Chapter XXI (1)

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

{148}

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

{165}

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

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

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

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

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

{175}

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

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

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

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