Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted

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Myths and Myth-Makers: Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted
by comparative mythology by John Fiske

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MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS OLD TALES AND SUPERSTITIONS INTERPRETED
BY COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY

BY JOHN FISKE

La mythologie, cette science toute nouvelle, qui nous fait
suivre les croyances de nos peres, depuis le berceau du monde
jusqu'aux superstitions de nos campagnes.--EDMOND SCHERER

TO MY DEAR FRIEND, WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS,IN REMEMBRANCE OF
PLEASANT AUTUMN EVENINGS SPENT AMONG WEREWOLVES AND TROLLS AND
NIXIES, I dedicate THIS RECORD OF OUR ADVENTURES.

PREFACE.

IN publishing this somewhat rambling and unsystematic series
of papers, in which I have endeavoured to touch briefly upon a
great many of the most important points in the study of
mythology, I think it right to observe that, in order to avoid
confusing the reader with intricate discussions, I have
sometimes cut the matter short, expressing myself with
dogmatic definiteness where a sceptical vagueness might
perhaps have seemed more becoming. In treating of popular
legends and superstitions, the paths of inquiry are circuitous
enough, and seldom can we reach a satisfactory conclusion
until we have travelled all the way around Robin Hood's barn
and back again. I am sure that the reader would not have
thanked me for obstructing these crooked lanes with the thorns
and brambles of philological and antiquarian discussion, to
such an extent as perhaps to make him despair of ever reaching
the high road. I have not attempted to review, otherwise than
incidentally, the works of Grimm, Muller, Kuhn, Breal, Dasent,
and Tylor; nor can I pretend to have added anything of
consequence, save now and then some bit of explanatory
comment, to the results obtained by the labour of these
scholars; but it has rather been my aim to present these
results in such a way as to awaken general interest in them.
And accordingly, in dealing with a subject which depends upon
philology almost as much as astronomy depends upon
mathematics, I have omitted philological considerations
wherever it has been possible to do so. Nevertheless, I
believe that nothing has been advanced as established which is
not now generally admitted by scholars, and that nothing has
been advanced as probable for which due evidence cannot be
produced. Yet among many points which are proved, and many
others which are probable, there must always remain many other
facts of which we cannot feel sure that our own explanation is
the true one; and the student who endeavours to fathom the
primitive thoughts of mankind, as enshrined in mythology, will
do well to bear in mind the modest words of Jacob Grimm,--
himself the greatest scholar and thinker who has ever dealt
with this class of subjects,--"I shall indeed interpret all
that I can, but I cannot interpret all that I should like."

PETERSHAM, September 6, 1872.

CONTENTS.

I. THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE

II. THE DESCENT OF FIRE

III. WEREWOLVES AND SWAN-MAIDENS

IV. LIGHT AND DARKNESS

V. MYTHS OF THE BARBARIC WORLD

VI. JUVENTUS MUNDI

VII. THE PRIMEVAL GHOST-WORLD

NOTE

MYTHS AND MYTH-MAKERS.

I. THE ORIGINS OF FOLK-LORE.

FEW mediaeval heroes are so widely known as William Tell. His
exploits have been celebrated by one of the greatest poets and
one of the most popular musicians of modern times. They are
doubtless familiar to many who have never heard of Stauffacher
or Winkelried, who are quite ignorant of the prowess of
Roland, and to whom Arthur and Lancelot, nay, even Charlemagne,
are but empty names.

Nevertheless, in spite of his vast reputation, it is very
likely that no such person as William Tell ever existed, and
it is certain that the story of his shooting the apple from
his son's head has no historical value whatever. In spite of
the wrath of unlearned but patriotic Swiss, especially of
those of the cicerone class, this conclusion is forced upon us
as soon as we begin to study the legend in accordance with the
canons of modern historical criticism. It is useless to point
to Tell's lime-tree, standing to-day in the centre of the
market-place at Altdorf, or to quote for our confusion his
crossbow preserved in the arsenal at Zurich, as unimpeachable
witnesses to the truth of the story. It is in vain that we are
told, "The bricks are alive to this day to testify to it;
therefore, deny it not." These proofs are not more valid than
the handkerchief of St. Veronica, or the fragments of the true
cross. For if relics are to be received as evidence, we must
needs admit the truth of every miracle narrated by the
Bollandists.

The earliest work which makes any allusion to the adventures
of William Tell is the chronicle of the younger Melchior Russ,
written in 1482. As the shooting of the apple was supposed to
have taken place in 1296, this leaves an interval of one
hundred and eighty-six years, during which neither a Tell, nor
a William, nor the apple, nor the cruelty of Gessler, received
any mention. It may also be observed, parenthetically, that
the charters of Kussenach, when examined, show that no man by
the name of Gessler ever ruled there. The chroniclers of the
fifteenth century, Faber and Hammerlin, who minutely describe
the tyrannical acts by which the Duke of Austria goaded the
Swiss to rebellion, do not once mention Tell's name, or betray
the slightest acquaintance with his exploits or with his
existence. In the Zurich chronicle of 1479 he is not alluded
to. But we have still better negative evidence. John of
Winterthur, one of the best chroniclers of the Middle Ages,
was living at the time of the battle of Morgarten (1315), at
which his father was present. He tells us how, on the evening
of that dreadful day, he saw Duke Leopold himself in his
flight from the fatal field, half dead with fear. He
describes, with the loving minuteness of a contemporary, all
the incidents of the Swiss revolution, but nowhere does he say
a word about William Tell. This is sufficiently conclusive.
These mediaeval chroniclers, who never failed to go out of
their way after a bit of the epigrammatic and marvellous, who
thought far more of a pointed story than of historical
credibility, would never have kept silent about the adventures
of Tell, if they had known anything about them.

After this, it is not surprising to find that no two authors
who describe the deeds of William Tell agree in the details of
topography and chronology. Such discrepancies never fail to
confront us when we leave the solid ground of history and
begin to deal with floating legends. Yet, if the story be not
historical, what could have been its origin? To answer this
question we must considerably expand the discussion.

The first author of any celebrity who doubted the story of
William Tell was Guillimann, in his work on Swiss Antiquities,
published in 1598. He calls the story a pure fable, but,
nevertheless, eating his words, concludes by proclaiming his
belief in it, because the tale is so popular! Undoubtedly he
acted a wise part; for, in 1760, as we are told, Uriel
Freudenberger was condemned by the canton of Uri to be burnt
alive, for publishing his opinion that the legend of Tell had
a Danish origin.[1]

[1] See Delepierre, Historical Difficulties, p. 75.

The bold heretic was substantially right, however, like so
many other heretics, earlier and later. The Danish account of
Tell is given as follows, by Saxo Grammaticus:--

"A certain Palnatoki, for some time among King Harold's
body-guard, had made his bravery odious to very many of his
fellow-soldiers by the zeal with which he surpassed them in
the discharge of his duty. This man once, when talking tipsily
over his cups, had boasted that he was so skilled an archer
that he could hit the smallest apple placed a long way off on
a wand at the first shot; which talk, caught up at first by
the ears of backbiters, soon came to the hearing of the king.
Now, mark how the wickedness of the king turned the confidence
of the sire to the peril of the son, by commanding that this
dearest pledge of his life should be placed instead of the
wand, with a threat that, unless the author of this promise
could strike off the apple at the first flight of the arrow,
he should pay the penalty of his empty boasting by the loss of
his head. The king's command forced the soldier to perform
more than he had promised, and what he had said, reported, by
the tongues of slanderers, bound him to accomplish what he had
NOT said. Yet did not his sterling courage, though caught in
the snare of slander, suffer him to lay aside his firmness of
heart; nay, he accepted the trial the more readily because it
was hard. So Palnatoki warned the boy urgently when he took
his stand to await the coming of the hurtling arrow with calm
ears and unbent head, lest, by a slight turn of his body, he
should defeat the practised skill of the bowman; and, taking
further counsel to prevent his fear, he turned away his face,
lest he should be scared at the sight of the weapon. Then,
taking three arrows from the quiver, he struck the mark given
him with the first he fitted to the string. . . . . But
Palnatoki, when asked by the king why he had taken more arrows
from the quiver, when it had been settled that he should only
try the fortune of the bow ONCE, made answer, 'That I might
avenge on thee the swerving of the first by the points of the
rest, lest perchance my innocence might have been punished,
while your violence escaped scot-free.' "[2]

[2] Saxo Grammaticus, Bk. X. p. 166, ed. Frankf. 1576.

This ruthless king is none other than the famous Harold
Blue-tooth, and the occurrence is placed by Saxo in the year
950. But the story appears not only in Denmark, but in
Fingland, in Norway, in Finland and Russia, and in Persia, and
there is some reason for supposing that it was known in India.
In Norway we have the adventures of Pansa the Splay-footed,
and of Hemingr, a vassal of Harold Hardrada, who invaded
England in 1066. In Iceland there is the kindred legend of
Egil brother of Wayland Smith, the Norse Vulcan. In England
there is the ballad of William of Cloudeslee, which supplied
Scott with many details of the archery scene in "Ivanhoe."
Here, says the dauntless bowman,

"I have a sonne seven years old;
Hee is to me full deere;
I will tye him to a stake--
All shall see him that bee here--
And lay an apple upon his head,
And goe six paces him froe,
And I myself with a broad arrowe
Shall cleave the apple in towe."

In the Malleus Maleficarum a similar story is told Puncher, a
famous magician on the Upper Rhine. The great ethnologist
Castren dug up the same legend in Finland. It is common, as
Dr. Dasent observes, to the Turks and Mongolians; "and a
legend of the wild Samoyeds, who never heard of Tell or saw a
book in their lives relates it, chapter and verse, of one of
their marksmen." Finally, in the Persian poem of Farid-Uddin
Attar, born in 1119, we read a story of a prince who shoots an
apple from the head of a beloved page. In all these stories,
names and motives of course differ; but all contain the same
essential incidents. It is always an unerring archer who, at
the capricious command of a tyrant, shoots from the head of
some one dear to him a small object, be it an apple, a nut, or
a piece of coin. The archer always provides himself with a
second arrow, and, when questioned as to the use he intended
to make of his extra weapon, the invariable reply is, "To kill
thee, tyrant, had I slain my son." Now, when a marvellous
occurrence is said to have happened everywhere, we may feel
sure that it never happened anywhere. Popular fancies
propagate themselves indefinitely, but historical events,
especially the striking and dramatic ones, are rarely
repeated. The facts here collected lead inevitably to the
conclusion that the Tell myth was known, in its general
features, to our Aryan ancestors, before ever they left their
primitive dwelling-place in Central Asia.

It may, indeed, be urged that some one of these wonderful
marksmen may really have existed and have performed the feat
recorded in the legend; and that his true story, carried about
by hearsay tradition from one country to another and from age
to age, may have formed the theme for all the variations above
mentioned, just as the fables of La Fontaine were patterned
after those of AEsop and Phaedrus, and just as many of
Chaucer's tales were consciously adopted from Boccaccio. No
doubt there has been a good deal of borrowing and lending
among the legends of different peoples, as well as among the
words of different languages; and possibly even some
picturesque fragment of early history may have now and then
been carried about the world in this manner. But as the
philologist can with almost unerring certainty distinguish
between the native and the imported words in any Aryan
language, by examining their phonetic peculiarities, so the
student of popular traditions, though working with far less
perfect instruments, can safely assert, with reference to a
vast number of legends, that they cannot have been obtained by
any process of conscious borrowing. The difficulties
inseparable from any such hypothesis will become more and more
apparent as we proceed to examine a few other stories current
in different portions of the Aryan domain.

As the Swiss must give up his Tell, so must the Welshman be
deprived of his brave dog Gellert, over whose cruel fate I
confess to having shed more tears than I should regard as well
bestowed upon the misfortunes of many a human hero of romance.
Every one knows how the dear old brute killed the wolf which
had come to devour Llewellyn's child, and how the prince,
returning home and finding the cradle upset and the dog's
mouth dripping blood, hastily slew his benefactor, before the
cry of the child from behind the cradle and the sight of the
wolf's body had rectified his error. To this day the visitor
to Snowdon is told the touching story, and shown the place,
called Beth-Gellert,[3] where the dog's grave is still to be
seen. Nevertheless, the story occurs in the fireside lore of
nearly every Aryan people. Under the Gellert-form it started
in the Panchatantra, a collection of Sanskrit fables; and it
has even been discovered in a Chinese work which dates from A.
D. 668. Usually the hero is a dog, but sometimes a falcon, an
ichneumon, an insect, or even a man. In Egypt it takes the
following comical shape: "A Wali once smashed a pot full of
herbs which a cook had prepared. The exasperated cook thrashed
the well-intentioned but unfortunate Wali within an inch of
his life, and when he returned, exhausted with his efforts at
belabouring the man, to examine the broken pot, he discovered
amongst the herbs a poisonous snake."[4] Now this story of the
Wali is as manifestly identical with the legend of Gellert as
the English word FATHER is with the Latin pater; but as no one
would maintain that the word father is in any sense derived
from pater, so it would be impossible to represent either the
Welsh or the Egyptian legend as a copy of the other. Obviously
the conclusion is forced upon us that the stories, like the
words, are related collaterally, having descended from a
common ancestral legend, or having been suggested by one and
the same primeval idea.

[3] According to Mr. Isaac Taylor, the name is really derived
from "St. Celert, a Welsh saint of the fifth century, to whom
the church of Llangeller is consecrated." (Words and Places,
p. 339.)

[4] Compare Krilof's story of the Gnat and the Shepherd, in
Mr. Ralston's excellent version, Krilof and his Fables, p.
170. Many parallel examples are cited by Mr. Baring-Gould,
Curious Myths, Vol. I. pp. 126-136. See also the story of
Folliculus,--Swan, Gesta Romanorum, ad. Wright, Vol. I. p.
lxxxii

Closely connected with the Gellert myth are the stories of
Faithful John and of Rama and Luxman. In the German story,
Faithful John accompanies the prince, his master, on a journey
in quest of a beautiful maiden, whom he wishes to make his
bride. As they are carrying her home across the seas, Faithful
John hears some crows, whose language he understands,
foretelling three dangers impending over the prince, from
which his friend can save him only by sacrificing his own
life. As soon as they land, a horse will spring toward the
king, which, if he mounts it, will bear him away from his
bride forever; but whoever shoots the horse, and tells the
king the reason, will be turned into stone from toe to knee.
Then, before the wedding a bridal garment will lie before the
king, which, if he puts it on, will burn him like the
Nessos-shirt of Herakles; but whoever throws the shirt into
the fire and tells the king the reason, will be turned into
stone from knee to heart. Finally, during the
wedding-festivities, the queen will suddenly fall in a swoon,
and "unless some one takes three drops of blood from her right
breast she will die"; but whoever does so, and tells the king
the reason, will be turned into stone from head to foot. Thus
forewarned, Faithful John saves his master from all these
dangers; but the king misinterprets his motive in bleeding his
wife, and orders him to be hanged. On the scaffold he tells
his story, and while the king humbles himself in an agony of
remorse, his noble friend is turned into stone.

In the South Indian tale Luxman accompanies Rama, who is
carrying home his bride. Luxman overhears two owls talking
about the perils that await his master and mistress. First he
saves them from being crushed by the falling limb of a
banyan-tree, and then he drags them away from an arch which
immediately after gives way. By and by, as they rest under a
tree, the king falls asleep. A cobra creeps up to the queen,
and Luxman kills it with his sword; but, as the owls had
foretold, a drop of the cobra's blood falls on the queen's
forehead. As Luxman licks off the blood, the king starts up,
and, thinking that his vizier is kissing his wife, upbraids
him with his ingratitude, whereupon Luxman, through grief at
this unkind interpretation of his conduct, is turned into
stone.[5]

[5] See Cox, Mythology of the Aryan Nations, Vol. I. pp.
145-149.

For further illustration we may refer to the Norse tale of the
"Giant who had no Heart in his Body," as related by Dr.
Dasent. This burly magician having turned six brothers with
their wives into stone, the seventh brother--the crafty Boots
or many-witted Odysseus of European folk-lore--sets out to
obtain vengeance if not reparation for the evil done to his
kith and kin. On the way he shows the kindness of his nature
by rescuing from destruction a raven, a salmon, and a wolf.
The grateful wolf carries him on his back to the giant's
castle, where the lovely princess whom the monster keeps in
irksome bondage promises to act, in behalf of Boots, the part
of Delilah, and to find out, if possible, where her lord keeps
his heart. The giant, like the Jewish hero, finally succumbs
to feminine blandishments. "Far, far away in a lake lies an
island; on that island stands a church; in that church is a
well; in that well swims a duck; in that duck there is an egg;
and in that egg there lies my heart, you darling." Boots, thus
instructed, rides on the wolf's back to the island; the raven
flies to the top of the steeple and gets the church-keys; the
salmon dives to the bottom of the well, and brings up the egg
from the place where the duck had dropped it; and so Boots
becomes master of the situation. As he squeezes the egg, the
giant, in mortal terror, begs and prays for his life, which
Boots promises to spare on condition that his brothers and
their brides should be released from their enchantment. But
when all has been duly effected, the treacherous youth
squeezes the egg in two, and the giant instantly bursts.

The same story has lately been found in Southern India, and is
published in Miss Frere's remarkable collection of tales
entitled "Old Deccan Days." In the Hindu version the seven
daughters of a rajah, with their husbands, are transformed
into stone by the great magician Punchkin,--all save the
youngest daughter, whom Punchkin keeps shut up in a tower
until by threats or coaxing he may prevail upon her to marry
him. But the captive princess leaves a son at home in the
cradle, who grows up to manhood unmolested, and finally
undertakes the rescue of his family. After long and weary
wanderings he finds his mother shut up in Punchkin's tower,
and persuades her to play the part of the princess in the
Norse legend. The trick is equally successful. "Hundreds of
thousands of miles away there lies a desolate country covered
with thick jungle. In the midst of the jungle grows a circle
of palm-trees, and in the centre of the circle stand six jars
full of water, piled one above another; below the sixth jar is
a small cage which contains a little green parrot; on the life
of the parrot depends my life, and if the parrot is killed I
must die."[6] The young prince finds the place guarded by a
host of dragons, but some eaglets whom he has saved from a
devouring serpent in the course of his journey take him on
their crossed wings and carry him to the place where the jars
are standing. He instantly overturns the jars, and seizing the
parrot, obtains from the terrified magician full reparation.
As soon as his own friends and a stately procession of other
royal or noble victims have been set at liberty, he proceeds
to pull the parrot to pieces. As the wings and legs come away,
so tumble off the arms and legs of the magician; and finally
as the prince wrings the bird's neck, Punchkin twists his own
head round and dies.

[6] The same incident occurs in the Arabian story of
Seyf-el-Mulook and Bedeea-el-Jemal, where the Jinni's soul is
enclosed in the crop of a sparrow, and the sparrow imprisoned
in a small box, and this enclosed in another small box, and
this again in seven other boxes, which are put into seven
chests, contained in a coffer of marble, which is sunk in the
ocean that surrounds the world. Seyf-el-Mulook raises the
coffer by the aid of Suleyman's seal-ring, and having
extricated the sparrow, strangles it, whereupon the Jinni's
body is converted into a heap of black ashes, and
Seyf-el-Mulook escapes with the maiden Dolet-Khatoon. See
Lane's Arabian Nights, Vol. III. p. 316.

The story is also told in the highlands of Scotland, and some
portions of it will be recognized by the reader as incidents
in the Arabian tale of the Princess Parizade. The union of
close correspondence in conception with manifest independence
in the management of the details of these stories is striking
enough, but it is a phenomenon with which we become quite
familiar as we proceed in the study of Aryan popular
literature. The legend of the Master Thief is no less
remarkable than that of Punchkin. In the Scandinavian tale the
Thief, wishing to get possession of a farmer's ox, carefully
hangs himself to a tree by the roadside. The farmer, passing
by with his ox, is indeed struck by the sight of the dangling
body, but thinks it none of his business, and does not stop to
interfere. No sooner has he passed than the Thief lets himself
down, and running swiftly along a by-path, hangs himself with
equal precaution to a second tree. This time the farmer is
astonished and puzzled; but when for the third time he meets
the same unwonted spectacle, thinking that three suicides in
one morning are too much for easy credence, he leaves his ox
and runs back to see whether the other two bodies are really
where he thought he saw them. While he is framing hypotheses
of witchcraft by which to explain the phenomenon, the Thief
gets away with the ox. In the Hitopadesa the story receives a
finer point. "A Brahman, who had vowed a sacrifice, went to
the market to buy a goat. Three thieves saw him, and wanted to
get hold of the goat. They stationed themselves at intervals
on the high road. When the Brahman, who carried the goat on
his back, approached the first thief, the thief said,
'Brahman, why do you carry a dog on your back?' The Brahman
replied, 'It is not a dog, it is a goat.' A little while after
he was accosted by the second thief, who said, 'Brahman, why
do you carry a dog on your back?' The Brahman felt perplexed,
put the goat down, examined it, took it up again, and walked
on. Soon after he was stopped by the third thief, who said,
'Brahman, why do you carry a dog on your back?' Then the
Brahman was frightened, threw down the goat, and walked home
to perform his ablutions for having touched an unclean animal.
The thieves took the goat and ate it." The adroitness of the
Norse King in "The Three Princesses of Whiteland" shows but
poorly in comparison with the keen psychological insight and
cynical sarcasm of these Hindu sharpers. In the course of his
travels this prince met three brothers fighting on a lonely
moor. They had been fighting for a hundred years about the
possession of a hat, a cloak, and a pair of boots, which would
make the wearer invisible, and convey him instantly
whithersoever he might wish to go. The King consents to act as
umpire, provided he may once try the virtue of the magic
garments; but once clothed in them, of course he disappears,
leaving the combatants to sit down and suck their thumbs. Now
in the "Sea of Streams of Story," written in the twelfth
century by Somadeva of Cashmere, the Indian King Putraka,
wandering in the Vindhya Mountains, similarly discomfits two
brothers who are quarrelling over a pair of shoes, which are
like the sandals of Hermes, and a bowl which has the same
virtue as Aladdin's lamp. "Why don't you run a race for them?"
suggests Putraka; and, as the two blockheads start furiously
off, he quietly picks up the bowl, ties on the shoes, and
flies away![7]

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