if they caught it in their nets, would not keep it, but returned it to the sea; if they found one dead, they would bury it, weeping; and they held that these creatures were dear to Perseus. The importance of these statements will appear hereafter. Another tradition of Seriphos noticed by the same writer attributes the silence of the frogs (which never croaked) on the island to the prayers of Perseus, when they disturbed his sleep on his return from the contest with Medusa.[9.1] The hero of the island would naturally be credited with many of its peculiarities.

The general result is that legends identical in substance with that of Perseus were widely known in ancient times. From Persia to Italy, from cultured Greece to the barbarous shores of the Red Sea, a tale was told, a hero was celebrated, identified by Greek and Roman writers with {10} the son of Danae. The tale, however, was not told without variations, of which the underground chamber in the Argive territory and the escape of Danae to Ardea are specimens; while the hero’s mysterious connection with a fish, or marine crustacean, points to another.

The legend consists of three leading trains of incident, namely:--

1. The Birth, including the prophecy, the precautions taken by Akrisios, the supernatural conception, the exposure of mother and babe, and the fulfilment of the prophecy by the death of Akrisios.

2. The Quest of the Gorgon’s Head, including the jealousy of Polydektes, the divine gift of weapons, the visit to the Graiæ, the slaughter of Medusa, and the vengeance on Polydektes.

3. The Rescue of Andromeda, including the fight with the monster and the quelling of Phineus, the pretender to the maiden’s hand.

Singly, these trains of incident appear in many traditions, sometimes in one form, sometimes in another. We shall consider them first in combination, with the object of tracing the legend in its wanderings and modifications. Afterwards, leaving out of account the surrounding details, we shall examine the central incidents, so as, if possible, to arrive at the ideas which underlie them. In other words, we shall first treat the story as a whole, and then analyse it into its component parts. A tale, however, in its passage through the world is susceptible of almost infinite modifications. It will be obviously impossible in the analysis to deal with more than a few of these; and I shall confine my attention to the above three leading trains of incident and one other, which appears in many modern versions, and {11} which we shall find to be not the least important and interesting of the four.

Considering the story as a story-whole, we may begin by reminding ourselves that the forms in which we receive it from Ovid and Lucian are literary forms of a pre-existing oral version. This version was probably the most widely accredited, though, as we have seen reason to think, not the only version current in classical times. And in transferring our inquiries from literature to tradition, we shall be met by variations much wider than those manifested in ancient writings. On the other hand, we shall not be left without approximations to the form with which we are familiar there.

Of these approximations, perhaps the closest was told a few years ago to Signor Giovanni Siciliano by an absolutely illiterate peasant woman of Pratovecchio in the Val d’Arno. It runs thus:--A childless king, praying for offspring, hears a voice asking him to choose between a son who will die and a daughter who will run away. By the advice of his subjects he chooses the latter; and a daughter is accordingly born. Some miles from his city the king has a palace in the midst of a fair garden. Thither he brings the child, with nurse and maid of honour, to keep her in safety; and he and his wife visit the little one but rarely. No sooner, however, had she arrived at the age of sixteen than the son of King Jonah, passing by, saw her and bribed her nurse to let him have access to her. The young people fell in love with one another, and were secretly married. In due time the bride gave birth to a son; and her father, learning this, refused to see her again. When the boy was fifteen years of age he went to find his grandfather, who would not so much as speak to him. He endured this silence for three {12} or four months, and then demanded the reason for it, offering the king, if he would tell him, to go and cut off the Witch’s head for him. The king replied that this was just what he wanted him to do. Now, the witch in question was so terrible that all who looked at her became statues; and the king hoped that the youth would perish in the adventure. But on the way he met an old man who gave him a flying steed, and directed him to a palace wherein dwelt two women who had only one eye between them, from whom he was to obtain a mirror. And the old man warned him always to regard the witch in the mirror, and never to look at her otherwise, lest he should become a statue. The flying steed carried the adventurer safely over a mountain inhabited by all sorts of wild and ravenous beasts; and he arrived in due course at the palace of the one-eyed women. There, by possessing himself of the eye while one of them was handing it to the other, he extorted the mirror which enabled him to accomplish the object of his journey. After cutting off the witch’s head, he returned home another way; and coming to a seaport town he found a chapel by the sea-side, and a lovely maiden within it, clad in mourning garb and weeping. She bids him depart, lest he also be eaten by the seven-headed dragon whereto she has been offered, and whose coming she is then awaiting. He refuses to leave her. Instead of doing so, he attacks the dragon on its rising from the sea, turns it to stone, and cuts out its seven tongues, which he ties up in a handkerchief and puts in his pocket. But, having delivered the lady, he ungallantly refuses to see her home, saying that he wishes to see a little more of the world. Before leaving her, however, he makes an appointment to return in six months. This inscrutable conduct gives opportunity to a cobbler, who {13} meets her alone, to threaten her with death unless she will tell her father that he is the slayer of the dragon. Deprived of her champion, she is compelled to submit to the terms; but when her father offers her in marriage to her supposed deliverer, she pleads for a delay of six months. Then the king sent placards through all his cities, announcing his daughter’s deliverance by a cobbler and her approaching marriage to him. Her real deliverer _hears_ the placards, and returns to the capital just as the six months are expiring. He attends an audience, and inquires of the king how many heads the beast had, and whether the cobbler has any proof of his victory. The cobbler is summoned, and asked where are the dragon’s seven tongues? The damsel settles the question, however, by declaring that the youth it was who slew the dragon and cut out his tongues, and that the rascal of a shoemaker had taken her by force and compelled her to say that it was he. The shoemaker is promptly burned in the great square, and the hero married. He returns with his bride to his grandfather, to whom he shows the witch’s head, with the inevitable result, and then fetches his father from the garden where he had himself been born.[13.1]

That there should be so striking a resemblance between this story and that of the classical writers is not surprising to any one who realises the tenacity of popular traditions. It is not, indeed, necessary to suppose that it has been handed down from pagan times in Tuscany: it may only date, as a popular tale, from the revived paganism of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. If so, however, it would stand alone among Italian traditions, not one of which has been traced to the great movement known as the Revival of Learning, and a large number of which were already current {14} while that movement was in progress. The assumption, therefore, that the Tuscan tale is a relic of two thousand years or more does not seem unwarranted. Moreover, it is confirmed by an Albanian _märchen_, obtained from the recital of a woman at Ljabovo in the district of Riça. It had been foretold, we learn, to a certain king that he should be put to death by his grandson, yet unborn. Wherefore he flung into the sea and drowned every boy born of his two daughters. The third boy, however, escaped with his life, and was cast by a wave on the shore, where he was found by two herdsmen and taken home to their wives to bring up. When he was in his twelfth year, beautiful and strong, a Lubia, or ogress, dried up all the waters; and it was prophesied that she would never let them flow again until she had eaten the king’s daughter. The maiden is accordingly bound in a certain spot, to await the Lubia; but the hero of the story, accidentally finding her, learns the fate in store for her, and bids her fear not, but call him when the Lubia comes. Meanwhile he hides behind a rock, and covers himself with a cap, so that he is no longer visible. He slays the Lubia with his club; and at the same moment the waters begin again to flow. The king offers his daughter in marriage to the victor; and the hero proves his right to the reward by the possession of the Lubia’s head. During the wedding games he throws his club and by mischance kills the king, thus fulfilling the prophecy, and himself becomes king in his stead.[14.1]

Imperfections and confusion--especially the confusion between the king who is the hero’s grandfather and him who is the father of the maiden exposed to the ogress--are {15} to be noted in this version. They are probably due to the reporter, or perhaps, as Von Hahn (to whom the story was supplied) suggests, to defects in the telling. But it is clear withal that here, in another of the classic lands, the tale of Perseus has been preserved in its main features by oral transmission to this day. Whether it be due to the truncated character of this version that the hero’s birth is not actually ascribed to a supernatural cause, it is difficult to say. In this omission it agrees with the Tuscan variant; but in both, the circumstances, though different from one another, are similar to those of Perseus. As we shall shortly meet with types of the story in which the cause and circumstances of the birth are broadly distinguishable from those of the two foregoing tales, we may classify the latter as belonging to the _Danae type_.

The Albanian tale, it will be observed, omits the Quest of the Gorgon’s Head. A modern Irish saga, on the other hand, omits the rescue of Andromeda; and not only so, but modifies the supernatural birth, and identifies the hero’s grandfather with the Gorgon. Tory Island was the stronghold of a warrior, Balor by name, to whom a Druid had prophesied that he should be slain by his own grandson. Balor had two eyes, but not in the usual place. One of them was in the middle of his forehead, and the other in the back of his skull. The latter was venomous, and had the property of striking dead or petrifying all on whom its glances fell, wherefore it was usually kept covered. He had also an only daughter, Ethnea, whom, in consequence of the prediction, he kept secluded in an impregnable tower on the summit of Tor-more, an inaccessible rock at the eastern end of the island; and he placed with her in the tower a company of twelve matrons, with strict orders to keep {16} all men, and all knowledge of men, away from her. On the mainland, opposite the island, dwelt three brothers, Gavida, a famous smith, MacSamhthiann, and MacKineely. Balor, by a trick, robbed MacKineely of a wonderful cow whereon he set a high value; and MacKineely was determined on revenge. His Leanan-sidhe, or familiar spirit, called Biroge of the Mountain, dressed him in woman’s clothing, and wafted him on the wings of the storm across the Sound to the top of Tor-more, and there, knocking at the door of the tower, demanded admittance for a noble lady whom she had rescued from a tyrant. The matrons, fearing to disoblige the Banshee, admitted both to the tower. No sooner had MacKineely thus gained access to Ethnea than the Banshee, by her supernatural power, laid the twelve matrons asleep. When they awoke, the intruders were no longer there, and Ethnea had lost her maidenhood. In course of time she brought forth three sons, whom her father, on discovering, sent rolled up in a sheet, to be cast into a certain whirlpool. But on the way the pin fell out of the sheet, and one of the boys dropped into the harbour, where he was received by the Banshee and wafted safely across the Sound to his father, who sent him to be fostered by his brother Gavida. Balor, meanwhile, had learned from his Druid that MacKineely was the father of Ethnea’s children, and now set forth to punish him. With a band of followers he landed at Ballyconnell, seized MacKineely, and, laying his head on a large white stone, cut it off with one blow of his sword. The blood gushed forth and penetrated the stone to its very centre, thus forming the red veins which are still shown to the traveller; for the stone was raised in 1794, on a pillar sixteen feet high, and gives its name, Clogh-an-Neely, to a district comprising two parishes. Balor {17} now thought himself secure, for he believed his three grandsons were all drowned. But the heir of MacKineely grew up unknown to him at Gavida’s forge, and became an accomplished smith. One day Balor came to the forge to get some spears made. Gavida was absent, and his foster-son did the work. In the course of the day Balor happened to mention with pride his conquest of MacKineely. It was an evil moment for him; for the young smith, who had been nursing his revenge, watched his opportunity, and, taking a glowing rod from the furnace, thrust it through the basilisk eye and out through the other side of Balor’s head, thus slaying his grandfather and fulfilling the Druid’s prediction.[17.1]

For another story of the Danae type we must go as far as Germany; and we must piece it out as well as we can from Grimm’s notes to the tale of _The Two Brothers_, of which it is given as a variant. It is related in Hesse that a king’s daughter was pursued by mice, until, in order to save her, he was driven to building a tower, like the Mouse-tower of the Rhine, in the midst of the river. There she dwelt with one maid. One day a jet of water springs in through the window, and fills a tub which they set for it. Both princess and maid drink of it, and afterwards bear each a son, one of whom is called Water-Peter and the other Water-Paul. Both children are put into a chest and floated down the stream. They are rescued by a fisherman, and taught hunting. Going out together, they spare successively three animals, a bear, a lion, and a wolf: in return, each of them is gifted with one of the creature’s young. They part from one another, sticking their knives into a tree at the {18} parting-place, as a token of life or death of the owner. Water-Peter comes to a town hung with mourning for the king’s daughter, who is to be offered up to a seven-headed dragon the next day. With the help of his beasts he slays the dragon; and then, having cut out its tongues, he lies down and falls asleep, he and his animals, from weariness. The king’s marshal, who has been set to watch, comes and finds the dragon dead and its slayer sleeping. He kills the hero, and compels the maiden to admit that he and no other had delivered her. Now the king has promised her in marriage to any one who would save her from the dragon; but she succeeds in postponing the marriage for a year and a day. When the faithful beasts awake, they find their master dead; but happily they are able to bring him to life again by means of a magical herb. After wandering about the world he returns to the town in the nick of time, and by producing the dragon’s tongues he proves that he himself is the victor, and the marshal an impostor. His own wedding to the king’s daughter and the marshal’s death follow; and on the king’s demise Water-Peter receives the kingdom. One day, going out hunting, he loses his attendants, and at night rests with his beasts beside a fire. An old cat sitting on a tree asks if she may warm herself at the fire? When he says Yes, she gives him three of her hairs, and prays him to lay one on each of his beasts, else she will be afraid of them. As soon as he has done this, the animals die. Enraged, he is about to kill her, when she says there is a spring close by of the Water of Death, and another of the Water of Life: if he will take some of the latter and pour it over them, they will come to life again. This is accordingly done. Meanwhile, Water-Paul comes to his brother’s palace, and is received by the queen {19} as her husband. At night, however, he lays a naked sword in the bed between himself and her. When Water-Peter returns and finds Water-Paul in his place, he kills him from jealousy; but on learning the facts he restores him with the Water of Life.[19.1]

The divergence between this story and that of Perseus is considerable. Not merely is the hero duplicated; the gift of weapons is transformed into the acquisition of faithful attendant animals, and the incident of the Gorgon’s Head, postponed to the slaughter of the dragon, becomes a night adventure with a supernatural cat in the forest. The differences, in fact, are such as to preclude the notion of any lineal connection between them. A large proportion of the modern stories agree with that of _Water-Peter and Water-Paul_ where it diverges most widely from the classical legend; and those which do not so agree differ in one way or other still further. Some of them we shall have to consider hereafter. There are, however, two other stories of the same type mentioned by Grimm, both apparently from Hesse. In the one, a king, having resolved that his daughter shall not marry, builds a house for her in the forest in the greatest solitude, where she has to dwell without ever seeing a stranger. But near the house rose a wonderful spring, whereof the maiden drank and bore two boys exactly alike, who received the names of John Waterspring and Casper Waterspring. John fights the dragon, and is brought to life again by the sap of an oak which the ants have been fetching for their dead, trampled down during the conflict. In other respects the tale contains nothing new. The second story omits the supernatural birth of the twins. It begins with a golden box, wherein two {20} fair boys are enclosed, falling from heaven into a fisherman’s net. The dragon is killed by a poisoned seed thrown by the hero into its throat. The princess’ intended bridegroom tries to poison her deliverer; but his faithful beasts discover the treachery. He is afterwards turned into stone by a witch; but his brother forces the witch to tell him by what means to bring him back to life. A wicked snake, the cause of the whole enchantment, is lying under a stone: it must be hewn in pieces, roasted at the fire, and the petrified brother smeared with its fat.[20.1]

There are resemblances here in some of the details to the story of Perseus. The petrifying witch in the latter of the two tales reminds us more nearly of Medusa than does the mysterious cat; while in the former the Supernatural Birth approaches the Argive tradition, though no motive is assigned for the king’s resolution not to permit his daughter’s marriage. The fatal prophecy, which is the centre of the whole plot in the classical tale, is, in fact, commonly omitted in modern folktales of this type. We do not find it in either of the German stories; and even in the Tuscan its force is greatly weakened. It is absent also from the Swedish _märchen_ of _Silverwhite and Littlewarder_. In that story a widower-king, going to the wars, places his only daughter alone with a single waiting-woman in a tower to guard her honour. An old woman, suborned by youths who are angry at being denied access to the princess, gives her two enchanted apples. The princess and her maid, eating them, bear a son each. After seven years, when the king is expected to return, they let the boys down from the tower, that they may seek their fortunes. They meet a man who gives them each a sword and three dogs. At a {21} crossway they part. Silverwhite throws into the fountain that rises there his knife, given him by his mother, the princess, and charges his foster-brother, if the water become red and thick, to avenge him, for then he will be dead. Then, going on his way, by the help of his dogs he saves a king’s three daughters on successive days from three sea-trolls. Having killed the trolls, he cuts out their eyeballs, and goes away. A courtier claims to be the victor, and is to be married to the youngest of the three maidens; but on the wedding-day Silverwhite appears, produces the trolls’ eyeballs, and the king’s daughters recognise the rings they have bound in his hair previous to the fights. He takes the place of the bridegroom, who is punished. One night the brother of the trolls calls to Silverwhite, and challenges him to combat, that he may avenge them. The troll has three dogs, but they are driven away by the hero’s dogs; and the troll takes to flight also. Climbing a tree, he desires to parley, but the dogs bark furiously. In order to quiet them, he gives three hairs from his head to Silverwhite, with a request to lay them on the dogs. They lie silent and motionless; and the troll, descending from the tree, renews the contest and kills their master. Littlewarder, however, conquers the troll, and extorts from him two bottles. The water in one of these bottles restores the dead to life, that in the other holds fast whoever comes to a place where it has been spread. With the latter he binds the troll immovably; with the former he brings his foster-brother back to life. The incident of Water-Peter’s jealousy follows. Silverwhite’s wife has a sister conveniently ready and willing to marry Littlewarder; and so all ends happily.[21.1]

Only one other variant need be mentioned here. A story {22} obtained in Little Russia relates that a maiden coming home from the field was seized with thirst. She saw in the road two footprints filled with water, and, drinking, felt herself immediately pregnant; for they were divine footprints. She bears two sons, who grow with wonderful rapidity, and at the age of seven go out into the world. In a forest they meet, one after another, several troops of animals--hares, foxes, wolves, bears, lions--who dissuade the precocious twins from shooting them, by bestowing on each of them one of themselves. The brothers part. The elder rescues a princess from a dragon, and suffers death at the hands of a Gipsy who has watched the combat; but he is brought to life again by his beasts with the Water of Life and Healing, and weds the princess. He observes that a fire burns all night long in a certain house. On inquiry he is told that an old snake dwells there. Accordingly he rides thither with his beasts, and fastens his horse in the courtyard to a stake furnished with golden and silver rings. He enters, and meets an old woman in an iron mortar, propelled with an iron pestle--the inconvenient but usual vehicle of the Baba Yaga (witch, or ogress) in Russian folktales. She pretends to be afraid of his animals, and bids him flourish over them two rods which lie upon the oven. As he does it they are changed to stone, together with himself and his steed. Before they parted, the two brothers had buried beneath a certain tree, the one red, the other white, wine; when the white should become red, or the red white, it would be a token of the death of him whose wine had changed colour. The younger brother now, coming to the tree, finds that his elder brother is dead, and, going to seek him, reaches his wife, and is mistaken for her husband. With the object of getting some clew to his brother’s death, {23} he remains with her three nights, putting the sword between them every night. He then goes to the witch, for whom he is too wary. Seized by his animals, she gives him the Water of Life, which restores his brother. On the way home the elder brother strikes off his deliverer’s head from jealousy; but when, at his return, his wife upbraids him concerning the sword, he recognises his wrong, and hastens the next morning to set his brother’s head on his shoulders again, and sprinkle it with the Water of Life.[23.1]