The Science of Fairy Tales Part 17

Journal," vol. i. p. 251).

[213] "Journ. Ethnol. Soc." N. S., vol. ii. p. 26; Giles, _pa.s.sim_; Brauns, p. 388.

[214] "Y Cymmrodor," vol. v. p. 94.

[215] Map, Dist. ii. c. 11.

[216] Map, Dist. ii. c. 12.

[217] "Y Cymmrodor," vol. iv. p. 201. Nothing turns on the actual names in these stories; they have been evidently much corrupted,--probably past all recognition.

[218] Ibid. p. 189; vol. v. pp. 59, 66; vol. vi. p. 196.

[219] Pliny l. xvi. c. 95; Thorpe, vol. ii. pp. 275, 277; Stephens, p.

248, citing the "Barzas Breiz."

[220] The above paragraphs had scarcely been written when the London papers (June 1890) reprinted extracts from a letter in the _Vossische Zeitung_ relating the adventures of Dr. Bayol, the Governor of Kotenon, who was recently imprisoned by the bloodthirsty King of Dahomey. The king was too suspicious to sign the letter written in his name to the President of the French Republic. In all probability he was unwilling to let the President have his sign manual, for of course M. Carnot would have no hesitation in bewitching him by its means.

[221] Keightley, p. 121, quoting from Thiele; Thorpe, vol. iii. p. 155.

[222] Ancient Laws and Inst.i.tutes of Wales (Public Record Comm., 1841) pp. 44, 252. (The Dimetian code was the one in force at Myddfai; but that of Gwynedd was similar in this respect.) Farrer, p. 256.

[223] Campbell, vol. iii. p. 403; Mac Innes, p. 211; Wratislaw, p. 314.

_Cf._ a similar story told by a peasant to Dr. Krauss' mother no longer ago than 1888, as having recently happened at Mrkopolje: he "knew the parties!" (Krauss, "Volksgl." p. 107).

[224] Ellis, p. 208; Grinnell, p. 129.

[225] "Choice Notes," p. 96; _cf._ Jahn, p. 364, cited above, p. 279.

(Kennedy relates the story of the Lady of Inchiquin differently.

According to him the husband was never to invite company to the castle.

This is probably more modern than the other version. Kennedy, p. 282.) Keightley, p. 458, quoting the _Quarterly Review_, vol. xxii. Sir Francis Palgrave, though an accurate writer, was guilty of the unpardonable sin of invariably neglecting to give his authorities. Ibid.

p. 485, quoting Mdlle. Bosquet, "La Normandie Romanesque."

[226] "Journal Amer. F. L." vol ii. p. 137; vol. i. p. 76; Schneller, p.

210; "Rosenol," vol. i. p. 162; Child, vol. i. p. 337, quoting Schmidt and Apollodorus; "Panjab N. & Q.," vol. ii. p. 207. (In this form the story is found as a tradition, probably derived from the Mahabharata.) "Trans. Aberd. Eistedd." p. 225; White, vol. i. p. 126.

[227] Dennys, p. 140; "Corpus Poet. Bor." vol. i. p. 168; "Katha-sarit-sagara," vol. ii. p. 453, _cf._ p. 577; White, vol. i. p.

88; Schneller, p. 210; Robertson Smith, p. 50.

[228] Gill, p. 265.

[229] "Indian N. & Q." vol. iv. p. 147.

[230] "Sacred Books of the East," vol. xxvii. pp. 471, 475, 476; "Indian N. & Q." vol. iv. p. 147.

[231] Romilly, p. 134; Landes, p. 123.

[232] Bent, p. 13. The Nereids in modern Greek folklore are conceived in all points as Swan-maidens. They fly through the air by means of magical raiment (Schmidt, p. 133).

[233] See my article on the "Meddygon Myddfai," ent.i.tled "Old Welsh Folk Medicine," "Y Cymmrodor," vol. ix. p. 227.

[234] A certain German family used to excuse its faults by attributing them to a sea-fay who was reckoned among its ancestors; Birlinger, "Aus Schwaben," vol. i. p. 7, quoting the "Zimmerische Chronik."

[235] Namely, her husband's father, whose name she was not permitted by etiquette to utter. See above, p. 309.

[236] Theal, p. 54. The Teton lady who became a mermaid was summoned, by singing an incantation, to suckle her child; "Journal Amer. F. L." vol.

ii. p. 137.

[237] Schreck, p. 71.

[238] Poestion, p. 55; "Cymru Fu," p. 474.

[239] "Y Cymmrodor," vol. iv. p. 177, vol. vi. p. 203. I have also made inquiries at Ystradgynlais, in the neighbourhood of the lake, the results of which confirm the statements of Professor Rhys'

correspondents; but I have failed to elicit any further information.

CHAPTER XII.

CONCLUSION.

Retrospect--The fairies of Celtic and Teutonic races of the same nature as the supernatural beings celebrated in the traditions of other nations--All superst.i.tions of supernatural beings explicable by reference to the conceptions of savages--Liebrecht's Ghost Theory of some Swan-maiden myths--MacRitchie's Finn Theory--The amount of truth in them--Both founded on too narrow an induction--Conclusion.

We have in the preceding pages examined some of the princ.i.p.al groups of tales and superst.i.tions relating to Fairies proper,--that is to say, the Elves and Fays of Celtic and Teutonic tradition.

Dealing in the first instance with the sagas found in this country, or in Germany, our investigations have by no means ended there; for in order to understand these sagas, we have found occasion to refer again and again to the _marchen_, as well as the sagas, of other European nations,--nay, to the traditions of races as wide apart from our own in geographical position and culture, as the South Sea Islanders, the Ainos, and the Aborigines of America. And we have found among peoples in the most distant parts of the globe similar stories and superst.i.tions.

Incidentally, too, we have learned something of the details of archaic practices, and have found the two great divisions of Tradition,--belief and practice,--inseparably interwoven.

I do not pretend to have touched upon all the myths referring to Fairies, as thus strictly defined; and the Kobolds and Puck, the Household Spirits and Mischievous Demons, have scarcely been so much as mentioned. Want of s.p.a.ce forbids our going further. It is hoped, however, that enough has been said, not merely to give the readers an idea of the Fairy Mythology correct as far as it goes, but, beyond that, to vindicate the method pursued in the investigation, as laid down in our second chapter, by demonstrating the essential ident.i.ty of human imagination all over the world, and by tracing the stories with which we have been dealing to a more barbarous state of society and a more archaic plane of thought. It now remains, therefore, to recall what we have ascertained concerning the nature and origin of the Fairies, and briefly to consider two rival theories.

We started from some of the ascertained facts of savage thought and savage life. The doctrine of Spirits formed our first proposition. This we defined to be the belief held by savages that man consists of body and spirit; that it is possible for the spirit to quit the body and roam at will in different shapes about the world, returning to the body as to its natural home; that in the spirit's absence the body sleeps, and that it dies if the spirit return not; further, that the universe swarms with spirits embodied and disembodied, because everything in the world has a spirit, and all these spirits are a.n.a.logues of the human spirit, having the same will and acting from the same motives; and that if by chance any of these spirits be ejected from its body, it may continue to exist without a body, or it may find and enter a new body, not necessarily such an one as it occupied before, but one quite different. The doctrine of Transformation was another of our premises: that is to say, the belief held by savages in the possibility of a change of form while preserving the same ident.i.ty. A third premise was the belief in Witchcraft, or the power of certain persons to cause the transformations just mentioned, and to perform by means of spells, or symbolic actions and mystical words, various other feats beyond ordinary human power. And there were others to which I need not now refer, all of which were a.s.sumed to be expressed in the tales and songs, and in the social and political inst.i.tutions, of savages. Along with these, we a.s.sumed the hypothesis of the evolution of civilization from savagery. By this I mean that just as the higher orders of animal and vegetable life have been developed from germs which appeared on this planet incalculable ages ago; so during a past of unknown length the civilization of the highest races of men has been gradually evolving through the various stages of savagery and barbarism up to what we know it to-day; and so every nation, no matter how barbarous, has arisen from a lower stage than that in which it is found, and is on its way, if left to its natural processes, to something higher and better. This is an hypothesis which does not, of course, exclude the possibility of temporary and partial relapses, such as we know have taken place in the history of every civilized country, any more than it excludes the possibility of the decay and death of empires; but upon the whole it claims that progress and not retrogression is the law of human society. The different stages of this progress have everywhere left their mark on the tales and songs, the sayings and superst.i.tions, the social, religious and political inst.i.tutions--in other words, on the belief and practice--of mankind.

Starting from these premises, we have examined five groups, or cycles, of tales concerning the Fairy Mythology. We have found Fairyland very human in its organization. Its inhabitants marry, sometimes among themselves, sometimes into mankind. They have children born to them; and they require at such times female a.s.sistance. They steal children from men, and leave their own miserable brats in exchange; they steal women, and sometimes leave in their stead blocks of wood, animated by magical art, or sometimes one of themselves. In the former case the animation does not usually last very long, and the women is then supposed to die.

Their females sometimes in turn become captive to men. Unions thus formed are, however, not lasting, until the husband has followed the wife to her own home, and conquered his right to her afresh by some great adventure. This is not always in the story: presumably, therefore, not always possible. On the other hand, he who enters Fairyland and partakes of fairy food is spell-bound: he cannot return--at least for many years, perhaps for ever--to the land of men. Fairies are grateful to men for benefits conferred, and resentful for injuries. They never fail to reward those who do them a kindness; but their gifts usually have conditions attached, which detract from their value and sometimes become a source of loss and misery. Nor do they forget to revenge themselves on those who offend them; and to watch them, when they do not desire to be manifested, is a mortal offence. Their chief distinction from men is in their unbounded magical powers, whereof we have had several ill.u.s.trations. They make things seem other than they are; they appear and disappear at will; they make long time seem short, or short time long; they change their own forms; they cast spells over mortals, and keep them spell-bound for ages.

All these customs and all these powers are a.s.serted of the Fairies properly so called. And when we look at the superst.i.tions of other races than the Celts and Teutons, to which our inquiries have been primarily directed, we find the same things a.s.serted of all sorts of creatures.

Deities, ancestors, witches, ghosts, as well as animals of every kind, are endowed by the belief of nations all over the world with powers precisely similar to those of the Fairies, and with natures and social organizations corresponding with those of men. These beliefs can only be referred to the same origin as the fairy superst.i.tions; and all arise out of the doctrine of spirits, the doctrine of transformations, and the belief in witchcraft, held by savage tribes.

But here I must, at the risk of some few repet.i.tions, notice a theory on the subject of the Swan-maiden myth enunciated by Liebrecht. That distinguished writer, in his book on Folklore, devotes a section to the consideration of the group which has occupied us in the last two chapters, and maintains, with his accustomed wealth of allusion and his accustomed ingenuity, that some at least of the Swan-maidens are nothing more nor less than ghosts of the departed, rescued from the kingdom of darkness for a while, but bound to return thither after a short respite here with those whom they love. Now it is clear that if Swan-maiden tales are to be resolved into ghost stories, all other supernatural beings, G.o.ds and devils as well as fairies and ghosts, will turn out to be nothing but spectres of the dead. A summary of his argument, and of the reasons for rejecting it, will, therefore, not only fill up any serious gaps in our discussion of the main incidents of the myth in question; but it will take a wider sweep, and include the whole subject of the present volume.

His argument, as I understand it, is based, first, on the terms of the taboo. The object of the taboo, he thinks, is to avoid any remark being made, any question being asked, any object being presented, which would remind these spirits of their proper home, and awaken a longing they cannot withstand to return. There is an old Teutonic legend of a knight who came in a little boat drawn by a swan to succour and wed a distressed lady, on whom he laid a charge never to ask whence he came, or in what country he was born. When she breaks this commandment the swan reappears and fetches him away. So the nightmare-wife, as we have seen, in one of the tales vanishes on being asked how she became a nightmare. Again, the fay of Argouges disappears on the name of Death being mentioned in her presence. A fair maiden in an Indian tale, who is found by the hero in the neighbourhood of a fountain, and bears the name of Bheki (Frog), forbids her husband ever to let her see water. When she is thirsty and begs him for water, the doom is fulfilled on his bringing it to her. A similar tale may be added from Ireland, though Liebrecht does not mention it. A man who lived near Lough Sheelin, in County Meath, was annoyed by having his corn eaten night after night. So he sat up to watch; and to his astonishment a number of horses came up out of the lake driven by a most beautiful woman, whom he seized and induced to marry him. She made the stipulation that she was never to be allowed to see the lake again; and for over twenty years she lived happily with him, till one day she strolled out to look at the haymakers, and caught sight of the distant water. With a loud cry she flew straight to it, and vanished beneath the surface.[240]

Liebrecht's next reason is based upon the place where the maiden is found,--a forest, or a house in the forest. In this connection he refers to the tavern, or drinking-shop, on the borders of the forest, where Wild Edric found his bride, and points to a variant of the story, also given by Walter Map, in which she is said, in so many words, to have been s.n.a.t.c.hed _from the dead_.[241] The forest, he fancies, is the place of the dead, the underworld. Lastly, he gives numerous legends of the Middle Ages,--some of which found their way into the "Decameron," that great storehouse of floating tales, and other literary works of imagination, as well as into chronicles,--and instances from more modern folklore, wherein a mistress or wife dies, or seems to die, and is buried, yet is afterwards recovered from the tomb, and lives to wed, if a maiden, and to bear children. He supports these by references to the vampire superst.i.tions, and to the case of Osiris, who returned after death to Isis and became the father of Horus. And, following Uhland, he compares the sleep-thorn, with which Odin p.r.i.c.ked the Valkyrie, Brynhild, and so put her into a magic slumber, to the stake which was driven into the corpse suspected of being a vampire, to prevent its rising any more from the grave and troubling the living.

Now it may be admitted that there is much that is plausible, much even that is true, in this theory. It might be urged in its behalf that (as we have had more than one occasion in the course of this work to know) Fairyland is frequently not to be distinguished from the world of the dead. Time is not known there; and the same consequences of permanent abode follow upon eating the food of the dead and the food of the fairies. Further, when living persons are stolen by fairies, mere dead images are sometimes left in their place. These arguments, and such as these, might well be added to Liebrecht's; and it would be hard to say that a formidable case was not made out. And yet the theory fails to take account of some rather important considerations. Perhaps the strongest point made--a point insisted on with great power--is that of the taboo. The case of the lady of Argouges is certainly very striking, though, taken by itself, it is far from conclusive. It might very well be that a supernatural being, in remaining here, would be obliged to submit to mortality, contrary perhaps to its nature; and to remind it of this might fill it with an irresistible impulse to fly from so horrible a fate. I do not say this is the explanation, but it is as feasible as the other. In the Spanish story it was not the utterance of the name of Death, but of a holy name--the name of Mary--which compelled the wife to leave her husband. Here she was unquestionably regarded by Spanish orthodoxy, not as a spirit of the dead, but as a foul fiend, able to a.s.sume what bodily form it would, but bound to none. The prohibition of inquiry as to the bride's former home may arise not so much from a desire to avoid the recollection, as from the resentment of impertinent curiosity, which we have seen arouses excessive annoyance in supernatural bosoms. The resentment of equally impertinent reproaches, or a reminiscence of savage etiquette that avoids the direct name, may account at least as well for other forms of the taboo. Liebrecht suggests most ingeniously that a.s.sault and battery must strike the unhappy elf still more strongly than reproaches, as a difference between her present and former condition, and remind her still more importunately of her earlier home, and that this explains the prohibition of the "three causeless blows." It may be so, though there is no hint of this in the stories; and yet her former condition need not have been that of a ghost of the dead, nor her earlier home the tomb. By far the greater number of these stories represent the maiden as a water-nymph; but it is the depths of the earth rather than the water which are commonly regarded as the dwelling-place of the departed.

Moreover, the correspondence I have tried to point out between the etiquette of various peoples and the taboo,--such, for instance, as the ban upon a husband's breaking into his wife's seclusion at a delicate moment in his family history,--would remain, on Liebrecht's theory, purely accidental. Nor would the theory account for the absence of a taboo in the lower savagery, nor for the totemistic character of the lady, nor, least of all, for the peltry which is the most picturesque, if not the most important, incident in this group of tales.