Europa's Fairy Book Part 24

"Oh, this is nothing to wear," said the Queen, "this is something to eat. To show you that there can be no harm in it I will take half of it myself and you shall eat the other half."

So she cut the apple in two and gave the poisoned half to Snowwhite.

And the moment she had swallowed the first bite of it she fell down dead. Then the Queen slunk away and went back to the palace and went at once to her chamber and addressed the mirror on the wall:

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, Who is the fairest of us all?"

And this time the mirror answered, as it used to do:

"Queen, Queen, on thy throne, The greatest beauty is thine own."

Then the Queen knew that Snowwhite was dead at last, and that she was without a rival in beauty.

When the dwarfs came home that night they found Snowwhite lying upon the ground quite dead, and could not find out what had happened or how they could cure her. But, though she seemed dead, Snowwhite kept her beautiful white skin and seemed more like a statue than a dead person. So the dwarfs had a gla.s.s coffer made, and put Snowwhite in and locked it up. And she remained there for days and days without changing the slightest, looking oh, so beautiful under the gla.s.s case.

Now a great prince of the neighbouring country happened to be hunting near the hill of the dwarfs and called at their hut to get a gla.s.s of water. And when he came in he found n.o.body there but Snowwhite lying in her crystal coffer. And he fell at once in love with her and sat by her side till the dwarfs came home, and he asked them who she was.

Then they told him her history, and he begged that he might carry the coffer away so that he might always have her near him. At first they would not do so. But he showed how much he loved her, so that they at last yielded, and he called for his men to carry the coffer home to his palace.

And when the men commenced carrying the coffer down the mountain they jolted it so much that the piece of poisoned apple in Snowwhite's throat fell out, and she revived and opened her eyes and looked upon the Prince who was riding by her side. Then he ordered the coffer to be opened, and told her all that had happened. And he took her home to his castle and married her.

After this happened the Queen once more came to her room and spoke to the mirror on the wall and said:

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, Who is the fairest of us all?"

And the mirror this time said again:

"Queen, Queen, on thy throne, Snowwhite's the fairest thou must own."

And the Queen was so enraged because she had not destroyed Snowwhite that she rushed to the window and threw herself out of it and died on the spot.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Snowwhite and the Three Dwarfs]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

INTRODUCTION TO NOTES

Ever since the Brothers Grimm in 1812 made for the first time a fairly complete collection of the folk-tales of a definite local or national area in Europe, the resemblance of many of these tales, not alone in isolated incidents but in continuous plots, has struck inquirers into these delightful little novels for children, as the Italians call them (_Novelline_). Wilhelm Grimm, in the comparative notes which he added to successive editions of the _Mahrchen_ up to 1859, drew attention to many of these parallels and especially emphasized the resemblances of different incidents to similar ones in the Teutonic myths and sagas which he and his brother were investigating. Indeed it may be said that the very considerable amount of attention that was paid to the collection of folk tales throughout Europe for the half century between 1840 and 1890 was due to the hope that they would throw some light upon the origins of mythology. The stories and incidents common to all the European field were thought likely to be original mythopoeic productions of the Indo-European peoples just in the same manner as the common roots of the various Aryan languages indicated their original linguistic store.

In 1864 J. G. von Hahn, Austrian Consul for Eastern Greece, in the introduction to his collection of Greek and Albanian folk tales, made the first attempt to bring together in systematic form this common story-store of Europe and gave an a.n.a.lysis of forty folk-tale and saga "formulae," which outlined the plots of the stories found scattered through the German, Greek, Italian, Servian, Roumanian, Lithuanian, and Indian myth and folk-tale areas. These formulae were translated and adapted by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould in an appendix to Henderson's _Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England_ (London, 1866), and he expanded them into fifty-two formulae. Those were the days when Max Muller's solar and lunar explanations of myths were in the ascendant and Mr. Baring-Gould applied his views to the explanation of folk tales. I have myself expanded Hahn's and Baring-Gould's formulae into a list of seventy-two given in the English Folk-Lore Society's _Hand-Book of Folk-Lore_, London, 1891 (repeated in the second edition, 1912).

Meanwhile the erudition of Theodor Benfey, in his introduction to the Indian story book, _Pantschatantra_ (Leipzig, 1859), had suggested another explanation of the similarities of European folk-tales. For many of the incidents and several of the complete tales Benfey showed Indian parallels, and suggested that the stories had originated in India and had been transferred by oral tradition to the different countries of Europe. This entirely undermined the mythological theories of the Grimms and Max Muller and considerably reduced the importance of folk tales as throwing light upon the primitive psychology of the Aryan peoples. Benfey's researches were followed up by E. Cosquin who, in the elaborate notes to his _Contes de Lorraine_, Paris, 1886, largely increased the evidence both for the common European popularity of many of the tales and incidents as well as for the parallels to be found in Oriental collections.

Still a third theory to account for the similarity of folk-tale incidents was started by James A. Farrer and elaborated by Andrew Lang in connection with the general movement initiated by Sir Edward Tylor to explain mythology and superst.i.tion by the similar processes of savage psychology at definite stages of primitive culture. In introductions to Perrault and Grimm and elsewhere, Andrew Lang pointed out the similarity of some of the incidents of folk tales--speaking of animals, transference of human feeling to inanimate objects and the like--with the mental processes of contemporary savages. He drew the conclusion that the original composers of fairy tales were themselves in a savage state of mind and, by inference, explained the similarities found in folk tales as due to the similarity of the states of minds. In a rather elaborate controversy on the subject between Mr. Lang and myself, carried through the transactions of the Folk-Lore Congress of 1891, the introduction to Miss Roalfe c.o.x's "Cinderella," and in various numbers of "Folk-Lore,"

I urged the improbability of this explanation as applied to the _plots_ of fairy tales. Similar states of mind might account for similar incidents arising in different areas independently, but not for whole series of incidents artistically woven together to form a definite plot which must, I contended, arise in a single artist mind.

The similarities in plot would thus be simply due to borrowing from one nation to another, though incidents or series of incidents might be inserted or omitted during the process. Mr. Lang ultimately yielded this point and indeed insisted that he had never denied the possibility of the transmission of complete folk-tale formulae from one nation and language to another.

During all this discussion as to the causes of the similarity of folk-tale plots no attempt has been made to reconst.i.tute any of these formulae in their original shape. Inquirers have been content to point out the parallelisms to be found in the various folk-tale collections, and of course these parallelisms have bred and mustered with the growth of the collections. In some cases the parallels have run into the hundreds. (See "Reynard and Bruin.") In only one case have practically all the parallels been brought together in a single volume by Miss Roalfe c.o.x on Cinderella (Folk-Lore Society Publication for 1893; see notes on "Cinder-Maid"). These variants of incidents obviously resemble the _variae lectiones_ of MSS. and naturally suggest the possibility of getting what may be termed the original readings.

In 1889 the following suggestion was made by Mr. (now Sir) James G.

Frazer in an essay on the "Language of Animals," in the _Archaeological Review_, i., p. 84:

"In the case of authors who wrote before the invention of printing, scholars are familiar with the process of comparing the various MSS.

of a single work in order from such a comparison to reconstruct the archetype or original MS., from which the various existing MSS. are derived. Similarly in Folk-Lore, by comparing the different versions of a single tale, it may be possible to arrive, with tolerable certainty, at the original story, of which the different versions are more or less imperfect and incorrect representations."

Independently of Sir James Frazer's suggestion, which I have only recently come across, I have endeavoured in the present book to carry it out as applied to a considerable number of the common formulas of European folk-tales, and I hope in a succeeding volume to complete the task and thus give to the students of the folk-tale as close approach as possible to the original form of the common folk-tales of Europe as the materials at our disposal permit.

My procedure has been entirely similar to that of an editor of a text.

Having collected together all the variants, I have reduced them to families of types and from these families have conjectured the original concatenation of incidents into plot. I have a.s.sumed that the original teller of the tale was animated by the same artistic logic as the contemporary writers of _Contes_ (see notes on "Cinder-Maid,"

"Language of Animals"), and have thus occasionally introduced an incident which seemed vital to the plot, though it occurs only in some of the families of the variants. My procedure can only be justified by the success of my versions and their internal coherence. As regards the actual form of the narrative, this does not profess to be European but follows the general style of the English fairy tale, of which I have published two collections (_English Fairy Tales_, 1890; _More English Fairy Tales_, 1894).

In the following notes I have not wasted s.p.a.ce on proving the European character of the various tales by enumerating the different variants, being content for the most part to give references to special discussions of the story where the requisite bibliography is given.

With the more serious tales I have rather concerned myself with trying to restore the original formula and to establish its artistic coherence. Though I have occasionally discussed an incident of primitive character, I have not made a point of drawing attention to savage parallels, nor again have I systematically given references to the appearance of whole tales or separate incidents in mediaeval literature or in the Indian collections. For the time being I have concentrated myself on the task of getting back as near as possible to the original form of the fairy tales common to all Europe. Only when that has been done satisfactorily can we begin to argue as to the causes or origin of the separate items in these originals. It must, of course, always be remembered that, outside this common nucleus, each country or linguistic area has its own story-store, which is equally deserving of special investigation by the serious student of the folk-tale. I have myself dealt with some of these non-European or national folk-tales for the English, Celtic and Indian areas and hope in the near future to treat of other folk-tale districts, like the French, the Scandinavian, the Teutonic or the Slavonian.

I had gone through three-quarters of the tales and notes contained in the present book before I became acquainted with the modestly named _Anmerkungen zu Grimm's Mahrchen_, 2 vols., 1913-15, by J. Bolte and E. Polivka. This is one of those works of colossal erudition of which German savants alone seem to have the secret. It sums up the enormous amount of research that has been going on in Europe for the last hundred years, on the parallelism and provenance of the folk-tales of Europe, and in a measure does for all the Grimm stories what Miss Roalfe c.o.x did for Cinderella. Only two volumes have as yet appeared dealing with the first 120 numbers of the Grimm collection in over a thousand pages crammed with references and filled with details as to variants. The book has obviously been planned and worked out by Dr.

Bolte, who had previously edited the collected works of his chief predecessor, R. Koehler. Dr. Polivka's contribution mainly consists in the collection and collation of the Slavonic variants, which are here made accessible for the first time. I therefore refer to the volume henceforth by Dr. Bolte's name. The book is indispensable for the serious students of the folk-tale, and would have saved me an immense amount of trouble if I had become acquainted with it earlier.

In thirty-eight or nearly a third of the tales Dr. Bolte gives a formula, or radicle, summing up the "common form" of the story, and I am happy to find that in those cases, which occur in the early part of the present volume, my own formulae, agree with his, though of course for the purposes of this book I have had to go into more detail. Dr.

Bolte has not as yet expounded any theory of the origin of the Folk Tale, but, with true scientific caution, judges each case on its merits. But his whole treatment a.s.sumes the organic unity of each particular formula, and one cannot conceive him regarding the similarities of the tales as due to similar mental workings of the folk mind at a particular stage of social development.

Finally, I should perhaps explain that in my selection of typical folk-tales for the present volume, I have included not only those which could possibly be traced back to real primitive times and mental conditions, like the "Cupid and Psyche" formula, but others of more recent date and composition, provided they have spread throughout Europe, which is my criterion. For instance "Beauty and the Beast" in its current shape was composed in the eighteenth century, but has found its place in the story-store of European children. A couple, like "Androcles and the Lion" and "Day Dreaming," owe a similar spread to literary communication even though in the latter case it is the popular literature of the _Arabian Nights_. These must be regarded as specimens only of a large cla.s.s of stories that are found among the folk and can be traced in the popular mediaeval collections like Alfonsi's _Disciplina-Clericalis_ or Jacques de Vitry's _Exempla_, not to speak of the _Fables of Bidpai_ or _The Seven Wise Masters of Rome_. These form quite a cla.s.s by themselves and though they have come to be in many cases Folk-Lore of European spread, they differ in quality from the ordinary folk-tale which is characterized by its tendency to variation as it pa.s.ses from mouth to mouth. Still one has to recognize that they are now European and take their place among the folk and for that reason I have given a couple of specimens of them, but of course my main attention has been directed to attempting to reconstruct the original form of the true folk-tale from the innumerable variants now current among the folk.

I. CINDER-MAID

_Source._--Miss Roalfe c.o.x's volume on Cinderella, published by the Folk-Lore Society (London: David Nutt, 1893), contains 130 abstracts and tabulations of the pure Cinderella "formula," found in Finland, the Riviera, Scotland, Italy, Armenia, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, France, Greece, Germany, Spain, Calcutta, Ireland, Servia, Poland, Russia, Denmark, Albania, Cyprus, Galicia Lithuania, Catalonia, Portugal, Sicily, Hungary, Martinique, Holland, Bohemia, Bulgaria, and the Tyrol. Besides these there are 31 intermediate stories approximating to the Cinderella type, from Russia, Asia Minor, Italy, Lorraine, The Deccan, Poland, Hungary, Catalonia, Corsica, Finland, Switzerland, and in Basque, Spain. The earliest form in which the pure type occurs is in Basile's _Pentamerone_, 1634, and of the indeterminate type in Bonaventure des Periers _Nouvelles Recreations_, 1557, though the latter seems more cognate to the Catskin formula.

In many of the variants there is an introductory series of incidents in which the heroine, after the loss of her mother, is set tasks by the envious step-mother and sisters, which she is aided to perform by means of an animal helper, mainly sheep or cow, which, in some of the versions, is clearly identified with her mother either in a transformed or a natural state. In these versions the magic dresses, for example, are taken out of the ear of the cow or sheep! These incidents however seem to me to be incongruous with the rest of the story, which involves a monogamous society with fairly fixed social grades and with the wearing of shoes at least among the upper strata of society. They belong rather to the type of story represented by the Grimm's "One eye, Two eyes, Three eyes"; and I have therefore reserved them for my retelling of this formula. In a similar way, in some of the Celtic versions, a long series of incidents is inserted, clearly taken from the Sea Maiden story (see _Celtic Fairy Tales_, xvii.).

The central incident of the Cinder-Maid formula is clearly the Shoe Marriage Test, up to which everything leads and upon which the mutilation incidents at the end depends. The mutilation again implies that the shoe in question must have been of a hard or metallic substance which could not be pressed out of shape. In the form endeared to most European children of the upper cla.s.ses by Charles Perrault, the slipper is made of gla.s.s. It was first suggested by Balzac that Perrault's _pantoffles de verre_ was due to his misunderstanding of the _pantoffles de vair_, or fur (the word _vair_ is still used to indicate this in heraldry), which he had heard from his nurse or other folk-tale informant. But the step-sisters would not have been compelled to hack their heels to get inside a fur slipper, and, from this point of view, the gla.s.s shoe would be preferable. I have had, however, to reject it because it occurs in only six of the variants obviously derived directly, or indirectly, from Perrault. The majority of the versions prefer _gold_ (see Miss Roalfe c.o.x's enumeration p. 342).

The Shoe Marriage Test again involves the previous meetings of the high-born lover and the menial heroine, transformed for the nonce by her dress into a dame of equal standing. In some of the variants these meetings are in church and not at a ball, royal or otherwise. But the Shoe Marriage Test involves a highly desirable _parti_ who can practically command any wife he desires; this points to some super-chief or king. I have, therefore, reserved the church meetings for the Catskin type of story in which the heroine is scullery-maid in the young lord's own household. The obtaining of the dresses needed for the Royal b.a.l.l.s involves some animal or supernatural aid (in Perrault it is, of course, a fairy G.o.d-mother, unknown to the folk mind), while the menial condition of the heroine is best explained in the usual folk-tale manner by the envious step-mother or sisters.

I have pointed out in _English Fairy Tales_ (Note to "Childe Rowland") that in most folk-tales of a romantic type the mode of telling is by prose narrative interspersed with rhyming formulae a.n.a.logous to the cante-fable as in "Auca.s.sin and Nicolete." The Cinderella formula shows clear traces of such rhymes, especially at the stages of the narrative where incidents are repeated--the appeal for aid at the mother's grave (Dress Rhyme), the avoidance of pursuit by the guards (Pursuit Rhyme), and the calling attention of the Prince to the mutilated feet of the step-sisters (Feet Rhyme).

Now some of these rhymes are found in similar and almost identical shape in collections made in different countries and different languages; thus the Tree Rhyme is found in the _Archivio_ (c.o.x, p.

139) and in Ive (p. 265), in Bechstein (p. 166), and in Grimm (p.

222), and in Hahn (p. 244), and Moe (p. 322), each pair having practically identical rhymes. Thus we have the existence of a Tree Rhyme, shown in Italy and Germany, Greece and Denmark. So, too, the Feet Rhyme is found in Scotland and Denmark, Germany and Brittany. It is scarcely possible to doubt that all these came from one original form of the story in which similar rhymes occurred at the same stage of the narrative. The possibility of such coincidences arising casually may fairly be regarded as out of the question.

The subordinate incidents growing out of these essential elements of the formula are of course more flexible, but the Shoe Marriage Test itself involves some remarkable dresses used to disguise the ident.i.ty of the Cinder Maid at her meetings with the hero, and this again involves, though not so directly, a series of metal carriages. The Pursuit Rhyme might easily give rise to the expedients of the Honey and Tar Traps though these do not occur in very many of the variants.

I have never-the-less inserted them for the sake of the children if not for that of Folk-Lore Science.

Thus, from what may be called the artistic logic of the Cinderella story, one is enabled to reconst.i.tute its original formula somewhat as follows:

n.o.ble Father--Single Daughter--Mother's Death--Tree Planted on Mother's Grave--Second Marriage--Two Ugly Step-Sisters--Menial Heroine--Cinder-Maid--Prince Coming of Age--Royal Ball--Step-Sisters Dressing--Tree Rhyme--Bird Aid--Magic Dress (blue heaven with stars)--Copper Chariot from Tree--Copper Shoes--Caution Rhyme--Ball Success--Pursuit Rhyme--Step-Sisters' Envy--Second Ball--Magic Dress (golden brown earth with flowers)--Silver Chariot--Silver Shoes--Honey trap--Pursuit Rhyme--Third Ball--Magic Dress (green sea with waves)--Golden Chariot--Golden Slippers--Tar Trap (lost shoe)--Time Expired--Shoe Marriage Test--Mutilated Foot--Feet Rhyme (_bis_)--Happy Marriage.

It is in accordance with the above formula that the version presented in the preceding pages has been written, the rhymes being, in most cases, compounded from the various renderings given in Miss c.o.x's volume. I have only added the Caution Rhyme about returning at midnight, which is in prose in the versions; it would be incongruous for the little bird to change her mode of diction so suddenly. I can only hope I will not remind the reader of the guide's description of Wallenstein's horse at Prague: "The head, neck, forelegs, left hind-leg, and part of the back and tail have been restored; all the rest is the original horse."