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 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE 
 
 SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND 
 
 THE GIFT OF 
 
 HENRY W. SAGE 
 
 1891 
 
Cornell University Library 
 GR138 .S91 
 
 Segnius Irritant, or Eight primitive foi 
 
 oiin 
 
 3 1924 029 889 783 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029889783 
 
SEGNIUS IRRITANT; 
 
 OR 
 
 EIGHT PRIMITIVE FOLK-LORE STORIES. 
 
 Translated and Compared^ with Notes, Comments, Tables, and 
 Two Supplementally Essays. 
 
 )a/T£) 
 
 W. W. STRICKLAND. 
 
 The eight stories are selected atid translated frotn Karel Jakomir Erbe.n's 
 ".4 Hundred Genuine Popular Slavonic Fairv Stories in the Original Dialects.*' 
 
 LoxnoN : 
 ROBERT FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER STREET, E.G. 
 
 1896. 
 

 MlH-foU 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 1. Thebb Haies op Father Know- All (Czech) 1 
 
 2. Long, Bkoad, and Shaep-Etes (Czech) 11 
 
 3. Golden Locks (Czech) 22 
 
 4. Eeason and Foetune (Czech) 30 
 
 5. Geoege and His Goat (Czech : Domaslik dialect) ... 33 
 
 6. The Theeb Citeons (Slovenian) ... ... ... ... 38 
 
 7. The Sun-Hoesb (Slovenian) 54 
 
 8. Eight aptbe all Ebmains Eight (Upper Lusatian) ... 66 
 
 9. SUPPLBMENTAEY EsSAY ... ... ... ... ... 84 
 
 10. Lapp AND Slav FoLK-LOEB CoMPAEBD 104 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 s, d. 
 Seven Poems. (Bound in cloth.) 2 
 
 Two Mock Epics : " Hanuman," by Svatopluk (Czech), translated 
 from the 17th edition ; and " Tantum Religio, or Sir Blasius." 
 Bound in cloth ... 2 6 
 
 Theeb Essays ON Italy 6 
 
 Down with the Hangman I An Interesting Interview in the East 
 
 Anglian Dialect 1 
 
 LONDON : R. FORDER, 28 STONECUTTER ST., E.G. 
 
Three Hairs of Grandfather Know- All. 
 
 It was, it was not : there was once a king who was very fond of 
 hunting wild animals in the woods. And so it happened one day 
 that he pushed too far forward after a stag and lost his way. He 
 was alone, alone : night came on, and the king was glad to find a 
 cottage at the forest toll-house. The woodcutter lived there. The 
 king says : " Perhaps he would kindly shew him the way out of the 
 wood, and that he would pay him well." " I would gladly go with 
 you," said the woodcutter ; " but see here, my wife is just now 
 expectant : I cannot leave her. And, then, where would you be at 
 night ? Sleep on the hay in the loft, and in the morning I will shew 
 you the way." Soon after this a little son was born to the wood- 
 cutter. The king lay in the loft, and could not get to sleep. About 
 midnight he noticed down below, in the living-room, a kind of light. 
 He peeps through a chink in the ceiling, and this is what he sees. 
 The woodcutter was asleep; his wife lay as if in a trance; and 
 beside the babe stood three old grandmothers, all in white, each 
 with a lighted candle in her hand. The first one says : " I grant to 
 this boy that he shall run into great dangers." The second says : 
 " And I grant him happily to extricate himself from them all and to 
 live long." And the third says : "And I grant him for a wife the 
 little daughter that has to-day been born to this king who lies up 
 aloft here on the hay." On this the grandmothers extinguished the 
 candles and all was again quiet. They were the Fates. 
 
 The king remained as though a sword had been thrust into his 
 breast. He did not sleep till morning, but thought over what to do 
 and how, so that what he had heard might not happen. "When the 
 morning broke, the child began to cry. The woodcutter rose ; and 
 he sees that in the meantime his wife had slept away into eternity. 
 " Ah ! my poor little orphan ! " he cried, lamenting ; " what am I 
 now to do with thee? " " Give me this infant," says the king. " I 
 will take care of it, that it shall be well with it. And to thee I will 
 give so much money that until the day of thy death thou wilt never 
 more have to burn wood." The woodcutter was glad at this, and 
 
2 Grandfather Know-All. 
 
 the king promised to send for the said infant. When he reached his 
 castle they announced to him with great joy that a beautiful little 
 daughter had that very night been born to him. It was the same 
 night that he had seen the Three Pates. The king frowned, sum- 
 moned one of his servants, and says: "Go such and such a way 
 into the woods ; in a cottage, there, lives a woodcutter ; give him 
 this money, and he will give thee a little child. This child take and 
 afterwards drown on the way home. If thou dost not drown it, 
 thou shalt thyself drink the brook." The servant went, took the 
 infant in a basket, and when he came to a plank bridge where a 
 deep and broad river flowed, threw it, basket and all, into the water, 
 " Good night, unwelcome son-in-law," said the king afterwardsi 
 when the servant told him of it. 
 
 The king thought that the infant was drowned, and it was not 
 drowned ; it swam with its little basket over the water, as if the 
 water rocked it, and slept as if the water sang to it, until it floated 
 away to the cottage of a fisherman. The fisherman sat on the bank 
 mending his net. Then he sees something floating down stream, 
 jumps into his boat and away after it, and has drawn out of the 
 water an infant in a small basket. And so he took it to his wife, 
 and he says, " Why, thou hast always wanted a little son, and here 
 thou hast him; the water has brought him to us." The fisherman's 
 wife was glad at this, and brought up the child as her own. They 
 called him Plavachek (Swimmerlet) because he had floated down, to 
 them over the water. 
 
 The river flows and the years flow with it, and the boy has 
 grown up into a beautiful youth, who has not his equal far and wide. 
 Once, in summer, it happened that thither rode on horseback the 
 king alone, alone. It was stifling, he wanted to drink, and beckoned 
 to the fisherman to give him a little fresh water. When Plavachek . 
 (Swimmerlet) offered him it, the king started, looking upon him : 
 " That's a jolly boy, oh! fisherman," says he. "Is he thy son?" 
 "He is, and he is not," answered the fisherman. "Just twenty 
 years ago, he floated down stream in a small basket as a tiny little 
 infant, and we brought him up." Motes flickered before the king's 
 two eyes, and he grew as white as a sheet {lit. : as a wall). He 
 perceived that it was the very one he had given to be drowned. But 
 he remembered himself at once, leapt from horseback, and says : " I 
 want to send a messenger to my royal castle, and have no one with 
 me. Could you let this youth go there ? " " Your royal highness 
 
Grandfather Knoio-All. 3 
 
 commands, and the boy goes," said the fisherman. The king sat 
 down and wrote his royal lady a letter as follows : " The youth 
 whom I herewith send to thee, have stabbed with a sword without 
 more ado ; it is my wicked enemy. By the time I return, see that 
 it is accomplished. Such is my will." Then he folded the letter, 
 sealed it, and pressed his signet-ring upon it. 
 
 Plavachek set off at once with the letter. He had to go through 
 a great wood, and before he was aware of it, strayed from the road 
 and lost his way. He went from thicket to thicket until it now 
 began to grow dark. Then he met an old grandmother. " Whither 
 away, Plavachek, whither away?" "I am going with a letter to the 
 castle of the king, and have lost my way. You could not inform me, 
 little mother, how I am to get on to the road again? " " In any case, 
 to-night you will never reach your journey's end, it is so dark," said 
 the grandmother. " Stay with me for the night ; you won't be with 
 strangers, you know, for I am your godmother." The youth agreed, 
 and scarcely had they proceeded a few steps, when, lo ! there stood 
 before them a pretty little house, just as if it had all at once grown 
 out of the ground. In the night, when the boy had fallen asleep, 
 the grandmother drew the letter out of his pocket and put there 
 another one, in which it was written as follows : " This youth whom 
 I herewith send to thee, have married to our daughter without more 
 ado ; it is my predestined son-in-law. Before my return see it is 
 accomplished. Such is my will." 
 
 When the royal lady had read through this letter, she at once 
 had the wedding prepared, and both the royal lady and the young 
 queen could not gaze upon the bridegroom enough, they liked him so 
 much, and Plavachek was also contented with his royal bride. After 
 several days, home came the king, and when he saw what had 
 happened he was tremendously angry with his lady for what she had 
 done. " Nay, but thou didst thyself order me to have him married 
 to our daughter before thy return ! " replied the queen, and handed 
 him the letter. The king took the letter : glanced at the hand- 
 writing, seal, paper — aU was his own. And then he bade summon 
 his son-in-law, and enquired of him: "What had happened, and 
 how ; and where he had gone ? " 
 
 Plavachek related how he had gone and lost his way in the wood, 
 and had stopped the night at his old godmother's. " And what 
 did she look like?" "Thus and thus." And the king recognised 
 from his description that it was the same person who twenty years 
 
4 Grandfather Know-All. 
 
 before had predestined his daughter to the son of the woodcutter. 
 He pondered and pondered, and then he says : " What has happened 
 cannot be changed, but for all that, thou canst not be my son-in-law 
 for nothing ; if thou wishest to have my daughter thou must bring 
 her for dowry three golden hairs of Grandfather Know-AU. He 
 thought that in this way he would be quite certain to get rid of his 
 unwelcome son-in-law. 
 
 Plavachek bade farewell to his wife, and went whither and where? 
 I know not ; but, having a Fate for his godmother, it was easy for 
 him to find the right way. He went long and far, over hill and dale, 
 over broad and ford, until he came to a black sea. There he sees a 
 boat and a ferryman upon it. " Hail to thee, in the Lord's name, 
 old ferryman ! " " The same to you, young wayfarer ! Whither 
 away, then, by this road?" " To Grandfather Know-AU for three 
 golden hairs." "Ho, ho! for such a messenger I have long been 
 waiting. These twenty years have I been ferrying here and no one 
 comes to set me free. Promise me to ask Grandfather Know-AU 
 when will be the end of my serfdom, and I will ferry thee over." 
 Plavachek promised, and the ferryman ferried him over. 
 
 After this he came to a certain great city, but it was all gone to 
 rack and ruin. Before the city he meets a little old man, who held 
 a staff in his hand, and scarcely crawled along. " Hail to thee, in the 
 Lord's name, oh ! grey-haired old grandfather." " The same to thee, 
 my fine young fellow! And whither away by this road?" "To 
 Grandfather Know-AU for three golden hairs." " Ay ! ay ! for such 
 a messenger we have long been waiting here ; so I must conduct thee 
 at once to our lord the king." When they came there, said the 
 king : "I hear thou art on a message to Grandfather Know-AU. 
 We had here an apple tree ; it bore apples that made one young 
 again ; if any man ate one, though he were on the verge of the grave, 
 he grew young again, and was like a stripling. But now for the last 
 twenty years the apple tree has borne no fruit. Wilt thou promise 
 me to ask Grandfather Know-AU if there is any help ? I will reward 
 thee royally." Plavachek promised, and the king graciously let him 
 go forward. 
 
 After this he again came to another great city, but it was half over- 
 thrown. Not far from the city a son was burying his dead father, 
 and tears like peas kept rolling down his cheeks. " Hail to thee, in 
 God's name, melancholy gravedigger 1 " said Plavachek. " The same 
 to you, worthy wayfarer. Whither away, then, by this road ? " "I go 
 
Grandfather ITnOw-All. 5 
 
 to Grandfather Know-All for three golden hairs." " To Grandfather 
 Know- All ? 'Tis a pity thou earnest not sooner ! But our lord the 
 king has now long been waiting for such a messenger. I must bring 
 thee to him." When they came there the king said : " I hear thou 
 goest on a message to Grandfather Know-All. We had here a well. 
 Living water gushed from it ; when anyone drank of it, were he at 
 the point of death, he was at once again hale and hearty ; and if he 
 was already dead and they sprinkled him with this water, he again 
 rose and walked. But now these twenty years the water has ceased 
 to flow ; wilt thou promise me to enquire of Grandfather Know-All 
 whether there is any help for us ? I will give thee a royal reward." 
 Plavachek promised, and the king graciously let him go forward. 
 
 After this he went long and far through a black forest, and in 
 the middle of this forest he sees a great green meadow, full of fair 
 flowers, and on it a castle of gold. It was the castle of Grandfather 
 Know-All. It flashed and quivered as though it were on fire. 
 Plavachek entered the castle, but found no one there, save that in 
 one corner sat an old grandmother and spun. " Welcome, Plava- 
 chek," she says, " I am glad to see thee again." It was his god- 
 mother, just as he was at her house in the wood for the night, when 
 he carried the letter. "What, pray, has brought thee here?'' 
 " The king won't have me for his son-in-law for nothing, and so he 
 has sent me for three golden hairs of Grandfather Know-All." The 
 grandmother smiled, and she says : " Grandfather Know-All is my 
 son, the clear orb of day ; in the morning he is a little boy, at mid- 
 day a man, and in the evening an old grandfather. I will provide 
 thee with three hairs from his golden head, that I, too, may not be 
 thy godmother for nothing. But for thee to stop here just as thou 
 art, my little son, is impossible ! My son is a really worthy soul, 
 but when he comes hungry home at even, it might easily happen for 
 him to roast thee and eat thee for supper. There is here an empty 
 cask ; I will fasten it over thee." Plavachek begged her to ask also 
 about the three things respecting which he had promised on his 
 journey to bring answers. " I will ask," said the grandmother, 
 " and pay attention to what he says." 
 
 All at once the wind began to roar outside, and through the 
 western window, into the living-room, flew the sun, an old grand- 
 father with a golden head of hair. " Sniff! snuff! There is man's 
 flesh!" says he. "Thou hast somebody here, little mother?" 
 " Oh ! star of day ! whom, pray, could I have here without thy see- 
 
g " GrandfcUher Khoio-All. 
 
 ing him? But it's this: all day long thou art hovering over that 
 blessed world, and there thou keepest sniff-snuffing that man's flesh; 
 and so no wonder, when thou comest home in the evening, if the 
 smell still haunts thee." To this the old man said nothing, and sat 
 down to supper. 
 
 After supper he laid his golden head in the grandmother's lap 
 and began to snooze. "When the grandmother saw that he had 
 already fallen asleep, she drew out a single golden hair and threw it on 
 the ground ; it rang out like a harp-string. ' ' What wouldst thou of me, 
 little mother?" said the old man. "Nothing, little son, nothing! 
 I was dozing, and had such a strange dream." " And what did you 
 fancy ? " "I fancied I saw a city ; they had there a spring of living 
 water ; when any one was dying and drank of it, he got well again, 
 and if he were dead, and they sprinkled him with this water, he 
 came to life again. But these twenty years the water has ceased to 
 flow. Is there any way to make it flow again ? " " Nothing easier. 
 In this well, at the source, sits a frog, and does not let the water 
 flow. Let them kill the frog, and clean out the well; the water will 
 again flow as before." When, after this, the old man fell asleep 
 again, the grandmother drew out another ofi his golden hairs, and 
 threw it on the ground. " What's the matter with thee this time, 
 little mother ? " "Nothing, little son, nothing. I dozed off, and 
 again fancied something so strange. Methought there was a city, 
 and they had an apple tree there. It bore rejuvenating apples; 
 when any one grew old and ate one, he grew young again. But 
 now these twenty years the apple tree has borne no fruit. Is there 
 any help? " " Easy help. Under the apple tree lies a snake which 
 gnaws away its strength. Let them kill the snake and transplant 
 the apple tree ; it will bear fruit again as before." After this, the 
 old man soon fell asleep again, and the grandmother drew from his 
 head the third golden hair. " Why won't you let me sleep, little 
 mother? " said the old man crossly, and wished to get up. " Lie 
 down, little son, lie down ! Don't be angry, I didn't mean to wake 
 you. But a drowsiness came over me, and I again had such a very 
 strange dream. Methought I saw a ferryman on a black sea. For 
 twenty years he has now been ferrying there, and no one comes to 
 set him free. When will be the end of his serfdom? " " Noodle of 
 a mother that I am the son of ! Let him put the oar into another's 
 two hands and himself jump out on to the beach. This other will 
 then be ferryman in his place. But now let me rest in peace at last. 
 
Qran^atJieT Knom-AU. 7 
 
 I must get up early to-morrow morning and go to dry the tears 
 which the king's daughter weeps every night for her husband, the 
 woodcutter's son, whom the king has sent for my three golded 
 hairs." 
 
 Early next morning the wind again howled outside, and on the 
 ap of hi& little old mother awoke, instead of an old man, a beautiful 
 golden-haired child, the divine sunrise ; bade adieu to his mother, 
 and flew away out of the eastern window. The grandmother now 
 unfastened the cask again and said to Plavachek : " Look, here are 
 the three golden hairs, and what answers Grandfather Know-All 
 gave about those three things thou also now knowest. Go, and God 
 be with thee ! Now thou wilt see me no more ; there is no further 
 need." Plavachek thanked the grandmother finely and went. 
 
 When he came to the first city the king asked him what sort of 
 news he brought them. " Good," said Plavachek. " Have the well 
 cleaned out, and the frog that sits at the source of it killed, and the 
 water will flow for you as it did formerly." The king immediately 
 ordered this to be done, and when he saw that the water gushed 
 forth in full force, he presented Plavachek with twelve horses white 
 as swans, and upon them as much gold and silver and precious 
 stones as they could carry. 
 
 When he came to the second city the king again asked him what 
 sort of news he brought them. " Good," said Plavachek. " Have the 
 apple tree dug up, you will find a snake under the roots ; kill this 
 snake; then replant the apple tree, and it will bear you fruit as 
 before." The king at once ordered this to be done, and the apple 
 tree clothed itself in blossom during the night as if it had been 
 sprinkled with roses. The king was highly delighted, and presented 
 Plavachek with twelve horses black as ravens, and upon them as 
 much treasure as they could carry. 
 
 After this, Plavachek rode forward, and when he reached the black 
 sea the ferryman asked him whether he. knew when he should be set 
 at liberty. " I know," said Favachek ; " but ferry me across first and 
 then I will tell you." The ferryman, indeed, was reluctant ; but 
 when he saw there was no help for it, he finally ferried him over, 
 four-and-twenty horses and all. " The next time thou hast some 
 one to ferry over," said Plavachek to him, hereupon, '' put the oar 
 into his hands and jump ashore, and he will be ferryman in thy 
 place." 
 
8 Grandfather Know-Alt. 
 
 The king did not believe even his own eyes when Plavachek 
 brought him those three golden hairs of Grandfather Know-All, arid 
 his daughter wept, not for grief, but for joy, that he had again 
 returned. " And where hast thou acquired these fine horses and 
 this great treasure?" enquired the king. "I deserved it," said 
 Plavachek, and related how he had helped this king to grow his 
 regenerating apples again, which made young people out of old ones, 
 and that king to set his living water going again, which made sound 
 people out of sick, and living out of dead. " Youth-giving apples ! 
 living water ! " the king kept repeating quietly to himself. " If only 
 I could eat one I should be young again ; and even if I were 
 dead, with this water I should come to life again." Without 
 more ado he set out upon a journey to get the youth-giving apples 
 and the water of life — and as yet he has not returned. 
 
 And so the woodcutter's son became the king's son-in-law, and 
 as for the king, perhaps he is still hard at work ferrying people 
 across the black sea. 
 
Grandfather Know-AU. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 This story holds in solution, as it were, in a primitive form, a large number 
 of other legends. The Three Hairs of Father Know-AU is more primitive than 
 the Miraculous Hair of the Servian legend,' which is itself at least as ancient as 
 the time of Virgil ; for Virgil's account of the death of Dido is copied minutely 
 from it. Another form of the same legend is the Golden Fleece hung upon a tree, 
 which the Argonauts went in search of. We shall meet with it again in the second 
 half of the Hungarian-Slovenian story of the Three Citrons, where a gipsy, 
 corresponding to Medea, causes the golden-haired queen, seated on a rook, to be 
 turned into a dove by thrusting a pin into her head. This portion of the legend 
 has developed into a whole crop of stories of stepmothers or mothers-in-law 
 turning their daughters into birds, which resume their human form when the pin 
 is drawn out again. The Lorely is another form of the legetid. It is the sunlight 
 dancing on the crown of a rook. The legend of the Tailor crag at Troll-hatten, 
 In Sweden, is another form of it. The tailor, condemned for murder, is to be 
 spared if, seated on this precipice, between sunrise and sunset, he can sew a suit 
 of clothes. He works for dear life. Just as the sun sets, he has finished, but at 
 the same instant turns giddy and plunges headlong into the maelstrom below. 
 Transplanted to the Cambridge fens, the legend reappears in Tennyson's beautiful 
 poem of the Lady of Shalott. Father Know-AU, in his three forms of child, 
 middle-aged man, and old man, also reappears in Vedic mythology under exactly 
 the same name. In the Three Fates we have the Norns or Greek Parcse, one of 
 them being, in fact, represented as spinning. Their attendance at the birth of 
 Plavachek is a more primitive form of the legend of the Magi. Just as in the 
 Venetian legend of the basket of flowers we shall find that Capricornus, the Goat, 
 In the Story of George and his Goat, has been metamorphosed into an enchanted 
 basket of flowers ; just as the Vedic horses, Harites, become the Three Graces of 
 Greek mythology ; so the three old women in the present myth become, in the 
 later one of the birth of Christ, the three kings accompanied by a star in the 
 East. In Plavachek we seem to have, in a primitive form, Moses in the basket of 
 rushes ; in the king's impotent attempts to put him out of the way, the legend of 
 CEdipus and that of Herod and the Massacre of the Innocents as well. 
 
 The part of the story relating how the fisherman saved Plavachek appears 
 strangely developed into another story, Otesanek, or Little Shaveling. Here it is a 
 woodcutter who brings home to his childless wife a tree-root shaped like a little 
 baby. They called it Otesanek, and feed it with pap. This infant rapidly develops 
 into an enfant terrible, who eats up its father and mother, everything and every- 
 body who comes in his way, until he threatens to eat up an old woman hoeing 
 greens. She throws her hoe at him ; it splits open his stomach, and all his victims 
 march merrily out again. Since this is an allegory of winter, it is evident that 
 Plavachek is carried down by a late autumn flood. In the supplementary com- 
 parative essay, the diflerent characters of these stories are analysed. The king as 
 bovrman corresponds to Sagittarius ; the commencement of the story is therefore 
 laid in the beginning of December or towards the end of November. The Otesanek 
 
10 Grandfather JTnoio-Att. 
 
 story, it may be observed, occurs in various forms, the most obvious one being 
 that of Bed Cap or Red Riding Hood ; linking it by means of the Bed Cap with 
 the Polish story of Hloupy Piecuch (Stupid Sit-by-the-Pire), and this with 
 Cinderella. Bed Cap straying among the forest flowers is the red winter sun 
 straying amid the stars ; and the fact of her ultimate disappearance into the maw 
 of Penris, the wolf, shows that this form of the legend was developed within the 
 Arctic circle. The character of the woodcutter has split up into two in Grand- 
 father Know-All. In these folk-lore stories he is sometimes represented as a 
 gamekeeper; in the Vedio mythology he is called Tvashtar (lit., the ooverer), the 
 artificer or carpenter, and allegorises the waning autumn sun. As autumn is the 
 seed-time, he is considered as a kind of Demogorgon. Like Vulcan, his Latin 
 form, he is lame. In the Middle Ages this form dwindled to Asmodeus, the lame 
 devil, who presides over mines and hid treasures, and appears in the Slavo- 
 Genovese tale of the Three Brothers. In the Scandinavian legends he is 
 Wayland Smith, and in the Christian ones, Joseph the Carpenter. All these 
 personages have in common a wife or daughter whom they or their sons-in-law 
 fail to render pregnant, and who has to have recourse to miraculous means of fertili- 
 sation. Vulcan's wife is unfaithful with Mars. Tvashtar's daughter is sometimes 
 represented as a Virgin whom a Marut, or wind-god, fertilises ; sometimes as the 
 wife of the impotent Pandu who gets Vaju, the Zephyr or Holy Spirit, to supply 
 his own shortcomings. Her name is Kunti. In the Christian form of the legend, 
 the wind-god fertilises a virgin of the name of Mary ; a name recalling on the one 
 hand the Maruts, and on the other, Maya or Illusion, the mythical mother of 
 Buddha. 
 
 The number twenty, which occurs in Grandfather Know-All, is unusual. 
 Plavachek is twenty years old when his adventures begin. I ofier the following 
 explanation for what it may be worth. We know that the story begins in Decern'^ 
 ber. We also know that in very primitive times the year was reckoned in half — 
 that is to say light and dark — ^moons. There would therefore by twenty-four of 
 them to a year. Kow supposing Plavachek's age to be reckoned years for half 
 moons, the twentieth would fall at the beginning of September, that is to say, at 
 the end of summer ; which tallies with the visit of the king in summer to the 
 fisherman, his request for a drink of water, and his discovery of the twenty-year- 
 old Plavachek. Giving the black sea incident to October, the two cities to 
 November and December, the castle of gold to January, the events of the stot; 
 distribute themselves as in the other annual fairy stories, concluding with the 
 triumph of spring. Only that while many of the stories limit themselves to the 
 three winter months, this one, including its prelude, covers a year and three 
 months. 
 
Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes. 
 
 There was a king and he was now old, and had but one son. Once 
 he called this son to him, and said : " My dear son, thou well knowest 
 that the mature fruit falls to give place to another. My head is also 
 ripening to decay, and perhaps in a short time the sun will no more 
 shine upon it ; but before thou buriest me, I would gladly see my 
 future daughter, thy bride. Marry thee, my son." And the king's 
 son said : "I should gladly have submitted to thy wishes, father, but 
 I have no sweetheart, and know of no one. And so the old king felt 
 in his pocket, drew out a golden key, and offered it to his son. " Go 
 up on to the tower, to the top storey : look round there and tell me 
 which thou fanciest." The king's son tarried not, but went. All 
 his life he had never yet been up there, and also had never heard 
 what there might be there. 
 
 When he came up above to the last storey, he saw in the ceiling 
 a small iron door like a trap-door ; it was locked ; he opened it with 
 the golden key, raised it, and stepped out into the room above. This 
 was a large circular hall, the ceiling blue, like the sky in a clear 
 night ; silver stars twinkled upon it ; the floor was a carpet of green 
 silk, and round the wall stood twelve lofty windows in golden mould- 
 ings, and in each window on crystal glass was a virgin depicted in 
 rainbow hues, with a royal crown on her head, different in each 
 window, and in a different dress, but one more beautiful than the 
 Other, so that the king's son could scarely take his eyes off them; 
 and when he thus looked upon them with astonishment, not knowing 
 which to choose, these virgins began to move as if alive, looked 
 round at him, smiled, and all but spoke. 
 
 Then the king's son observed that one of these twelve windows 
 was covered with a white curtain ; and so he tore aside the curtain 
 that he might see what was under it. And there was a virgin in a 
 white dress, girdled with a silver girdle, with a crown of pearls on 
 her head ; she was the most beautiful of all, but pale and sorrowful 
 as if she had risen from the grave. The king's son stood a long time 
 before this picture as if in the presence of an apparition ; and as he 
 thus looked his heart melted within him, and he said : " Her I wish 
 
12 Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes. 
 
 to have, and no other." And as he said these words this virgin 
 bowed her head, blushed like a rose, and in a moment all the pictures 
 vanished. 
 
 When after this he came down again and told his father what he 
 had seen, and which of the virgins he had chosen, the old king grew 
 gloomy, reflected awhile, and said : "Thou hast done ill, my son, in un- 
 covering what was veiled, and by this word thou hast put thyself in 
 great peril. This virgin is in the power of a wicked sorcerer or 
 prince of darkness, and is imprisoned in a castle of iron ; no one who 
 has attempted to set her free has ever yet returned. But what is 
 done cannot be undone : given word is law. Go, try thy fortune, 
 and come home again to me safe and sound." 
 
 The king's son bade farewell to his father, mounted his horse, 
 and rode away for this bride. And so it befell him to ride through 
 a great wood, and in this wood he rode on and on until at last he 
 quite lost his way. And when he and his horse had thus wandered 
 among thickets and among rocks and quagmires [baziuami : baziti 
 means to desire], not knowing whither he went nor where he was, 
 he heard some one calling after him : " Hi ! wait a minute ! " The king's 
 son looked round and saw how a tall man was hurrying after him. 
 " Stop and take me with you, and if you take me into your service 
 you will not repent it." " Who art thou?" said the king's son, 
 "and what art thou skilled in?" " My name is Long, and I am 
 skilled in stretching. Do you see up there on that tall fir tree a 
 bird's nest ? I will take the nest for you, and there is no need for me 
 to climb up the tree the least little bit." 
 
 And so Long began to stretch ; his body quickly grew until it was 
 as tall as the fir tree ; then he reached for the nest, and in a 
 twinkling crumpled himself up again, and offered it to the king's 
 son. " Well hast thou learnt thy feat of skill ; but what good are 
 birds' nests to me if thou canst not lead me out of this wood ? " 
 " Oh 1 that is an easy matter," said Long, and began to stretch 
 himself out again, until he was three times as tall as the tallest pine 
 tree in that wood ; looked round about him, and says : " In yonder 
 direction we shall find the shortest way out of the wood." Then he 
 crumpled himself up, took the horse by the bridle, and walked 
 before it, and ere the king's son expected it, they were out of the 
 wood. Far before them stretched a broad plain, and beyond the 
 plain were lofty grey rocks, like the walls of a great city, and 
 mountains overgrown with forest. 
 
Long, Sroad, and Sharp-Eyes. 13 
 
 " Look, master, there goes my comrade," said Long, and pointed 
 in the direction of the plain. " Him you ought also to have taken 
 into your service ; faith 1 he would have served you well." " Shout 
 to him, and summon him, that I may see who he is." " It is rather 
 far, master," said Long, " he would scarcely hear me, and it would 
 be sometime before he came, for he has much to carry. I had rather 
 take a skip after him." Then Long stretched himself out so tall that 
 his head was quite buried in the clouds, took two — three steps, seized 
 his comrade by the shoulder, and placed him before the king's son. He 
 was a dumpy little fellow, with a paunch like a four-gallon souterkin. 
 " "Who art thou, pray ? " enquired the king's son, " and what art thou 
 skilled in?" "I, niaster, am called Broad, and I know how to 
 broaden out." " Then shew me." " Master, ride back into the 
 wood, quick, quick," cried Broad, and began to puff himself out. 
 
 The king's son could not conceive why he was to ride back ; but 
 seeing that Long was flying in haste to the wood, he spurred his 
 horse and rode after him at a gallop. And it was high time for him 
 to ride away, or Broad would have crushed him to pieces, horse and 
 all, his paunch grew so rapidly in all directions ; for all at once 
 everything was full of him, just as if a mountain had come down in 
 an avalanche. Then, after this, Broad ceased to puff himself out, 
 blew the wind off, so that the woods bent double, and again made 
 himself just as he was at first. " A pretty breathing thou hast given 
 me," said the king's son to him, " but such a fellow I shall not find 
 every day; come with me." 
 
 And so after this they continued their journey. When they came 
 near to those rocks they met a certain one, and he had his eyes 
 bound with a handkerchief. " Master, that is our third companion," 
 says Long. " Him you ought also to have taken into your service ; 
 faith ! he would not have eaten your victuals in vain." " "Who, 
 pray, art thou?" enquired the king's son of him, "and why hast thou 
 thy eyes bandaged; why thou canst not see the road?" " Hoj ! 
 master, on the contrary, it is just because I see too sharply that I 
 have to have my two eyes bandaged; I, with my two eyes bandaged, 
 see as much as another fellow with his eyes unbandaged, and when 
 I unbandage myself, I look everything through and through; and 
 when I look hard at anything, it catches fire, and what cannot burn 
 splits in pieces. Therefore I am called Sharp-Eyes." Then he 
 turned to a rock not far off, unbound the handkerchief, and fixed 
 upon the rock his glowing eyes ; and the rock began to crackle, and 
 
14 J-^i^g, liroad, and Sharp-Eyes. 
 
 pieces to fly from it in all directions, and after a very short time 
 nothing remained but a heap of fine dust. And in this dust some- 
 thing flashed and quivered like fire. Sharp-Eyes went to fetch it 
 and brought it to the king's son. It was pure gold. 
 
 " Ho ! ho ! Thou art a lad beyond money's worth," said the 
 king's son. " A fool were he who would not desire to use thy 
 services. But since thou hast such a good sight, please look again 
 and tell me if I have still far to go to the castle of iron, and what is 
 going on there." " If you had been riding alone there, master," 
 answered Sharp-Eyes, " perhaps you would not have reached it 
 even by next year ; but with us you will get there this very day ; 
 for us and no one else they are now preparing supper." " And 
 what is my destined bride doing there ? " " In an iron-grated bower, 
 all upon a lofty tower, Black-Prince holds her in his power." And 
 the king's son said : " Thou who art good, help me to set her free." 
 
 And they all promised to help him. And so they led him between 
 those grey rocks by that cleft which Sharp-Eyes had made in them 
 with his two eyes, on and on among those rocks and lofty mountains 
 and deep forests ; and where there was any kind of obstacle in the 
 way, those three jolly mates had cleared it off in no time ; and as 
 the sun inclined towards the west, the mountains began to lower, 
 the woods to thin out, and the rocks to cower among the heather; 
 and when it was already above the west, the king's son saw not far 
 before him a castle of iron ; and when it was just setting, he rode 
 over the iron bridge into the gateway of the castle, and the instant 
 it had set, the iron bridge rose of itself, the gates closed with a bang, 
 and the king's son and his companions were imprisoned in the castle 
 of iron. 
 
 When they had looked about here in the courtyard, the king's 
 son put his horse into the stable — and everything was already pre- 
 pared there for it ; then after this they went into the castle. In the 
 courtyard, in the stable, in the castle hall, and also in the rooms, 
 they saw in the twilight many people richly dressed, some of them 
 masters and some servants, but none of them moved the least ; they 
 were all turned to stone. They passed through several rooms and 
 came to the dining hall. It was brightly lighted, in the middle a 
 table on which were plenty of good eatables and good drinkables ; it 
 was laid for four persons. They waited and waited, and thought 
 that someone would come ; but when after a long time no one came, 
 they sat down and ate and drank to their hearts' content. 
 
Long, Broad, and Sharp-JSyes. 15 
 
 When they had finished eating, they began to look about to see 
 where they were to sleep. At this moment the door unexpectedly 
 flew open with a bang, and into the room stepped the sorcerer, a 
 hump-backed old man, in a long black robe, with a bald head, grey 
 beard and whiskers down to the knees, and instead of a belt, three 
 iron hoops. By the hand he led a beautiful, surpassingly beautiful 
 virgin, dressed in white, round her waist she wore a silver girdle, a.nd 
 a crown of pearls on her head, but she was pale and sorrowful as 
 though she had risen from the tomb. The king's son recognised her 
 at once, started, and went towards her ; but before he could utter a 
 word Black-Prince, the sorcerer, had addressed him as follows : "I 
 know why thou art come ; this queen thou wouldst take away from 
 here. Very well. Be it so. Take her if thou canst manage to keep 
 watch over her for three nights so that she does not escape thee. 
 But if she eludes thee, thou shalt be turned to stone, servants and 
 all, like all who have come before thee." After this he shewed the 
 queen to a chair that she might sit down, and departed. 
 
 The king's son could not take his eyes off this virgin a moment, 
 she was so beautiful. He even began to speak to her, and to ask 
 her all sorts of questions ; but she did not answer him, she did not 
 smile, and never once looked at any one, as if she had been of 
 marble. And so he seated himself beside her, and determined not 
 to sleep the whole night, that she might not escape him ; and for 
 greater security Long stretched himself out like a thong and wound 
 himself all round the room against the wall ; Broad settled himself 
 at the door, puffed himself out, and stopped it up, so that not even 
 a little mouse could have crept through, and Sharp-Eyes posted 
 himself by the pillar in the middle of the room on guard. But after 
 a very short time they aH began to snooze, dropped off, and slept 
 the whole night, as if he had thrown them into water. 
 
 In the morning when it began to dawn, the king's son was the 
 first to awake. But it was just as if someone had thrust a knife into 
 his heart — the queen was flown 1 And he immediately roused his 
 servants and asks what is to be done. " Don't be the least anxious, 
 master," said Sharp-Eyes, and looked hard out of the window. 
 " Why, I see her already ! A hundred miles from here is a wood, in 
 the middle of the wood an old oak, and on this oak, on the top of 
 it, an acorn — and this acorn is she. Let Long take me on his 
 shoulders and I'll get her." And Long at once put Sharp-Eyes on 
 his back, stretched himself out, and went, every step was ten miles, 
 and Sharp-Eyes pointed out the way. 
 
16 Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes. 
 
 And before time enough had passed for one to run three times 
 round the cottage, lo ! they were back again, and Long offered this 
 acorn to the king's son: " Master, drop it on the ground! " The 
 king's son dropped it on the ground, and at that moment the queen 
 stood before him. And as the sun began to show itself beyond the 
 mountains, the door flew open with a clatter, and Black-Prince 
 entered the, room and smiled maliciously; but when he perceived 
 the princess he frowned, grumbled — and crack ! one iron hoop on 
 him split and bounded off. Then he took the virgin by the hand and 
 led her away. 
 
 The whole day after this the king's son had not anything to do 
 but to wander through the castle and round the castle, and to gaze 
 at all that was strange there. Everywhere it was just as though life 
 had expired at one and the same moment. In one hall he saw some 
 sort of royal personage who held in his two hands an uplifted 
 hunting knife, as if he meant to cut someone in half, but the blow 
 fell not, he was turned to stone. In one room was a knight also 
 turned to stone ; he fled as if in terror before someone, and stumbling 
 at the threshold missed his footing but did not fall. In the chimney 
 corner sat some servant or other; he held in one hand a piece of 
 roast meat from supper, and with the other he carried a mouthful to 
 his lips, but it never got so far ; when it was just before his lips it 
 also had been turned to stone. And many others besides he saw 
 there turned to stone, every one exactly in the attitude he was in 
 when the sorcerer said: "Be turned to stone." And also many 
 handsome horses he saw here which had been turned to stone. And 
 in the castle and around the castle everything was dead and desolate ; 
 there were trees, but without leaves ; there were meadows, but 
 without grass ; there was a river, but it did not flow ; no little bird 
 singing; no little flower springing — earth's daughter, not one wee 
 white fish in the water. 
 
 Morning, mid-day, evening, the king's son and his companions 
 found in the castle a good and abundant feast, the dishes served 
 themselves up, the wine poured itself out. And when supper was 
 over the doors again opened and the sorcerer led in the queen for the 
 king's son to guard. And although they all determined to try with 
 all their might to prevent themselves from going to sleep, it was all 
 of no use, off to sleep again they went. And when in the morning 
 the king's son awoke at daybreak and saw that the queen had 
 vanished, he leapt out of bed and twitched Sharp- Eyes by the 
 
Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes. 17 
 
 shoulder. "Hi! get up, thou Sharp-Eyes! Knowest thou where 
 the queen is? " Sharp-Byes rubbed his two eyes, looks, and says : 
 " Now I see her; two hundred miles from here is a mountain, and 
 in that mountain a rock, and in that rock a precious stone, and that 
 stone is she. "When Long takes me there we shall get her." 
 
 Long immediately took him on his shoulder, stretched himself 
 out, and went — every step was twenty miles. Sharp-Eyes then 
 fixed his two burning orbs on the mountain, and the mountain 
 dissipated itself, and the rock split into a thousand pieces, and . 
 among them flashed and quivered a precious stone. This they took 
 and brought to the king's son, and as he dropped it on the ground, 
 there stood the queen again. And when after this Black-Prince 
 came and saw her there, his two eyes sparkled with rage, and crick ! 
 crack ! again an iron hoop upon him split and bounded off. He 
 grumbled and growled, and led the queen out of the room. 
 
 This day was again just like the day before. After supper the 
 sorcerer again brought the queen, peered shrewdly into the eyes of 
 the king's son, and observed sarcastically : " We shall see who's 
 master here ; whether thou winnest or 1 1 " And so saying, he de- 
 parted. And so to-day they all took greater pains than ever to 
 prevent themselves from dozing off ; they would not even sit down, 
 they would walk up and down the whole night ; but it was all in 
 vain, for they were under a spell ; one after the other fell asleep as 
 he walked, and the queen escaped as before. 
 
 In the morning the king's son was again the first to awake, and 
 when he did not see the queen, he aroused Sharp-Eyes : " Hi I get up, 
 Sharp-Eyes, look about, where is the queen? " Sharp-Eyes looked 
 out of the window for a long time. " Ho ! master," he says, " she's 
 a long, long way off. Three hundred miles from here is a black 
 sea, and in the middle of this sea, at the bottom, Ues a shell, and in 
 this shell a golden ring, and this ring is she. But do not be uneasy, 
 we will get her yet, only to-day Long must also take Broad with 
 liiin — vve shall want him." Long put Sharp-Eyes on one shoulder 
 and Broad on the other, stretched himself out and went ; every step 
 was thirty miles. And when they came to the black sea, Sharp- 
 Eyes showed him where he must reach into the water for the shell. 
 Long stretched and stretched out his arm as much as he could, but 
 still there was not enough of him to get to the bottom. 
 
 " "Wait a bit, comrade, wait just a little bit; see if I don't help 
 you," said Broad ; and puffed himself out as much as his stomach 
 
18 Lo7ig, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes. 
 
 would stand it. Then he laid himself down by the shore and drank. 
 After a very little time the water had fallen so much that Loug quite 
 easily reached the bottom, and drew the shell out of the sea. And 
 he took the ring out of it, put his comrades on his shoulders, and 
 hastened back to the castle. But on the way home it was just a 
 little inconvenient to run with Broad on his back, the fellow having 
 half a sea of water inside him, and so he shook him off his shoulders 
 on to the ground in a broad valley. He bounced about like a 
 ■ bladder let fall from a tower, and in a moment the whole valley was 
 under water, like a great lake. Broad himself scarcely managed to 
 creep out of it. 
 
 Meanwhile, in the castle, the king's son was in great anxiety. 
 The sun's beam began to show itself from behind the two mountains 
 and the servants still returned not ; and the more fiercely the rays 
 mounted on high, the greater grew his distress. A deadly sweat 
 started to his forehead. Then soon the sun appeared in the east 
 like a thin glowing stripe, and at that moment the doors flew open 
 with a tremendous bang, and on the threshold stood Black-Prince, 
 and, seeing no signs of the queen, chuckled horribly and stepped 
 into the apartment. But at that moment — crunch ! — the window 
 flew in pieces and a golden ring fell upon the floor, and at that very 
 instant there stood the queen again. Sharp-Eyes, seeing what was 
 happening in the castle, and what danger his master was in, in- 
 formed Long. Long took a step and threw the ring through the 
 window into the room. Black-Prince roared with rage till the castle 
 shook again, and then — crick ! crack ! crick ! — the third iron hoop 
 cleft upon him, bounded off, and Black-Prince turned into a raven 
 and flew away out of the window. 
 
 And then immediately this beautiful virgin addressed the king's 
 son and thanked him for having set her free, and she blushed like a 
 rose. And in the castle and round about the castle all at once 
 everything came to life ; he who held in the hall a drawn hunting 
 knife flourished it in the air till the air whistled again, and then 
 stuck it in the sheath ; he who stumbled at the threshold finished 
 falling on to the ground, but immediately got up again and caught 
 himself by the nose to see if it was still whole ; he who sat by the 
 chimney corner put the mouthful of roast meat between his lips and 
 went on eating ; in a word, everyone finished doing what he had 
 begun, and went on where he had left off. In the stables, the 
 horses pawed the ground and whinnied cheerily; the trees about the 
 
Lrnig, Broad, cmd Sharp-Eyes. 19 
 
 castle grew green like the periwinkle, on the meadows were plenty 
 of parti-colored flowers; high in air the skylark twittered, and in 
 the rapid river shoals of tiny little fish careered along. Everywhere 
 was life and merriment. 
 
 Meanwhile many nobles gathered together to the room where 
 the king's son was, and they all thanked him for their liberation. 
 But he said : " Me you ought not to thank ; if it had not been for 
 my trusty servants. Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes, I should have 
 been in the same state you were in yourselves." And immediately 
 after this he set off on his way home to his father, the old king, he 
 and his bride and his servants, Long and Sharp-Byes, and all those 
 nobles escorted him. On their way they met Broad and took him 
 with them, too. 
 
 The old king wept with joy that his son's affairs had turned out 
 so prosperously ; he thought that he was fated never to return. 
 Soon after this there was a noisy wedding. All the nobles whom 
 the king's son had set free were invited. When the wedding was 
 over, Long, Broad, and Sharp-Byes announced to the young king 
 that they were going again into the world to look for work. The 
 young king begged and prayed them to remain at his palace. " I 
 will give you everything you may stand in need of till the day of 
 your death." But to them such a lazy kind of existence was dis- 
 tasteful ; they took leave of him and went in spite of everything, 
 and ever since have been tramping it somewhere in the world. 
 
20 Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 This story, perhaps a primitive form of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, occurs 
 in various forms in the folk-lore of the Italianised Slavs of Venice. In the 
 Venetian variants of the Slav stories there are several things worth noticing, for 
 they prove conclusively that the Venetian folk-lore, or at all events the main bulk 
 of it, comes directly from the Slav reservoir of Central and Eastern Europe, and not 
 vice versd. It might have been supposed that the Venetian fairy stories, like the 
 Slav so Eastern in many of their aspects, had been brought direct from the East 
 in the palmy days of Venetian grandeur and had thence penetrated among the 
 Western Slavs ; but this is not the case. One famous Venetian legend, that of 
 the Merchant of Venice, is identical with, and perhaps has been taken from the 
 episode of the Falcon and the Dove, which occurs in the Mahabharata, and has 
 been so splendidly versified in the late Lord Lytton's Glenaveril ; but nothing 
 resembling this story is at all general, if it occurs, amongst the folk-lore of the 
 Western Slavs. On the other hand, many of the characteristics of annual myths 
 have disappeared from the stories in the milder climate of Venice. In the Three 
 Sisters and the Twelve Brothers, the frozen lords and their retainers take the form 
 of marble statues, who are resuscitated by a vial of elixir found in the head of the 
 enchanter ; in the Dead Man, winter is simply represented by a dead man who 
 comes to life after being watched by the heroine a year, three months, and a 
 week— exactly the period, it will be observed, we have deduced from internal 
 evidence as the period of the story. Three Golden Hairs of Father Know- All. But 
 the most conclusive evidence is perhaps to be found in the punishment of the 
 witches, step-mothers, and mothers-in-law of the Venetian Slav and the Central 
 European Slav stories respectively. In the latter the invariable punishment is to 
 be torn to pieces by four wild horses, perhaps representing the four points of the 
 compass. In the former it is as invariably to be burnt alive on a barrel of tar. 
 Now if the stories had been transplanted from Venice to the pine forests of 
 Slavonia, Hungary, and Bohemia, there is no reason why this penalty should not 
 have figured in the stories of Central Europe, the genial methods of Christian love 
 having naturalised this horrible form of it all over Christendom in the Middle 
 Ages; but there is an overwhelming reason why, transplanted to Venice, the 
 Central European Slav stories should lose their horse element, namely that, from 
 the nature of the case, there is not a single horse, carriage, cart, or pony to be 
 found from one end of the city of Venice to the other. To anyone conversant 
 with the stories in their original dialects, definite proofs of this kind are super- 
 fluous, the fact emerges in a thousand minute details of fact and manner, but to 
 the general reader a general proof may be not unwelcome. Though not strictly 
 relevant to the present story, another remarkable difference between the Central 
 European and the Venetian Slav folk-lore is worth pointing out. In the former 
 it is invariably the hero who undergoes hardships in search of the heroine, but 
 in the Venetian variants it is quite as often the heroine who goes in search of and 
 rescues the hero — an extraordinary fact when one considers the purely passive 
 
Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes. 21 
 
 rdle conceded to the weaker sex by Italian social usage and custom. The only 
 other part of Italy where the women play an active part in social life is amongst 
 the riveral population of East Liguria, where it has earned for them and their 
 region amongst other Italians the cynical saying that Liguria is a region where 
 the mountains are without woods, the seas without fish, and the women without 
 shame. Several facts of folk-lore, and more of language and place-names, seem 
 to point to some close connection in early times between the peoples of the north- 
 west mountain district of the Venetian province and those of isolated Liguria. 
 
 It is worth noting, finally, that in this story the enchanted maiden is invari- 
 ably styled not " princess," but queen, and this is the case generally in the 
 Venetian stories in which a king's daughter is the heroine. She is spoken of as 
 a queen and not as a princess. 
 
Golden Locks. 
 
 Theeb was a king and he was so clever that he even understood 
 what all living creatures said to one another. And hear how he taught 
 himself. A certain old grandmother came to him, brought him a 
 snake in a basket, and says that he is to have it cooked ; when he 
 eats it he will understand everything that any creature in the air, on 
 the ground, or in the water says. The idea of knowing something 
 no one else knew pleased the king ; he paid the grandmother hand- 
 somely, and at once bade his servant prepare this fish for him for 
 dinner. "But mind," he says, "you don't even touch it with your 
 tongue ; verily, if you do you shall pay for it with your head.'' 
 
 George, this servant, wondered why the king so strictly forbade 
 it. " Never in my life have I seen such a fish," he says to himself. 
 " It looks just like a snake ; and what sort of a cook must he be not 
 to try what he is cooking?" "When it was baked he took a morsel on 
 his tongue and tasted it. At that moment he heard something buzz 
 past his ears : " Us a bit too ! Us a bit too ! " George looks round to 
 see what it is, but there is nothing but a few flies flying about in the 
 kitchen. Then, again, outside on the street he hears someone 
 exclaim sibilantly : "Whither away? whither away?" and a tiny 
 little voice answer : " To the miller's barley ! to the miller's barley ! " 
 George peeps out of the window and sees a goose girl with a flock of 
 geese. " Ah ! " he says, " that's the sort of fish it is ! " Now he 
 knew what it was. Yet again he stuffed a small piece into his mouth 
 and then took the snake to the king as though nothing had happened. 
 
 After dinner the king ordered George to saddle the horses, for he 
 wished to take a ride, and George was to accompany him. The king 
 rode before, and George after him. As they were riding over a green 
 meadow George's horse frisked and whinnied. "Ho! ho! ho! 
 brother, I feel so light I should like to jump over the mountains." 
 "Oh! as for that," says the other, "I should like to jump about 
 too, but on me sits an old man; were I to jump about, he would fall 
 to the ground like a bladder and break his neck." " Let him break 
 it ! What of that ? " said George's horse ; " instead of an old man 
 
Golden Locks. 23 
 
 you will then carry a young one." George laughed heartily to 
 himself at this conversation, but only silently that the king might 
 not know it. But the king also understood very well what the two 
 horses had been saying to one another, looked round and seeing that 
 George was laughing, inquires: "What art thou laughing at?" 
 " Nothing, your Serene Highness ; it was only that something 
 occurred to me," said George in excuse. But the old king now had 
 him in suspicion, and did not much trust the horses either, faced 
 about, and so home again. 
 
 When they rode into the castle the king bade George pour him 
 out a glass of wine. "But with thy head shalt thou answer for it 
 if thou fillest not brimful or over-pourest." George took the vessel 
 with the wine and pours. At that moment two small birds flew in 
 by the window ; one was chasing the other, and the other that took 
 flight had three golden hairs in its beak. " Give me them," says the 
 one, "they're mine, indeed they are!" "I won't, they're mine! As 
 if I didn't pick them up! " " As if I wasn't the one to see how they 
 fell, when the golden-haired maiden combed herself ! Give me two, 
 at any rate." "Not a single one, I tell you." Here this other little 
 bird hies after him and has caught hold of these golden hairs. After 
 tussling for them in the air, each was left with one golden hair in its 
 beak, and the third fell upon the ground and just rang out like a 
 harp-string. At that moment George looked round at them and 
 over-poured. " Thy life is forfeit to me," exclaimed the king, " but 
 I wish to treat thee graciously, on condition that thou obtainest for 
 me this golden-haired maiden and bringest her to me as my bride." 
 
 What had George to do ? If he wanted to preserve his life he 
 must hie after the maiden, although he didn't the least know where 
 to look for her. He saddled his horse and rode hither and thither. 
 He rode to a black wood, and here under the wood by the roadside 
 burnt a bush ; shepherds had kindled it. Under the bush was an 
 ant-hill ; the sparks were falling upon it, and the ants with their little 
 white eggs were running hither and thither. "Oh! help, George, 
 help!" they cried piteously; "we are burning, and our young too in 
 their little eggs." Down from his horse in a minute was George, 
 grasped the bush, and quenched the fire. " When thou shalt have 
 need of us, think of us, and we also will help thee." 
 
 After this he rode through the same wood and came to a tall 
 pine. On the top of the pine was a nest of young ravens, and down 
 on the ground were two young ravens piping and lamenting : 
 
24 Golden Lochs. 
 
 " Father and mother have flown away and left us to feed ourselves, 
 and we poor fledglings do not yet know how to fly. Oh ! help, 
 George, help ! fill our maws, for really we are dying of hunger." 
 George did not reflect long ; leapt from his horse and thrust his 
 sword into its side that the young ravens might have something to 
 devour. '• "When thou shalt have need of us," they croaked gaily, 
 " think of us and we will help thee, too." 
 
 After this George had to go forward on foot. He went a long, long 
 way through the wood, and when at last he emerged from the wood 
 he saw a sea extending far and wide before him. On the shore at 
 the edge of the sea two fishermen were disputing together. They 
 had caught a large golden fish in a net, and each one wished to keep 
 it all to himself. " Mine is the net, therefore mine the fish ! " 
 And the other replied: "Little would thy net have availed thee, if 
 It had not been for my boat and my aid." "The next time we 
 catch such another it shall be thine." " Not so ; wait thou for the 
 next one and just give me that ! " "I will arrange your differences," 
 says George. "Sell me this fish; I will pay you well, and the 
 money you can divide between you half and half." And so he gave 
 them for it all the money he had from the king for his journey ; he left 
 himself nothing. The fishermen were glad to have sold it so weU, 
 and George let the fish go again into the sea. It splashed merrily 
 out into the water, plunged, and then, not far from the shore, stuck 
 out its head just once. " When you shall have need of me in your 
 turn, George, remember me and I will serve you ! " And after this 
 it was lost to sight. " Where goest thou?" asked the fishermen of 
 George. " I go in behalf of my master, the old king, for a bride, 
 for a golden-haired maiden, and I don't the least know where to 
 look for her." "Oh! about her we can well inform thee; it is 
 Golden Locks, the royal daughter, of the castle of crystal yonder on 
 that island. Kvery day in the morning, when it dawns, she combs 
 her golden tresses ; the glitter from them flashes over sea and sky. 
 If thou wishest, we will ourselves ferry thee across to this island, 
 because thou hast so well arranged our differences. But take care 
 thou choosest the right maiden ; there are twelve of them, all the 
 king's daughters, but only one has golden hair." 
 
 When George was at the island he went into the castle of crystal 
 to request the king to give his golden-haired daughter in marriage to 
 his lord the king. " I will give her," said the king, " but thou must 
 deserve her ; thou must during three days accomplish three tasks 
 
Golden Locks. 25 
 
 which I shall impose on you, each day one. Meanwhile, thou must 
 wait until to-morrow." The next day early, says the king to him : 
 " My Golden Locks had a string of precious pearls ; the string 
 snapped, and the pearls were scattered in the long grass upon the 
 green meadow. All these pearls must thou collect, and not a single 
 one must be missing." George went to this meadow ; it extended 
 far and wide ; he knelt down in the grass and began to search. " Oh ! 
 if my little ants were here, they could help me." " Why, here we 
 are to help thee ! " said the ants ; where they came, there they came, 
 but around him they just swarmed. " What wantest thou?" " I 
 have to collect pearls on this meadow, and I don't see a single one." 
 "Just wait a little bit, we will collect them for thee." And it was 
 not long before they had brought him out of the grass a small heap 
 of pearls ; he had nothing to do but thread them on the string. And 
 after this, when he was just meaning to tie up the string, yet one 
 other little ant hobbled to him ; it was crippled, its foot having been 
 burnt when there was the fire at their ant-beap, and it cried out : 
 " Stop, George ! don't tie it up yet, I am bringing just one other 
 little pearl." 
 
 When George brought these pearls to the king, and the king had 
 counted them over, not a single one was missing. "Well hast thou 
 performed thy task," he says; " to-morrow I will give thee something 
 else to do." George came early, and the king said to him : " My 
 Golden Locks bathed in the sea and lost there a golden ring ; this 
 thou must find and bring." George went to the sea and walked 
 sadly along the shore ; the sea was clear, but so deep that he could 
 not even see to the bottom, and however was he to pick out a ring at 
 the bottom? " Oh ! if my golden fish were here, she could help me." 
 That very instant something flashed in the sea, and from the depths 
 on to the surface floated the golden fish. " Why, here I am to help 
 thee. What needest thou? " " I have to find a golden ring, and I 
 do not even see to the bottom." " Only just now I met a pike,* he 
 wore a gold ring on his fin. Just wait a little bit and I will 
 bring it to you." And in no long time she returned from the depths 
 of the sea and brought with her the pike, finger-ring and all. 
 
 The king applauded George for having so well accomplished his 
 task; and after this, next morning, imposed the third. "If thou 
 wouldst have me give my Golden Locks to thy king as a bride, thou 
 
 * Hence we may infer that the black sea of these stories was a fresh water 
 lake. 
 
26 Golden Locks. 
 
 must bring her dead and living water, for she will have need ot it." 
 George, not knowing where to turn for this water, went haphazard 
 hither and thither, where his feet carried him, until he came to a 
 black wood. " Oh ! if my ravens were here, perhaps they could help 
 me ! " Here something rustled above his head, and where they came, 
 there they came — two young ravens : " Why, here we are to help 
 thee. What wouldst thou?" "I have to bring dead and living 
 water, and I do not know where to look for it." " Just wait a little 
 bit, we will bring it thee." And after a short time each brought 
 George a gourd full of water ; in one gourd was dead water, in the 
 other was living water. George was glad to have succeeded so well, 
 and hastened to the castle. At the outskirts of the wood he saw 
 stretched from pine to pine a spider's web, in the middle of the 
 spider's web sat a big spider sucking a dead fly. George took the 
 gourd with the dead water, spattered the spider with it, and the 
 spider rolled to the ground like a ripe cherry. It was dead. After, 
 this he spattered the fly with the living water from the other gourd, 
 and the fly began to stretch itself, scraped itself clean from the 
 spider's web, and hi ! away into the air. " Lucky for thee, George, 
 that thou hast resurrected me," it buzzed past his ear, " for without 
 me thou hadst scarcely guessed which of the twelve is Golden 
 Locks." 
 
 When the king saw that George had also discovered the third 
 thing, he said that he would give him his golden-haired daughter. 
 " But," says he, " thou must select her thyself." Hereupon, he led 
 him into a large hall; there in the middle was a round table, and 
 round the table sat twelve beautiful maidens, one just like the other ; 
 but each had on her head a long whimple falling to the ground, 
 white as snow, so that it was impossible to see what sort of hair each 
 had. " Look, there are my daughters," says the king. " If thou 
 guessest which of them fs Golden Locks, thou hast won her, and 
 canst take her away with thee ; but if thou dost not hit upon her, 
 she is not decreed to thee; thou must go away without her." 
 George was in the greatest perplexity, he did not know how to 
 begin. At that moment something whispered in his ear : " Buzz ! 
 buzz ! walk round the table. I'll tell thee which it is." It was the 
 fly that George had brought to life again with the living water. " It 
 isn't that girl — ^nor that one either— nor that — here, this is Golden 
 Locks." " Give me this daughter ! " exclaimed George, " her I have 
 deserved for my master." " Thou hast guessed," said the king, and 
 
Golden Looks. 27 
 
 the maiden also at once rose from the table, threw off the whimple, 
 and her golden hair rolled in rich masses from her head to the 
 ground, and all about her was as bright as when in the morning the 
 sunrise [lit. : the little sun] emerges, so that George's two poor eyes 
 quite ached again. 
 
 After this the king gave his daughter an escort for her journey, 
 as was right and proper, and George led her to his master to be the 
 old king's bride. The old king's two eyes sparkled, and he skipped 
 about with delight when he saw Golden Locks, and he gave orders 
 at once that preparations for the wedding should be made. " I 
 meant, indeed, to have had thee hanged for thy disobedience, that 
 the young ravens might feast off thee," he says to George ; " but 
 since thou hast served me so well, I will only have thy head cut off 
 with an axe, and then I will have thee respectably buried." When 
 they had executed George, Golden Locks begged the old king to 
 make her a present of his dead servant, and the old king could not 
 refuse his golden-haired bride anything. After this she fastened 
 George's head to his body, sprinkled him with the dead water, and 
 body and head grew together, so that not the least trace of the 
 wound remained ; then she sprinkled him with the living water, and 
 George got up again as if he had been born anew, fresh as a stag, 
 and with youth just beaming from his face. " Oh ! how sound I 
 have slept," says George, and rubbed his eyes. " Ay, verily thou 
 hast slept sound," said Golden Locks; " and if it had not been for 
 me, for ever and ever thou wouldst never have awoke again." When 
 the old king saw that George had come to life again, and that he 
 was younger and more beautiful than before, he also would gladly 
 have been rejuvenated in the same way. He at once ordered them 
 to decapitate him also, and then sprinkle him with the water. They 
 cut off his head and sprinkled and sprinkled with the living water 
 till all the water was sprinkled away ; but the head would on no 
 conditions attach itself to the body again ; only afterwards did they 
 begin sprinkling it with the dead water, and in a moment it grew 
 fast to the body ; but the king was again dead because they had now 
 no living water to resurrect him with. And because a kingdom 
 without a king cannot exist, and they had no one so clever as to 
 understand all living creatures in the way that George did, they 
 made George king and Golden Locks queen. 
 
28 Golden Locks, 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 In the preceding story we have a transitional form to the various Lorelys, Didos, 
 and luckless heroines turned into birds by a pin stuck into their brains, of Vfhich 
 European folk-lore is full. Perhaps of all these stories the most instructive is 
 the Servian legend of the Miraculous Hair. The poverty-stricken hero is warned 
 In a, vision that he will find under his bed-pUlow an apple, a kerchief and a 
 mirror. He is to follow a certain river to its source, where, on a crag, he will 
 find a beautiful maiden seated with a work-frame in front of her, on which she is 
 embroidering patterns with the sunbeams. He is not to reply to her questions or 
 he will be instantly changed into a fish or a snake ; but when she asks him to 
 search her head for lice he is to do so ; he will there find a blood-red hair, which 
 he is to pluck out, and run away. He does all this ; the maiden pursues him ; he 
 throws away the apple, then the kerchief, then the mirror ; never having seen a 
 mirror before, the Servian Lorely spends so much time coquetting with her own 
 image in it that the man outstrips her, sells the hair to the Sultan, and makes 
 his fortune. Just as the Servian legend of the radiant, amber-clear maiden the 
 boy beholds under the bark of the fir-tree is due to the trementina spruce forest, 
 so the plica polonioa may have something to do with this form of the Lorely 
 legend, which, as we shall find in the note to the Three Citrons, belongs to the 
 last week of the annual myth epic, which consisted of one year, three months 
 and a week ; but the remarkable part of it is that this comparatively modem 
 form of the legend, setting aside certain Christian embellishments, is certainly as 
 old as Virgil's JEneid, the death of Dido in the fourth book being imitated from 
 it. Being a specialised form of legends which are variants, certainly, and most 
 likely primitive forms of early Vedio myths, it must have drifted south from East- 
 Central Europe. Virgil therefore took the particulars of Dido's death from the 
 myth : the myth was not developed from the poem. Likely enough, the two 
 Venetian writers, Livy and Catullus, amused themselves by making collections of 
 the folk-lore stories of their province, and thus they became popularised amongst 
 literary Romans. Much more ancient, therefore, must be the more generalised 
 legends like the Three Golden Hairs of Grandfather Know-AU, in which wood- 
 cutters, carvers, or gamekeepers represent seed-time and the waning autumn sun, 
 and are variants, perhaps prototypes, of the Vedio demigorgon Tvashtar — repre- 
 sented, like his Latin counterpart, Vulcan, as lame and impotent. If the Vir- 
 giliao legend, then, was borrowed from the Servian one, and this was a develop- 
 ment of still more ancient myths coeval with Vedic ones and perhaps anterior, it 
 is evident that the legend of the impotent Bethlehem carpenter, whose virgin 
 wife is impregnated, like Tvashtar's daughter, by a health-bearing wind, could 
 not have given rise to them, but was itself merely a still later development of 
 them. Christians, therefore, who affirm, by their religious and domestic practices 
 at the end of the year, the historic truth of this Bethlehem fairy story, this last 
 wreckage of the primitive annual-solar myth, act unwisely, for it is never wise to 
 maintain by word or act that something is an historical fact when it is really the 
 remains of a primitive allegory. 
 
Golden Locks. 29 
 
 Tvashtar, the autumn woodoutter-god, and ludra, the storm-god, are oloaely 
 connected together in the Vedio legends. According to one of the legends, Indra 
 was thrown into a well, where he fought a dragon and let loose the autumn 
 floods ; and in this legend Gubernatis suspects the legend of the first, that is to 
 say, of the Old Testament Joseph thrown into the well by his brethren. Now, in 
 another form of the legend, Indra, in the form of an ant, stings the serpent, 
 which, distracted by the pain, allows the escape of the autumn floods. In the 
 limping little ant which rolls up the last pearl, therefore, it is possible that we 
 have, in an exceedingly abridged form, the limping carpenter, Tvashtar, the 
 limping blacksmith, Vulcan, the limping Asmodeus of the Genovese-Slovenian 
 " We Three Brothers." 
 
 We have seen that the black sea of these stories must have been a fresh water 
 lake because there were pike in it ; the golden fish was therefore moat likely a 
 golden carp. When the Polish story of Hloupy Piecuoh reached Venice, the 
 wonder-working pike was exchanged for an eel, another proof that the stories 
 drifted from Central Europe to Venice and not the other way, for there are plenty 
 of eels both in the Central European lakes and in the lagoons, but no pike in the 
 lagoons. The more primitive character of the Polish variant of the story also 
 appears from Pieouch's fondness for kvas and redcaps, the former symbolising 
 the torpid cold, the latter the red sun of winter. When, by the help of the pike, 
 he wins his princess, these eccentricities cease, and he becomes a commonplace 
 hviman being. In the Venice variant. El Mezo (the Half), a pregnant woman, 
 having eaten all the parsley in a witch's garden, is made to promise to give the 
 witch half the child when it is seven years old. The other half has much the 
 same adventures as Piecuch, and when he marries his princess the two halves 
 come together again and form " un belissimo zovine." 
 
Reason and Fortune. 
 
 Once Eeason and Fortune met at a foot-bridge. Eeason was in 
 those days still inexperienced ; he did not know who is expected to 
 give place to whom, and so he said : " Why should I move out of 
 thy way? Thou art no better than I." " The better is he," replied 
 Fortune, " who proves himself to be so in practice. Seest thou that 
 peasant's son yonder, who is ploughing in the field? Enter into him, 
 and if he fares better with thee than with me, I will always sub- 
 missively move out of thy way when and wheresoever we meet." 
 Eeason agreed to this, and then and there entered into the plough- 
 boy's head. As soon as the plough-boy felt that he had Eeason in 
 his head he began to syllogise. " Why must I walk behind the 
 plough to the day of my death ? I am sure I could make my fortune 
 in some other and easier way as well." He left off ploughing, put 
 by the plough, and went home. " Dear little father," he says, " I 
 don't like this husbandry business ; I had rather apprentice myself 
 to a gardener." His papa said: " What's up with thee, Vanek? Art 
 thou out of thy wits?" But then he reflected, and said: " Nu ! 
 since thou wishest it, go in Heaven's name ! thy brother will have 
 this cottage after me." Vanek lost the cottage ; but he cared nothing 
 for that ; he went and apprenticed himself to the royal gardener. 
 The gardener did not show him much ; on the other hand, Vanek> 
 just through this, got to understand more. Soon after he did not 
 even obey the gardener when he told him to do anything, and did 
 everything his own way. At first the gardener was cross ; but then, 
 seeing that everything succeeded better so, he was contented. " I see 
 that thou hast more reason than I have," he said, and henceforth left 
 Vanek to garden exactly as he pleased. In no long time Vanek had 
 improved the garden so much that the king had great delight in it, 
 and often took a walk in it with his royal lady and his only daughter. 
 This daughter of the king was a very beautiful maiden, but from her 
 twelfth year she had ceased to speak ; no one had ever heard a single 
 word from her. The king was greatly vexed on that account, and 
 had it proclaimed, who causes her to speak again shall be her 
 husband. And so many young kings, princes, and other great lords 
 announced themselves one after the other, but as they came so they 
 
Reason and Fortune. 31 
 
 ■went away again ; none of them succeeded in causing her to speak. 
 "And why should not I try my fortune, too?" thought Vanek. 
 " Who knows whether I may not succeed in bringing her to answer 
 when I ask a question ? " And so he at once mentioned the matter 
 to the king, and the king and his counsellors led him into the room 
 where his daughter lived. This daughter had a pretty little dog and 
 was very fond of it, because it was very intelligent ; it understood 
 everything she wanted to have. When Vanek and the king and 
 those counsellors stepped into her room, Vanek pretended not even 
 to see the royal maiden, but turned to that little dog and says : " I 
 have heard, doggy, that thou art very intelligent, and I am come to 
 thee for advice. We were three boon companions : one a carver, 
 the other a tailor, and myself. Once we went through a wood and 
 had to pass the night in it. In order that we might be safe from the 
 wolves we made a iire and agreed to watch in turn. First the 
 carver watched, and to shorten the time he took a block of wood and 
 carved out of it a fine maiden. When it was finished he woke the 
 tailor that he might watch his turn. The tailor, seeing the wooden 
 maiden, asked what it meant. ' As thou seest,' said the carver, 
 ' time hung heavily, and I carved a dummy out of a block of wood ; 
 if thou also findest the time hang heavily, thou canst dress her.' 
 The tailor immediately drew forth his scissors, needle and thread, 
 cut out a suit, and set himself to sew ; and when the suit was ready, 
 he dressed dummy in it. After this he summoned me to go and 
 watch. And I also ask what is up with him. ' As thou seest,' said, 
 the tailor, ' time passed slowly with the carver, and he carved a 
 dummy out of a log, and I, finding time pass slowly, clothed her, 
 and if thou shalt find time pass slowly, thou canst teach her to 
 speak.' And so I really did teach her to speak by morning. But in 
 the morning when my comrade awoke, each one wished to have 
 dame dummy. The carver says : ' 'Twas I made her.' The tailor : 
 ' 'Twas I clothed her.' And I also maintained my right to her. 
 Tell me, then, doggy, to which of us does that dummy maiden 
 belong ? " Doggy was silent ; but instead of the dog, the king's 
 daughter rephed : "To whom should she belong but to thee? 
 What is there in a carven dummy without life ? What in a 
 tailor-made suit of clothes without speech? Thou gavest her the 
 best gift, life and speech, and therefore she belongs of right to 
 thee." "Thou hast thyself given judgment about thyself," said 
 Vanek. " Even to thee have I restored speech and new life, and 
 
32 Meason and fortune. 
 
 therefore thou too belongest to me of right." Then said a certain 
 
 one of the counsellors of the king : " His royal highness will give 
 
 thee a sufficient reward for having succeeded in unloosing his 
 
 daughter's tongue ; but thou canst not marry her thyself, thou art of 
 
 vulgar birth." But Vanek would not hear of any other reward, and 
 
 said: "The king promised without reservation: he who causes his 
 
 daughter to speak again shall be her husband. The king's word is 
 
 law, and if the king wishes others to keep his laws, he must himself 
 
 be the first to respect them. And therefore the king must give me 
 
 his daughter." " Guards ! bind him," exclaimed that counsellor; 
 
 "he who says that the king must do anything, outrages his royal 
 
 majesty, and is worthy of death. Your royal highness, please 
 
 command that this criminal be executed by the sword." And the 
 
 king said : " Let him be executed by the sword." And so then and 
 
 there they bound Vanek, and led him to the scaffold. When they 
 
 came to the place of execution, Fortune was already waiting for 
 
 them there, and said privily to Eeason : " See how this man has 
 
 fared with thee. Now it has come to this : he has to lose his head ! 
 
 Eetire, that I may enter in thy place ! " As soon as Fortune entered 
 
 into Vanek, the executioner's sword snapped off close at the hilt, as 
 
 though someone had cut it in two with scissors ; and before they had 
 
 brought him another, forth from the city on horseback rode a 
 
 trumpeter as if he were winged, trumpeted gaily and waved a white 
 
 pennon, and after him drove the king's coachman to fetch Vanek. 
 
 And this was how it was. That king's daughter had said afterwards 
 
 to her father at home, that, after all, Vanek had only spoken the 
 
 simple truth, and the king's word ought not to be broken, and that 
 
 if Vanek was of vulgar birth the king could easily make him a prince. 
 
 And the king said : " Thou art right ; let him be a prince ! " And 
 
 so they sent the royal coachman at once for Vanek, and instead of 
 
 him was executed that counsellor who had prompted the king against 
 
 Vanek. And when after this, Vanek and that royal daughter drove 
 
 away together from the wedding, Eeason happened somehow to be 
 
 on the road, and seeing that he would have to meet Fortune, he bent 
 
 his head and fled aside, as if he had been well splashed. And ever 
 
 since then they say Eeason, whenever he has to meet with Fortune, 
 
 gives him a wide berth. 
 
 Note.— In the original there is a play upon the word "maiden" which cannot 
 be given in the translation. Parma means a virgin, as for instance the Virgin 
 Mary, and also a wooden doll or dummy. ShtjesH, again, means rather more 
 than good luck or fortune, as it also includes the notion of happiness. 
 
George and His Goat. 
 
 [Bohemian : in the Domaslik dialect. The dialect of this story difiers from pure 
 Czech chiefly in placing a v before on (he), and also before words com- 
 pounded of od and o, " from " and "about." There is further a misuse of the 
 aspirate : ale, ahy, kde and kdy becoming hale, haly, hde, lidy.] 
 
 Theee was a king and he had a daughter, and no one could make 
 her laugh ; she was always gloomy. So this king said he would give 
 her to him who made her laugh. So there was a shepherd, and he 
 had a son, and they called him George. He said : " Little father ! 
 I will also go and see if I can make her laugh. I do not ask any- 
 thing of you except this nanny-goat." And his father said : " Well, 
 go then." This goat was of such a kind that when she wished, she 
 held every one fast, and the man must remain stuck to her. 
 
 So he took this nanny-goat and went, and he met a certain one, 
 he had his foot on his shoulder. George said : " Why, prythee, hast 
 thou thy foot on thy shoulder ? " And he : "I, when I lift it off, so 
 I make a skip of a hundred miles." " And where goest thou ?" "I 
 go into service if any one will take me." " Soh ! come with me." 
 
 They went on, and again met a certain one, he had a small plank 
 across his eyes. " Thou, prythee, why hast thou that plank across 
 thy eyes ? " And he : " I, if I raise that plank, so I see an hundred 
 miles." "And where goest thou?" " I go into service if thou 
 wouldst take me." " Very well, I will take thee. Come thou, too, 
 with me." 
 
 They went a piece of the way and met a third comrade ; he held 
 a bottle under his arm, and held his thumb in it instead of a cork. 
 " Why dost thou hold thy thumb so — eh ? " " When I uncork it I 
 send a jet a hundred miles, and souse everything I please. If thou 
 wilt take me too, into thy service, that can be our fortune and thine 
 likewise." And George replied : "Well, then, come." 
 
 After that they went into that city where that king was, and 
 piled up ribbands on their goat. And they came to an ale-house, 
 and the man there had been told beforehand, when such and such 
 people came that he was to give them what they wanted to eat and 
 drink, and that the king would pay him everything. So they led 
 
34 George and His Goat. 
 
 this goat out, all over ribbands, and put it into the bar under charge 
 of the barman, and he put it into the alcove vsrhere his daughters lay. 
 Now this ale-house fellow had three daughters, and they were not 
 yet asleep. Then that Manka (Maggie) said : " Oh ! if I could have 
 some ribbands like those, too ! I will go and take some off that goat." 
 The second, Doodle (Dolly), says : " Don't go, he will find out next 
 morning." But she went all the same. And when a long time 
 passed and Manka came not, the third one, that Kate, said : "I will 
 go there for her." So that Doodle went and slapped Manka on the 
 back : " Do come and leave it ! " And there she was, and couldn't 
 tear herself away from it. So that Kate says : " Do come away ; 
 don't untie them all." She went and shook Doodle by the petticoat, 
 and now she too couldn't get away, but had to remain fast to her. 
 
 So in the morning that George got up early and went for that 
 nanny-goat and led them all out : Kate, Doodle, and Manka. The 
 barman was still asleep. They went through the village, and there 
 was the mayor peeping out of the window. " Oh ! fie, Katey, what's 
 this ? what's this ? " He went and seized her by the hand and tried 
 to pull her away, and he also remained stuck fast to her. After this 
 a herdsman drove cows by the lane, and the bull in passing rubbed 
 against them, got fixed, and George led him along with the rest. 
 
 So after this they came before the castle, and there came out the 
 servants, and when they saw such a thing they went and said to that 
 king: "Oh! sir, there's such a strange sight to see; we've already 
 had all sorts of masquers here, but never anything like this." So 
 that king at once brought out his daughter into the square, and she 
 was taken by surprise and laughed until the castle shook again. 
 
 So now they asked who it was. He replies: "That it is the 
 shepherd's son, and that they call him George." And they : " That 
 it cannot be ; that he is of vulgar birth, that they cannot give him 
 that daughter, but that he must do them something else." He says : 
 " What ? " And they : " Look, yonder is a well, a hundred miles 
 off; if within a minute he shall bring that jar full of water, then he 
 shall get the girl." So he, that George, says to him who has his foot 
 on his shoulder : " Thou saidst, if thou wert to take that foot off thy 
 shoulder that thou wouldst skip a hundred miles." And he : " Oh ! 
 as to that, I can easily do it." Put hfs foot down, gave a skip, and 
 was there. But after this it already wanted a very little of the time 
 for him to have returned. So George said to that second fellow : 
 " Thou saidst, if thou wert to lift that small plank off thy eyes, 
 
George and His Goat. 35 
 
 that thou wouldst see a hundred miles; look and see what he is 
 doing there." " Oh ! master, he's lying down there. Oh ! Jemini ! 
 why he's gone to sleep there." " That will be the deuce," says 
 George, " time will be up directly. Thou, number three, thou saidst 
 that when thou didst uncork that thumb of thine, thou couldst 
 throw a jet a hundred miles ; quick, throw a jet there, that he may 
 get up. And thou, take a glance and see if he's yet stirring there or 
 not ? " " Oh ! master, now he's getting up, now he's wiping himself 
 — now he's drawing water." After this he gave a skip, and was 
 already back again, and just in time. 
 
 So after this they said that he must show them yet an'other trick; 
 that in yonder rocks there was such and such a wild beast, a unicorn, 
 and that it destroyed many of their people ; if he would clear it out 
 of the wood, that then he should get the girl. So he took his men, 
 and into that wood they went. So they came to such and such a 
 pine tree. So there were the three wild beasts, and as many lairs 
 rubbed bare by their lying in them. Two of these animals did 
 nothing, but that third one devoured people. So they collected 
 stones and those pine cones in their lap and crept up into the tree • 
 and when those three beasts laid themselves down, they let drop a 
 stone on to that one of the animals that was an unicorn. And he, 
 that beast, cried to the second one : " Do be quiet, don't push me ! " 
 And the other says : " I am doing nothing to thee." And again they 
 let drop a stone from above on to that unicorn. " Do be quiet ! now 
 thou hast done it to me a third time." " When I have done nothing 
 to thee ! " So they seized one another and fought together. And 
 that unicorn tried to run the other beast through ; but he skipped 
 aside, and as the unicorn rushed savagely at him, it drove its horn 
 into the tree and could not at once draw it out again. So the men 
 jumped down at once from the pine tree, and those two animals took 
 to flight, and they cut off the head of the third one — that unicorn, put 
 the head on their shoulders, and carried it to the castle. 
 
 Then those in the castle saw that George had again accomplished 
 his task. " What, prythee, shall we do ? Perhaps we must give him 
 that girl after all ? " " No, master ! " said that one of the servants, 
 " it cannot be, when he is of vulgar birth, to think of his getting a 
 king's daughter such as yours. But we must clear him out of the 
 world." So he, that king, said he should keep the word that he had 
 spoken. So there was there a female lodger, she said to him : " Oh ! 
 George, to-day it will go ill with thee, they want to clear thee out of 
 
36 George and His Goat. 
 
 the world." So he says : " Oh ! I'm not frightened; once, when I 
 was only twelve years old, I killed twelve of them at a blow.'' But 
 it was thus when his mamma baked him ember cakes, twelve flies 
 setttled on them, and he killed them at a single blow. 
 
 So they, when they heard it, said : " There is nothing for it but 
 to shoot him." So, after this, they prepared the soldiers, and told 
 them they must make a parade in his honour, for he was going to be 
 married in the square. So they led him out there, and the soldiers 
 were just going to let fly at him. And he, that George, said to the 
 man who used his thumb instead of a cork : " Thou saidst, if thou 
 wert to uncork that thumb of thine, that thou couldst souse every- 
 thing ; quick, uncork ! " So he uncorked his thumb and soused them 
 all until they were all blind, and no one saw at all. 
 
 So at last, when they saw there was nothing for it, they told him 
 to come and they would give him that girl. So after this they gave 
 him fine royal robes, and there was a wedding. And I, too, was at 
 that wedding ; they had music there, sang, ate and drank ; there 
 were baskets full of meat, pound-cake, and everything, and casks full" 
 of vodka. I went to-day and got there yesterday ; I found an egg 
 among the tree roots, broke it on somebody's head, and made him 
 bald, and bald he has been ever since. 
 
George and His Goat. 37 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 This story occurs In Venetian Slav folk-lore as the Basket of Flowers. We have 
 already shewn reason to believe that the Venetian folk-lore stories have travelled 
 from East-Central Europe south, and not from Venice north. The story in its 
 Venetian dress confirms this hypothesis. We shall see later on that George's 
 Goat is Oapricornus. With its transformation into a basket, and the disappear- 
 ance of the three mates corresponding to Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes, as well as 
 the bull and the mayor, the story almost entirely loses its character of an annual 
 myth. Like the transformation of the pike in the Polish story .into an eel in the 
 Venetian one, and of the horse punishment of Slav stories into the punishment of 
 being burnt on a tar barrel in the Venetian ones, the transformation of Oapri- 
 cornus into a basket of flowers is just what we might expect if the story was 
 transplanted from rigorous Central Europe to the lagoons of Venice, and its 
 character of an annual myth became thus obliterated. The loss of the three 
 mates and the transformation of the mayor and the bull into other characters is 
 particularly significant, for, as will be shewn further on (see supplementary essay), 
 Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes are the three signs of the Zodiac, Sagittarius, 
 Aquarius, and Pisces, and the mayor and the bull in all probability the sun and 
 Taurus. In the Venetian variant, instead of George we have an old man, instead 
 of the mayor a hell-ringer with a bunch of grapes, instead of the hull a baker's 
 boy, a wayfarer and a flock of geese. But the transformation of the goat into a 
 basket is the most instructive of all, for it tells us a lot of things, and shows in 
 actual operation the mechanism, partly linguistic, partly local, partly racial, by 
 which the characters of myths and fairy-stories change their form with Protean 
 facility. If there is one characteristic more marked than another in the Venetian 
 dialect, and therefore in the speech organs of the race that speaks it at present, 
 it is the softening of the harsh s into the soft «. Now there are two words in 
 Czech — hoza, a she-goat, and Uosh, a basket. The former word, it might be 
 remarked in parenthesis, gives us the famous Slav Cossacks, properly goat-hords. 
 Supposing a people in Venice and the neighbouring lagoons who spoke, or at all 
 events understood Slavonic, and the absence of that mountain animal, the goat, 
 among swamps and rushes, the two words Uoza and Uosh, being both pronounced 
 with the terminal consonant as soft z, would easily be confused and interchanged ; 
 and the basket, being more appropriate to that rushy region than the goat, would 
 soon take its place. We may thus infer, with some probability, that the story was 
 transplanted to Venice, or at all events to the adjacent fens, at a period when the 
 people inhabiting Venice or those fens still spoke Slavonic. That such a period 
 existed in the perhaps not very distant past is also rendered highly probable from 
 the fact that all the principal place-names of the region, and indeed those of a 
 great part of the province of Venetia, can be perfectly accounted for as Latinized 
 Slav words. 
 
The Three Citrons. 
 
 [Slovenian.] 
 
 Theeb was once an old king, and this king had an only son. This 
 son he once called before him and addressed him thus : " My son ! 
 thou seest that my head is now white with age ; to-day or to-morrow 
 I shall close my eyes, and yet I know not in what state I shall leave 
 thee. "Wed thee, my son ! let me bless thee, just as thou closest my 
 eyes in death." The son answered nothing, only he remained very 
 pensive ; he would have been heartily glad to fulfil his father's wish, 
 but there was no girl for whom his heart could feel affection. 
 
 Once as he sat in the garden, and was just thinking what he 
 ought to do, where she came, there she came, before him stood an 
 old woman. " Go to the hill of glass, gather the three citrons, and 
 thou shalt have a wife that shall be dear to thy heart," she said, 
 and as she had appeared so she vanished. Like a bright ray of light 
 these words streamed through the soul of the prince. That instant 
 he determined, come what might, to discover the hill of glass and to 
 gather the three citrons. He disclosed his intention to his father, 
 and his father gave him a horse for the journey, a suit of armour and 
 his own paternal benediction. 
 
 Through dense mountains, over lonely plains, wandered our 
 prince, a long, very long, time ; but of the hill of glass and the three 
 citrons no hint or rumour. Once, quite tired out by the long journey, 
 he threw himself down under a broad linden in the cool. As he 
 threw himself on the ground, his father's sabre rang out, for he had 
 it at his side, and op the top of the broad linden, a dozen ravens 
 croaked. Scared by the clatter of the sabre they rose on the wing 
 and flew away through the air above the tali trees. " H'm ! it is 
 long since I have seen a living creature," said the prince to himself, 
 and leapt from the ground. " I will go in the direction the ravens 
 flew, perhaps some hope will shew itself." 
 
 On and on he went again for three whole days and nights, until 
 at last a lofty tower appeared in the distance. "Praised be God! 
 at all events I shall once more get among human beings," he ex- 
 claimed joyfully, and stepped forward. 
 
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The Three Citrons. 39 
 
 The castle was of pure lead ; round it fluttered the twelve ravens, 
 and before it stood an old woman leaning upon a long leaden staff. 
 " Eh ! my son, where art thou going by this road? Why, here not 
 one little bird, not one little butterfly is to be heard, much less any 
 little man of earth," said Jezibaba to the prince. " Fly ! if thy life 
 be dear to thee ; for when my son comes he will eat thee." " Ah t 
 not so, aged mother, not so ! " entreated the prince. " "Why, I have 
 come to you for advice, to see if you could tell me anything about 
 the hill of glass and the three citrons." " About the hill of glass I 
 have never heard, but wait until my son comes home, perhaps he 
 will be able to tell you something. Why, I will stow thee away 
 somewhere safely at once ; thou shalt hide thyself under the broom, 
 and thou shalt stay there so long on the watch as I do not summon 
 you." 
 
 The mountains re-bellowed, the castle shook again, and Jezibaba 
 whispered to the prince that it was her son coming. " Fuj ! Fuj ! 
 what a smell of man's flesh ; I am going to eat it," roared Jezibaba's 
 son, while still at the door, and thumped on the ground with a great 
 club of lead, so that the whole castle shook again. " Ach ! not so, 
 my son, not so ! " said Jezibaba coaxingly ; " Why, it is a beautiful 
 youth who has come, and wishes to ask your advice about some- 
 thing." "Oh !'well, if he wishes to ask my advice, let him come 
 here." "Faith, he shall come, my son, but only if thou dost promise 
 me that thou wilt not do anything to him." " Well, I will not do 
 anything to him, only let him come ! " 
 
 The prince, under the broom, was shaking like an aspen, for he 
 saw through the rods before him a giant to whose knees he scarcely 
 reached. Happily he had now his life guaranteed, when Jezibaba 
 bade him come out from under the broom. " Well, thou cockchafer, 
 what art thou frightened of ? " roared the ogre ; " Whence art thou? 
 What wouldst thou?" "Oh! as to what I want," replied the 
 prince, " I have been wandering ever so long in these mountains and 
 cannot find what I am looking for, and so I have come to thee to 
 see if thou mightest not be able to tell me something about the hill 
 of glass and the three citrons." Jezibaba's son wrinkled his brow, 
 and after a little time said in a quieter voice : " About the hill of 
 glass, nothing is to be heard here ; but hie away to my brother of 
 the castle of silver, perhaps he will be able to tell thee something. 
 " But stay, I will not let thee go away empty ; mother, bring here the 
 dumplings." Old Jezibaba placed a large dish on the table, and her 
 
40 The Three Citrons. 
 
 gigantic son sat down to it. " Come and eat," he roared to the 
 prince. The prince took the first dumpling and bit it, but two of his 
 teeth snapped, for it was a dumpling of lead. " Nu ! why dost thou 
 not eat? Perhaps it does not please thee?" asked Jezibaba's son. 
 " Oh, yes ! indeed, they are excellent, but I am not hungry just 
 now." " "Well, if thou art not hungry just now, put it in thy pocket 
 and eat it on the road." The poor young prince, must, willy-nilly, 
 put the leaden dumplings into his pocket. After this he took himself 
 off, and went forward. 
 
 On and on he went for three whole days and nights, and the 
 further he went the more he wandered astray in the thick dark 
 mountains. Before him was a desert, behind him a desert ; not a 
 single living creature was to be seen. Quite wearied out by the long 
 journey he flung himself on the groiind. The sound of the silver 
 sabre spread far and wide. Above him croaked four-and-twenty 
 ravens, scared by the clatter of the sabre, and rising on the wing, 
 flew into the air. " A lucky sign ! " cried the prince, " I will go in 
 the direction in which the ravens have flown." 
 
 So he went in that direction, on and on, as far as his feet would 
 carry him, until all at once a tall castle appeared. He was still far 
 from the castle, and already its walls flashed brightly, for this castle 
 was of pure silver. Before the castle stood a hump-backed old 
 woman leaning on a long silver staff, and it was Jezibaba. " Eh 1 
 my son, whither wouldst thou this way ? Here there is not even a 
 little bird, not even a little butterfly, much less any little human 
 being," exclaimed Jezibaba to the prince. " As thy life is dear to 
 thee, fly, for when my son comes he will eat thee." "Ah! old 
 mother, he'll scarcely eat me, I fancy ; why, I have not yet saluted 
 him from his brother of the castle of lead." " Oh ! if thou hast not 
 yet saluted from the castle of lead, then go into the room, my son, 
 and tell me what thou art looking for ? " " Hey ! old mother ! what 
 am I looking for? Now, for ever so long I have been looking for 
 the hill of glass and the three citrons, and I cannot find them ; and 
 so I am come here to ask if you could not tell me something about 
 them." " About the hill of glass I know nothing ; but stay until my 
 son comes, perhaps he will be able to tell you something. Hide 
 under the bed, and do not betray thy presence unless I summon 
 thee." 
 
 The mountains re-bellowed with a voice of a hundredfold com- 
 pass, and the castle shook again, and the prince now knew that it 
 
The Three Citrons. 41 
 
 was Jezibaba's son coming home. " Fuj ! Fuj I what a smell of 
 man's flesh, I am come to eat it ! " roared the gigantic fellow, while 
 yet at the door, and thumped with a silver club on the ground, so 
 that the whole castle shook again. " Ah ! not so, not so, my son ; 
 why, it is a beautiful youth has come and brought thee salutations 
 from thy brother of the castle of lead." " Oh ! if he has been at my 
 brother's, and if he has done nothing to him, don't let him be the 
 least afraid of me ; let him come out." The prince jumped out from 
 under the bed and stood beside him, and looked beside him as if he 
 had posted himself under a very tall pine tree. " Well, thou midget, 
 wert thou really at my brother's? " " Yes, that I have been ; and 
 here I have some of the dumplings left which he gave me for the 
 journey." " Well, I believe thee ; so now tell me, what wouldst 
 thou?" " Achl what would I? I have come to ask thee if thou 
 couldst perhaps tell me something about the hill of glass and about 
 the three citrons." " H'm ! I have heard something about it all, 
 but I cannot point thee out the way. Meanwhile, knowest thou 
 what? Go to my brother at the castle of gold — he will direct thee. 
 But, stay ! I will not let thee go empty ; mother, quick, the dump- 
 lings ! " Jezibaba brought the dumplings upon a great silver dish 
 and placed them on the table. " There ! eat," exclaimed her son. 
 The prince, perceiving that the dumplings were of silver, said he was' 
 not hungry, but would take some on the journey, if he might. 
 " Take as many as thou wishest, and salute my brother and aunt." 
 The prince pocketed the dumplings, politely expressed his thanks, 
 and continued his journey. 
 
 Three days had already elapsed since he had quitted the castle 
 of silver, and had wandered continuously through thick mountains, 
 not the least knowing whither he ought to go, whether this way or 
 that. Completely tired out he threw himself under a broad beech 
 tree to take breath a bit. His silver sabre rang out upon the ground, 
 and its voice was carried far and wide. " Kr, kr, kr," croaked above 
 the wayfarer a flock of ravens, scared by the clatter of the sabre, 
 and flew into the air. " Praised be God ! the golden castle will not 
 be far off now ! " exclaimed the prince, and, relieved and comforted, 
 continued his journey according as the ravens showed him the way. 
 Scarcely had he emerged from the valley on to the hillside, when he 
 saw a beautiful broad meadow ; in the middle of the meadow stood 
 a castle of gold. It was as though he had been looking at the sunrise, 
 and before the gate of this castle stood old hump-backed Jezibaba 
 
42 The Tlwee Citrons. 
 
 leaning upon a staff of gold. " Eh ! my son, what art thou looking 
 for ? " she called out to the prince. " Why, here there is not a single 
 little bird, not a single little butterfly to be heard or seen, much less 
 any poor little human being. Ah 1 as thou lovest thy life, be off 
 with thee ! for when my son comes he will eat thee." " Hoj ! old 
 mother, he'll scarcely eat me, I fancy. Why, I have not saluted 
 him yet from his brother of the castle of silver." " Oh, well, if thou 
 hast not saluted yet from the castle of silver, then come into the 
 hall and tell me what has led thee to us." " Oh ! old mother ! what 
 has led me hither ? Ever so long I have been wandering through 
 these mountains and cannot discover where the hill of glass is and 
 the three citrons ; so they directed me to you, as perhaps you might 
 be able to tell me something about them." " Where is the hill of 
 glass ? that I cannot tell thee myself ; but wait until my son comes, 
 he will counsel thee what to do and whither to go. Hide under the 
 table, and stay there so long as I do not summon thee." 
 
 The mountains re-bellowed, the castle shook again, and Jezi- 
 baba's son entered the hall. "Fuj ! Fuj ! there's a smell of man's 
 flesh, I am come to eat it ! " he roared, while yet at the door, and 
 thumped with a golden mace upon the ground, so that the whole 
 castle quivered. " Softly, softly, my son," said Jezibaba coaxingly, 
 " why, it is a beautiful youth that has come and has brought thee 
 salutations from thy brother of the castle of silver ; if thou wilt do 
 nothing to him, I will summon him at once." " Well, if my brother 
 has done nothing to him, I will do nothing to him either." The 
 prince dragged himself out from under the table and stood beside the 
 other, and looked, compared with him, as if he had posted himself 
 beside some lofty tower ; and he shewed him the silver dumplings in 
 proof of his really having been at the castle of silver. " Well, tell 
 me, midget, what wouldst thou? " thundered the tremendous fellow. 
 " If I can advise thee I will advise thee, never fear ! " Then the 
 prince recounted to him all his own long journeyings, and begged 
 him to advise him what way to go to get to the hill of glass, and 
 what he ought to do to obtain the three citrons. " Seest thou that 
 globe which blackens yonder ? " he said, pointing it out to him with 
 his golden mace ; " that is the hill of glass ; on its summit stands a 
 tree, and on that tree hang three citrons which scent the air all 
 round for seven miles. Thou shalt climb on to that hill of glass, 
 kneel under the tree and stretch out thy hands ; if the citrons are 
 destined for thee they will fall of their own accord into thy hands ; 
 
The Three Citrons. 43 
 
 but if they are not destined for thee, thou wilt not tear them off, do 
 what thou ■wilt. "When thou art returning, and art hungry or thirsty, 
 cut one of these citrons in two, and thou shalt eat and drink thy fill. 
 And now go ! and God be with thee ! But stay, I will not let thee 
 go away hungry ; mother ! here with those dumplings 1 " Then old 
 Jezibaba placed a large golden dish on the table. " There, eat ! " 
 says her son to the prince, " and if thou art not hungry now, put 
 them in thy pocket and eat on the road." The prince was not 
 hungry, but put them in his pocket, observing that he would eat 
 them on the road. After this he thanked the giant finely for his 
 hospitality and advice, and continued his journey. 
 
 Briskly he stepped out from hill to valley, from valley to hill 
 again, and never halted until under that very same hill of glass. 
 Here he halted as if turned to stone. The hill was high and smooth, 
 there were no excrescences of any sort upon it. On the summit 
 waved and trembled the branches of the miraculous tree, and on the 
 tree the three citrons swung to and fro, and smelt so strong that 
 the young prince almost swooned. " Honour and praise to God ! 
 What will be, will be. Now I am once here, I can at least know my 
 fate ! " he thought to himself, and tried to scramble up by clawing 
 at the smooth glass ; but scarce had he ascended a few fathoms, 
 when he missed his footing and down he fell head over heels from 
 the top to the bottom, so that he had not a notion where he was nor 
 what he was, save when he found himself on the ground. In his 
 vexation he begins to toss away the dumplings, thinking that perhaps 
 their weight impeded him. He flings away the first, and lo ! the 
 dumpling sticks to the hill of glass ; he throws away a second and a 
 third, and sees before him three steps on which he could stand 
 without danger. The prince was quite enchanted. He flung the 
 dumplings before him, and everywhere steps formed out of them for 
 him. First he flung out the leaden dumplings, then the silver ones, 
 and finally the golden ones. Over the steps thus formed the prince 
 strode upward, ever higher and higher, until he had reached safe 
 and sound the very crest of the hill of glass. Here he knelt 
 under the tree and stretched out his hands, and lo ! three beauti- 
 ful citrons flew down into his outstretched palms of their own 
 accord. The tree crumbled away, the hill of glass flattened out 
 and vanished, and when the prince came to himself again, there 
 was neither tree nor hill — a bare plain stretched before him in all 
 directions. 
 
44 The Three Citrons. 
 
 And so he again turned his steps homeward, overjoyed. He 
 neither ate nor drank, nor saw nor heard, for very rapture. Not 
 until the third day did his interior begin to assert its claims. He 
 was so hungry that he would even have had recourse to the leaden 
 dumplings if his pocket had not been empty. There he was with 
 empty pockets, in a plain as bare as the palm of your hand ! So he 
 drew out of his pocket a citron and cut it in half ; but what did not 
 happen ? Out of the citron sprang a beautiful girl, naked as your 
 finger, bowed herself before him, and exclaimed : " What hast thou 
 prepared me to eat ? What hast thou prepared me to drink ? What 
 fine clothes hast thou prepared for me ? " "I have not, oh ! beautiful 
 creature, anything to give thee to eat, nor to drink, nor to array thy- 
 self in," said the prince, remorsefully; and the beautiful girl clapped 
 three times with her white hands before him, bowed, and vanished. 
 
 " Aha ! now I know then what sort of citrons they are ! Stay, 
 now I will not out them open on such slight pretexts," said the 
 prince. From the one he had cut in half he ate and drank his fill, 
 and thus refreshed, marched forward. But on the third day a 
 hunger three times worse than the previous hunger overpowered 
 him. " Praise and glory to the Lord God ! " he thought to himself, 
 " there is still one left ; I will divide it." And here he drew out the 
 second citron, cut it in half, and lo ! a still more beautiful girl than 
 the previous one stood before him, just as God had created her. 
 " What hast thou prepared me to eat ? What hast thou prepared 
 me to drink ? What fine raiment hast thou prepared for me ? " 
 " Nothing have I prepared, fair darling ! nothing," and the beautiful 
 girl clapped with her hands three times before him, bowed herself, 
 and vanished. 
 
 Now he had only one citron left. He takes it in his hand and 
 thus addresses it : "I will not cut thee in two, save in the house of 
 my father ! " And with this he hastened home. On the third day 
 he saw again, after a long time, his native city. He himself did not 
 the least know how he got there, save that all at once he found 
 himself in the fortress castle of his father. Tears of joy filled his 
 aged father's eyes. " Welcome, my son, welcome, a hundred tim.es 1 " 
 he exclaimed, and fell about his neck. The prince related how he 
 had fared on the journey ; and those at home, how yearningly they 
 had awaited his return. 
 
 The following day a grand feast was prepared ; the nobihty was 
 invited from all sides, the tables were loaded with the choicest wines 
 
The Three Citrons. 45 
 
 and viands in the world, and dresses were prepared, beautifully 
 embroidered with gold and begemmed with pearls. The nobility 
 gathered itself, sat down to table, and awaited what should happen. 
 Then the prince drew out the remaining citron, divided it in half, 
 and forth from the citron sprang a maiden, three times more beautiful 
 than the previous ones: ""What hast thou prepared me to eat? 
 "What hast thou prepared me to drink? "What fine raiment hast 
 thou prepared for- me ? " " Everything, my darling, everything have 
 I prepared," responded the prince, and offered her the beautiful 
 raiment. The beautiful girl arrayed herself in the beautiful raiment, 
 and all — how they exulted in her incomparable beauty. Not long 
 after this was the betrothing, and after the betrothals a splendid 
 wedding. 
 
 And 80 at last the desire of the old king was fulfilled ; he blessed 
 his son, handed the kingdom over to him, and not long after died. 
 
 The first thing that surprised the young king, after the death of 
 his father, was a war which neighbouring kings stirred up against 
 him. So now he must separate for the first time from his hardly- 
 won bride. That nothing might happen in his absence, he had a 
 throne erected in a garden above a lake, and this garden no one 
 could reach unless she let down a silken cord and drew him to her. 
 
 Not far from the royal fortress castle lived an old grandmother — 
 she, in fact, who had advised the young king about the three citrons. 
 She had for a servant a gipsy-girl, whom she sent to this lake for 
 water. "Well, she knew that the young king had got a wife, and it 
 vexed her exceedingly that he had not invited her to the wedding, 
 ay, that he had not even thanked her for her good advice. And so 
 once she sent this servant-girl to the lake for water. The servant 
 goes, dips her jug, and behold in the water a beautiful form. Under 
 the impression that it is her own reflection, she flings the vessel of 
 water on the ground, so that it breaks into a hundred fragments. 
 "As if thou wert worthy," she says, " that I, such a fine girl as I 
 am, should carry water for thee, thou old witch." And as she so spoke 
 she looked up, and lo ! it was not her own reflection that she had 
 seen in the water, but that of the beautiful queen. Abashed and 
 mortified, she collected the fragments and returned home. The old 
 grandmother, who already knew beforehand what had happened, 
 ran out with a new vessel to meet her, and inquired of her 
 servant, only for form's sake, what had occurred. The servant 
 related everything as it had happened. " Nu ! that's nothing," says 
 
46 The Three Citrons. 
 
 the old grandmother; "but knowest thou what? go once again to 
 the lake and request this lady to let down the silken cord and to 
 draw thee up that thou mayst comb her hair,; and when she falls 
 asleep, stab this pin into her head. After this, array thyself in her 
 robes and sit there as queen.'' 
 
 The gipsy-girl did not require much persuasion. She took the 
 pin, took the water vessel, and returned to the lake. She fills. her 
 vessel and looks round at the beautiful queen. " Ach ! how fine thou 
 art, oh ! how fine thou art ! " she exclaims, and peers maliciously 
 into her eyes. " Hej ! " she says, " but you would have been a 
 hundred times more beautiful if you had let me comb your hair; 
 verily, I would so have plaited your majesty's golden hair that your 
 royal husband would have been enchanted." And she so bewildered 
 the queen, so bewitched her, that at last she let down the silken 
 cord and drew the gipsy up to her. 
 
 The wicked gipsy combs the golden hair, handles and plaits 
 it, until the beautiful queen at last fairly dozes oif to sleep. Then 
 the gipsy draws out the pin and thrusts it into the head of the 
 sleeping queen. At that moment a beautiful white dove fluttered 
 down from the golden throne, and of the queen not a trace was left 
 except her beautiful robes, in which the gipsy hastily arrayed herself, 
 seated herself on the spot where the queen had sat before, and 
 looked at herself in the lake ; but in the lake no beautiful reflection 
 appeared, for the gipsy, even in royal robes, remained a gipsy still. 
 
 The young king happily prevailed over his enemy, and made 
 peace with him. Scarcely had he returned to the city, when he ran 
 to the garden to look for his beloved, in case anything had happened 
 to her. But who can describe his dismay and astonishment when, 
 instead of his beautiful queen, he beheld the wicked gipsy. " *Ah ! 
 my dear, my ever dearest, how changed I find thee ! " he sighed 
 deeply, and with streaming eyes. " Changed I am, my beloved, 
 changed I am, for my longing for thee has sapped my strength," 
 said the gipsy, and tried to fall upon his neck ; but the king turned 
 away from her and quitted the garden full of angry sorrow. 
 
 From that time he had no rest nor peace, he had neither day nor 
 night, but continually bemoaned the lost beauty of his queen, and 
 nothing could comfort him. 
 
 * There is here, as in many passages in this story, a play upon words which 
 cannot be given in the translation. The original runs thus : " Ach, moja mila 
 premila, ako si sa mi premjenila I " 
 
The Three Citrons. 47 
 
 Thus resentful and absent-minded, he once walked up and down 
 the garden. And would you believe it? there flies down to him 
 from a high tree a beautiful white dove, and alights upon his hand, 
 and looks with sorrowful eyes into his sorrowful and indignant ones. 
 " Ach ! my little dove! why art thou so gloomy? Has thy mate 
 grown ugly and repulsive to thee as my fair queen to me? " mur- 
 mured the young king as he stroked her fondly over the head and 
 neck. Only he detects on her head a sort of lump, blows the feathers 
 apart, and lo ! there is the head of a pin. Stirred by pity the king 
 draws out the pin ; at that moment the beautiful mournful dove 
 transforms itself into his beautiful wife. She related him everything, 
 how it happened to her and what, how the gipsy had hocussed her 
 and had thrust the pin into her head. The king immediately 
 ordered the gipsy and the old grandmother to be seized and burnt 
 without any sort of trial. 
 
 From that time nothing any more disturbed his happiness ; 
 neither the strength of his enemies nor the wickedness of malicious 
 people ; and so he lived with his beautiful queen in peace and love, 
 and ruled happily, and is ruling still if he is not yet dead. 
 
48 The Three Citrons. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 This story is one of the most complete of the West Slavonia annual solar or epic 
 fairy stories, and it will be worth while dwelling upon it a little. It is a form of 
 the Jack in the Bean Stalk legend, which occurs over the whole northern hemi- 
 sphere from Dogger Indians to England, and has travelled south in its original 
 form pretty near as far as the Siebenbiirger. Transmitted from there through 
 Bohemia to Slovenia, the branches the shepherd-hero carries with him from 
 plateau to plateau, became transformed into dumplings, either through a 
 deliberate play upon words or unconsciously — most likely the former. For 
 in Bohemian, hahize means a branch (a small one), whereas in Slovenian 
 the word halushki means dumplings, and the word konar a branch. Most likely 
 it was from Slovenia that the legend penetrated to Venice, where the whole of it 
 occurs in an abridged and more or less mutilated form under the name of The 
 Love of the Three Oranges. The second half of the story has also become another 
 Venetian legend called The Dead Man. There are also traces of it in a third called 
 El Vento (The Wind). In one or two particulars the Venetian and apparently 
 modernized forms of the legend supplement the Slovenian legend ; in fact, they 
 render it possible to lay down a more or less definite chronological plan of the 
 story, and this in its turn leads to some very remarkable conclusions. In the 
 Venetian story of The Love of the Three Oranges, the legend has adapted itself to 
 town life, and would hardly be recognizable as an annual solar legend were it not 
 for the Slovenian one. The castles have become three old men, who send the 
 hero on from one to the other when he asks them where he is to go for the love of 
 the three oranges. The third sends him to an enchanted Venetian palace, the 
 ground floor of which is full of cats, dogs, and witches. He duly pacifies them, 
 goes upstairs and finds the three oranges on the chimney-piece in the drawing 
 room. When the third beauty springs from the cleft orajjge (this happens on the 
 journey home), he leaves her in charge of a washerwoman whose swarthy 
 daughter takes the place of the gipsy in the Slovenian story. She sticks three 
 pins into the head of the heroine, and when they are drawn one by one from the 
 dove's head, first an arm and a leg, then the other arm and leg, and lastly the 
 whole person of the heroine re-emerges. It is particularly worth noticing that in 
 this story, and also in that of The Dead Man, the wicked character is represented 
 in one case as swarthy, in the other as a Moorish slave. This is a strong indication 
 that the two stories have travelled south, for it is a particularly northern idea, 
 and is in exact contradiction to the ideas of the Venetian common people as 
 expressed in their popular sayings, of which the following are a few : 
 
 Tera mora fa boni fruti 
 
 Tera bianco, tuti bruti. — (Matrimonial proverb.) 
 
 Oci gori (castagna) fa bel vardar 
 
 Oci mori fa inamorar 
 
 Oci da gata (chiari) fa ispirita 
 
 Xe niegio una mora co tuti i so ati 
 
 Che no una bianca co mile ducati. 
 
 [Those whose hair-front forms an M ( -■ — -^.- — ^ ) are good and to be trusted.] 
 
The Tlvree Citrons. 49 
 
 The beginning of the Venetian variant is as follows : A king has a son who 
 never laughs. To make him laugh the king digs a hole In his gardeii and fills it 
 with oil, thinking that the people who come to draw this oil may make his son 
 laugh. The device does not succeed until the oil gets very low, and an old 
 woman, in attempting to draw it, tumbles into the hole. Then the king's son 
 laughs, and the old woman threatens that he shall never be happy until he has 
 won the love of the three oranges. Now we know for certain, from internal 
 evidence and from comparison with other folk-lore stories, that the Slovenian 
 version of the Three Citrons begins at the end of November or the beginning of 
 December ; the Venetian variant proves beyond doubt that the goat In George and 
 his Goat is Caprioornus and not Aries. The prince, or princess, therefore, who 
 does not laugh. Is, as regards this idiosyncrasy, the gloomy month of November ; 
 Listopad, the fall of the leaf in Slav, the month of the Novene, the commem- 
 oration of the dead ; in Central Europe of small-pox and other epidemics, of 
 Morana, goddess of pestilence, of fog and gloom everywhere, and of expiring life. 
 Caprioornus the goat, which has the faculty of sticking things together, and which 
 makes nature laugh, is therefore the first winter frost with a bright clear sky, that 
 occurs at the beginning of December or the end of November. And how closely 
 the popular imagination has kept to fact in the allegory is shewn in the following. 
 In the Basket of Flowers (Venetian) the story finishes with the making of the 
 princess laugh, and she marries an old man, because the story finishes within the 
 limits of the old year. In George and his Goat, on the contrary, we have the 
 three boon companions — that is to say, besides Caprioornus, Aquarius, Sagittarius 
 and Pisces— in other words, the story is carried on to the eve of the new year, and 
 includes the triumph of spring. The princess, therefore, is imagined as ultimately 
 marrying the youthful hero. 
 
 The story of L'omo morto, The Dead Man (Venetian), is the second half of The 
 Three Citrons, modified by being told as a city story. 
 
 A poor sempstress runs away to find her fortune, and comes to an empty and 
 enchanted palace. Here she finds dinner prepared, and is served by mysterious 
 hands. She wanders over the palace, and in one room finds a dead man, with a 
 placard at his feet announcing that if any one will watch by him a year, three 
 months, and a week, he will come to life and marry her. She watches a year. 
 Towards the end of the three months she hears from the canal below the balcony 
 (the scene, observe, has contracted to Venice), voices from a gondola announcing 
 Moorish slaves for sale. Being weary of solitude she buys one. At the beginning 
 of the last week, she tells this Moorish girl to watch by the dead man while she 
 sleeps for three days. On the third day the Moorish girl is to awake her. Instead 
 of this, the slave lets her sleep on, and thus supplants her. The dead man wakes, 
 sees the slave-girl watching, embraces and marries her. Ultimately, as in The 
 Three Citrons, etc., but by a different chain of circumstances, the fraud is dis- 
 covered, and the slave punished by being burnt alive. The story forms, therefore, 
 one of the large family of stories that have sprouted from the last week's events 
 of the primitive annual solar or epic fairy story. The Lorely legend, the Lady of 
 Shalott, The Troll-hatten legend, The Miraculous Hair (Serbian) , The Death of 
 Dido (Virgil), Medea and the Golden Fleece, The Dead Man (Venetian), the second 
 half of The Three Citrons, the second half of The Love of the Three Oranges 
 (Venetian)— arrd no doubt there are many other variants and derivatives — have 
 
50 The Three Citrons. 
 
 all in common the following : (1) A shining* maiden seated aloft (except in the 
 Argonaut legend, where she has become a golden fleece) ; (2) a river, sea, or piece 
 of water below her ; (3) a dark, sinister, or adverse person, who comes from below, 
 meddles with her hair, and thus bewitches her— except in the Lorely legend where 
 the tables are turned. 
 
 This event occurs some time in March, when the triumph of the spring of life 
 has been definitely assured, and the sunlight has been rescued from its imprison- 
 ment during winter in the pitch-dark underworld. 
 
 The action of this kind of epilogue is comprised within exactly seven days, or 
 a week. Translating the allegory into general terms, it evidently is intended to 
 represent something of the following kind. The sunlight dancing on a rock, 
 Increasing every day in power, causes vapours to rise from the water as dusky 
 clouds when seen against the mountain and to interfere with the sun's rays (the 
 golden hair). Ultimately, they obscure the sun, forming above into white cumulus 
 clouds (transformation of the maiden into the dove). This process has continued 
 a week, and has been accompanied by frost (struggle of the young king with his 
 enemies). At the end of that time the frost ceases, but the sky still remains 
 overcast, until finally the warm teeming earth disperses the white cumulus clouds, 
 and the sun again leaps forth. 
 
 So specialized a phenomenon, particularly as to time (just seven days) seems 
 to point to the primitive legend having been framed in some very definite and 
 circumscribed locality, with an extremely cold upper stratum of atmosphere. 
 
 Let us now turn to the internal evidence of the Slovenian legend, which 
 indicates pretty clearly whereabouts that region lay. And first let us take stock, 
 so to say, of our acquired knowledge in the matter. First, from Father Know-All 
 and L'omo morto we know that the whole period of the primitive myth was one 
 year, three months, one week, and a brief indefinite period after it. 
 
 From Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes, and from George and his Goat, and other 
 stories, we know that the three months are the three winter months presided 
 over by Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces. 
 
 From George and his Goat, and from the Venetian form of The Three Citrons 
 {L'amore delle Tre Narancie), we know that these three months were sometimes 
 preluded by two or three of the last days of November, represented by George's 
 goat, Capricornus, symbolizing the first frosts after the misty weather of Novem- 
 ber. Now these three winter months count exactly ninety days, and this, be it 
 said parenthetically, explains the prevalence of this number, which is a noteworthy 
 feature of Siberian legends and others of high latitudes, but which disappears 
 almost completely as the legends drift south. It may be laid down as a rule that 
 the imagination of the people and of poets is much more matter-of-fact than 
 learned people give it credit for, and that to produce a myth of the prodigious 
 dimensions of the primitive annual solar fairy story we are here considering 
 required a prodigious natural phenomenon. When the popular fancy declares 
 that the sun disappeared into a black sea, that the hero wandered through pitch- 
 black forests, or that there was a kingdom where the sun never shone, and that to 
 make up for its absence the king of that country led a Sun-horse through it from 
 
 * In the TroU-hatten legend, she and her framework of embroidered sunbeams 
 have become a tailor sewing. 
 
The Three Citrons. 51 
 
 one end to the other, popular fancy means what it says ; it doesn't mean that there 
 came a bright spell of keen frosty winter weather. Let us, then, for a moment 
 assume that the myth was hatched within the Arctic circle, on a latitude where 
 the sun disappears below the horizon for a length of time equal to that occupied 
 by the prince from his first encounter with the ravens to his exodus from the 
 castle of silver. Let us also assume that the ravens represent days. Turn to the 
 plan of the story represented graphically, and it will be seen at a glance that it is 
 a period of 42 days of darkness — that is to say, 21 days from the 1st of December 
 to the shortest day, and 21 days from the shortest day to the departure from the 
 castle of silver. Now, when the prince disturbs the next flock of ravens after 
 three days' journeying, we should expect them to be 36 in number, but the story 
 expressly omits to give the number, and it is easy to see why it does so ; but it will 
 become more clear when we consider the interpretation of the citrons, which can 
 be explained by comparing them with the three hairs in Father Know-AU. The 
 general reason is that, having emerged from the definite period of darkness, the 
 period of light is, as regards the story, unlimited. We have, then, a period of three 
 days from the castle of silver to the castle of gold, a period when the sun was just 
 re-appearing after its long winter sleep. Now, there was a period between the 
 departure of the prince from his father's castle and his first encounter with the 
 ravens. If, in George and his Goat, Manka, Doodle and Kate represent three 
 days, as is likely enough, they would be the last three days of November, and the 
 law of symmetry also requires this number. We should then have just 48 days 
 from the prince's departure from home to his arrival at the castle of gold. Now in 
 Father Know-All the hero arrives at a precisely similar castle of gold, and the sun 
 returns to the castle as an old man. Therefore, when the giant returns to the 
 castle of gold he returns at sunset, and is, in fact, the sun returning to the under" 
 world. The three golden hairs are pulled out in a single night, the old man 
 wakes three times and then falls asleep again. Now this part of the allegory falls 
 in, to perfection, with the Arctic hypothesis, but cannot be satisfactorily explained 
 in any other way whatever. Obviously, at the beginning of the sun-period in high 
 Arctic latitudes, the sun rises for a very short time at first, and then sets again, 
 hardly, in fact, as yet really breaking the long winter night, in allegorical language, 
 the old man (Pushan, Bhaga (Czech, Buh, god) or Aditjp,), just waking and then 
 falling asleep again. Since, then, the gathering of the three citrons obviously 
 corresponds to the drawing out of the three hairs in Father Know-All, the period 
 of transit from the castle of gold to' the hill of glass may be neglected as probably 
 only occupying a few hours ; the three citrons will therefore represent three Arctic 
 winter days ; to the cutting of the first orange there are three days ; to the cutting 
 of the second, three days ; to the arrival home, three days — in all, twelve. From 
 the arrival home, comprising the betrothal, marriage, and death of the old king, we 
 may well imagine a month of thirty days to elapse, and this just accounts for the 
 90 days of the three winter months, thus : 
 
 Capricomus 31, Aquarius 31, Pisces 28 = 90. 
 
 Prince' s j ourney to castle of gold 48 -t- 3 (hill of glass) ,-f3-|-3-|-3-(-30 = 90. 
 
 The hill of glass ought not to occasion any difficulty, though learned people 
 have racked their brains over it to little purpose. The giant of the castle of gold 
 (recollect, it is sunset) points it out to the hero with these words : " Do you see 
 
52 The Three Citrons. 
 
 that globe there blackening in the distance ? " That is to say, it obviously means 
 the cap of darkness spreading over the eastern region of the sky after sunset. And 
 seeing that the next three days are but brief and fleeting apparitions, it maintains 
 its individuality throughout, and then, as the days go on lengthening, crumbles 
 away, vanishes and collapses altogether. The result, therefore, of this investigation 
 is as follows : (1) The primitive epic fairy story consisted of five parts — A prelude 
 of a year ; the three months of winter, and a week with a, few days appended. 
 (2) This fairy story was hatched on that degree of latitude within the Arctic circle 
 where the sun remains continuously below the horizon in winter for just six 
 weeks. (3) It was hatched in a region where some very special formations of 
 cloud cumulus occurred during one week, and, in fact, the first week in March ; 
 probably a region where exists a wide extent of lakes and perhaps rivers. 
 
 When we reflect upon this reconstituted Arctic fairy story, we find to our 
 amazement that it lies at the root of the three most celebrated and popular forms 
 of our European literature— the Epic poem, the Greek and modern drama, the 
 latter with its five acts being based upon the analysis of the Greek drama, and the 
 three-volume novel. As to the epic poem, the Iliad and Odyssey are the two perfect 
 types, and conform so completely to the annual solar myth as to have induced 
 competent writers to believe them to be altogether allegorical — myths of the dawn 
 or what not. All other modern European epics are merely imitations of them. 
 In the drama the first act is the annual prelude, the next three develop the action, 
 and the fifth gives the final solution — exactly as in the annual solar myth. Many 
 of Shakespeare's plays are indeed forms of fairy stories. We may cite for example 
 " All's well that ends well," closely dramatized from Boccaccio, whose story most 
 likely is hut an elaborated European form of Kalidasa's masterpiece, the Indian 
 drama, " Sakuntala, or the Lost Ring," itself obviously drawn 'from the annual 
 solar myth ; " The Taming of the Shrew," also dramatized, if I mistake not, from 
 Boccaccio, who was probably indebted to the Venetian popular fairy story, Casa 
 Cuccagna, itself a version of the Slovenian, " The Golden Spinneress." How appro- 
 priate, too, to lay the scene of the fairy drama, " A Midsummer Night's Dream," in 
 Athens in the time of Theseus, to indicate what our modern learned are only just 
 beginning to realize, that Greek myths. North and Central European fairy stories, 
 Jewish and Christian superstitions, and Hindoo creeds and mythologies are all but 
 parts and parcels of one a3d the same thing. The first half of " Oymbeline," again, 
 is taken from Boccaccio's story of the Merchant of Genova, and this has its 
 counterpart in various Venetian fairy stories, the closest being The Three Waiters 
 and the Golden Apple (El porno d'oroj, which in its turn is derived from the 
 Polish legend of the Shepherd's Pipe. In form, again, " King Lear " is a pure and 
 simple annual solar myth containing all the principal elements. But it is needless 
 to insist further upon what is so obvious. In the three-volume novel — we moderns 
 are such busy folk — the three winter months, the months of action of the Epic 
 fairy story, have alone gone to form the new literary variant. In Blackmore's 
 highly artistic " Lorna Doone," we have, however, an anti-climax, corresponding to 
 the seven days at the end of The Three Citrous. Probably the host of unhappy 
 scribblers who furnish our half-educated reading public with that feeble literary 
 pabulum, the three-volume novel, which is supposed to give a picture of modern 
 life, is quite unconscious that the optimistic fatality which compels it to marry off 
 its heroes and heroines at the end of the story is due to the permanent disappear- 
 
The Three, Citrons. 53 
 
 anoe of the sun duriog some weeks of wiuter within the Arctic circle, and its 
 re-appearance and subsequent marriage, in spring, with the re-awaking andglitteriug 
 forces of life and movement that have conjured it back once more. In what is 
 probably the greatest modern novel, however, Flaubert's Salambo, the solar myth 
 form has been scrupulously preserved, only that, being transplanted to the semi- 
 tropic soil of North Africa, the annual solar myth has melted into its microcosm 
 of a diurnal one, as, in fact, happens more or less wherever the original Arctic epic 
 fairy story drifts south. We have had instances, but not very marked ones, in the 
 case of the Venetian fairy stories. The similar case of the Vedic and Brahmin 
 mythology is still more to the point. When, the winter setting is removed, the 
 allegory in its original form ceases to appeal to the senses of the popular audience, 
 and little by little modifies itself to reflect more closely the new climatic conditions. 
 Cervantes' Don Quixote also partakes more or less of the nature of a solar myth, 
 and most likely, upon analysis, it would be found that many of our most famous 
 novels were modelled upon the same block, not perhaps always consciously, but 
 owing to the instinctive conservatism of art and literature and its loyal adherence 
 to and reliance upon the traditions of the craft. 
 
 In conclusion, it may be noted that, as I have already pointed out, two of the 
 most famous modern lyrics, Heine's Lorely and Tennyson's Lady of Shalott are 
 merely versified forms of the seven days' epilogue or anti-climax of the primitive 
 story of The Three Citrons. 
 
 If the reader looks at the graphic plan of the story, and reflects a little, he will 
 perceive that, whatever the state of the moon, when the sun disappeared on the 
 1st of December, the relative position of the castle of lead and the castle of silver 
 can always be imagined as in the story and diagram. In certain cases, however, 
 the distance between the castle of silver and that of gold would be increased. The 
 mysterious disappearance of the sun into the underworld for a considerable 
 period of time is sufficient to account for all the various Indian and Egyptian 
 solar myths as well as those of Central and Northern Europe and Asia ; but no 
 other natural phenomenon is in the least degree sufficient — eclipses are too rare 
 and intermittent, the diurnal disappearance too brief, frequent, and common- 
 place. When the primitive northern folk perceived that the eVjb or drain under- 
 ground of the life-forces in operation upon the surface of the ground, as it 
 intensified, had gradually affected the sky also, and finally pulled the golden 
 apple of the sun underground as well — for with their rude scientific knowledge 
 they naturally inverted cause and effect according to our scientific way of looking 
 at things — they must have turned to the pale image of the sun, the waxing and 
 waning moon, as a pledge that the disappearance of the vital forces of nature was 
 not permanent. No wonder if they associated it with those ebbing forces, and if 
 the juices of life, the Soma, the water of immortality, became indissolubly 
 connected with the waxing and waning, but yet, relatively speaking, constant 
 moon, so that at last they came to be looked upon as almost one and the same 
 thing. 
 
The Sun-Horse. 
 
 [Slovenian.] 
 
 Theue was once a region, gloomy and dark as the grave, for in it 
 the divine sun never cast its rays. But there was there a king, and 
 this king had a horse with a sun on its forehead, and this Sun-horse 
 of his he had led through the dark region, from one end to the other, 
 that the people might exist ; and from this horse light flashed in all 
 directions wherever they led him, as if it had been the loveliest day. 
 
 All at once this Sun-horse vanished.* Darkness worse than that 
 of night rolled over the whole region, and nothing could scare it 
 away. Unheard-of terror spread among the subjects, dreadful misery 
 began to weigh them down, for they could neither work at anything 
 nor fashion anything, and such confusion arose among them that 
 everything was turned upside down. And so, to prevent the disso- 
 lution of his kingdom and the general ruin, the king set out with all 
 his army to look for the Sun-horse. 
 
 Through dense darkness, here, there and everywhere, he at last 
 somehow groped his way to the boundary of his kingdom. Through 
 dense primeval mountains the divine light at last began to break 
 forth from the next region, as if at dawn sunrise were emerging from 
 densely packed masses of cloud. In these same mountains the king 
 and his army arrived at a poor and lonely cottage. He enters to 
 enquire where he is, what it all means, and so forth. By the table 
 sat a fellow diligently reading in a large open folio. When the king 
 bowed, he raised his eyes, returned the greeting, and got up. His 
 whole figure proclaimed that he was not a man like other men, but 
 that he was a seer. 
 
 " I have just been reading about thee," he said to the king ; 
 " how that thou goest in search of the Sun-horse. Harass not 
 thyself further, for thou wilt not get him ; but rely on me, I will 
 discover him for thee." " And i' faith right royally will I reward 
 thee, good man," responded the king. " I reck not of any recom- 
 pense ; return home, thou and thy army ; there there is need of thee ; 
 only leave me one servant." 
 
 * Skapati (it scappare) means lit. : to trickle away, drip or drain oS ; from kap, 
 a drop of water. 
 
The Sun-Horse. 55 
 
 The following day the seer, together with the servant, set off on 
 a journey. The journey was long, and led them far, for they had 
 already past the sixth region and had to go yet further, until, in the 
 seventh kingdom, they halted at the royal palace. In this seventh 
 kingdom three own brothers ruled, having three own sjsters as their 
 wives, whose mother was a witch. When they had halted before 
 the palace, the seer says to the servant : " Now, listen, stay thou 
 here and I will go in to spy out whether the kings are at home, for 
 with them is the Sun-horse, and the youngest king is wont to ride 
 it." So saying, he transformed himself into a green bird, and, flying 
 off to the window of the eldest queen, fluttered about it so long and 
 so kept pecking at it, until at last she opened it and let him into her 
 apartment. And when she had let him in, he sat upon her white 
 hand, and the queen was as delighted with him as if she had been a 
 little child. " Ach ! little rascal ! i' faith ! thou art a darling," she 
 kept repeating as she sported with him ; " if my husband were at 
 home, thou hadst delighted him, too ; but he comes not save in the 
 evening, he has gone away to inspect a third part of his district." 
 
 All at once the old witch dashed into the apartment, and glancing 
 at the bird shrieked to the girl : " Seize that accursed bird, or else 
 it will dirty thee." " Ach ! how could it dirty me when it is such a 
 darling, such a harmless little thing?" replied the girl; and the 
 witch : " A harmless darling? piece of nastiness ! here with it, that 
 I may wring its neck ; " and now she rushed after it. But the bird 
 quickly turned itself into a man, and away out of the door ; they did 
 not the least know what had become of him. 
 
 After this, he again turned himself into a green bird, and flew off 
 to the window of the second sister, and pecked and pecked at it 
 until at last she opened it for him. And when she had let him in 
 he flew on to her white hand and fluttered backwards and forwards 
 from hand to hand. " Ah ! little wretch, what a darling thou art ! " 
 exclaimed the queen smilingly; "faith, thou hadst delighted my 
 spouse when he left home ; but he cometh not until to-morrow 
 evening, he has gone to inspect two-third parts of his kingdom." 
 
 At this moment the witch dashed wildly into the apartment. 
 " Wring its neck ! wring its neck ! the accursed bird, or it will dirty 
 thee still ! " she shrieked the moment she caught sight of it. " Ach ! 
 how should it dirty me ? why, it's such a harmless, such a darling 
 little thing ! " replied the girl ; and the witch : " A harmless darling 
 piece of nastiness ; here with it, let me wring its neck," and she was 
 
56 ■ The Sun- Horse. 
 
 just on the point of clutching it. But the green bird, at that instant, 
 transformed itself into a man ; he ran out of the door, and as if from 
 a flat palm of the hand, disappeared, so that they did not the least 
 know what had become of him. 
 
 After awhile he again changed himself to a green bird, and flew 
 away to the window of the youngest queen, and fluttered about it 
 and pecked at it so long until at last the queen opened it. And when 
 she had let him in, he flew straight to her white hand, and so 
 ingratiated himself that she sported with him with a childlike 
 delight. " Ach ! little rascal ! indeed thou art a darling ! " says the 
 queen; "were my husband here, indeed thou hadst charmed him 
 too; but he will not come until the evening of the day after to- 
 morrow, for he is gone to inspect all three divisions of his kingdom." 
 
 At this moment the old witch ran into the apartment. " Wring 
 its neck ! wring its neck ! the accursed bird ! " she shrieked while 
 still at the door, " or it will dirty thee yet ! " " Ah ! mpther mine, 
 the idea of its dirtying me, the beautiful innocent little pet ! " replied 
 the daughter ; and the witch : " Beautiful, innocent piece of nasti- 
 ness ! here with it, let me wring its neck ! " But at that instant the 
 bird mad? itself into a man, and he off and away out of the door so 
 that they never saw him again. 
 
 Now the seer knew where the kings were, and when they were 
 coming home. He came to the servant and told him to hasten after 
 him out of the city. After this they went at a brisk pace, on and on, 
 until they came to a bridge, over which the kings must pass. Under 
 this bridge they lurked until the evening. 
 
 When the evening sun had sunk behind the mountains, there was 
 to be heard at the bridge the thud of a horse's hoofs. It was the 
 eldest king returning home. At the bridge the horse stumbled over 
 a beam which the seer had rolled across the bridge. " Eh ! who is 
 the scoundrel that has rolled this beam here?" shouted the king, 
 incensed. That instant the seer leapt from under the bridge and 
 stormed at the king for daring to abuse him as a scoundrel, and 
 seizing his sword hurried after him. The king, too, drew his sword 
 in defence ; but after fencing a short time, fell from his horse a 
 corpse. The seer lashed the dead king to his horse and then whipped 
 up the horse that it might carry its dead master home. After this 
 he retired under the bridge and again lurked there until evening. 
 
 When the next day inclined towards evening, the second king 
 arrived at the brijJge, and seeing the ground bespattered with blood, 
 
The Sun-Horse. 57 
 
 exclaimed : " They have killed someone here ! Who has ventured, in 
 my kingdom, to commit such a crime ? " At these words, the seer 
 leapt from under the bridge, and with drawn sword rushed at the 
 king, exclaiming : " How darest thou insult me ? Defend thyself as 
 best thou canst." The king fenced and fenced, but after a short 
 tussle expired under the sword of the seer. The seer again lashed 
 the dead body to the horse and whipped up the horse that it might 
 carry its dead master home. After this he retired under the bridge 
 and lurked there until the third evening. 
 
 The third evening, just at the set of the sun, sped the youngest 
 king on the Sun-horse, sped fast, for he had been delayed somewhat ; 
 but as a pool of blood crimsoned the ground before the bridge, he 
 halted, and observing it, exclaimed : " It has been some unheard-of 
 criminal who has dared to kill a man in my kingdom." Scarcely had 
 these vyords escaped his lips when the seer posted himself before him 
 with drawn sword, vigorously urging him to defend himself for having 
 cast a slur upon the honour of a seer. " I know not how," responded 
 the king, "unless thou art thyself the criminal." But as his oppo- 
 nent was already hurrying after him with a sword, he drew his, too, 
 and did his best to defend himself. 
 
 To vanquish the fir^t two brothers was mere child's play for the 
 seer. Not so, this one. Long they fought, their swords were 
 broken, and yet victory did not declare itself for one or the other. 
 " Now we shall never decide the affair with our swords," says the 
 seer; "but knowest thou what? We will turn ourselves into wheels,* 
 and then let ourselves off down yonder hill ; the wheel which is 
 broken, he is vanquished." " Very well," replied the king ; " I will 
 be a cart wheel, and thou some lighter wheel." " Ah, not so ; thou 
 shalt be the lighter wheel and I will be the cart wlieel," observed 
 the seer hastily ; and the king agreed even to that. Hereupon they 
 set off to the hill, there turned themselves into wheels and let them- 
 selves roll down the slope. The cart wheel flew spinning along, and 
 whack ! into the lighter one, so that it smashed it all to pieces. The 
 seer immediately emerged in his proper shape from the cart wheel, 
 and exclaimed exultantly: "There thou art at last! mine is the 
 victory!" "Ah! not so, worshipful brother," cried out the king; 
 "it is only my finger that thou hast broken as yet But knowest 
 thou what ? We will transform ourselves into flames, and the flame 
 which burns up the other shall be the victor. 1 will transform 
 myself into a crimson flame, thou into a whitish one." "Ah! not 
 
58 The Sun-JIorse. 
 
 so," broke in the seer ; " thou into the whitish one and I into the 
 crimson one." The king consented even to this. They ran out on 
 to the road to the bridge, and, changing themselves into flames, 
 began to burn one another without mercy. For a long time they 
 burnt one another and nothing came of it. At this moment — would 
 you believe it ? — appears an old beggar-man with a long grey beard 
 and a bald head ; he has a large wallet at his side, and is bending 
 over a big thick staff. " Old father," says the whitish flame, " if 
 you will bring water and sprinkle that crimson flame, I will give you 
 a kreutzer." And the pink flame quickly cries out : " Old father, I 
 will give you a groschen if you will pour the water on to the white 
 flame." The beggar liked a groschen better than a kreutzer ; brought 
 the water and poured it on the white flame. So it was all over with 
 the king. The crimson flame changed itself into a man, caught the 
 Sun-Horse by the curb-chain, seated himself upon it, summoned the 
 servant, and, thanking the beggar for his timely aid, continued his 
 journey. 
 
 In the royal palace was deep sorrow over the murdered kings -^ 
 the whole palace was draped in black cloth, and the people thronged 
 into it from all sides to look at the mutilated bodies of the two elder 
 brothers, just as their horses had brought them home. The old 
 witch, infuriated at the death of her sons-in-law, was brewing ven- 
 geance upon their murderer, the seer. Then suddenly she seats 
 herself upon a rake-handle, catches up her three girls under the 
 Armpits, and hie ! away with them into the air. 
 
 The seer and his servant had already traversed a good part of 
 the road, for they had put their best foot forward ; anS now they 
 were going among nothing but barren mountains and smooth-shorn 
 wildernesses. Here a terrible hunger seized upon the servant, and 
 to appease it there were not even any wild berries anywhere. Here- 
 upon they all at once come to an apple-tree. Apples hung upon it ; 
 'twas well the boughs were not broken ; they smelt beautifully, they 
 glowed a delicious russet red, and quite invited you to eat. "Praised 
 be God ! " cries out the servant, in ecstacies ; "now I shall make a 
 dainty feast off these apples." And he was just running to the 
 apple-tree. " Don't attempt to pluck of them," shouted' the seer to 
 him ; " stay, I will gather them myself for thee." And instead of 
 gathering an apple, he drew his sword and thrust it forcibly into the 
 apple-tree. Crimson blood spouted far out of it. " There, look ! 
 thou feeest ; thou wouldst have taken corruption if thou hadst eaten 
 
The Sun-Horse. 59 
 
 of those apples, for that apple-tree was the eldest queen, whom her 
 mother had posted here on purpose to carry us out of the world." 
 
 After a time they came to a spring. The water in it welled up, 
 clear as crystal ; it regularly surged out, and quite allured the way- 
 farers. " Ach ! " says the servant, " if I cannot get anything more 
 substantial, I will drink plenty of this good water." "Do not ven- 
 ture to drink of it," cried the seer; "but wait, I myself will draw of 
 it for thee." But the seer did not really draw the water, but with 
 drawn sword made a stab into the very middle of it. All at once it 
 was stained with the blood which began vigorously to surge up, 
 wave after wave. " That's the second queen, whom her mother, the 
 witch, posted for the purpose of carrying us out of the world," said 
 the sage ; and the servant, thanking him for his warning, trudged 
 on, willy nilly, whether thirsting or starving, wherever the seer led 
 him. 
 
 Soon after this they came to a rose-bush; it was one mass of 
 pink from the delicious roses all over it, and filled the whole neigh- 
 bourhood with its odour. "Ah! what beautiful roses! Eeally, I 
 am sure I never saw their like before in all my life. Ej ! I will go 
 and gather a few of them ; at any rate, I shall find some consolation 
 in them for not being able to satisfy my hunger and thirst." " Nay, 
 do not venture to pluck any of them," exclaimed the seer; " I will 
 gather them for thee myself." So saying, he made a slash at the 
 bush with his sword ; crimson blood spurted out, just as when one 
 cuts a human vein. " That is the youngest queen," says the seer to 
 the servant, "whom her mother, the witch, posted here, wishing to 
 avenge herself upon us for the death of her sons-in-law." This said, 
 they continued their journey. 
 
 When they stepped across the boundary of the dark kingdom, 
 flashes of light streamed in every direction from the horse's forehead, 
 and everything came to life again ; the beautiful regions exulted, and 
 spring returned with new flowers. The king knew not how suffi- 
 ciently to thank the seer, and pressed upon him as a reward one half 
 of his kingdom ; but the seer replied : " Thou art king, lord it over 
 the kingdom, and I will return to my cottage in peace." He de- 
 parted and went. 
 
60 Tlie Sun-Horse. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Pbom the conclusion of the Three Citrons it was inferred tliat the primitive epic- 
 fairy story was hatched within the Arctic circle at some point where there are- 
 numerous lakes or rivers, or both. The Sun-horse tends to confirm this theory. 
 Let the reader turn to the plan of the two stories, and he will see that, assuming, 
 the six kingdorns traversed by the seer and servant in search of the Sun-horse to- 
 be so many weeks, they exactly tally with the journey of the young prince from 
 the first meeting with the ravens to the departure from the castle of silver, a 
 period of forty-two days. And, assuming this coincidence, the other elements also 
 exactly coincide. It follows, therefore, that the first kingdom — that one, namely, 
 in which the divine sun never shone — is also a period of time. It therefore coin- 
 ' oides with November, of which, in fact, it is a perfectly natural and obvious allegory. 
 The disappearance of the Sun-horse seems to allegorize a year when the fog was. 
 so thick that the sun disappeared for awhile altogether : that is to say, the legend, 
 belongs to some region intersected with lakes or canals to supply vapour enough 
 to produce such a phenomenon in an Arctic, and therefore smokeless, part of the- 
 world. The arrival of the king at the limits of his kingdom where the sun peeps, 
 through dense fogs, will thus correspond to the Manka, Doodle and Kate incident 
 in George and his Goat, and the end of the three first days' travelling of the young 
 prince in the Three Citrons, that is, to the end of the first three days' winter frost, 
 at the end of November. 
 
 We have already seen that Father Know-AU represents the original epic fairy 
 story with the incidents fairly distributed over it, the only part which is missing 
 being the last week's epilogue or anti-climax, followed by a brief indeterminate 
 period of a few days. 
 
 The stories we have been considering are all varied from the primitive type by 
 the omission of part of the period, or the excessive elaboration of one or two of its 
 elements. Thus, while Father Know-All corresponds in form to the epic poem, 
 Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes is the prototype of our three-volume novel. The 
 Three Citrons of the three-volume novel with an anti-climax of the Lorna Doone 
 type ; in both of these stories the three months' winter period being excessively 
 elaborated ; in the former, indeed, the last three days' struggle to get back the sun 
 is the piece de resistance, while in the lattei- the journey through the forty-two- 
 sunless days is the appetizing morsel. In reading other fairy stories and legends 
 with intelligence, it will be perceived that all the more celebrated ones— those, 
 that is to say, most widely diffused— obey the same law. Either we have abridg- 
 ments of the whole primitive epic, or condensation of one part or parts, combined 
 with the expansion of others, or the isolation of one of the elements and its special 
 elaboration. In the more purely local stories the disintegration may have gone 
 further, and some single incident be that from which the story is evolved, and the 
 only link connecting it with its proper section of the primitive myth. To make 
 this clearer, I will give two instances of local fairy stories in which the connecting 
 link has almost disappeared. The first is a Venetian one called La Merda, which 
 is an allegory of the rise of Venice from the slime and mud of the Lagoons. 
 
Tlie Sun-Horse. 61 
 
 Three fairies, passing over a meadow, find a beautiful piece of dung. They decide 
 to turn it into a beautiful girl with a golden ring on her finger, who, so long as 
 she wears this ring, is fated to say nothing but " Dung, dung, dung." The ring, 
 transferred to another person, carries the peculiarity with it. A prince passes and 
 sees the beautiful girl, and in spite of her conversational defects takes her home 
 and marries her. (The incident of the Virgin Mary Godmother, The Tinkling 
 Iiinden, Bda la mare mapiu bela la fia, and hundreds of others.) One day they 
 .■go to mass. After mass there is a collection and a sermon. The girl, having 
 forgotten her purse, puts the gold ring in the collector's alms-salver. The preacher, 
 seeing a fine gold ring in the salver, beckons the collector to bring it him, puts it 
 on his finger and begins his sermon: "Dearly beloved brethren. Dung, dung, 
 dung, dung, dung." Hereupon the congregation stampedes, scandalized at this 
 peculiar form of Papal benediction ; but henceforth the young queen remains 
 cured of her defect. This ring is almost the only link between La Merda and 
 Long, Broad, and Sharp-Byes, or Golden Locks ; but the incident of the gold ring 
 on the pike's fin turns up in a thousand different forms. We have seen it in the 
 Sakuntala, in All's Well that Ends Well, and in Boccacio ; we have it in the King 
 of Thule and a Lowland Scotch variant of the Sakuntala legend ; nay, this image 
 of the disappearance of the golden apple of the Arctic circle into its black sea of 
 sunless winter has so taken hold of popular imagination that it has become 
 embodied in custom, and we have the Papal fisherman's ring, the wedding ring, 
 and the gold ring worn by the boys in their left ear all through the Venetian 
 ■ province, as well as the ring with which the Doge married the Adriatic. Lastly, 
 in the legend of the piece of money found in the fish's mouth we have another 
 form of the primitive myth, unless indeed it was that the myth so impressed 
 Christ's mind, that he took it into his head to act it by means of ground-baiting, 
 and the simple, ignorant, and superstitious Christians have since dubbed this 
 commonplace trick of fishing craft, a miracle — something, that is to say, according 
 to their confused ideas, which reverses the ordinary laws of nature, and proves the 
 performer of it to be a direct Incarnation of the Divinity. 
 
 The other story of a local type similar to La Merda to which I alluded, is a 
 Slovenian one called The Lake of Carlovics. In this story a Wallachiau peasant 
 is induced by a black priest (or enchanter) to help him to exorcize two dragons 
 out of the lake. They then fly through the air on their backs until they arrive at 
 a certain town. Here they alight, kill the dragons, and sell their fiesh for a large 
 sum of money, because it is so hot in that town that the inhabitants, to keep alive, 
 are obliged constantly to hold a piece of the dragon's flesh under their tongues. 
 Now this is obviously the popular, poetical way of saying that some one, long ago, 
 made a lucrative business of collecting the ice of the Lake of Carlovics, and selling 
 it in some hot southern town in the neighbourhood ; but the black priest or prince 
 (the two words are closely connected in Slavonic) is our friend of the Long, Broad, 
 and Sharp-Eyes story, and the dragon is the gentleman that so frequently keeps 
 guard over the enchanted beauty. The black priest or sorcerer is, in fact, the long 
 black night of the Arctic winter, who, after the three days' struggle, flies out of 
 the window as a raven ; and the dragon is the frost and ice — his agent in keeping 
 nature spell-bound. This story forms a remarkable instance of how easily the 
 most commonplace events become distorted into legends of miraculous events, by 
 the imagination of the ignorant and superstitious, and how they become a sort 
 
&2 The 8un-IIorse. 
 
 of radiating centre for much more ancient legends and myths to crystallize 
 around. ' 
 
 We have seen in Father Kuow-All that the Prelude occupies a period of a year 
 from the Ist of December to the 1st of December. Naturally, therefore, the events- 
 are sketched in but slightly. The childhood of Plavachek, for example, is passed 
 over without comment, because, occupying the same period as the great winter 
 romance, it would only be a feeble, infantile anticipation of it. This period, 
 however, being left indefinite, has been seized hold of by popular fancy to burlesque 
 the great winter romance ; hence we have a crop of stories of the Red Riding Hood 
 type, in which a wolf or an overgrown baby eats up all the characters and then 
 splits open, and all the characters march out again. El Galo, the cock (Venetian), 
 Le tre ochete (the three goslings), also Venetian, Otesanek (Little Shaveling, 
 Czech), Budulinek (Moravian : huda is connected with the word "booth "), Red 
 Riding Hood, the Finding of Moses in the Bushes (so appropriately parodied in 
 the frontispiece to Mark Twain's " Innocents Abroad "), are one or two types of 
 this large group of popular burlesqued annual solar myths. Speaking generally, 
 it may be said that the first incident in Father Know-All has given us the group 
 of miraculous birth legends of the Bethlehem and Three Magi (Christian), or The 
 Godmother death type (Moravian, but found in a degraded form in Italy as Crispins 
 e la Comare). The saving of Plavachek has given us the popular burlesques of 
 which the Finding of Moses and Little Red Biding Hood are types. The journey 
 of the prince and the struggle for the three hairs gives the bulk of the popular 
 fairy stories which differ according as the journey or the struggle is the most 
 elaborated ; in the Three Citrons the journey, in the Sun-horse the struggle, is the 
 part most carefully worked out. The struggle for the three hairs isolated has 
 perhaps, on drifting south, transformed into the midsummer fairy stories of which 
 Jezinky and the Wood Woman (Czech) are among the most beautiful instances. 
 Lastly, the week's epilogue, tag, or anti-climax has given us the great group of 
 Lorely and Miraculous Hair legends. Nor is this, perhaps, all. This or that segment 
 of the primitive myth having produced a whole group of variants, the details of 
 these new stories have been transformed and grafted, so to say, upon members of 
 the other groups ; language, latitude, and climate, as the stories drifted south- 
 ward or to and fro, have helped to modify them, and thus the precious heirloom 
 of folk-lore and popular legend, as we possess it at the present day, has been 
 gradually compounded from the disintegration of the primitive rock. 
 
 A glance at the plan, and a rapid mental resume of the Sun-horse, and we see 
 that the whole bulk of the story consists of a development of the incident of the 
 three hairs in Father Know-All, of the three days and nights in the enchanted 
 castle of Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes, and of the castle of gold and the hill of 
 glass in the Three Citrons. The Sun-horse, in this part of it, is nearest to the 
 Three Citrons ; the three days' struggle at the return of the sun from its winter 
 underworld causes a twofold set of events, the first in the castle or palace where 
 information is obtained as to the whereabouts of the hill of glass in the former, 
 and of the three kings in the latter case, but it is more highly elaborated. I have 
 said that the rape of the three hairs in Father Know-All can only be explained as 
 an Arctic allegory of the first days of the sun's return, when it only appears for 
 so short a time above the horizon that it may be said just to wake and go to sleep 
 again during a single long night. No doubt as the myth drifted south this part of 
 
The Sun-IIorse. 63 
 
 the legend would gradually inodify itself to suit a less rigorous winter and other 
 changed climatic conditions, and perhaps this may have been partly the case with 
 Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes ; nevertheless, in all four of the above-cited fairy 
 stories it is perfectly possible to interpret the incidents, without forcing them, as 
 Arctic winter ones, while in Father Know-AU and the Three Citrons it is the only 
 satisfactory interpretation. Let us look a little more closely at the event as 
 elaborated in the Sun-horse. But before doing so let us try and put ourselves 
 into the mental position of our savage circumpolar ancestors. At present, 
 enlightened by science, we refer all the vital phenomena of the surface of our 
 globe to the heat of the sun. But the instinct of savage people is just the other 
 way. There is with them a complete inversion of cause and effect. It is not (see 
 supplementary essay) the sun that creates mankind, but mankind that creates the 
 sun. It is not the sun that brings back the spring, but the gathering vital forces 
 of nature that conjure back the sun. And if this habit of mind, still prevalent 
 among religious folk whose superstitions represent the dying oosmical blunders of 
 primitive barbarism, is still powerful enough to cause hundreds of thousands of 
 Christians to believe that by prayer they can conjure the climatic effects dependent 
 upon the movements of cyclones and anti-cyclones, or thereby change the course 
 of epidemics or their own lives and conduct, it is not wonderful if savages within 
 the Arctic circle, with few or no means of accurate observation and scanty stores 
 of accumulated knowledge, mistook cause for effect, and imagined it was the cold 
 which killed the sun and not the sun which killed the cold. In fact, it is probable 
 that with the scanty accumulated knowledge and means of observation of those 
 times, our first men of science would have come to pretty much the same con- 
 clusion. The sun being imagined as at all events not so very far away from the 
 earth, the cold that affected the earth would naturaUy be supposed, when it was 
 extreme, also to extend itself to the upper sun-heaven. Now it would be matter 
 of constant observation that as things lost their heat they lost their mobility and 
 buoyancy, that as the fire smouldered out its flames leapt less high, that as the 
 water cooled its vapour ceases to rise, that when it congealed to ice all movement 
 was checked. Again, it would be also recognized that if the sun was not the 
 primary source of heat, it was all events a sort of reservoir or point of condensation 
 of terrestrial warmth, and that, as this last declined, the sun had less vis viva to 
 perform its diurnal revolution, until at last, growing weaker and weaker ^ari^assM 
 with the increasing rigour of the frost, it had hardly force left to raise itself a few 
 degrees above the horizon. At last it died, the cold had killed it, it disappeared 
 into the maw of Penris the wolf ; the golden apple, frost-bitten like any other 
 apple, had fallen into the subterranean apple garth ; all that remained to hope for 
 was that the deity, prime source of the vigorous, sensual northern vitality, would 
 have vital force enough to revivify the old sun or to create another one. In 
 order to do this, in order to resuscitate the sun, to recover the Sun-horse, 
 what was required was for the vital forces of nature to combat and conquer 
 the long winter frost and lifelessness. And seeing that man was conscious above 
 all things in himself of that general vitality, the notion of the seer or hero 
 who performed the miracle became something more than a mere metaphor, 
 it hovered between allegory and reality, like the faiths, hopes, and superstitions 
 of our own modern religious world. If the reader has followed these preliminary 
 observations, he will see how perfectly natural and easy is the explanation of 
 
64 77(6 Sun-Horse. 
 
 the incidents which take place in the castle and at the bridge in the story of the 
 Sun-horse. 
 
 In the adventures of the seer at the palace of the three kings we have an allegory 
 of the indications of the coming break-up of the long winter Arctic night and the 
 return of warmth and vitality upon the earth which rescue and bring back the 
 sun. The reader will remember that the Three Pates in Father Know-Ail were 
 dressed in white and carried tapers in their hands, the imagery being taken from 
 the white world of snow with the stars shining above it. In the same way the three 
 queens with their white hands represent the snow, and the witclj mother-in-law 
 is the cold or the darkness, the dragon or the black priest, or perhaps a sort of 
 blending of the two. The green bird is the patches of green where the snow has 
 melted owing to the ground-thaw, so often the prelude to the atmospheric thaw. 
 When the witch exclaims, " Wring the bird's neck, or it will dirty you yet," it is 
 only another way of saying : " If the thaw continue, the snow will become nothing 
 but mud aud slush." In the palace of the seventh kingdom, then, we are given 
 the indications of the coming thaw — Nature's great vernal transformation-scene 
 in oircum-polar lands ; at the bridge, which, as we know from Long, Broad, and 
 and Sharp-Eyes, is the popular, poetical figure for the moment of sunset, we have 
 the actual beginning of the transformation scene. All ardent skaters must be 
 conscious with what anxiety they scan the weather at the moment of sunset, in 
 order to divine whether their divine pastime will yet have a lease of life accorded 
 to it, or is destined to expire with the morrow's sun. 
 
 No doubt, in the same way, in circum-polar regions, the sunsets of the brief 
 days after the first re-appearance of the sun after its winter sleep were scanned 
 by our circum-polar ancestors with the same eagerness, in order to be able to 
 •conjecture whether or no the victory of vitality and light were at last in process 
 of being secured. Did the puddles remain wet, or was a net-work of ice-spioules 
 beginning to form over them ? Did the dead- white sky veil itself rapidly in a cloak 
 of darkness, or did the sunset burn low in lurid redness, or did a pellucid rose-tree 
 rise transparent, like the shimmering vapour of a hot summer mid-day, suffusing 
 itself through the limpid transparency of the western sky ? It was a matter of 
 very practical importance to those primitive ancestors of ours in their stuffy, 
 uncomfortable, round winter pits, destitute of all or nearly all our modern 
 luxuries, with the water that wouldn't boil, or cooled as soon as boiled, no soap, 
 and only flint scraping stones to shave with, quite as important, indeed, as it is 
 ■nowadays to the modern skating enthusiast or tobogganer, or perhaps even 
 more so. 
 
 Now in the three days' contest at the bridge we have an admirable description 
 of the last three days of a spell of winter weather. We have all the prognosti- 
 cations of the coming thaw in a poetical dress, and in the journey home a picture 
 of the milder weather with the efforts of the frost " to take hold " again. Two popu- 
 lar weather saws (Sajas) inform us that in winter " Three white frosts and then a 
 thaw," and in summer, " Three fine days and then a thunderstorm," is the usual 
 sequence ; and in both cases the weather intensifies from the first day to the 
 third. The frost goes on doubling and doubling, and then bursts like the " enfant 
 terrible " in Otesanek or Little Shaveling ; the weather gets hotter and hotter, and 
 people say : " Oh I this must end in a thunderstorm." In the present instance we 
 shall have two elements, therefore, tugging in opposite directions, so to say : the 
 
The Sim- Horse. 65 
 
 lengthening days and the strengthening power of the sun, the strengthening frost 
 and the shortening nights, or three to one against the frost-kings. For let us 
 assume the three kings to be the frost, riding home at sunset, then we see at once 
 why the encounters became more difficult each night ; the story also gives us a 
 clear hint of the lengthening of the days when it says " the youngest king sped 
 fast, for he had been delayed somewhat." The horror of the frost-kings at blood- 
 shed is intelligible enough, anything fluid being contrary to their very existence and 
 abhorrent to their whole regime. The pool of blood is evidently the pool of unfrozen 
 water in which the lurid red of the sunset is reflected. The cart-wheel which 
 smashes the lighter wheel is the disc of the sun, supplanting the disc of the moon 
 that had been omnipotent in the long winter night ; 14ie red flame conquering the 
 pale flame is the light of the sunset and the sunrise gradually crowding out the 
 moonlight ; the old beggar man is the Annual Destiny or Fate sprinkling with dew 
 the dying moon at the triumph of the dawn. The witch catching up her daughters 
 .and flying with them into the air is the evaporation of the snow, which, by cooling 
 the air occasionally at the end of a long spell of winter weather, galvanizes the 
 frost into a last efiort, and efiects brief temporary arrests of the triumph of 
 returning spring. The apple tree, the well, and the rose tree symbolize three such 
 brief arrests, and the blood of the three queens is the surface-water produced by 
 the melting of the snow in contradistinction to the genuine streams and rivers. 
 And lastly, the Sun-horse, with the sun on its forehead, which at the beginning of 
 the story in November was but a substitute for the sun, faintly glimmering through 
 autumnal mist and fog, has now become the sun itself, returning triumphant in the 
 triumph of a re-awakening and unclouded spring. 
 
Right after all remains Right. 
 
 [Upper Lusatian.] 
 
 Now there was a gamekeeper who had a son who was also a game- 
 keeper. He sent him into a foreign land to see the world and learn 
 a little more. Here he comes to an ale-house where he finds a 
 strange man, with whom he enters into conversation. And the two 
 discourse together on all sorts of topics, until at last they begin to 
 talk in earnest. And the stranger said that it was possible, with the 
 help of money, to make even the most unrighteous thing right. The 
 gamekeeper, on the other hand, maintained that right after all 
 remained right, and said that as a foreigner he was willing to stak& 
 three hundred dollars on it. The stranger was quite satisfied with 
 this arrangement, and the two agreed to ask the opinion of three 
 advocates in the matter. The two go to the first advocate, and he 
 says that it is possible for money to turn wrong into right. Then 
 the two go to the next one. He also says that, for money, wrong can 
 be turned into right. Finally, the two go to the third. And he also 
 tells the pair that it is possible for money to make wrong right. 
 After this the two go home again together, and as they had been 
 walking about the whole day, they reached the ale-house quite late 
 in the evening. The stranger then asks the gamekeeper whether he 
 does not now believe that it is possible for the most unrighteous 
 act to be made right with the help of money, and the gamekeeper 
 replies that he must almost believe it, according to the ruling of the 
 three legal gentlemen, although it still did not seem true to him. 
 The stranger was wiUing to leave him his head provided he paid the 
 three hundred dollars; but just as the two were talking it over, 
 another man arrived, who suggested to the stranger that he ought 
 to stand by the arrangement they had made together at first. How- 
 ever, he does not do so, but just deprives the gamekeeper of the 
 light of his eyes with a red hot iron, observing at the same time 
 that he, too, will believe that right remains right in the world when 
 the gamekeeper gets his sight again. 
 
Right remains Might. 67 
 
 And the gamekeeper entreated the ale-house keeper to conduct 
 him on to the right road to the town. Mine host conducted him on 
 to the road to the gallows, and went his way. When the game- 
 keeper had gone on some distance, the road came to an end, and he 
 heard eleven strike. He could go no further, and remained lying 
 there in the hopes that perhaps some one would come in the morning. 
 After a little while he hears a tapping, then again some one comes, 
 and no long time elapsed before a third joined the other two. Now 
 it was three spirits who at night left their bodies and performed all 
 sorts of abominations on earth. They began to talk among them- 
 selves, and one remarked : " 'Tis exactly a year and a day since we 
 were here together and related to one another our performances of 
 the previous year. A year is again gone by, and the time has come 
 for us to investigate which of us in the past year has done the best 
 stroke of business." The first answered, and said : " I deprived the 
 inhabitants of the city of Eamuli of their water ; but there is still help 
 for them, if some one will discover what it is that stops up the source." 
 " And what pray is it? " says the second ; and the first replies : " I have 
 placed a great she-toad upon the source from which the water used 
 to run ; if this toad is taken away, the water will then again flow as 
 before." The second says : " I bewitched the princess of Sara- 
 hawsky, so that her beauty perishes, and she is shrinking into a 
 skeleton ; still there is help for her, if some one will draw out the 
 silver broad-headed nail which is fixed above her couch." The third 
 said: " Yesterday evening I had another man deprived of the light 
 of his eyes with a red hot iron ; still there is help for him, if he laves 
 his eyes with the water which is to be found in a well not far from 
 this gallows." After this, in the town it strikes twelve, and in a 
 twinkling the three spirits vanish ; the gamekeeper, however, care- 
 fully keeps in mind all he has heard, and rejoices to think that he 
 will be able to get the light of his eyes again. 
 
 Early next morning he hears some one passing somewhere near, 
 and begs him to send him people from the city to tell him where that 
 good well is. After this, all sorts of people come to him, but none of 
 them can shew him the well, until an old woman does so. He has 
 himself conducted thither, and when he had washed his eyes, he 
 then and there gets the light of his eyes again. 
 
 He now immediately enquires for the city of Eamuli, and sets off 
 thither. As soon as he arrived there, he announced at once to the 
 town council that he was willing to give them their water back. 
 
68 Right remains Right. 
 
 . Now as plenty of persons had already stayed there and the town had 
 lavished much money upon them, but none of them had done any 
 practical good, since everything had been in vain, they were now 
 unwilling to have any further hand in the matter. Then he said that 
 he was willing to do everything free of expense, if only they would 
 let him have some of the slaves to give him help. And so it is 
 arranged. When they had dug so far down as to have reached the 
 appliances through which the water formerly flowed, and which were 
 adapted to the source, he sent all the workmen away, and after 
 groping about for a short time, lo ! there was the she-toad seated on 
 the source, like a copper built into a wall. He drew it out, and 
 immediately the water began to flow, and after a short time all the 
 wells were full and running over with water. Then the town prepared 
 a grand feast in his honour, and rewarded him with much money for 
 what he had done. 
 
 After this he continued his journey, and reached the town of Sara- 
 hawsky. There he found out after a short time that the princess 
 was as ill as he had heard, and that no doctor could do her any 
 good; that, consequently, the king had promised that he should 
 marry her who succeeded in curing her complaint. Hereupon, he 
 dressed himself up very smart, went to the king's castle, and there 
 said that he had come from a distant country and that he wished to 
 help the princess. The king replied that now he had quite lost all 
 hope ; but that at the same time he might try his hand on her. The 
 gamekeeper said that he must go and get some medicines. He goes 
 off and buys all sorts of nasty sweets, and then presents himself to 
 the princess. He gives her the first dose and looks round to see in 
 which of the beams the silver nail is fixed. Next day early, he visits 
 her again, gives her some of his medicine, and while she is taking it 
 seizes the nail and tugs away at it so long that at last it moves a 
 little. In the evening the princess already feels a little better. The 
 third day he again goes to her, and as the princess is taking her 
 physic he again catches hold of the beam, pulls the nail clean out, 
 and secretly stows it away in his pocket. By the forenoon the 
 princess was now so perfectly cured that she wanted to dine, and the 
 king invited the gamekeeper to a grand dinner. And they settled 
 when the marriage was to be ; the gamekeeper, however, made up 
 his mind that he ought first to go home. 
 
 And after staying at home, he again came to the ale-house where 
 he had lost the light of his eyes, and the stranger man was also 
 
Right remains Right. 69 
 
 there. Again they began to discourse on all sorts of topics, and the 
 gamekeeper mentioned what he had heard under the gallows ; how 
 he had discovered the water, and finally, also, how he had got the 
 light of his eyes again, and he added that the strange man ought now 
 to believe that right in the world still remained right. The strange 
 man was very much astonished, , and said that he was ready to 
 believe it. 
 
 After this the gamekeeper pursued his way and came to his 
 princess, and they had a grand wedding festival for a whole week in 
 succession. The strange man now thinks to himself that he will 
 go under the gallows : perhaps he, too, may discover things as the 
 gamekeeper had done, and afterwards get some princess for his wife. 
 And he goes there just as the year has run out. He hears eleven 
 strike, and then after a little while a tapping, then again some one, 
 and in no long time a third joins them. They begin to speak among 
 themselves, and number one says : "It cannot be but last year some 
 one overheard us, for everything which we had contrived has been spoilt 
 and ruined. So before we recount to one another the past year's 
 performances, let us make a thorough search." Forthwith they begin 
 to search, and soon light upon the strange man. They rend him in 
 three pieces and hang them upon the three arms of the gallows. 
 
 Now when the old king was dead, his people choose the game- 
 keeper to be their king, and if he is not yet dead, he is still ruling at 
 the present day, and sticks to his- faith in right being always and for 
 ever right — in his kingdom at all events. 
 
 NOTE. 
 Just as the Venetian story, The Love of the Three Oranges, is a corrupted version 
 of the Three Citrons, so the present story is a more modern and corrupted version 
 of Father Know-All. We have left far behind us the open-air life of nature with 
 its complete moral indifference and exuberant vitality as depicted in the earlier 
 myths, and have got into an atmosphere of pot-houses, gallows, pettifogging 
 lawyers and morality. It is worth noticing how in many of the Venetian variants, 
 also relalively modern, pot-houses take the place of castles. This is the case in the 
 Three Waiters, a variant of the Cymbeline legend, and also in others. Another 
 indication of its more recent character is the confusion of the dates and the trans- 
 ference of the pin and dove Incident, properly belonging to the epilogue of the 
 Three Citrons, in a very corrupted form to an earlier section of the story, just as 
 the three kings of the Sun-horse legend with their jewels of ice and snow have 
 taken the place of the three Noms present at the birth of Plavachek in the more 
 modern Bethlehem variant. 
 
 Both these variants are interestihg and important as giving an indication of 
 the great antiquity of the primitive myth. 
 
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EXPLANATION OF PLAN. 
 
 "This plan of the second half of the Three Citrons is a necessary' 
 •deduction from comparing the Sun-horse, Father Know-AU and the 
 Three Citrons with the corresponding and later variants in Bernoni's 
 Venetian folk-lore. The merit of the great Venetian folk-lorist's 
 work is that it is an absolutely plain unvarnished tale, every syllable 
 of which has been taken down direct from the mouths of the common 
 people ; it is, therefore, absolutely to be relied upon. Now before 
 reading his work, I deduced /rom internal evidence that the period of 
 Father Know-AU was a year and three months. Now in that most 
 precious relic, the Venetian story L'omo morto (the dead man), 
 we find this deduction confirmed with certainty, for the heroine is 
 invited to watch a year and three months and a week by the bedside 
 ■of the dead man. And this story is a variant of the anti-climax of 
 the Three Citrons, and allows us to infer with certainty that the 
 incident of the war and the bewitching of the queen occupied exactly 
 seven days. Again, in the variant of the whole story of the Three 
 ■Citrons,' in the Venetian L'amore delle tre narance that is to say, 
 -the one discrepancy between the Sun-horse and the Three Citrons 
 does not occur, the third citron being cleft before the arrival at the 
 <;astle home of the hero (see plan). And this discrepancy in the two 
 forms of the Three Citrons is easily explained by the uncertainty 
 -whether in the return journey the three last days of November 
 ought or ought not to be counted in. On the one hand, the law of 
 symmetry requires that they should be; on the other hand, that 
 they should not, in order that the marriage and betrothal month 
 should exactly tally with February, the month when the birds pair. 
 It follows from this that the Sun-horse is a fragmentary story, and 
 closely related to the Three Citrons. Again, Eight remains Eight is 
 simply a later variant of Father Know- All. We have thus established 
 for four of the eight stories the period of a year, three months, a 
 week, and a brief indefinite period, that is to say, in their primitive 
 -form. Again, all eight stories in their period from the first dis- 
 appearance to the first re-appearance of the sun after its Arctic 
 winter death exactly tally and synchronize. On the other hand, as 
 we shall see, it is next to impossible to draw a comparative illus- 
 tration to scale in which the events of the second half of the eight 
 stories can be made to synchronize. To quote the most obvious 
 instance : in Father Know- All the three days' struggle to recover the 
 sunlight occurs in the castle of gold, and is omitted in Eight remains 
 Eight ; in the other stories it occurs as a twelve hours' journey from 
 the castle or its equivalent. And the further we travel from the first 
 half of the stories the greater become the discrepancies. Now if the 
 
72 Explanation. 
 
 theory o£ the Arctic origin of the eight stories be the true one, this is- 
 just what we should expect ; on any other it is inexpHcable. For th& 
 six weeks' winter night on a given latitude is a definite period, not 
 merely in theory, but in practice, and one that would indelibly stamp 
 itself upon the primitive savage mind, with the dark misgivings of a 
 perfectly reasonable terrpr — for there was to the people of those days 
 no logical reason of any validity why the sun should re-appear after 
 its winter death. Granted that within living memory and tradition 
 it always had done so after a period of forty-two days, there was no- 
 logical proof whatever that it always would do so ; it might be 
 destined at no very distant period to set for ever and close for ever 
 the sorry roll of earthly human existence, or to set for a period long 
 enough to destroy all existing life upon the world and then to re- 
 emerge and re-create a new era. We can only dimly realize with 
 what passionate anxiety the more intelligent of the primitive inhabi- 
 tants of the Arctic circle, under the constant shadow of this misgiving, 
 would note the phases of the moon in that long night in order to 
 establish the period of darkness, how light alnd dark moons would 
 thus of necessity become the natural mode of reckoning time, how 
 the moon would be everywhere hailed as par excellence the measurer 
 and its light be looked upon as the water of life, the mystic Soma 
 juice, the elixir of life, because it was the earnest and promise ot the 
 return of spring life and immortality, with the sun its mystic symbol 
 in the heavens. So much for the winter night. The period after the 
 solar resurrection down to the 1st of March was in a very different 
 condition. It was in a certain sense an arbitrary period. It did not 
 begin and end with the sharpness and definiteness of a newly-made 
 grave. It was not a gap, a blank in the existing order of nature 
 delved by some invisible hand, and always of exactly the same 
 length, but merged gradually into the nightless summer day. And 
 the partial thaws preluding the spring, and typified by the cleaving 
 of the citrons, the apple tree, the well and the rose bush, were events 
 which stubbornly refused to be submitted to any chronological law 
 whatever, their occurrence varying with every varying year. Thus 
 these eight primitive fairy stories in whose literary sculpture the 
 Arctic winter mystery of death and regeneration is remodelled with 
 such striking fidelity, have preserved at once the rigidity of death 
 and the flexibility of life, synchronizing precisely where they re- 
 mirror the definite period of Arctic winter death, diverging and 
 divesting themselves of their mutual coherence where they allegorize 
 the gradual return of spring, with its variously distributed thaws and 
 partial relapses into winter frost and ice. 
 
^i?.>^ 
 
73 
 
 EXPLANATION 01 THE PLATES. 
 
 The preceding plate is a comparative illustration of the first half o 
 the eight fairy stories, and shows to demonstration that they are*all 
 variants of one and the same primitive myth, the origin of which 
 was the long winter night of the Arctic circle. The drawings are not 
 fancy ones, they are simply plotted down from the stories. Truly 
 astonishing is the absolute uniformity in segments seven, with the 
 exception of the story of George and His Goat, the most confused of 
 any of the stories. In all the rest we have the termination of a black 
 forest ot of the night spent in a black forest, or of journeying 
 through kingdoms of darkness. In all these again we have a castle 
 of gold with the figure of an old woman outside it, or some obvious 
 variation to represent the re-appearance of the sun after the ong 
 Arctic winter night, either a castle of gold or a castle where a green 
 bird perches on the three queens' ' snow-white hands, obviously the 
 patches of green which appear at the melting of the snow ; or a well 
 which gives sight to the blind, or a lake with a gold fish in it, or a 
 cleft rock with a gold nugget extracted from it, or a doll given the 
 golden gift of speech and life. In George and His Goat we have an 
 illustration of how in later variants the symbolical characters became 
 mixed and interchanged. We know from the Venetian variant of the 
 Three Citrons, Le tre narance, as well as from II qestelo di fiori, that 
 George's goat properly signifies Capricornus, and that the incident 
 of making the princess laugh belongs properly to the beginning of 
 the winter fairy romance. But in this story the events occurring 
 in the black forest being hastily sketched in, the first frosts at the 
 end of November have become linked with the return of, light in 
 spring, a combination all the more easy to be made from the facility 
 with which the goat Capricornus was confounded with Aries ; thus 
 we can explain the mayor looking out of the window, and the bull 
 afterwards brushing past and attaching itself to him, as the sun 
 passing into the constellation of the bull in spring. The same is 
 more or less true of the three mates in Long, Broad, and Sharp- 
 Eyes ; they are in part the long moonless night of the Arctic winter, 
 its broad moonlight, and the returning sunlight after the dark 
 period, in part the last autumn and two winter signs of the zodiac; 
 and Broad is perhaps, besides this, a symbol of the autumn or spring 
 floods, or perhaps both. We shall see soon how pre-eminently syn- 
 thetic the speculation of primitive times was ; this transformation and 
 transposition of the symbolical characters is not, consequently, due 
 to confusion of thought, but to a desire to establish recondite analogies 
 between the part and the whole, to find the impress of the whole 
 year in its microcosm, and of this in its six weeks' sunless period. 
 Thus in the Moravian story of the Four Brothers, the four seasons 
 are symbolized by personages closely resembling Long, Sharp-Eyes, 
 
74 Explanation. 
 
 and the tailor of Reason and Happiness. Thus in the Bethlehem 
 legend we have the three kings of the Sun-horse put in the place of 
 the three Norns of Father Know- All. In the comparative illustration 
 the dark line at the top of it indicates the long Arctic winter night, 
 where the primitive legend was first invented ; and so profoundly did 
 it affect the consciousness of our ancestors, that, like the traditional 
 blood-stain which cannot be effaced, faint or distinct it has remained 
 within the web and woof of these eight primitive Slavonic fairy 
 stories, and can be more or less clearly traced in all of them. There 
 is, in fact, in all of them, a strange material kind of inertia. Just as 
 the Noah's Ark or cloud-wrack persists identical in form through the 
 long winter's night, and maintains its contours until the last flicker of 
 white fleece melts away into the transparent ether, just as every 
 vibration of the tide's waves are mirrored in the sand pictures of the 
 sand and coal dust in the Durham Sands, just as the cloud-line 
 follows the mountain, just as the gyroscope retains the inclination 
 given to it, just as the expression of face in a pencil sketch cannot 
 wholly be got rid by any amount of after-altering of the lines which 
 form the features, so in the first half of these stories the sun's six 
 weeks' sojourn in the ijnderworld of Arctic winter life has printed 
 itself indelibly upon all of them. One of the most curious instances 
 of this " inertia " is perhaps to be found in the Venetian story — in 
 every respect modern — of a holiday dinner. As we shall see, the 
 cat jumps into a spider's web, her tail hangs down, and the dog 
 jumps at the tail, the wife at the dog, the husband at the wife, and 
 they are all hung up together. Now this is George and His Goat 
 over again : the goat is the old woman of the Tre narance, she is the 
 old woman of the Three Citrons, who corresponds to the Norns of 
 Father Know -All, the third of whom is found by the hero, spider- 
 like, spinning in a corner of the deserted castle of gold. 
 
.V^3;r)Tv 
 
 
Explanation. 75 
 
 If this second illustration, drawn as far as possible to scale, and 
 representing the second half of the eight primitive annual solar fairy 
 stories, be compared with the previous illustration, the symmetry of 
 the one and the irregularity of the other cannot fail to strike the 
 reader's imagination. The first is symmetrical because it represents 
 the conventional myth fashioned, so to say, upon the rigid un- 
 changing block of the six weeks' journey of the sun through the 
 Arctic winter night from its first disappearance on the 1st December 
 to its re-appearance forty-two days later in January. The second is 
 irregular because the partial thaws and spells of warm weather, 
 heralding the return of spring, are differently distributed in different 
 years, and the final break-up of the reign of winter is also very 
 variable in date. The only event which is of constant occurrence in 
 this second half of the eight fairy stories, is the three days' struggle 
 for the light, and even thig is absent in Eight remains Eight, that 
 ■story being a degraded and moralized version of Father Know-AU, 
 in which the rape of the three hairs occurs within the castle of gold 
 instead of a twelve hours' journey beyond it. There is a certain 
 ■correspondence — more apparent, however, than real — in the incident 
 of the well; but in general the distribution of the incidents is so 
 ■different in each of the eight stories as to form the strongest possible 
 contrast with the mathematical regularity of the first group, which 
 were capable of being exactly drawn to scale. Now the primitive 
 annual solar fairy story's period may be compared to a ribbon a 
 little more than sixty-one inches in length, this length being constant 
 to represent the one year, three months, one week, and a few days 
 deduced roughly from Father Know-AU, and confirmed by the 
 Venetian variant of the end of the Three Citrons — L'omo morto (the 
 dead man) — and we must imagine this ribbon pinned down for just 
 six inches to represent the definite six weeks' period of the Arctic 
 winter night which gave rise to the myth. Hence, if a variant does 
 not quite reach to the end of the period — the second week in March, 
 and yet is to represent the whole of the year, three months, one 
 week, and a few days, it will have to begin a little earlier, in other 
 words, what is cut off one end of the ribbon will have to be added 
 on to the other. Now Father Know- All is the only one of the eight 
 myths which covers all, or nearly the whole of the period, and t^e 
 end of it does not exactly tally with that of the Three Citrons, so 
 that it is not wonderful if it begins a week or two earlier than the 
 Three Citrons would have done if it had been complete, that is to 
 say, if it had preserved its prologue or rapid sketch of the year 
 previous to the prince's wandering through the forty-two days of the 
 Arctic winter night. Consequently, in drawing the following diagram, 
 which forms a rough plan of the primitive annual myth, it has been 
 necessary to extend it rather beyond the exact limit of sixty-one 
 equal spaces and a fraction, because the internal evidence of Father 
 Know-Ail points to the birth of Plavachek having been imagined to 
 occur about the middle of November instead of at the end of it, though 
 it is not absolutely necessary to make this assumption. In any case 
 absolute identity of parts and relation of parts in eight elaborate 
 annual solar weather myths of great antiquity is hardly to be expected. 
 
76 ^Explanation. 
 
 This general plan sums up in a more or less graphical form many 
 of the results arrived at in the previous notes and comments to the 
 eight stories. I have introduced the principal incidents in the last, 
 and in many ways the most remarkable of the Venetian folk-lore 
 stories, collected orally by the late D. G. Bernoni, because it confirms 
 in a remarkable manner the inferences as to the dates and periods 
 which were drawn from a comparison of Father Know- All, The Three 
 Citrons, The Sun-horse, and L'omo morto. This story, called El Be 
 Gorvo (King Eaven), is a Venetian and consequently later variant of 
 the Three Citrons ; but while it has lost the anti-climax, it has- 
 preserved its prologue which links it more or less with Father Know- 
 Ail. The main points of the story are briefly as follows : A queen, 
 under a " conjuration," gives birth to a raven, which just twenty 
 years afterwards returns and demands for a wife the baker's daugh- 
 ter. He has three. The king and queen go to the baker, who 
 reluctantly agrees, after receiving a bribe to give his first daughter in 
 marriage to the raven. On the eve of this marriage a beautiful youth 
 passes the door of the baker's daughter, and says : " The idea of a, 
 beautiful girl like you to go and marry a raven. It will sit on your 
 shoulder and dirty you." The girl replies : "If it does I shall kill 
 it." The marriage takes place. On the following morning the girl 
 is found strangled in bed. The raven has flown. 'The raven returns 
 exactly at the end of a year, and the same happens to the second 
 daughter of the baker. At the end of another year the raven 
 returns and is betrothed to the third daughter of the baker. When 
 the beautiful youth passes her door and taunts her, she replies : 
 " Mind your own business ; if it dirties me I shall have plenty of fine 
 changes of raiment." The raven says to his parents : " This is the 
 girl for me, I won't kill her." They marry, and in bed the raven 
 turns into a beautiful youth. The young bride carries the raven 
 about on her shoulder all day, and is devoted to it. Unfortunately, 
 though bade keep the matter secret by her husband, she divulges to 
 his aunt the secret of their marriage, and the raven flies away. His 
 disconsolate wife begs oE her father-in-law a pilgrim's dress and 
 three pairs of iron shoes, and goes in search of him. Much the 
 same events occur as in the Three Citrons, but she meets no flocks 
 of ravens. The first castle is the castle of the wind, and the old 
 woman gives her a chestnut, and bids her only open it in case of 
 extreme need. The wind is prevented from eating the heroine by 
 being well fed up and gorged with a plate of "pasta " and haricot 
 beans, and sends her on to the castle of the moon. Here much the 
 same happens, except that the old woman gives the heroine a walnut 
 instead of a chestnut, and the moon (of course, a lady giant in Italian) 
 is gorged with a saucepanful of rice, and sends the heroine on to the 
 castle of the sun. Here the sun is gorged with maccaroni; the 
 heroine is given an apple by the old woman, and is carried by the sun 
 on his ray to the castle of King Eaven. At the castle of King Eaven 
 the heroine engages herself as goose-girl, opens the chestnut, and a 
 splendid robe comes out. The geese cackle on seeing it ; the queen 
 
Explanation. 77 
 
 «nquires why ; the heroine informs her, and shews her the dress. 
 The queen desires to buy it ; the heroine will only give it for a night 
 with king Corvo; the queen, to get the robe, consents, and possets 
 the king's wine. Baulked of her desire, the heroine laments through- 
 out the night. The same happens with the walnut ; but the king's 
 confidential servant, who sleeps in the adjoining room, overhears the 
 heroine lamenting, and informs the king. When the apple is opened, 
 and the queen is bribed by the beautiful dress to concede a third 
 night to the heroine, the king throws the possetted wine, unseen by 
 the queen, under the table, and when the heroine sleeps with him 
 the whole mystery is explained. A banquet is then announced, and 
 the twelve neighbouring kings invited. At dessert, when the cloth is 
 removed, each recounts his adventures, and last of all King Eaven 
 his. The end of the story is so quaint that I give it in full : " And 
 now (says he) it's my turn to speak ; and I have to relate what 
 happened to a king, a friend of mine. Well, you must know, that 
 this king was, in person, as we others are, and in the presence of his 
 parents, in the form of a raven ; because his mother, while enceinte 
 with him, was under a conjuration ; and so to her eyes he was a 
 raven. In his kingdom of so and so, he married, and told his young 
 spouse not to divulge that he was a youth ; and she confided it all 
 — every bit, to a friend of hers. And so' it happened to this king to 
 scamper off all at once, and to go a long, long way into another city. 
 There he married again, never dreaming that his first wife would go 
 ■nd find him in that city so far away. Instead of that, this first' 
 ife of his, to go and find him again, she has worn out three pairs of 
 on shoes, and she has passed through all sorts of hardships. And 
 lis second wife has had the courage to arrange that for three suits 
 jf clothes his first wife should sleep with him for three nights. If 
 it had been anyone who had had the idea of murdering him, that 
 there second wife would have let him be deprived of life for three 
 suits of clothes. Now what would she deserve, this second wife ? " 
 And he turns to the oldest king present, and says to him : " Sacred 
 majesty, he who is the oldest king of all we others here, let him say 
 what this second wife would deserve." He rises to his feet, this 
 Icing, and he says : " She would deserve to be burnt in the middle of 
 the piazza on a barrel of tar." Then King Eaven causes his second 
 wivi to come forth, and he says : " And burnt let her be ; it is your 
 ov.., daughter." 
 
 Aad so it was done ; and this King Eaven took with him the 
 goose-girl, and they have renewed their marriage, and have always 
 ielt a world of love for one another. 
 
 Now this story is full of points of interest. In the first place it 
 is obviously a form of the Three Citrons, and the three citrons were 
 shewn by a comparison of the word haluze (a branch), and halushy 
 (Slovenian for dumplings), to have come from the north through 
 some Slavonian region north of Slavonia, and where haluze meant a 
 branch ; because in the north the Jack in the Bean Stalk legend 
 speaks of branches but not of dumplings. In the Venetian variant a 
 
78 Explanation. 
 
 trace of the bean stalk remains in the dish of scarlet runners, and as 
 the scarlet runner is a symbol- of the moon, this proves that the 
 castle of the wind and the castle of lead really do, as was before 
 inferred, represent the dark moon. The dumplings of the Slovenian 
 legend have been transformed, the lead ones into a chestnut, the 
 silver ones into a walnut, and the gold ones into an apple, the 
 invariable high latitude symbol of the sun. It is, therefore, an , 
 absolutely unavoidable conclusion that the legend was transferred 
 from Slovenia to Venice, and not the other way. Veronese gnocchi, 
 a diminutive sort of dumplings, are indeed found in the restaurants- 
 of Venice, but they do not play the semi-comic role the dumpling 
 has in Germany and Slavonia, nor are they, as there, to anything 
 like the same extent popular national dishes ; on the other hand, 
 chestnuts, walnuts, and roast apples are sold everywhere in Venice, 
 and form a substantial part of the common people's bill of fare. 
 
 As an instance of this, and of the large part plays upon words 
 have in the formation of popular superstitions, I may cite the 
 popular Venetian remedy for hcsmorrhoids, viz. : to put a chestnut 
 in your pocket ; as it shrinks so, it is said, will the hoemorrhoids. 
 This superstition is due to the similarity between the Venetian for 
 hoemorrhoids, 'marroide, and the word for the larger chestnut, 
 marroni : the remedy, however, is not recommended to be applied, 
 because, according to popular Venetian superstition, the malady 
 carries with it the promise of longevity. Again, what else can the 
 three pairs of iron shoes be but skates ? — another indication of the 
 northern origin of the legend, just as Mercury's, the mirk-god's, 
 winged feet are most likely only another southern form of the 
 Norsemen's ice-runners. But most significant of all is the promi- 
 nence given to the raven element, that pre-eminently Scandinavian 
 and anything but Venetian bird. 
 
 Still more important perhaps are the time elements of the story. 
 It was shewn that, in Father Know-AU, by assuming the twenty 
 years of Plavachek to be twenty dark and light moons, that is, ten 
 months, we brought the king's thirst after his hot summer ride to 
 somewhere about the middle of September, and that the rest of the 
 story would complete itself within the limits of a year and three 
 months, as indicated by the Dead Man, the Three Citrons, etc. 
 Now making the same assumption for King Eaven, and supposing 
 him to be born at the end of November — for his flight out of the 
 window with the consequent gap or blank in the story is a faint 
 palimpsest or inertia-print of the six weeks' Arctic winter night — his 
 marriage with the first baker's daughter {i.e., the successor to the 
 baker or summer), will fall at the beginning of October. Now as 
 there is an interval of a year, that is, a fortnight (light or dark moon) 
 between each wedding, the second wedding will fall on the 15th 
 October (about), and the third at the beginning of November. No 
 straining of the imagination, therefore, is required to place the flight 
 of King Raven at the end of November, and the journey of his bride 
 through the dark world at the 1st of December. Thus the uniformity 
 
Explanation. 79 
 
 of all these stories, because fashioned upon the same block of the six 
 weeks' Arctic winter night, is again and again confirmed by different 
 lines of reasoning. Lastly, as to the marriage of King Eaven in 
 October, it is to be observed that October in Slavonic is called rijen 
 or the rutting month, and also that in that month and in the second 
 week in November occur St. Martin's summer, and his little summer 
 respectively. It may be considered too large and gratuitous an 
 assumption to make that a fortnight corresponds to a year. Let us 
 see. The whole character of the stories. Father Know-Ail and the 
 Three Citrons, shews them to be more archaic than the moralized 
 variants, such as Eight remains Eight and Fortune and Happiness. 
 Now we know from George and his Goat, and a comparison between 
 this and the other eight stories together, and with their Venetian 
 variants, that the laughing of the prince or princess is an incident 
 which allegorizes the first bright winter frost after the fogs and gloom 
 of November ; we also know frorn similar evidence that the hero and 
 heroine were supposed to be born at the same date, and that this date 
 was either the end of November or the beginning of December. In 
 a late variant like Eeason and Happiness, the stain, so to say, of the 
 December-January Arctic winter night would have almost disap- 
 peared, and the heroine would be born at the beginning of Decem- 
 ber. Thus when the story says the heroine never spoke or laughed 
 since the beginning of her twelfth year, this can only mean that 
 nature was rendered dumb and gloomy by the fogs of November ; 
 that it was sad and cheerless without the laughter of the sunlight. 
 Hence, if in two stories a year is found to correspond to a calendar 
 month, and in another that it corresponds to a fortnight, we may 
 safely infer that the origin of the latter was the more ancient, or, at 
 any rate, that in this particular it had maintained the more ancient 
 form, because it was only in very primitive times that the years were 
 reckoned by light and dark moons, and not by calendar months. 
 And it has been already pointed out that this method of reckoning 
 most likely originated in the Arctic circle where, during the long 
 winter night, the moon was of supreme importance as the measurer 
 par excellence. There would also be another reason, the desire of 
 symmetry and the tendency to synthesize and to endeavour to discover 
 the whole remirrored in the part, characteristic of primitive thought. 
 In Polar regions, and nowhere else, the system of reckoning by dark 
 and light moons would satisfy this yearning, for the six microcosms 
 of dark and light moons would reflect in miniature the year's bi-fold 
 divinity, its long summer day and long winter night, the cerny hog 
 and bily bog, the black and white divinity of the primitive Polar 
 Slavs or Finno-Slavs. Now a long time must have elapsed for the 
 legend of the Miraculous Hair to detach itself from the anti-climax 
 of the Three Citrons and develop into so different a variant. But 
 the Miraculous Hair was certainly prior to Virgil's account of the 
 death of Dido in the fourth book of the ^nid, which was copied 
 from it. Much older, therefore, than the time of Virgil was the story 
 of the Three Citrons, and also, therefore, of its companion story the 
 
80 Explanation. 
 
 Sun-horse. Now the Bethlehem legend has been formed by the 
 substitution of the three kings in the Sun-horse for the Three Fates 
 of Father Know-All; probably, therefore, there was some inter- 
 mediate legend between the fates in Father Know-All and the Magi 
 of Bethlehem, some legend in which three ice-kings stood by the 
 bedside of some Arctic Plavachek. And speaking generally, it is 
 sufficiently clear that the Bethlehem Magi legend was taken from the 
 Sun-horse and Father Know-All, and not Father Know-All and the 
 Sun-horse from the Bethlehem legend. Even the further develop- 
 ment of the Bethlehem legend corresponds not vaguely to its earlier 
 counterpart. Just as the hero of the primitive myth leaves home to , 
 wander through darkness and bring back the light, so Jesus, the 
 putative child of the Jewish Tvashtar, runs away from home, and 
 disputing with the doctors of divinity, proves himself to be more 
 enlightened than any of them ; and not long after this, after a forty 
 days' fast, which is perhaps a faint reminiscence of the forty-two 
 days' Arctic winter night, occurs the struggle for the light in its 
 usual triple form, but vulgarized into a trial of moral strength 
 between a devil and a saint, perhaps having been modified by ancient 
 Buddhist legends. Such is the stuff religions and religious thought 
 are formed of. 
 
 In saying this, I do not mean that the story of the New Testa- 
 ment is a mere annual myth or allegory ; just as in the legend of the 
 Lake of Carlovits, there may very well be a core of real fact round 
 which the legends have crystallized. Moreover, in the case of a 
 religious mystic, the question is a more complicated one, and it 
 becomes difficult to draw the line where fact ends and fiction begins. 
 These allegories and mysteries must have been widely diffused in the 
 time of Christ himself, and it is more than likely that a person who 
 proposed to himself the task of solving all human difficulties and 
 pointing out the narrow gate which leadeth unto life, had turned his 
 receptive mind to the study of popular beliefs, and had somehow or 
 other got to know of the great mystery of Arctic regions, the death 
 and burial of the sun, together with and in consequence of the tempor- 
 ary death of vegetable and animal life, and their resurrection together 
 with the sun in spring. And with his total absence of scientific training 
 and his idealizing tendencies, the knowledge of this cosmical mystery 
 would almost certainly lead him to the same conclusion to which it 
 had led our rudely cultivated Finnish ancestors themselves, that, 
 namely, the gradual collapse of the golden apple of the sun into 
 the apple-garth of the under-world, was only part of the great ebb 
 of vital energy which took place every autumn and winter. And 
 believing this great tide of vitality to be gathered up and to reach its 
 maximum in the human organism, no wonder if he came to believe 
 that in some mysterious way it was possible for an individual, by 
 accumulating within himself the forces df the soma of vitality by 
 means of signal chastity and singleness of life, and then acting in his 
 own life the great mystery of the sun's death, burial, and resurrection, 
 by sacrificing himself voluntarily as human beings had from the 
 
Explanation. 81 
 
 :foundation of the world been sacrified against their will to symbolize 
 that mystery — no wonder if he came to believe that "it was possible 
 for him, singly and alone, to cause the sun of righteousness to rise 
 with heahng on its wings, to bring back the age of gold, a spring and 
 fountain of eternal happiness, and some few years after his own 
 death, to come flying through the air in person on clouds of glory to 
 inaugurate an era of peace and happiness when all things should 
 become new. For that was the gigantic delusion to which he sacri- 
 ficed his life. If it were not so tragical, we, with our present 
 knowledge of the vastness of the universe and our own insignificance, 
 should be inclined to smile at the ludicrous want of a sense of pro- 
 portion between the means and the end that such an idea displayed, 
 and no doubt no Greek philosopher or even Greek lyric poet, with 
 their instinctive sense of proportion and harmony, could ever have 
 been betrayed into so glaring and fatal an error ; but it should be 
 remembered that Christ was most likely, in part at any rate, by birth 
 a Jew, and that that people have always tenaciously held the 
 savages' view of creation, which causes individual Scotch Presby- 
 terians to this day to believe that they can affect the local weather 
 by the action of their own wills, and Protestants to declare when 
 hard pressed and getting the worst of an argument, that they are 
 God, and that it is impious to endeavour to confute them. 
 
 And if there be any truth in this theory of the Christian legend, 
 it helps to explain a good many things in it. It may be, as the great 
 folk-lorist Gubernatis has pointed out, that the finding of the piece 
 of gold in the fish's mouth is merely a form of the Sakuntala, 
 Golden Locks, and Long, Broad, and Sharp-Byes legends ; but it 
 may also be a fact, Christ having deliberately acted the legend by 
 ground-baiting, and, if he did, we ought not exactly to accuse him of 
 charlatanism, for the importance of the esoteric truth thereby sym- 
 bolized may in his eyes have justified the trick; but we ought to 
 rememberj although a sufficient quantity has never yet been accumu- 
 lated in any individual or even congregation, that by faith we can 
 remove mountains — as Sharp-Eyes did. Symbolical, too, may have 
 been the so-called miraculous draught or draughts of fishes, which, if 
 they happened, were no miracle at all, they having been repeated in 
 a much more remarkable form in the lake at Nostell Priory by the 
 late Charles Waterton. We are not even informed how often Christ 
 failed to divipe the presence of the shoal of fish by observing their 
 shadows in the water. In fishing with the grasshopper or spinning 
 the minnow for large trout in the Oglio of Val Camonica, the success 
 of the fisherman depends in great part upon his power of seeing the 
 fish in the water as it follows the bait, "rhis faculty depends upon 
 the power of rapidly changing the eyes' focus when viewing anything 
 isolated in a transparent medium, and this, I believe, to the more or 
 less perfect adjustment of range of vision in the right and left eye. 
 In most people the range of sight differs more or less in the right 
 and left eye, and where this is very much the case, it is often 
 impossible to judge at a moment's notice whether an object flying be 
 
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Explanation. 83 
 
 to save its bacon, and to this day our religious world bears witness 
 to and perpetuates, in a slightly modified form, the grotesque delu- 
 sions, more pardonable in them from their want of our accumulated 
 stores of knowledge of our savage ancestry. 
 
 Lastly, when the authority of Eome, and the respect felt even in 
 its decay for the classic world by the rude northern tribes, had 
 attracted the northern chiefs to the Christian superstition, and had 
 caused them to be baptized themselves and to order the conversion 
 an masse of their serfs and vassals, half unconsciously, perhaps, it 
 would come to be felt, if our theory be the true one, that underlying 
 the new faith and incorporated with it, lay large fragments of the 
 half-forgotten primitive Arctic winter myth, with its glittering jewels 
 of ice and snow, and this half-recognition of the old friends under 
 new faces may help to explain the strange tenacity with which the 
 northern people of Europe have clung to the arid, cruel and vain 
 superstition which developed itself by degradation from the genial, 
 poetical, and, if in part mistaken, not at all events sour or absurd 
 beliefs, myths and generalizations of their lusty savage ancestry. 
 
Supplementary Essay. 
 
 This table is an attempt to classify the characters of these eight 
 stories. It will be seen that nearly all the characters are the 
 same in the eight stories, and that they can easily be referred to the 
 natural events they allegorize. Just as in biology the simple forms 
 precede the more differentiated chronologically, so, in a general way, 
 the story which most closely allegorizes the death of the year and 
 the renewal of spring will be the most ancient. Those stories in 
 which some of the characters have become rudimentary, or have 
 disappeared, in which new characters have been added or the 
 original ones differentiated into two, three, or more, will be the 
 more modern ones. That this principle is a sound one is borne out 
 by the fact that the two storips most differentiated are those to 
 which a moral is tacked on, viz., Eight yet remains Eight and 
 Eeason and Happiness. In George and his Goat a moral idea also 
 glimmers : George declares that the king ought to keep his promise, 
 for saying which the wicked counsellor declares his life to be forfeit. 
 In this story the characters have greatly changed in form. Jezibaba 
 has become a goat, not an inappropriate change. The sun has 
 become the mayor looking out of the window. Four new characters, 
 a landlord and his three daughters, Manka, Doodle and Kate (per- 
 haps corresponding to the baker and his three daughters in Ee 
 Corvo), have been added, not to mention a unicorn and two beasts. 
 In Eeason and Happiness, Charon and the sun have both dis- 
 appeared. The father of the heroine lias differentiated into a 
 perfectly inert king, a cruel counsellor and the executioner, that is, 
 inert winter — the icy wind and the frost which nips the nose off two 
 of the heroes in a story called " Are you Angry?" ; not to mention 
 the farmer's wife who cuts the mice's tails off in the catch of "Three 
 Blind Mice." Jezibaba has differentiated into Eeason and Good- 
 Luck, and the Pates dwindled into a carver and tailor (mentioned 
 incidentally), and have to be eked out by the hero himself, who 
 forms a third. In Eight remains Eight, the Fates and the sun 
 have both disappeared. Jezibaba plays a very subsidiary part as 
 the old woman who points out the sight-restoring well ; and Charon 
 has developed into three damned spirits, the souls of three executed 
 murderers. 
 
 Let us now pass in review the eight allegorical figures and 
 examine them more closely. 
 
 1. Dead winter, in all eight stories, is represented by a king who 
 is either inert or harsh and stubborn, with the exception of one, the 
 Sun-horse, where he has been replaced by the witch mother-in-law. 
 
Father 
 Know -All. 
 
 Dead Winter. 
 
 King — father 
 of the heroine. 
 
 Lofj^, Brisad, 
 
 and ' > 
 Sharp-Eyes. 
 
 Golden 
 Locks. ' 
 
 Frost-hound 
 Livmg Nature. 
 
 His daughter. 
 
 hiving Nature 
 in waning 
 Autumn. 
 
 Aggressive Life 
 
 of Nature in 
 
 re-opening 
 
 Spring. 
 
 Lord of the 
 
 Castle of Steel 
 
 — father of the 
 
 heroine. 
 
 King — father 
 
 of 
 Golden Looks. 
 
 His daughter, 
 
 dressed in 
 
 white. Her 
 
 white spectre 
 
 is one of twelve 
 
 seen by the 
 
 prince in the 
 
 tower. 
 
 Reason an(|l 
 Fortune. 
 
 George and j 
 His Goat. 
 
 A king— father 
 of the heroine, 
 his cruel coun- 
 sellor, and the 
 executioner. 
 
 A king— father 
 of the heroine. 
 
 The Three 
 Citrons. 
 
 VLord of the 
 astle of Steel 
 —father of the 
 , heroine. 
 
 The Sun- 
 horse. 
 
 Golden Locks, 
 one of twelve 
 maidens ; the 
 only one with 
 golden hair. 
 
 The woodman 
 
 — father of the 
 
 hero. 
 
 Hero, son of 
 the woodman. 
 
 The old king 
 
 — father of the 
 
 hero. 
 
 A king, 
 
 Jirichek's 
 
 master. 
 
 The prince, 
 son of the old 
 king, and hero. 
 
 Gross, age- 
 clotted, frozen 
 Matter tempt- 
 ing to the 
 "knowledge of 
 ' and evil. 
 
 Old man lean- 
 ing on a staff : 
 dead one being 
 buried. 
 
 Jirichek, the 
 
 king's servant, 
 
 and hero. 
 
 His daughter, 
 
 dumb from her 
 
 twelfth year. 
 
 His daughter, 
 
 who cannot 
 
 laugh. 
 
 The third of 
 
 the maidens 
 
 who appear at 
 
 the cleaving of 
 
 the citrons. 
 
 A peasant 
 cottage pro- 
 prietor. 
 
 A shepherd. 
 
 The old woman 
 
 who brings the 
 
 serpent. 
 
 The Fates. 
 
 The three fates 
 -godmothers 
 of the hero. 
 
 Charon. 
 
 Ferryman 
 over the black 
 
 The Sun. 
 
 As child, adult 
 and old man 
 
 Long, Broad, 
 
 and 
 Sharp-Eyes. 
 
 The old woman 
 
 who Ijrings the 
 
 serpent. 
 
 Vanek, his son, 
 the hero. 
 
 George, his 
 son, the hero. 
 
 Mpther-in-law 
 
 ot the three 
 
 kings. 
 
 \ 
 
 Right 
 
 yet Remains 
 
 Right. 
 
 Patiier of the 
 sicli: heroine 
 (a princess) . 
 
 A horse with 
 
 a sun on its 
 
 forehead. 
 
 An old king- 
 father of the 
 hero. 
 
 The king of 
 
 the sunless 
 
 kingdom. 
 
 An invalid 
 princess. 
 
 His son, the 
 hero. 
 
 Reason and 
 Good Luck. 
 
 The goat. 
 
 Jezibaba, who 
 incites the 
 
 prince to go for 
 
 the three cit 
 
 rons, and 
 
 appears to him 
 before the 
 
 castles of lead, 
 
 silver and gold. 
 
 The ants, the 
 
 ravens, and a 
 
 fish. A fly is 
 
 added. 
 
 Outskirts of c 
 dense wood. 
 
 Outskirts of a 
 black forest. 
 
 A carver, tailor 
 and the hero. 
 
 Long, Broad, 
 and 
 
 Sharp-Eyes. 
 
 The three 
 
 giants of the 
 
 castles of lead, 
 
 silver and gold, 
 
 respectively. 
 
 A seer, the 
 hero. 
 
 A gamekeeper. 
 
 His son, the 
 
 hero. Also a 
 
 gamekeeper. 
 
 In part the 
 mother-in-law 
 and the three 
 queens, and the 
 old man at the 
 bridge. 
 
 An old woman 
 
 who points out 
 
 the well. 
 
 Outskirts of a 
 pine forest, 
 with wolves. 
 
 In part 
 Golden Locks. 
 
 Three days 
 
 before point of 
 
 meeting with 
 
 the twelve 
 
 ravens. 
 
 The mayor 
 
 looking out of 
 
 the window. 
 
 The giant of 
 
 the castle of 
 
 gold. 
 
 In part the 
 servant and the 
 old man lean- 
 ing on a staff. 
 
 Cottage of the 
 seer. 
 
 Gallows and 
 
 the three 
 
 damned spirits. 
 
SupplementMry Essay. 85 
 
 This substitution of a mother-in-law or step-mother occurs con- 
 stantly where the story is not one of courtship. Observe that where 
 the king is represented as inert, he has evil counsellors prejudiced 
 against the hero and determined to ruin him, corresponding to the 
 ^frost and ice-wind, or Loki, of the Scandinavian legends. 
 
 2. Frost-bound living Nature, in all but the Sun-horse story, is 
 represented as the daughter of the king in (1). In two of the stories 
 she is one of twelve maidens, and in Long, Broad, and Sharp-Byes 
 she is dressed in white. ,She is therefore, in part, the last winter 
 month enveloped in snow. Where not one of twelve, she is gener- 
 ally represented as under a spell. In the Sun-horse story alone is 
 she represented by a Sun-horse, which is stolen by the mother-in- 
 law and her three daughters and rescued from them by the seer. 
 We are expressly told that when the sun had disappeared the king 
 had this horse led through his kingdom from end to end, and that 
 light streamed from it in all directions and saved the people from 
 perishing. When the horse was lost everything was in darkness ; it 
 was only when the king had reached the adjoining kingdom in his 
 search for the Sun-horse, that he saw the real sun just glimmering, 
 as if through a mist. This, as has been shown in the notes to the 
 Sun-horse, seems to be an allegory of the sun dimly seen through 
 the fogs of November, and points to some region in the Arctic circle 
 with abundant lakes or rivers as the source of the legend. The 
 legend would then be the tradition of a year or period, when, owing 
 to floods or some other reason, the fog was so thick that the sun 
 was completely veiled. Note particularly the substitution of a horse 
 for a young lady, 'this would lead one to expect to find traces of 
 some primitive legend in which the heroine was herself on horse- 
 back. 
 
 3. Living Nature in waning autumn. This character is more or 
 less subsidiary and faintly defined. In two stories he is a woodman, 
 the woods above all showing plainly the year's decay. In Eeason 
 and Happiness he is a peasant, perhaps an allusion to the Libusa 
 and Premysl tradition . In one he is a shepherd ; in two he is a 
 superannuated old king ; and in two the master of the hero. But in 
 these two last (the Sun-horse and Golden Locks), he merges more 
 or less into the king, who represents winter— particularly in Golden 
 Locks ; a perfectly natural transformation to a people without 
 almanacs, considering how variable the degree of cold is in autumn 
 and winter respectively, during different autumn and winter 
 seasons. 
 
 4. Aggressive life of Nature in returning re-opening spring. The 
 hero. He is always the son or dependent of the last. In Father 
 Know-Ail, the most primitive of the legends in form, he is called 
 Plavachek (just as the Piave is the chief river in the Slav province 
 of Venezia), the swimmer, a clear allusion to the river floods in 
 autumn, and perhaps also after the breaking up of the ice in early 
 spring. In two of the stories his name is Jiricek (? a diminutive 
 of year), which name, corresponding in Czech to George, may be an 
 
86 Supplementary Essay. 
 
 allusion to the Libusa legend (c/., ytovpyoi), and at the same time 
 connect the legends in which it occurs with St. George and the 
 Dragon. 
 
 5. Gross matter, congealed by the cold, and the cold itself, repre- 
 sented as extreme old age, tempting the hero to the knowledge of 
 good and evil. The primitive idea seems to have been that of an old 
 woman or old man leaning on a staff — a figure dear to Slavonic 
 literature. In the Slovenian legend, one of the most complete and 
 elaborate of any Slavonic fairy stories, Jezibaba, the fire-hag of the 
 ' tundra and steppes, plays the part. Now this hag {agni, gipsy, yag, 
 fire), was imagined as driving in a car drawn by two horses over J;he 
 steppes at a wild speed, stirring with an immense pestle an immense 
 mortar, from which sparks flew in all directions. She bears, there- 
 fore, a certain resemblance to the heroine on horse-back (inferred as 
 existing somewhere from the Sun-horse), and may perhaps be con- 
 sidered as a sort of burlesque of her. In Golden Locks she bears a 
 considerable resemblance to Eve. She appears at the palace (as 
 Jezibaba does in the Three Citrons), and offers the king a serpent, 
 which, when eaten, was to make him understand the language of 
 birds and animals. For the interpretation of the symbols of the 
 serpent and the apple, I refer the reader to Michael Angelo and 
 Gubernatis. George, the servant, contrary to express orders, himself 
 takes a bite before serving up the serpent, and in this way also 
 acquires the gift of understanding what the birds and beasts say. 
 
 This character, as I have said, represents the clotting cold, and 
 more or less merges, on the one hand, into the Fates, on the other 
 into the king or Black Prince — representing the black sunless winter 
 of the Arctic circle. Thus the mother-in-law of the Sun-horse legend 
 in part resembles the Black Prince of the Long, Broad, and Sharp- 
 Eyes legend, while her three daughters, the snow, . have much in 
 common with the Fates dressed in white, with tapers in their hands. 
 It is easy to see why in Arctic regions the idea of cold and fate 
 should be associated. Fate is, above all things, associated with 
 death, and death with cold — particularly where the cold is intense 
 enough to kill directly. To dwellers in Arctic regions the ever-present 
 idea is, and always must have been, that cold is the cause of death, 
 or vice versa, and this explains why in old Slavonic the words for 
 cold, congelation, and death are all closely linked together, because 
 at some very early period of their history the Slav stock certainly 
 inhabited a region within the Polar circle. Here is a list of some of 
 these words ; mor, pestilence ; Morana, the Goddess of pestilence 
 and death ; mord, murder (c/., the Itahan merda, the compact excre- 
 ment) ; more, a morass or stagnant piece of water, afterwards the 
 sea; morek, marrow; morena, madder; morous, a morose, concentrated, 
 reserved person ; mrah, a cloud ; mramor, marble ; mras, frost ; mrcha, 
 carrion ; mriti, to die ; mrtev, dead, and other derivatives ; mrzeti, to 
 vex or render morose ; mrznouti, to freeze ; mrzout, a grumbler ; mrzuty, 
 tiresome, morose ; smrk, a turpentine pine and snot ; smrkati, (cf. 
 Danish morke, Yorkshire mirk, and Mercury Psychopompon, the 
 
Supplementary Essay. 87 
 
 mirk-god) to become mirk, i.e., the day curdling into night; smrsh- 
 nouti, to wrinkle; smrstiti, the same; and smrst, an elephant's 
 trunk ; smrt, death ; umriti, to die ; and numerous derivatives from 
 both these words. Death therefore being evidently so closely linked 
 vfith cold, wrinkling and congelation, and fate with death (c/. the 
 Iforavian story of Godmother Death), no wonder if Jezibaba now 
 and then plays the part. And if there were any doubt about this it 
 would be set at rest by the story of the Three Citrons. 
 
 The old woman who persuades the young prince to go in search 
 of the citrons is the first winter frost after the fogs of November ; 
 she who makes the young prince laugh in the Love of the Three 
 Oranges (Venetian) by tumbling into the oil-well. But she is also 
 Destiny, for, arrived at the Hill of Glass, the prince exclaims : Poru- 
 cena Bohu ! uz ak bud'e tak bud'e ! che sara, sara (Honoured be God ! 
 what will be will be). And in a special sense is the cold of the first 
 winter frost at the beginning of the hero's adventures, a reapparition 
 of the Fates, who appeared just a year before at the same date 
 round bis cradle when he was born ; because just as fate leads 
 human life irresistibly to the grave, so did the first winter frost 
 infallibly prelude the grave's Arctic prototype, the long winter night, 
 in which the darkness was not all an evil ; for to our sensual Ugrian 
 ancestors it was a period of unbridled licence and sensuality — the 
 earthly' Soma juice, the elixir of life, the physical, material, bodily 
 delight, corresponding on earth to the moonlight in heaven, which 
 together rendered that darkness anything but unendurable. Thus 
 the people that walked in darkness saw a great light ; thus to the 
 annual winter death of Polar regions, enshrining in its sunless gloom 
 the silver casket of an utterly abandoned sensuality, we owe the 
 beautiful but alas ! unproven superstition, that the light of love still 
 gilds the tomb, just as it silvered ■ the long Arctic winter night to 
 our lusty Hungarian ancestors. We can now, step by step, shew 
 that the Norns and the basket in II qestelo di fiori (Venetian) are, 
 incredible as it may seem, one and the same person. For Jezibaba, 
 the old woman at the beginning of the Three Citrons, is a re-embodi- 
 ment of the Three Fates in the prelude to Father Know-All. This 
 old woman is the same as the one at the beginning of the Venetian 
 variant of the story (L'amore delle tre narance), who makes the 
 prince laugh by falling into the oil-well. The old woman who falls 
 into the oil-well is the same as George's goat in the Czech story, 
 who makes the princess laugh ; and a mistaken derivation of the word 
 kosa, combined with the Venetian lagoons, has turned the goat into 
 a basket. The transformation has even gone a step further in an 
 absurd Venetian variant called A Holiday Dinner. A woman leaves 
 the dinner cooking. The cat and dog eat it. Then, afraid of a 
 whipping, the cat jumps into a spider's web (note, the basket of 
 flowers has become an autumn spinner's web— the spider of St. 
 Martin's summers), but her tail hangs down. The dog jumps at the 
 tail and sticks to it. The wife, returning from mass, and then her 
 husband share the same fate, and are also hung up. Their crony 
 
88 Supplemeiitury Essay. 
 
 Tony finds them so, pulls off the cat's tail, and the dog swallows th& 
 cat, the wife the dog, the husband the wife — and the hearers are 
 great fools if they swallow Tony and my tale. But, for all that, I 
 would, in conclusion, heartily recommend this demonstrated series 
 of transformations to Professor Sayce and Canon Taylor, who find it 
 hard to believe that the Vedic Parkun'ya and the Slav Perkuna, the 
 Vedic Pandu and the Homeric Pandarus, the Vedic Earites and the 
 Greek Charites, the Vedic Gandharvas and the Greek Centaurs, etc., 
 etc., are really one and the same thing. 
 
 We now see why the old woman in the Three Citrons is not 
 invited to the wedding. She was the herald of the black Arctic 
 winter night, symbol of death, and thus the temptress to its dark and 
 sensual delights ; but not for this was she banned from the festivities, 
 but because the cold has no place in the marriage of the spring. All 
 she could do to revenge herself for the slight was, like the Christian 
 superstition of which she and the rest of the Arctic legends are the 
 more genial origin, to condense a black cloud, and with it for awhile 
 to obscure the sun. 
 
 We now see also why the three Frost Kings of the Sun-horse 
 story, substituted in the Bethlehem legend as three Magi for the 
 three white-robed winter Fates of Father Know-AU, bear caskets of 
 precious jewels : they are the jewels of ice and snow which the three 
 Frost Kings scattered in their Arctic kingdoms, transformed to gems 
 and blended with spices and scents as the legend was carried into 
 warmer southern climates. 
 
 6. The Fates appear in the first story as the godmothers of the 
 hero, reduced to one in the famous Moravian legend of Godmother 
 Death. They perfectly correspond to the three Norns seated under 
 the tree, Igdrasil, of the Scandinavian legend. In two stories they 
 take the form of dependents, and change sex, viz., as Long, Broad, 
 and Sharp-Eyes. In Golden Locks they become ants, ravens, and a 
 fish and a fly. In the Three Citrons (in part), three giants. In 
 another Slavonic fairy story they become identified with the four 
 brothers themselves, and this change is beginning to manifest itself 
 in Eeason and Happiness. In the Scandinavian Norns we have the 
 past, the present, and the future. It is not wonderful, therefore, to 
 find them in the Three Citrons blended with three periods. Nor need 
 we be surprised if they tend to merge in the hero or heroes of these 
 folk-lore tales. It is only in our actions that the fates which rule 
 our lives manifest themselves. 
 
 7. Charon only occurs in Father Know-AU. He corresponds to 
 the three damned spirits and his boat to the gallows in Eight remains 
 Eight, and perhaps to the first flock of ravens in the Three Citrons, 
 and his boat to the cottage of the seer in the Sun-horse. He repre- 
 sents the passage of the sun into the underworld of the Arctic 
 winter night. The bridges, and perhaps the dumplings, represent 
 the sunsets of the brief winter days on the return of the sun of the 
 Polar winter night. In Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes, the draw- 
 bridge which is represented as moving pari passu with the setting 
 
Supplementary Essay. 89 
 
 sun. It is drawn up and disappears just as the disc of the sun 
 disappears below the horizon. The simile, in fact, is an extremely 
 happy one. When halved by the horizon, the disc of the sun does 
 in fact form a one-arched bridge ; the instant it has sunk, the hero 
 and his companions are plunged in the kingdom of night. They 
 remain there three days. Again, in three lengthening days at the 
 beginning of the Arctic spring (if it can be called so), the course of 
 the sun will form three arches of a bridge, each arch a little wider 
 and higher than the one before, just as they are drawn in the illus- 
 tration of the second half of the Sun-horse. 
 
 As I have already said, in Eight remains Eight Charon has 
 become three accursed spirits ; after their appearance, the hero 
 visits the two cities of Eamuli and Sarahawsky, in the kingdom of 
 darkness. That Charon and the Three Spirits represent one and the 
 same element is shown by the fate of the king and the stranger mau 
 {tcuzy muz) in Father Know- All and Eight remains Eight respectively. 
 The sun has dropt out of the latter story, and with it the final three 
 days' struggle between the light and the darkness. The dumplings 
 in the Three Citrons, and the bridge in the Sun-horse, are closely 
 incorporated with the final struggle between the light and the dark, 
 the heat and the cold. Comparing Father Know-All, The Three 
 Citrons, the Sun-horse, and Eight remains Eight, the four stories 
 in which the time previous to the final struggle is sharply divided, 
 we find : 
 
 In (1) the hero passes through two ruined cities. 
 
 In (8) named Sarahawsky and Eamuli. 
 
 In (5) the seer in search of the Sun-horse passes through seven 
 kingdoms. 
 
 In (3) the hero visits two castles, first one of lead and then one of 
 silver. 
 
 This last form of the legend gives a clue to its general solution. 
 As we know, in primitive ages time was reckoned, not by lunar 
 months, but by dark and light moons, of fourteen days each. In 
 the castles of lead and silver, therefore, and the journeyings to reach 
 them, and stay in them, it is impossible not to recognise periods of 
 dark moons and light moons. If there were any doubt about the 
 matter, it would be set at rest by the Sun-horse legend. The seven 
 kingdoms, if taken as weeks, exactly tally with the time in the 
 Three Citrons (see the diagrams). It is worth noting that the Three 
 Citrons and the Sun-horse are both Slovenian, and have travelled 
 south, while the Magyars are related to the Turanian races of the 
 extreme north. I suppose, though my astronomical imagination is 
 too poorly cultivated to feel quite sure of it, that in a latitude where 
 the sun disappeared for a time permanently below the horizon, the 
 dark moon period would be less marked than with us, the waxing 
 moon appearing for the same length of time each diurnal revolution 
 in the constant darkness. This would quite agree with the details 
 of the legend where it is stated that the giant of the castle of lead 
 was considerably shorter than he of the castle of silver, and this 
 
90 Supplementary Essay. 
 
 gentleman than the lord of the golden castle. That is to say, there 
 was first a brief dark moon, then a long light one, followed by the 
 re-appearance of the sun with increasing and then waning splendour 
 for the remainder of the year. In the Siebenbiirgen form of the 
 story, in place of a castle of lead is a copper well, with copper- 
 coloured water, and a copper palace, which may be a reminiscence 
 of the Aurora borealis; in the Venetian variant the lead and copper 
 have given place to the wind. 
 
 Let us now attempt roughly to compare a few of the principal 
 incidents and properties of the eight stories. First, let us take the 
 properties of the Three Pates in the different stories. These figures 
 are absent from Vedic legends. Their most primitive form (ideally 
 if not chronologically), is that of the three Norns, past, present, and 
 future, allegorized in Greek myth as the Parcae plying that most 
 ancient of all spinning-jennies, the spindle, and twisting the line with 
 it from the distaff. In Father Know-Ail we observe them to be 
 dressed in white and to carry tapers. In Grandmother Death, as 
 has been observed, they have dwindled to one who leads the hero 
 into a cavern, where tapers representing the lives of human beings are 
 burning. This cavern with the tapers is the night firmament studded 
 with stars. *The idea that the life of every human being is bound 
 up with a star in heaven is a thoroughly and profoundly Slavic one, 
 although it also occurs among the Maoris of New Zealand in the 
 legend of Hikatoro. 
 
 * In my selections of Victor Halek's (the great Slav poet) evensongs, there is 
 a translation of his versified version of the legend. As my translation of his 
 admirable writings proved " caviar to the general," and the reader is not likely to 
 possess a copy, I reproduce here the translation, such as it is : 
 Two thoughts in God, as stars were set 
 
 In heaven's divine communion, 
 And shone, of all the starry choir. 
 
 In closest union, 
 Till one of them fell prone to earth 
 
 And left her mate to languish. 
 Till God excused her, too, the sMes 
 
 Pitying her anguish. 
 And many a night on earth they roved 
 
 In grief for their lost Aden, 
 Till once again they met as men. 
 
 As youth and maiden. 
 And looking in each other's eyes 
 They recognized straightway. 
 And lived, thrice blest, till God to rest 
 
 Called one away. 
 Who, dying out of earth, recalled 
 Her love to heaven's fair shore. 
 And God forbade it not, and now 
 They're stars once more. 
 
 Versifying this legend, the great constructive Slav poet wished to point out not 
 merely the only possible, but the only thinkable, form of immortality since the 
 new world of thought, created by Darwin and Darwinism. In the New Zealand 
 legend, Hikatoro's wife fell from heaven on to the earth. He followed in search of 
 
Supplementary JEssay. 91 
 
 In the hands of Tycho Brahe, of Prague, and indeed much earlier, 
 this idea was developed into the pseudo-science of astrology which 
 occupied so large a field in the Middle Ages. Those who have walked 
 over a plain or table-land thickly covered with snow on a starry 
 winter's night, know how intensely the mind is besieged by the idea 
 of fate and fatality. This is the feeling or idea which has dressed 
 the fates in white, with tapers in their hands. Interwoven in these 
 stories to the inmost core is the presence of snow and ice. Carried 
 to a warmer climate they may have melted into Indra myths and the 
 like : no Indra myth could ever have frozen into the Norns of Father 
 Know-AU. 
 
 In the Three Citrons the fates have become three periods presided 
 over by three giants — at least in part. These periods are not exactly 
 Past, Present, and Future, but they resemble them. There is first a 
 sun-and-moonless period — chaos. The castle of lead. A sunless 
 period — the castle of silver. A middle period, and so corresponding 
 to the present ; and a sunny period, the return of spring, the golden 
 age we hope for but which never comes. In Long, Broad, and 
 Sharp-Byes a great change occurs. The vagueness in which fate was 
 enveloped in the Three Citrons, where it was partly represented by 
 the giants and partly by Jezibaba, has disappeared ; again it has 
 become three persons who are active helpmates of the hero and 
 strongly individualized. 
 
 There are three stories in which these figures occur. In Long, 
 Broad, and Sharp-Eyes we have — 
 
 (1) Long, the man who can go 100 miles at a stride ; 
 
 (2) Broad, who can puff himself up like a puff-ball and drink seas 
 
 dry; 
 
 (3) Sharp-Eyes, who can split rocks open with a beam from his 
 
 eyes. 
 
 In George and his Goat — 
 
 (1) The man who goes so fast, that he has to tie one foot to his 
 
 shoulder ; 
 
 (2) The man with his finger in a wine-pouch, who squirts 100 
 
 miles ; 
 
 (3) The man so sharp-sighted that he has to wear a beam across 
 
 his eyes. 
 
 her, placed her in a boat, attached a rope to it, and they were hauled back into 
 heaven and there transformed into two stars. The legend also occurs in China in 
 the following form : "In the depths of the Milky Way dwells, according to Chinese 
 tradition, a disconsolate star-goddess. One day, when she had been sent on a 
 mission to the world, she committed the error of falling in love with a Chinese 
 shepherd. When her mission was concluded she was recalled to heaven, and left 
 her spouse a prey to profound despair. But when the hour of death sounded for 
 him, the council of the gods had pity upon the erring goddess and carried the soul 
 of the shepherd into the Milky Way, opposite to the spot where shone his beloved 
 one's. Once a year, on the seventh day of the seventh month, magpies descend 
 into the Milky Way, and, by the help of their wings, the divided lovers can re- 
 unite." 
 
92 Supplementary Essay. 
 
 In Eeason and Happiness — 
 
 (1) The carver ; 
 
 (2) The tailor ; 
 
 (3) The hero. 
 
 In Golden Locks we have — 
 
 (1) The ants who collect the pearls of the bracelet ; 
 
 (2) The fish that recovers the princess's gold ring from the bottom 
 
 of the sea ; 
 
 (3) The ravens that bring dead and living water {i.e., hail and 
 
 rain, or ice and flowing water) ; 
 
 (4) The fly that indicates which of the twelve maidens is Golden 
 
 Locks. 
 
 Now, Broad jn the first story, and the fish in Golden Locks, have 
 both the same task, viz., to recover the heroine's golden ring from 
 the bottom of the black sea. The recovery of the golden ring is the 
 return of the sun after the sunless Arctic winter, and this return 
 occurs towards the end of January or the beginning of February, 
 under the constellation of the Pisces. The fish, then, is the constel- 
 lation of the Pisces, and Broad can be no less. In George and his 
 Goat the man with his finger in the mouth of the bottle is certainly 
 Aquarius, and Sharp-Eyes is always Sagittarius. It follows, therefore, 
 that in Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes, Long is Aquarius, and in 
 George and his Goat, Pisces. The idea, perhaps, is the gigantic stride 
 the Arctic winter makes from darkness to light with the re-appear- 
 ance of the sun. 
 
 Turning to the story of Golden Looks, we shall soon identify the 
 ants and the ravens. In Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes, when the 
 last task has been completed, the heroine freed from the spell, the 
 frozen warriors recalled to life, and the third hoop has snapped off 
 the body of the Black Prince, he flies out of the window as a raven. 
 That is, the long winter night, when the thaw comes, flies off as a 
 thunder-cloud. In the Three Citrons the hero is given his father's 
 sword. Every time in his journey that he throws himself down to 
 rest, the sword clanks and disturbs the ravens above, who fly into the 
 air. The prince, following them, arrives at the different castles of lead, 
 silver and gold. Now the stick and sword represent the lightning in 
 these myths ; here again, therefore, the ravens represent the cloud- 
 wrack drifting eastward. In Golden Locks, therefore, the ravens 
 bearing frozen and fluid water are the thunder-clouds showering 
 hail or rain, and correspond to Aquarius, hence of necessity the 
 quick-eyed ants to Sagittarius. According to a Vedic legend, Indra 
 as an ant passed into a cavern where was a great serpent. He bit 
 this serpent and, distracting its attention for a moment, caused it to 
 allow the waters to escape and usher in the spring. In this form, 
 therefore, Indra, the ants and Sagittarius identify and may be com- 
 pared to Hermes Psychopompos, the usherer of the souls to the 
 under-world, just as Sagittarius ushers the sun into his Arctic 
 winter tomb. Lastly, the fly which recognizes which of the twelve 
 
Supplementary Essay. 93 
 
 maidens is Golden Looks is a symbol of the return of life in spring. 
 In George (? little year) and his Goat we have another sign of the 
 Zodiac— Capricornus, the December sign. The mayor looks out of 
 the window and says : " Oh fie ! Martha, Kate and Doodle ! " comes 
 down to detach them from the goat as the bull is passing, and he 
 and the bull both stick too. This seems to indicate the passing of 
 the sun into the constellation of the bull. There is, however, some 
 confusion here. The goat is certainly Gapricornus ; but, as we have 
 seen (and the explanation has been given), there is a tendency for the 
 characters to walk out of their frames, so to say, and assume different 
 parts. Analogies might easily be imagined between Gapricornus, 
 the first winter, and Aries, the first spring constellation ; between 
 the first constellation of the year, and the first one of the little year, 
 ■i.e., the three winter months. 
 
 The carver, tailor, and hero of the story Eeason and Happiness 
 are explained by a Moravian legend called The Four Brothers. In 
 this story four sons of a gamekeeper, like the Panduidi, go into a 
 wood, there divide and seek their fortunes. At the end of a year 
 they return home, each having learnt a trade. One is a botcher, the 
 second a thief, the third a gamekeeper, and the fourth a star-gazer. 
 The star-gazer wins the princess, and each brother is given a king- 
 dom. In spring the father lives with the botcher, in summer with 
 the thief, in autumn with the gamekeeper, and in winter with the 
 star-gazer. The hero, therefore, corresponds to the winter ; the 
 carver is autumn ; and the tailor who clothes the world with flowers 
 is the spring. In the Vedic legend Tvashtar (the Vedic Vulcan) — 
 compare Slav tvoritel- — the former or creator is associated with the 
 autumn, he creates all forms of beings. In other words, the seeds 
 which contain all the forms of vegetable life set and fall, the fish 
 spawn, the cattle rut. 
 
 We have now identified all the characters in these eight stories 
 who correspond, and have found, in their most abstract form, the 
 fates or grandmothers to represent vague ideas of time, past, present 
 and future ; then the recurrent periods of dark moons, light moons 
 and day, particularly associated with the long Arctic winter night ; 
 then the four seasons ; and lastly the twelve signs of the Zodiac, 
 presiding over the twelve months, and supposed in the dark ages of 
 the world to influence the destinies of human beings. The stories, 
 therefore, with the least differentiated Norns will, as a rule, be the 
 most ancient. 
 
 The table on next page shows the relation of the fates and their 
 substitutes to one another in the stories. 
 
 This analysis of the fate-element brings out in very clear relief 
 one or two facts with respect to the Slavonic myths, which seem to 
 me of considerable importance. In the first place, all the stories are 
 annual myths. In the next place, all are more or less impregnated, 
 so to say, with the elements of frost and cold. And, lastly, in all the 
 stories the hero is not the sun, but the revivifying forces of nature 
 acting upon the surface of our globe, and which bring dead nature 
 
FUTUBB. 
 
 Pbesent. 
 
 Past. 
 
 Indepihite Time. 
 
 Skulde. 
 
 Varende. 
 
 Vorth. 
 
 Scandinavian. 
 
 Atropos. 
 
 Clotho. 
 
 Lachesis. 
 
 Greek. 
 
 The Three 
 
 Fates or God- 
 
 mothers. 
 
 Czech (Father 
 Know-All) 
 
 Sun and Moon-Period. 
 
 Moon-Period. 
 
 Moonless 
 Period. 
 
 Arctic 
 Moon- 
 Periods. 
 
 Castle of Gold (Giant size of a high 
 tower) 48 ft. 
 
 Castle of Silver (Giant 
 size of a fir) 27 ft. 
 
 Castle of 
 
 Lead. 
 Giant 15ft. 
 
 The Three 
 
 Citrous. 
 
 Hungaro- 
 
 Slovenian. 
 
 Winter. 
 
 Autumn. 
 
 Summer. 
 
 Spring. 
 
 Annual Period, vrith 
 the four seasons. 
 
 Hvezdar, 
 the stargazer. 
 
 Mysliveo, the 
 gamekeeper. 
 
 Pobera, the 
 thief. 
 
 Latar, 
 the botcher. 
 
 The Pour Brothers. 
 Moravian. 
 
 The Hero. 
 
 The carver. 
 
 
 
 
 The tailor. 
 
 Beason and Happi- 
 ness. Czech. 
 
 
 1 
 
 P 
 
 > 
 
 o 
 
 t 
 
 i 
 
 CD 
 
 1 
 5' 
 
 QD 
 
 O 
 
 1- 
 
 
 <! 
 f 
 
 r 
 
 9 
 1 
 
 1 
 
 CO 
 
 
 Annual Period, with 
 
 Twelve Signs of 
 
 Zodiac. 
 
 Feb. 
 
 Jan. 
 
 Deo. 
 
 Nov. 
 
 Oct. 
 
 Sept. 
 
 Aug. 
 
 July 
 
 June 
 
 May 
 
 Apr. 
 
 Mar. 
 
 Months. 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
 CO 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Long, Broad, and 
 Sharp-Eyes. Czech. 
 
 
 i 
 
 
 H3 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Golden Locks. 
 Czech. 
 
 If 
 
 IK 
 
 ^1 
 
 a> 
 Q 
 
 SB 
 
 O P 
 
 S a" 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 a 
 W 
 
 g. 
 3 
 
 George and His Goat. 
 Czech. 
 
Supplementary Edsay. 95 
 
 to life again in spring. There is not a vestige of a myth of the dawn. 
 Even in the Vedas it does not seem certain that any of the myths 
 were originally dawn-myths, and a little reflection will show that it 
 they are very primitive they cannot have been. Professors Guber- 
 natis and Max Miiller have drawn pathetic pictures of primitive 
 man's terror at seeing the kindly orb of day disappear at night, and 
 his thankfulness when it returned, brighter than ever, next morning. 
 These pictures display a lively fancy in the composers of them, 
 but very poor imaginative faculties. The writers seem to forget that 
 primitive man began life, like ourselves, as babies. Moreover, primi- 
 tive man in many respects resembled children. In fact, just as 
 intra-uterine life is an epitome of our race's evolution from the 
 primitive monad to the first savage, our early years on earth may be 
 supposed to resemble that of primitive man himself. Now, referring 
 to our early years, we shall certainly find that normal, often recur- 
 ring events are accepted without fear or criticism. Prom infancy to 
 ten years of age we witness, or at all events assist at, 3650 sunsets 
 and the same number of sunrises, and are gradually trained to the 
 phenomenon by nature. What infant troubles its head about the 
 changes of day and night ? What boy of ten is the least alarmed at 
 the sun's disappearance, accustomed to it as he is from the earliest 
 days of awakening consciousness ? But every savage passes through 
 the same stages of infant and youthful life, so that there is no reason 
 why he should be more alarmed than ourselves. If we interrogate 
 our early past by means of memory, we shall find that the things 
 which impressed us were not frequently-recurring events, but those 
 which happened less frequently — a hard winter, a hot summer, an 
 eclipse of the sun, a comet, the rapid shortening of the forest of the 
 growing hayfield from year to year, for example, and others of the 
 like kind. Such, then, would also be the case with an infant savage, 
 and not more with one than another: that is, all would so feel. 
 Even the more marked changes from summer to winter would soon 
 cease to impress where the change was not exceptionally striking. 
 These myths, which ring a change upon the mysterious disappearance 
 of the winter sun into the black sea of death, could never for instance 
 have originated in warm countries where there is no snow or ice, or 
 next to none, and where, if the sun gives intenser light and more 
 heat in summer, it is far more brilliant and sparkling in winter. An 
 eclipse gives rise to the myth of the dragon eating the sun because it 
 is an event which appeals to the senses, and the myth is a present- 
 ation of a fact ; the myth of the disappearance of the sun into the 
 black sea, into the womb of night, its death and burial, also repre- 
 sents a felt and seen physical fact, if primitive man invented it, and 
 it is not a scientific allegory which primitive man was not in a 
 condition to create. As to sunsets and sunrises and winters and 
 summers in tepid climates, he takes them as much as a matter of 
 course as do the other animals, to such an extent, in fact, as to 
 resent rational explanations of what seems so commonplace as not to 
 need explaining: witness the Church and Galileo. If this general 
 
96 Supplementary Essay. 
 
 reasoning were insufficient, the fact that the fates invariably in the 
 later forms of the myth develope into late autumn and winter signs 
 of the Zodiac, and that in one of them we have as well an allusion to 
 the second spring constellation, ought to be conclusive. But in the 
 early forms of the myth the fates occur as Norns or Parcae. In the 
 Vedic legends there are no traces of Norns or Parcee. Therefore the 
 early forms of the myths were not derived from Vedic mythology. 
 Nor were the later ones, for they are evolved from the primitive ones 
 under the influence of astrology. Moreover, all the stories bear 
 witness to having been evolved under a rigorous winter climate. On 
 the other hand many of the characters correspond to those of the 
 Vedic mythology. For instance, the ants collecting the pearls are 
 Indra, as ant biting the serpent and setting free the autumn or spring 
 floods. The gamekeepers and woodsmen correspond to the carpenter- 
 god Tvashtar, the autumn god, the former of all things dead and 
 living, because autumn is the time of seeds which contain all the 
 forms of life within themselves. A connection undoubtedly exists 
 between some details of these primitive fairy stories and the Vedic 
 legends, but that they were borrowed from the latter there is no 
 proof. Seeing that it is now well ascertained that our primitive 
 ancestry did not " swarm " out of India into Europe, but that the 
 nomad tribes of North-West Europe and North-East Asia gradually 
 drifted south, part diverging vid Persia and the Punjaub into India, 
 and part settling in Europe, it is more likely that the portion which 
 drifted into India took its inheritance of legends with it into the 
 Punjaub, and there developed its Vedas from them, while the other 
 nomad tribes which occupied Europe carried their portion of the 
 Arctic legends into Europe with them, and there developed them in 
 their own way. This theory explains better than any other both the 
 points of resemblance and the points of difference between the fairy 
 stories and the Vedas, and their wide diffusion. That a myth of the 
 dawn, supposing it could be invented, belonging to a low latitude 
 should develope into an annual Arctic myth seems an impossibility, 
 but that an Arctic myth removed from surroundings which rendered 
 it intelligible should thaw and degrade into a dawn-myth is what we 
 should naturally expect of it if it were to travel south — it would 
 adapt itself to that order of facts in nature which best assured it a 
 basis in reality. Now by a singular coincidence, the day is an 
 epitome of the year ; the day begins with cloud and mist, culminates 
 at mid-day, and ends in cold and darkness, just as the year begins 
 with thaw and rain, culminates in summer heat, and ends in frost 
 and shortening daylight. And the analogy between the Arctic year 
 and the day and night of the temperate zone is still closer and 
 more striking. The northern myth, transplanted to a warmer 
 climate, would thus easily adapt itself from being first an annual 
 myth to becoming a diurnal one, while many "survivals" of the 
 primitive myth would remain, like rudimentary organs, to puzzle 
 the Sanscrit scholar ; and this is exactly the condition of the Vedic 
 myths. 
 
Svpplementary Essay. 97 
 
 Now, suppose a philosophizing reflective stage of thought reached, 
 as in fact was reached in the north of India some five or six centuries 
 before the birth of Christ, the condition of their mythology would 
 naturally turn thoughtful people's minds to the curious analogy be- 
 tween the cyclus of the day and that of the year, the evolution of the 
 day and the year, and that of human life : all three beginning with a 
 little fluid or viscid slime, and finishing in darkness, rigidity, and 
 death. And the verification of this fact (more particularly in minds 
 to which the true conditions and relations of the organic and inor- 
 ganic world world were still a mystery) would lead to a very natural 
 and simple inference. If, it would be said, the day is an epitome of 
 the year, the year will be an epitome of the Kalpa, or CEon. Partial 
 floods and deluges and the regular floods of spring would, in fact, be 
 data from which to infer that the Kalpa of which the year was an 
 epitome also began with flood and deluge. And if one Kalpa, then 
 the whole series of Kalpas, so that at last the generalization of Thales 
 would be reached, and in fact was reached— that the world began as 
 water. But in those early days of a robust vitality, still unbroken 
 by crowding and the insanitary conditions of city life, and when 
 inorganic nature was so totally inexplicable, organic vitalism was 
 •considered to be, in a way not understood, the source of the inorganic 
 activities and superior to them ; it was the spring that brought the 
 «un, not the sun that brought the spring, exactly reversing the 
 modern scientific conception. The third parallel series, the organic 
 vital cyclus from generation to the grave, would therefore come in 
 with irresistible force to clinch the previous induction and give it the 
 ■stamp of certainty. Finally, since all life begins with an egg, the two 
 primitive elements of the ontology would be, and were considered to 
 be, water and an egg (whence our baptism and Easter eggs) — an egg 
 floating on the water, although sometimes, as was indeed logical 
 where organic vitality was supposed to be at the root of the inorganic, 
 the egg itself was held to be the origin of the condition of deluge 
 which succeeded it (cf. : the Serbian chicken legends). 
 
 Now, this induction, of 2,500 years before the present day, was 
 considerably in advance of the latest modern thought and discovery 
 which has recognized in the development of the embryo an epitome 
 of the whole development through geologic time of organic beings. 
 What was necessarily wanting to it was verification by observation 
 and the collection of facts ; nevertheless, these ancient philosophers in 
 the legend of Purusha, who is developed from an egg, lives a thousand 
 years, producing from the different parts of his body, light, air, 
 fire, etc., and then dies, had in their general induction hit upon 
 the development among the lower animals by alternate genera- 
 tion, and in their ontology are in substantial accord with the con- 
 clusions of modern science. Lastly, in those earlier times, not 
 Qnly may several missing links between men and apes have been 
 still lingering upon earth (just as the Moas have only recently 
 Ijecome extinct in New Zealand), or at any rate traditions of 
 them have survived, but the creation of an inflexional language 
 
98 Supplementary Essay. 
 
 (perhaps consciously and deliberately evolved during its later stages 
 as a stupendous memoria tecnica), and the absence or rarity of 
 books and printing, with the pernicious habit of mind they create of 
 transferring memory from brains to paper, contributed to the develop- 
 ment of well-stored minds, with all their knowledge, so to say, in 
 hand, and tended to ensure the soundness of their inductions. I 
 have said we are behind these early philosophers in one respect, and 
 so we are. We have never yet attempted to infer the evolution of 
 the aeon from that of the year, because the analogical nexus between 
 the two has not been shewn to be necessary. Considering the success 
 of this method of induction among the ancients for arriving at 
 respectably accurate conclusions, it might even now be of use, at all 
 events for the framing of hypotheses to be afterwards the subject of 
 analytical study, observation, and the collation of facts. However 
 this may be, one thing is certain, that ancient traditions, beliefs and 
 theories are far from being the despicable trash they are supposed to 
 be by missionaries in the East, and that geologists, by a careful 
 collation of all the traditions and notices of the ape-hero Hanuman 
 in the Hindoo classics, might greatly facilitate their search for the 
 remnants quaternary, or perhaps yet more ancient, of the missing 
 link. A comparative study of the name for apes in all the languages 
 of the world might also lead to some valuable results. The roots of 
 many Latin words as, e.g., that of tabes and macula dim (cf. : mak), 
 are to be found in their most primitive form in old Slavonic. Now 
 the name of the filthy oscans was originally opisci (see Juvenal), and 
 isco, asco, etc., means " that nasty," while op in Sclavonic means 
 ape ; it is not unlikely, therefore, that the word opisci meant originally 
 " those nasty monkeys," from the likeness of the ancient oscans to 
 apes. 
 
 If the tenacity of the memory of the men of old be doubted, I 
 would appeal to that of the modern North Eussian moujik biliny 
 {lit. : weeds) or ballad singers, or to Homer and Hesiod, who, from 
 not being able to read or write, could remember 50,000 lines of 
 poetry, as well as to Herodotus, who repeated from memory a great 
 part of his history at the Olympic games. 
 
 To return to our immediate subject— the eight primitive Slav 
 fairy stories. From their comparison, the just conclusion seems to 
 be that they point to having been derived from Arctic annual myths, 
 and not from Indian Vedic solar ones, themselves more probably a 
 derivation from the same stock, the annual myth degrading to 
 diurnal ones, when the climatic conditions that originated them 
 were exchanged by migration (either of the story or the story-teller), 
 for less rigorous winters and warm summers. This theory in no way 
 touches or impugns what has been repeatedly demonstrated, that 
 Eastern legends and fairy stories (like the Bethgellert legend) have 
 constantly, and from remote times, found their way into Europe, 
 become naturalized, and extended themselves to remote regions. 
 The very welcome that they received proves that the soil was 
 congenial to them. They stirred memories of legends long since 
 
Supplementary Essay. 99 
 
 passed into oblivion, and were doubly welcome, both for their 
 novelty, and because, though the hearers, perhaps, only half-realized 
 it, they were old friends with new faces. When in some angle of a 
 breakwater the rolling breakers are repelled, the crests colliding with 
 the advancing billows increase the confusion and hurly-burly, and 
 heighten its wild extravagance. This is what has happened with 
 our myths and fairy stories. The huge majestic billows of the past 
 are subsiding, but the reflux from the last of their spent forces, 
 crossing the subsiding wave-roll of western pagan fancy, has pro- 
 longed the semblance of its activity and galvanized its decay into a 
 last flicker of youthful vitality. 
 
 In all the eight stories from the Czech, Lusatian, and Ungaro- 
 Slovenian of which I am writing, the frost and snow element is 
 intrinsic, and in some of them stronger than the climate of Bohemia 
 and Hungary would seem to warrant. This is particularly the case 
 with the Three Citrons and the Sun-horse, both of which have many 
 points in common with Eastern fairy stories. Every one knows the 
 story of Jack and the Bean Stalk ; it is the variant of a fairy myth 
 which extends from Alaska in North America to Serbia in the 
 Balkan Peninsula, and to Great Britain in the North of Europe. 
 That is to say, it covers probably nearly the whole of the Northern 
 hemisphere. In the Alaska (Dogger-Indian) legend, Chepewa, the 
 divine being, plants a stick* which grows into a fir-tree. This was 
 after the great flood. The stick rapidly grew into a fir which 
 reached heaven. A squirrel ran up the tree, and Chepewa after it, 
 and reached the stars and a broad table-land, where, laying a snare 
 for the squirrel, he caught the sun. In the Siebenbiirgen form of the 
 legend a young shepherd comes to a tree, the branches of which form 
 a kind of a ladder. After nine days' climbing he arrives at a plateau 
 on which is a palace, a forest, and a well, with copper-coloured 
 water. He dips his hand in, which becomes copper-coloured also. 
 He breaks off a branch, climbs other nine days, and reaches a similar 
 plateau, palaces, and a silver well, dips in his hand, and it becomes 
 silvered. He breaks off a branch, climbs other nine days, and 
 arrives at a plateau with a castle and well of gold. He detaches a 
 third branch, obtains admission to the castle, rides thrice round the 
 hill of glass, and, touching the breast of the king's daughter with the 
 three branches, causes her to become his bride. 
 
 In the English variant the plant of a haricot-bean shows that the 
 legend is a lunar one, the pea and haricot-bean being symbolical of 
 the moon, perhaps from their crescent-shaped pods (coritetti in 
 Italian), or because the scarlet-runner is a rapid-growing plant. In 
 one of the Serbian legends the miraculous hair has disappeared, but 
 the hero is conducted by a limping fox in return for kind treatment 
 (the squirrel of the Dogger- Indian story), to a sort of starry underworld 
 for the golden maiden, the golden maiden is only to be obtained in 
 
 * In the Serbian variant it becomes a vine-stock, perhaps through influence of 
 the Bible legend. 
 
100 Supplementary Essay. 
 
 exchange for the golden horse, and the golden horse for the golden 
 apple ; the fox transforms itself at each step into a golden maiden, 
 a golden horse, and a golden pippin ; thus the possessors of these 
 treasures are cheated as well as the stealer of the vine-stock, which 
 yields twenty-four buckets of wine. All these precious articles are 
 thus recovered and brought home by the hero, and the father, whose 
 right eye laughs and left eye weeps, being presented with the vine- 
 stock, weeps no more. In the normal form of the story it is always 
 a tree or leguminous plant the hero climbs ; in the Hungaro- Slovenian 
 variant the dumplings have been developed through a misunder- 
 standing. Haluski in Slovenian means dumplings ; and in Bohemian 
 and perhaps other Slavonic languages haluze means a branch. The 
 legend has therefore drifted into Hungary from the north, and the 
 branches turned to dumplings in the process. We have no right to 
 assume that the Slovenian Three Citrons was derived from the 
 Siebenbiirgen legend ; both may be variants of some legend more 
 primitive still ; all we have a right to affirm is that the legend 
 travelled south, and that the mistake about haluze created the 
 dumplings. Still we may safely assert that, besides being Arctic in 
 many other respects, the Slovenian legend is closely connected with 
 a story in which three periods of nine days each is a strongly marked 
 feature. Now in the Vedic legends (except in the late cosmogonical 
 one of Purusha, the universal male being nine months hatching in the 
 primitive egg), the number nine does not occur, but it is of common 
 occurrence in the northern forms of the legends. Thus, for example, 
 in the Siberian version of the legend of the fall, the fatal tree has 
 nine branches, and there are nine Adams and nine Eves. The fruit 
 of five of the branches pointing east might be eaten, the fruit of the 
 four other branches pointing west were forbidden. Under the tree 
 were a dog and a serpent. Erlik, the tempter, persuaded one of the 
 Eves to eat the forbidden fruit. This caused the shaggy hides of 
 the men and women (for, like the Japanese Ainos, they were covered 
 with hair) to fall off, and their expulsion from Paradise. How can 
 we here fail to identify the four westward-facing branches with the 
 bean-stalk — that is, dark- and light-moon periods of the Arctic 
 winter night, the profoundly phallic character of which can be 
 traced with certainty in the vulgarisms of the common people, both 
 of Durham and Liguria to this very day. May it not be that to the 
 pious orgies of those genial winter nights of the primitive circum- 
 polar civilization we owe it that our simian hides thinned off and 
 human forms emerged, worthy to be the subjects of the chisel of 
 Pheidias and Praxiteles? To this day the Northern Mongols are 
 almost hairless. Vice is a great depilatory, profligacy a great 
 humanizer. Juvenal, in his diatribes against Eoman vice, was well 
 aware of this, and begs heaven, in his satires, to restore the golden 
 ages of the world when the women were nearly as hairy as the men, 
 and both as bears. 
 
 Finally, in a lovely Lithuanian folk-lied, in which every syllable 
 declares itself the genuine offspring of a northern winter in all its 
 
Supplementary Essay. 101 
 
 gelid and sparkling splendour, we have the following myth enshrined. 
 " Liebe Maria " gives an orphan her handkerchief to dry her tears. 
 Having dried them, the orphan throws it into a bed of nettles. 
 Boys passing the nettles see something shining there ; ask what it 
 is, and are told that it is Liebe Maria's handkerchief sparkling with 
 the orphan's tears. I ask where shall I wash it? Mary replies : In 
 the golden brook. I ask where shall I keep it ? Mary replies : In 
 a golden casket hung round with nine little locks, having nine little 
 keys. Now these stinging-nettles correspond to the stinging-ants of 
 Golden Locks, and these to Sagittarius. The handkerchief lying in 
 the nettles sparkling with the orphan's tears is, therefore, the winter 
 sky bereft of the sun, but sparkling with stars, when the sun has 
 entered the November constellation of Sagittarius to remain there 
 and in Aquarius until February. The golden casket would, there- 
 fore, seem to mean the year of nine months (the nine keys and 
 locks), illuminated by the sun. The strong contrast between the 
 two periods in the myth, between the starlit winter yearlet of three 
 and the sunlit golden year of nine months, shows that it must have 
 been manufactured in high latitudes as surely as the Serbian legend 
 of the boy who looked under the bark of a spruce-tree and saw a 
 sun-bright, amber-clear nymph shining there, was the produce of a 
 spruce trementina forest of a much lower latitude. 
 
 Wonderful to dwellers within the northern circle must have been 
 the following coincidences, particularly where the sun remained, 
 eclipsed just a month. (1) The three sharply-defined winter months, 
 just ninety days in all, and the nine sunny months, giving the num- 
 bers three and nine. (2) The nine months' gestation of the human 
 fetus in the womb, perhaps, originally in some way, really due to the 
 arrest of nature's life during the three glacial winter months, and 
 our man-ape ancestry having a fixed rutting period (perhaps in 
 March), like the other animals. And (3), the 3x9=27 days of the 
 lunar month. It is worth remembering that nine is the number 
 sacred to Buddha, and that the Turanians of the north resemble 
 that personage in the respect they show for human life. Indeed, the 
 rareness of murder and the roundness of the skull of the Lapp and Sam- 
 oyede Nomads, besides their skill in magic, seem to indicate that physi- 
 cally they are the highest type of human beings yet in process of being 
 evolved. But they are so small, it may be objected. Size, however, 
 is no criterion of excellence. But we are Christians, and just the 
 right size, it may be retorted angrily. Of course, to this argument 
 there is no answer. All disbelievers can do is humbly to bow the 
 head in presence of a revelation. 
 
 In conclusion, I quote a Lithuanian versified form of the legend 
 in which the northern nine again occurs, and which is so obviously 
 an Arctic annual myth as to require no comments : 
 
102 
 
 Supplementary Essay. 
 
 Bitterlich weint das Sonnohen 
 
 In apfel-garten 
 
 Von apple-baum ist gefallen 
 Das Goldneu apfel 
 Wein nioht Sonnohen 
 
 Gott maoht ein Ander 
 
 Von gold, von erz 
 Von Silberchen 
 Steh fruh auf, 
 
 Sonnen-toohter, 
 
 Wasche weiss 
 Den liuen-tisohe 
 Morgen friih kommen, 
 
 Gottea Sohne 
 
 Den goldnen apfel 
 Zu wirbelu 
 
 Einfuhr die Sonne 
 Zum apfel-garten 
 Neun wagen zogen 
 
 Wohl hundert Bosse 
 
 Sohlumme o Sonne 
 Im apfel-garten 
 Die augenlider 
 
 VoU apfel-bliithen 
 
 Was weint die Sonne 
 So bitter traurig 
 In's meer gesunken 
 
 Ein goldnen Boot ist 
 
 Wein nicht, o sonne, 
 Gott baut ein neues 
 Halb baut er's golden 
 
 Und halb von Silber. 
 
 To make the allegory still clearer, the following Swedish enigma 
 is to the point : " Our mother," it says, "has a counterpane no one 
 can fold. Our father more gold than he can count. Our brother a 
 golden apple that nobody can bite." The answer tells us that the 
 counterpane is the sky, the gold is the stars, and the golden pippin 
 the sun. 
 
 Lastly, in all these eight stories, the hero is never the sun, but 
 the living-power-ot,organic nature triumphant in spring, and with 
 whose triumph the retiirn of spring^is somehow connected". Poets, 
 and " that universal poet, the people," are much more matter-pf- 
 fact and stick much closer to it than philologists give them credit for 
 doing. When a great number of myths are vaguely compared 
 together, a certain indefiniteness results, and many points of resem- 
 blance are masked and thus overlooked ; what is required is to group 
 the immense mass of myths and legends, and first to compare 
 minutely among themselves the members of the diiferent groups. 
 We are so accustomed to the scientific way of looking at nature, and 
 to refer all activity to the sun as the prime source of it, that it is 
 difficult for us to realize that the primitive savage's point of view 
 was a very different one. It was a mistake, of course, but with his 
 limited observation and knowledge of facts it was a perfectly logical 
 one. A child with strong rational and comparative instincts, that is 
 to say, poetical ones, tossed about at sea in a boat, blames the trees 
 for the wind, and exclaims: "Naughty trees." He knows that a 
 fan produces a current of air, and, observing that the trees wave 
 their arms about when the wind is high, naturally concludes that 
 the trees are the source of it. In the Eoumanian versified legend, 
 the infant Jesus being restless, the Virgin Mary gives him two apples 
 to play with ; one he throws into the air, and it becomes the sun, the 
 other becomes the moon. In the Hottentot form of the legend, the 
 first Hottentot man throws up his right shoe, and it becomes the 
 sun ; he throws up his left, and it becomes the moon. This is the 
 frame of mind one must try to get into to understand these early 
 Slav annual myths. The sun may be, indeed, an essential factor of 
 the problem, but it is always the hero, the latent invincible power of 
 
Supplementary JEssay. 103 
 
 organic life, which is the active agent in so re-adjusting the earthly 
 and the celestial as to ensure the triumph of life over death. A vague 
 over-ruling Destiny, to which, as in Greek mythology, even the sky- 
 gods are destined ultimately to succumb, is more or less recognized. 
 The fates and Father Know-AU are somehow associated as over- 
 ruling human destinies, but it is the hero who succeeds in carrying 
 off the three golden hairs ; it is the hero who removes the spell from 
 the frozen waters of the life-giving well, causes the life-giving apple 
 tree once more to bear fruit, kills the dragon, cures the sick princess, 
 exorcises the black prince, and dethrones the autumn king and takes 
 his place. 
 
 The analysis of these eight stories has, therefore, brought out 
 into strong relief three important facts about them : 
 
 (1) They are all annual solar high latitude myths, and not low 
 
 latitude solar myths of the dawn. 
 
 (2) They can all be traced to somewhere in the Arctic circle as 
 
 their point of origin ; the total disappearance of the sun in 
 winter and an excessive degree of frost and cold being 
 essential elements in their composition. 
 
 (3) The hero is never the sun, but invariably the latent force of 
 
 organic life, conceived as somehow instrumental in bringing 
 back the sun, by conquering the forces of death and cold on 
 the earth itself. 
 
Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths 
 Compared. 
 
 An examination of the eight Slav fairy stories has constrained us to 
 refer them to an Arctic origin. If the theory be correct, points of 
 resemblance ought to be found between the primitive myths of the 
 Arctic dwellers and our Slav folk-lore. The myths of the Lapps, 
 among the most northern nations of Europe, have lately been col- 
 lected; the principal ones, embodied in poetical form, are given, 
 translated literally from the German or Swedish into Italian, in 
 Professor Mantegazza's admirable little book " Un viaggio in Lap- 
 ponia." He ascribes to these legends a very great antiquity, believing 
 the most primitive of them to date as far back as the neolithic period. 
 Be this as it may, while it is very unlikely that Central Europe 
 Slavs should have carried the legends in remote times into the Arctic 
 circle, nothing is more likely than that dwellers in high latitudes, 
 finding it cold there, and life difiSoult, should have drifted into 
 warmer southern regions and brought their legends along with 
 them. In fact, there is some evidence that this happened. About 
 10 or 15,000 years ago the chmate of Belgium was much colder than 
 it is now. It was inhabited by chamois, the ptarmigan, the ibex, 
 and the reindeer, and also by a peaceful race of people, resembling 
 in their physique the modern Lapps of Lapland. These people were 
 gradually driven south about 10,000 years ago by their raw-boned 
 Scottish neighbours, and settled in the Auvergne, Savoy, and the 
 Maritime Alps. Between 20 and 80,000 years ago, Siberia was much 
 warmer than it is now, and mammoths lived there. All at once, most 
 likely in consequence of a sudden change in the distribution of sea 
 and land, where the Caspian now is, combined with other causes, a 
 sudden spell of cold weather set in, which killed all the mammoths, 
 and ice-potted them in the frozen gravel of Siberia, which, since then, 
 has never been warmer than it is at the present day. The difficulty 
 is to believe that myths hatched 70,000 years ago could be orally 
 transmitted down to the present day. But we know nothing of the 
 longevity of oral traditions among illiterate nature-folk. It is a 
 curious fact, which I do not pretend even to endeavour to explain, 
 that the primitive Slav stories are more clearly hall-marked with the 
 stamp of the long Arctic winter night than the (supposed) neolithic 
 Lapp ones. They may have been deliberately touched up in later 
 times, while the tradition of their Arctic origin was still fresh in 
 men's minds, although the stories themselves were circulating in 
 Central Europe. 
 
Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared. 105 
 
 One of the most ancient of the Lapp poems is called " The Child 
 of the Sun," and the substance of it is briefly as follows : — The Child 
 of the Sun goes on a voyage. After several years he reaches the 
 dreadful land of the giant. The giant asks if he has come " to the 
 table of death to nourish his (the giant's) father, to give him (the 
 giant) a mouthful to suck, to restore his tired brother, and set his 
 brother-in-law on his legs again." The Child of the Sun says that, 
 on the contrary, he has come to marry the giant's daughter. I 
 ought to have said that this lady did the sewing and washing for the 
 giant, who was blind, and she must soon have washed his shirts into 
 holes, for she thumped and swabbed exactly as they wash to this 
 day all over the North of Italy. On the Child of the Sun's frank 
 declaration, the daughter of the giant said it was a ease of love at 
 first sight, that she couldn't wait, that they must be married that 
 instant, and that she would speak to her papa about it, as well as 
 her mamma, who was lying rolled up in sand and birch-bark (? dead 
 or inebriated). " The giant, who meant to eat the hero, said : ' Come, 
 Child of the Sun, and see whose fingers are the most flexible.' " His 
 daughter gives the hero an iron anchor to proffer the giant, who, on 
 feeling it, declares him to be too tough for anything. On the advice 
 of the daughter, the hero then gives the giant a barrel of fish-oil (as 
 wedding food), one of tar as wedding drink, and a horse as a tit-bit. 
 The giant is thus made maudlin drunk, and in this condition unites 
 the happy pair, and loads their ship with bits of gold and silver; 
 besides this the bride takes " three pine-wood chests, blue, red, and 
 white, respectively, containing war and peace, blood and fire, illness 
 and death, and three knots containing breeze, wind, and storm, 
 respectively." When the -hero and his bride have departed, her 
 brothers, who were out walrus-hunting, return, and finding only "the 
 smell and sweat " of her seducer, are riled. They give chase : the 
 first knot is untied, a wind rises, and the lovers outstrip them ; 
 again close pressed, the lovers untie the second knot, and a powerful 
 west wind blows ; close pressed again, they untie the third knot, a 
 tremendous north wind blows ; the bride's eyes flash fire as the light 
 of dawn spreads, her.two brothers are turned into two rocks, even 
 their copper-coloured skiff becomes a rock visible with the other two 
 to this day at Vake. After this she became as small as other 
 human beings, and gave birth to the sons of Kalla — i.e., a race 
 of royal heroes. 
 
 This poem belongs to the three-months winter fairy story of the 
 three volume novel type: examples — Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes 
 and the Three Citrons. In the speech of the giant : " Hast thou 
 come to the table of death?" etc., we have the Lapp form of Jezi- 
 baba's stereotyped phrase : " My ! fly ! here there is not one little 
 bird, much less one little human being; and when my son comes 
 home he will eat you." In the orally collected Venetian variants 
 it occurs with unfailing regularity in the formula : Tanti anni e tanti 
 anni e nessuno ha picchiato a questa porta, in King Eaven, the King 
 of the Beans, and many others. In the incident of the anchor it is 
 
106 Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared. 
 
 needless to point out that we have the Lapp form of the incident of 
 the flute in Jank a Hanka, the Upper Lusatian equivalent of the 
 German Hans and Grettel. The gingerbread-maker is fattening the 
 children up to eat them, and requests Hans to put out his finger to 
 see if he is yet fat enough ; he proffers his shepherd's pipe, and old 
 Wjera hacks away at it, and says ; " Oh ! no, he's much too tough 
 yet." In the way the heroine saves her lover from being eaten, we 
 have a primitive form of the incidents at the castle of the wind, the 
 moon, and the sun in King Eaven : one of the Venetian variants of 
 the Three Citrons. The three chests, blue, white, and red, seem to 
 correspond to the castles of lead, silver, and gold ; the dark moon, 
 the light moon, and the sun periods; the three knots to the cutting 
 open of the three citrons— perhaps blood oranges. It was a primi- 
 tive Lapp superstition that three knots tied in a handkerchief steeped 
 in the blood of a virgin had this power of raising storms. Many 
 similar superstitions occur in Lapland, which are exactly remirrored 
 in Latin ones as given by Pliny. They are common in Venice to 
 this day. The untying of the winds is an incident that has assumed 
 various forms. We have it in the first book of Virgil's ^neid. It 
 occurs again in the legend of the Argonauts, so strikingly similar to 
 this Lapland poem. When ^etes pursues the Argonauts on their 
 homeward journey, Medea dismembers her young brother Absyrtos, 
 and throws his limbs into the sea. -ffietes stops to pick up the 
 remains of his child, and Jason and Medea escape. We have seen 
 the legend in a different form in the story of the Miraculous Hair. 
 There are, in fact, a whole crop of stories in which the lovers escape 
 the sorceress by throwing behind them a brush, a mirror, and a 
 razor, which change into thickets, a lake, and a quantity of razors ; 
 the witch trips over these and is cut to pieces. In the Polish story 
 of the Skeleton King, we find even the indignation at the sweat and 
 smell of the fugitive reproduced. Before flying from her father's 
 house, the princess spits upon the pane of glass ; she and her lover 
 then locked the door and fled. The spittle at once froze. When 
 the servants of King Skeleton go to summon the prince they find the 
 door locked ; and when they summon the prince it exclaims : " Im- 
 mediately." After being once or twice choused in this way they 
 break open the door, and find the spittle splitting with laughter on 
 the frozen pane. When the father pursues the lovers the princess 
 first changes herself into a river and her lover into a bridge across 
 it ; next they change into a wood ; and lastly the princess changes 
 herself into a church, and her lover into the bell, and in this 
 way they escape. In place of the castle of lead in the Siebenbiirgen 
 variant is a copper-coloured well into which the hero dips his hand, 
 which also becomes copper-coloured. In the Servian legend of the 
 Two Brothers, again, the brother who goes by the lower road, the 
 three days' journey through the other world, comes to a lake 
 which he has to swim across, and when he comes out he and his dog 
 are all gilded. In the Virgin Mary Godmother (Upper Lusatian) 
 the naughty godchild thrusts its finger through the keyhole of the 
 
Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared. 107 
 
 forbidden chamber, and the finger remaining gilded, the Virgin Mary 
 thereby discovers her disobedience. In the story of the Argonauts 
 the copper-man Tabs attempts to prevent the landing of the crew in 
 Crete, but Poeas, father of Philokletes, managed to hit the copper- 
 man's single vein running from neck to heel, with the bow of the 
 Sun-god Herakles (or Melcarth). Talos fell and died. In this Lapp 
 legend the two brothers pursue the child of the Sun and their sister 
 ma copper-coloured ship. All these yellow and copper-coloured 
 objects seem to be symbols or reminiscences of the Arctic Aurora 
 Borealis. 
 
 The next Lapp poem in length is called the Son of Pissa Passa. 
 Pissa, we are told, was chief of the villages of the land of the sun ; 
 Passa, daughter of the chief of the lands of night. When they 
 married they swore on the bear-skin that not a sparkle of the second 
 world should shine on the one who broke his oath. Unluckily a 
 statu (some sort of magician or ogre) killed Pissa, and stole his herds 
 and wealth ; and Passa fled, enceinte, with what remained. The 
 son, when born, asked who his father was : the mother says he had 
 none. " Bosh," says the precocious youth, " every thing has a father." 
 Then he goes and kills a bear, brings it home, and asks his mother 
 for hot bread, and again : "Who is my father?" " Pissa Passa, my 
 son ! " " Where did he go ? " " The old man of the black mountain 
 slew him, and stole our herds and wealth ; that's why I don't like 
 you to go on the high, sparkling mountains." The son begs to be 
 armed with his papa's stick and helmet of war ; goes and challenges 
 the old man of the mountain. One of his servants. Hurry, thunders ; 
 another, Hurry-skurry, lightens ; and one, Ilmaratje, pours torrents 
 of water. The old man asks what the hero is like ? Hurry-skurry 
 says : " He's a head taller than anybody else, and very cock-a-hoop." 
 The old man orders a dinner of a whole young reindeer, his coat of 
 mail, bows, arrows, spears, and lances. The youth approaches and 
 sees a pointed skull encircled by poisonous snakes, from which boys 
 are taking the venom for the arrows. The youth challenges the old 
 man to combat (1) on the surface of the water (no answer) ; (2) to 
 take headers (no answer); (3) to box (no answer). He then asks 
 whose the skull is, and is told Pissa Passa's. He then challenges the 
 old man with the bow. The old man shoots ; the youth catches the 
 arrow and breaks the point against a stone, exclaiming : " Old man, 
 what turned the point ? " The old man replies : " The teeth of Pissa 
 Passa." The same happens with the bolt and the lance. The old 
 man then issues for a hand-to-hand combat, and is soon disarmed. 
 His life is spared, and the herald, in a magnificent speech, glorifying 
 the power and mercy of the one invisible and spiritual God, urges 
 him to repent. He does so, and soon after dies. The poem con- 
 cludes : " He, the hero, had conquered the storm, and reconciled 
 the dead, one with the other. He embraced his mother, he, the 
 excellent man of the south, of the north, of the house of the re- 
 union of the peoples." Thus, in this noble Lapp poem, dating 
 perhaps from the Neolithic epoch, the doctrine of the forgiveness of 
 
108 Primitive Lapp aiid Slav Myths Compared. 
 
 our worst enemies was inculcated, at all events many thousand 
 years before the birth of Christ. 
 
 As will be at once apparent, it belongs to the epic fairy myth 
 group of the Father Know-Ail type, beginning with the birth of the 
 hero and something mysterious about that birth. In the details and 
 development of the myth there is not very much to connect it with 
 our Slav myths. The hero, however, as in Golden Locks, George 
 and his Goat, Long, Broad, and Sharp-Byes, etc., has his three 
 faithful helpmates, Hures, Hureskutje and Ilmaratje. There is no 
 anti-climax. 
 
 The next poem is called the Daughter of the Sun, and is founded 
 on a Lapp superstition that anyone who can embrace her will be 
 wealthy. She appears as a beautiful shiny maiden seated on a 
 rock. Owing to the climate of the Arctic circle, or its proximity to the 
 magnetic pole, or perhaps to both causes together, the hyperborean 
 peoples are liable to hallucinations, whatever that may mean. Only 
 a few years ago a Lapp clergyman saw the Daughter of the Sun 
 seated, stole behind her to embrace her and struck his head against a- 
 rock. In the poem the seer succeeds in embracing her ; she tells him 
 to follow her, and by no means to look back. He follows, but looks- 
 back, and the front of his herd of reindeer disappears. A storm occurs, 
 he looks back again and the middle of the herd become wild reindeer. 
 The Daughter of the Sun then goes home with him and bids him 
 close every chink of his tent. He does so, but the sun still shines 
 through a small crevice, whereupon the Daughter of the Sun kisses 
 him and vanishes. In the morning he looks out of his tent and 
 finds the rest of his herd of reindeer turned to stone, so that it 
 made you shudder to look at them. 
 
 This story has nothing very closely in common with our eight 
 Slav myths, except the central figure, so strikingly similar to the 
 figure of the Lorely, or the Maiden of the Miraculous Hair. Thosa 
 who favour the theory of the separate genesis of similar myths will 
 prefer to see here only a coincidence. In the next poem, however, 
 the points of resemblance between the Lapp and its Slav (Moravian) 
 equivalent are so striking that I shall give the two stories almost in 
 full. They belong to the group of burlesque fairy myths, having- 
 their point of origin at the rescue of Plavachek. 
 
 The Man in the Big Fue Coat ; or. The Stupid Man. 
 
 The boys and girls used to play and sing, run skipping and 
 wrangle here and there, and leave traces of their feet at the margins 
 of the springs. The Statu prepared his traps of iron, placed them 
 near the water, hid them in the mud. The old Lapp perceived the 
 hidden traps of the eater of men, hid himself in his tight fur coat, 
 and placed himself in the trap of the bear. Statu visits his traps. 
 Aha; the old friend has taken the bait; he is dead here. The Statu 
 takes him home and hangs him to the roof above the smoke. The 
 youngest Statu says : " Look how he whimpers and grunts ! " The 
 other (the elder) son: "Thou whimperest and gruntest thyself; not 
 
Primitive Zapp and Slav Myths Compared. 109 
 
 at all this gift of God." The old Lapp thinks : " Of God even he 
 knows something." Statu: "Yes, yes; he begins already to 
 liquefy." Behind the mill he splits wood for the trough, chops it, 
 trims the branches, splits and cuts, carries it to a trough near the 
 back door. To the elder son : " Dear child, bring me the axe (out 
 of the hut)." The old Lapp carries away the axe. The younger 
 Statu : " Father, now he's looking up ; now he's moving ; now he 
 seizes even the axe." Statu chuckles, sings and plays ; he does not 
 hear, observe, or know anything. The old man strikes the elder 
 youth on the head and kills him. Statu finds that he dallies, sings 
 and waits. He says to the younger son : " Bring me the axe, quick, 
 quick." The old Lapp then split open this child's head too, took 
 out the brains and severed the windpipe. Statu (listening) ; " They 
 loaf round all the angles, they wave their heads and eyes ; I myself 
 wish to take the axe." The old man awaits with care with the axe 
 behind the door of the possu, waits and moves here and there. He 
 let fall a splitter on the head of the terrible one, split the large 
 skull, tore away the eyes and nose, shed the blood of the devourer 
 of men, and the blood coloured the soil. (The old Lapp carries out 
 the fallen one, cuts him in pieces and throws them one after the 
 other to *Ludac, Who in the meantime had come home). Ludac 
 taps on the ground here and there, snuffs, noses, and gloats oyer 
 that which enters the possu. She resumes the prey, beats it with 
 her hands and cries in anger : " Throw me reindeer's hoofs and not 
 stockinged feet." (She continues while she proceeds to eat the 
 soup prepared from her husband and children) : " How good it is; 
 but yet it has a queer taste of its own ! " (The Lapp takes the 
 eyes of the woman, which lie under the door, fries them in a frying 
 pan, and she perceives it and enquires: "What is it that explodes, 
 crackles and hisses ; what is it that fizzles on the charcoal, bursts, 
 brawls, goes click clack ? Look, my eyes, become clear under the 
 door ; become clear, my eyes, my sparks." The Lapp : " He 
 has dipped the flesh of thy husband thy eyes in the fat and has 
 eaten them." Ludac : " In his stomach are my eyes, my 
 husband, my little owlet,t dear boy, my little one. (The man in the 
 fur coat, the Lapp, goes away making merry). 
 
 The Moravian variant of this poem is called Budulinek, and is as 
 follows : 
 
 There was once a grandfather and grandmother, and they had 
 Budulinek. They boiled him a nice dish of soup, and said : 
 " Buduhnek, don't open to any one." After this they went away 
 into the wood. When they had gone away came Mrs. Poxey,, 
 tapped at the door and cried : " Open ! Budulinek." Budulinek 
 replied: "I won't open," and Foxey cried :" Do open, and I'll 
 give you a ride on my little tail ! " Budulinek wanted to have a 
 ride on Foxey's little tail, forgot grandfather's warning and opened. 
 
 * The wife of Statu is called Ludao (a bug) because she sucks the blood from 
 the bodies of men with an iron tube. 
 
 t Pet name for babies, because they open their eyes wide. 
 
110 Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared. 
 
 Foxey walked into the room and gobbled up all his nice soup. 
 When grandfather and grandmother came home they enquired: 
 " Buduhnek, who has been here ? " Budulinek said : " Foxey has 
 been here, and has gobbled up all my nice soup." They said : 
 " There, you see ; did we not tell you not to open to any one." 
 The next bime they boiled him pap, and exactly the same thing 
 happened. 
 
 The third day they cooked him a nice stew of pears and went 
 into the wood. When they were gone, again came Foxey, and cried : 
 " Budulinek ! open, I will give thee a ride on my little tail." Budu- 
 linek replied : " Thou wilt never give me a ride, I know." Foxey 
 promised she would, and he opened to her. Foxey entered and 
 gobbled up the nice stewed pears. Buduhnek seated himself on her 
 tail, and Foxey gave him a ride ; but after this she ran off with him, 
 and carried him away into her earth. 
 
 When grandfather and grandmother came home and did not see 
 Budulinek, they bethought them at once where Budulinek was. 
 They took a hatchet, a pot, and a fiddle, and went to the fox's hole. 
 When they came in front of the fox's hole grandfather began to play 
 his nice little fiddle. Grandmother drummed rub-a-dub on the pot, 
 and sang thereby as follows : 
 
 Four little foxes live within, 
 
 And the fifth is Budulinek ; 
 
 We've a nice new violin 
 
 And a really fine bubinek [a small drum or tambourine] . 
 
 And so the old fox said to to the young she-fox : " Just go and peep 
 out to see what that is." The young fox ran out. And as she ran 
 out of the hole grandmother chopped off her poor little head and 
 flung it under the pot. After this grandfather went on playing. 
 Grandmother drummed rub-a-dub, and sang : 
 
 Three little foxes now within, 
 
 And the fourth is Budulinek: 
 
 We've a nice new violin 
 
 And a really fine bubinek. 
 
 The third little fox shares the same fate as the previous one, and 
 then the second ; for the old fox again said to her : " Those scamps 
 there are dancing; just go and take a peep to see what it's all 
 about." She went ; and as she crept out of the hole grandmother 
 cut off her poor little head and threw it under the pot. Grandfather 
 again played, grandmother drummed rub-a-dub, and sang. Then 
 the old she-fox said: "I must go out there myself." But as she 
 came out grandmother cut off her head too, and threw it under the 
 pot. After this, grandfather and grandmother crept into the fox-hole 
 and found Budulinek. He sat there in a corner and cried for his 
 grandfather and grandmother, and for not having obeyed them. 
 They took him and brought him home, and from that time forth 
 Budulinek has been obedient and got on well. 
 
 In another rambling Lapp poem called the Song of the Lamenting 
 Kaskias, occurs the following : " . . . He threw me into the 
 river. The pike took me into his custody ; he placed me under his 
 
Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared. Ill 
 
 liver, where I remained a year. . . ." After that the malignant 
 man laid his nets and caught the pike, and the hero lived three 
 years in a house. He was then enclosed three years alive in a coffin. 
 The malign man's son then comes flying in the form of a black-cock. 
 To the malign man's great disgust, they quarrel about it, and various 
 things happen. Here the pike saviour corresponds closely to the 
 friendly pike Piecuoh spares in the PoHsh story, and which after- 
 wards obeys all his behests when called upon. 
 
 These are the principal narrative poems given by Mantegazza ; 
 the others are shorter lyrics, often shrewdly and accurately describing 
 fish and animals, as, e.g., the wolf, the salmon, and the reindeer: 
 their habits and habitats. We come now to the three prose fairy 
 stories, of which a translation is given. The first is called the Giant 
 whose life was hid in a hen's egg. I give it only slightly abbre- 
 viated. It is from Uts-zok : 
 
 A woman had a husband who, for seven years, had been in con- 
 stant war with a giant. The woman pleased the giant, who wanted 
 to get rid of the husband, and at last, after seven years, succeeded 
 in killing him. But she had a son, who, when grown up, endeavoured 
 to avenge the death of his father by killing the giant. But he never 
 succeeded. It seemed just as though there was no life in the giant. 
 
 " Dear mama," said the boy one day, "perhaps thou knowest 
 where the giant conceals his life ? " 
 
 The mother knew nothing, but promised to enquire ; and one day 
 when the giant was in a good humour, did so. 
 
 " Why do you ask me?" said the giant. 
 
 " Because," replied the woman, " if you or I were in any danger, 
 it would be a consolation to know that your life was well defended." 
 
 The giant had no suspicion, and recounted as follows : " In the 
 middle of a sea of fire there is an island, in the island a barrel, in the 
 barrel a sheep, in the sheep a hen, in the hen an egg, and in the egg 
 exists my life." 
 
 Having discovered the secret, the mother confides it to her son. 
 " Then," said her son, " I ought to choose me helpmates, with 
 whom I may cross the sea of fire." He hired a bear, a wolf, a falcon, 
 and a yunner (a large kind of sea bird), and they set off. He sat 
 under an iron tent with the falcon and the yunner to prevent being 
 burnt, and made the bear and wolf row. 
 
 This is why the bear has dark brown fur and the wolf brown 
 spots about the shoulder; for both have made a journey in the 
 middle of a sea of fire, the waves of which burnt like the flame. 
 
 And 80 they reached the island. When they had found the 
 barrel, the bear knocked the bottom out with his paw. Out of the 
 barrel leapt the sheep. The wolf pursued the sheep and rent it. 
 From the sheep out flew the hen. The falcon seized it and tore it 
 to pieces. In the hen was an egg, which fell into the sea and 
 foundered. The yunner dived for it. The first time he remained a 
 long time under water, but not being able to stay so long without 
 breathing, returned to the surface. Having recovered breath he 
 
112 Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared. 
 
 dived again, and remained longer under water than the first time, 
 but still did not find the egg. The third time he remained under 
 water longer than the two preceding times, and this time found the 
 egg at the bottom of the sea. When the youth saw that the yunner 
 had found the egg, he was delighted. They made a fire and put the 
 egg in the middle to burn it. This done they returned home. As 
 soon as they reached the shore whence they set out, the youth 
 hastened home, and then he saw that the giant was burning like the 
 egg in the island. The mother was delighted at the return of her 
 son. " Thanks, dear son, for you have triumphed over the life of 
 the giant." There was yet a little life in the giant. " What folly 
 was mine," he exclaimed, "to let myself be wheedled into telling the 
 secret of my life to this malign woman ! " 
 
 Then the giant seized his tube of iron (with which he used to 
 suck the blood of people), but the woman had put one end of it in 
 the fire. Thus he sucked up fire and cinders, and burnt both within 
 and without. At last the fire went out, and with it was spent the 
 life of the giant. 
 
 This story occurs in the Cyrilian Serbian as the Dragoness and 
 the Czar's Son. It is manifestly a form of the Three Citrons 
 legend. It is, briefly, as follows ; A Czar had three sons ; the 
 first went out hunting, started and pursued a hare which arrived at 
 a mill, turned into a dragoness and ate him. The same happened to 
 the second son. The third son did not pursue the hare, but went 
 after other game and at length reached the mill, and behold at the 
 water mill an old woman (our old friend Jezibaba, in fact). The 
 Czar's son greeted her in God's name : " God assist thee, aged 
 mother." And the old woman accepted the greeting, and responded : 
 " God protect thee, little son ! " Then the prince enquired : " Aged 
 mother, where is my hare?" And she replied; " My little son, 
 that was no hare, but was a dragoness ! All this country she 
 ravages and destroys." Hearing this, the Czar's son was somdwhat 
 troubled, and said to the old woman: "Well, what's to be done? 
 No doubt it is she who has killed my two brothers." The old 
 woman replied: "Alas! alas! there is no help; therefore, little 
 son, go home while you are safe and sound, and not where they are." 
 Then he said to her: "Aged mother, do you know what? I'm 
 certain you, too, would be glad to free yourself from this misfortune." 
 And the old woman hastened to reply : " Oh, my little son I should 
 just think so. The dragoness would have seized me, too, but she 
 has not yet had the chance." Then he continued : " Hear well 
 what I tell you ; when the dragoness comes home ask her where her 
 strength resides ; and kiss all the place where she says her strength 
 resides, as if from affection, until you discover where it is, and then, 
 when I return, tell me where it is." The Czar's son then returns 
 to the palace, and the old woman stays at the water mill. When 
 the dragoness comes home the old woman begins to ask her : " And 
 where has it been, the dear ? And whither away so far ? And 
 why won't it tell me where it goes? And the dragoness replies : " Oh 
 
Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared. 113 
 
 Lord, old mother, I go a long way." Then the old woman begins to 
 coax and wheedle. " And why does it go so far? and why won't 
 it tell its old baba where its strength resides ? Why, if I knew 
 where its strength resides, I don't know what I should do for joy ; 
 I should go and kiss the place all over." At this the dragoness 
 laughed, and said : " Look ! there's my strength in yonder fire- 
 place ! " Then the old woman goes and embraces and kisses the 
 fireplace all over. And when the dragoness sees it she burst out 
 laughing, and exclaims : " You silly old woman ; my strength isn't 
 there. My strength is in yonder tree." The old woman now began 
 to embrace and kiss the tree, and the dragoness again burst out 
 laughing and said : " Get away, you old noodle, my strength isn't 
 there ! A long way off, in the next czarstvy near the imperial city is 
 a lake (the bridge near the palace of the three kings, in the king- 
 dom of the Sun-horse), in that lake is a dragon, and with the dragon 
 a wild boar, and with the wild boar a dove ; in the dove is my 
 strength." The old woman having discovered the secret, confides it 
 to the Czar's son, who goes to the next kingdom and engages 
 himself with the king of it as his shepherd. The shepherd takes 
 with him two greyhounds to chase the boar, a falcon to chase 
 the dove, and bagpipes. The first two days the fight with the 
 dragoness results in a draw, but the third day the shepherd obtains 
 permission to take the king's daughter. He bids her at the critical 
 moment of the fight kiss him on the cheek, the eye, and the fore- 
 head. This she does, and he flings the dragoness to the height of 
 heaven. She falls on the ground and is broken to pieces. Out of 
 her springs the boar; the greyhounds catch the boar and rend 
 it. Out of it flies the dove. The falcon catches it and brings it to 
 the prince. • The Czar's son says to it : " Now, tell me where 
 my brothers are?" And the dove replies: "I will, only don't 
 do anything to me. Hard by your father's city is a water mill, and 
 at that water mill are three willow saplings ; cut down those 
 three saplings, and smite upon the rocks ; immediately the iron 
 door of a vast underground storey will open. In that underground 
 storey are a host of people, old and young, rich and poor, small and 
 great, women and maidens enough to found a considerable czarstvy. 
 There your brothers are." When the dove had explained every- 
 thing, the Czar's, son instantly wrung its neck. The hero and 
 heroine then returned to the palace, the hero triumphantly tootling 
 the bagpipes; and the readers will of course divine the termination 
 of the story. 
 
 It is unnecessary to insist upon the identity of this Slav and the 
 Lapp story, which is too obvious to require comment ; nor need any 
 more be said of the various phials and bottles hid in lions' heads, etc., 
 which contain the life of the wicked Magi in the Venetian variants. 
 We have had an instance in the story of the Twelve Brothers, where 
 the twelfth sister wheedles the magician into telling her where his 
 life resides, and betrays it to the twelfth brother, who is thus enabled 
 to set free the other eleven brothers and sisters whom the magician 
 
114 Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared. 
 
 had turned to stone. "We have thus traced the legend from the 
 Arctic circle to the shore of the Mediterranean. In the Serbian story 
 it is interesting to observe how the grave of the Arctic winter sun, 
 whose return is allegorized in so many ways in these stories, and 
 which has given us so many enchanted castles, of which the castle of 
 iron, with its frozen warriors, is the prototpye, is here gradually 
 transforming itself into the place of eternal torment of our genial 
 Christian theology. I quote another Serbian story called the Devil 
 and the Archangel, partly because it illustrates this metamorphosis, 
 and partly because it shows that the egg which fell into the sea of 
 fire in the Lapp story, symbolizes the sun. The yunner's three 
 attempts to recover it correspond to the plucking of the three hairs 
 in Father Know-AU, and to the three days' struggle at the bridge in 
 the Sun-horse, to the invariably triple form of the three days' struggle 
 for the light at the re-appearance of the sun from its Arctic underworld. 
 "When the devils revolted and fled to the earth, they brought the 
 sun with them, and the Czar of the devils stuck it on a pike, and 
 carried it over his shoulder. But when the world began to disgust 
 God so that he wished to burn it up by means of the sun, he sent 
 his Holy Archangel on to the earth, and the Archangel began to 
 fraternize with the Czar of the devils : but the Czar of the devils 
 perceived what the other wanted, and carefully kept on his guard. 
 Going thus about in the world they came to the sea and prepared to 
 bathe, and the devil flung the spear with the sun on it upon the 
 ground. After bathing a little, says the Holy Archangel : " Suppose 
 we dive to see who can go the deepest." And the devil replies : 
 " Come along, then." So the Holy Archangel dives and brings up a 
 sponge in his teeth. Now it is the devil's turn, but he fears lest the 
 Archangel filch the sun while he is diving. Just then an idea strikes 
 him. He spits on to the ground, and from the spittle forms a magpie 
 to watch the sun while he is under water ; but the Holy Archangel 
 makes the sign of the cross over the sea, and ice forms upon the 
 surface twelve ells in thickness ; then he seizes the sun and carries 
 it to God, and the magpie begins to cry out. "When the devil hears 
 the magpie's voice he knows what it means, and hastens back at full 
 speed. But rising to the surface, he finds it hard frozen, and cannot 
 get out. So down he goes again to the bottom, fetches a stone, 
 breaks the ice, and hurries after the Holy Archangel. Away runs 
 the Archangel and the devil after him. Just as the Holy Archangel 
 is stepping up to God in heaven with one foot, that moment the 
 devil catches him up, and with his nails pinches a large piece of 
 fiesh out of the soles of both his feet. "When the Archangel, thus 
 wounded, comes into the presence of God, he complains thus : 
 " "What am I to do, O God, thus deformed as I am." And God 
 said : " Never fear ! I wish to arrange that all people should have a 
 dent like a small valley in the soles of both feet." And so God 
 formed them, and in all people is formed on the soles of both 
 their feet a depression like a small valley. And thus it has remained 
 even down to the present day. 
 
Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared. 115 
 
 This curious legend, which does not tend to raise one's opinion 
 either of Christian honesty or of the sublimity of Christian imagi- 
 nation — we are a long way from the Herald's speech in the Lapp 
 pagan poem — seems to show a consciousness of what was probably 
 the case, that our primitive ancestors were flat-footed, as many 
 negro races and the anthropoid apes are to this day (Lombroso). If so, 
 just as Brlik in the Siberian legend helped semi-simian humanity out 
 of its monkey-fleeces to higher things, so this Serbian devil was no 
 inconsiderable stepping-stone in the triumphant upward march of 
 human evolution. 
 
 The next story — the "Woman of the Sea from Naessebegy — is one 
 of that large class of which El Granchio (the crab), and a Slavonic 
 one, the Frog, are examples. The hero is conducted to a palace 
 under the sea by a mermaid, and presented with a heap of silver 
 and a large golden cup, which once stood on the table of a king. 
 These stories seem to be expansions of the third task in the three 
 days' struggle for the light, when the hero fishes up a gold ring from 
 the bottom of a black sea with the help of a pike or a boon com- 
 panion. 
 
 The third story is called the Poor Boy, the Devil, and the City 
 of Gold (from Karasjok). A poor and a rich man go out fishing; 
 the rich man is fortunate, the poor man catches nothing. Then he 
 hears a voice : " Promise me what your wife carries under the heart 
 and you shall be rich" [Jephthah's daughter: El mezo (Venetian) 
 etc.]. The man catches a fish full of gold coins, and makes his 
 fortune. He finds his wife enceinte. Fifteen years after the devil 
 comes and claims the boy. The rest of the story is one of the 
 innumerable variants of the Three Citrons — the three volume novel 
 form of fairy story. Taking it all together, it belongs therefore to 
 the epic fairy story type, beginning as it does with the birth of the 
 hero, and something miraculous connected with it. 
 
 We have now compared the principal fragments of ancient Lapp 
 literature with the Slavonic folk-lore, and have shewn beyond the 
 possibility of cavil how close is the connection between the two. 
 
 In conclusion, a few words may be said of the Lapp superstitions, 
 which may perhaps be traced in our Slav variants of Lapp nature 
 myths. They are not very numerous, perhaps, in part because the 
 records of Lapp mythology are few and rapidly perishing. 
 
 1. When the noaide's, or Lapp magician's soul, during the mes- 
 meric trance passed into Saiwo, the subterranean Lapp elysium, it 
 was conducted by a Saivvo-bird or fish. The fish was either piscine 
 or vermiform. In the Venetian variant (El Mezo) of the Polish Hloupy 
 Pieeuch, the wonder-working pike is exchanged for an equally thau- 
 m'aturgic eel. A reminiscence of the primitive Lapp idea may 
 perhaps have contributed to the choice of pike and eels, as well as 
 to the serpent in the story of Qolden Locks. 
 
 2. Originally the Lapps adored the sun, and a fragment of the 
 ancient belief is preserved to this day in the custom of smearing the 
 walls of the round hut with butter, that the sun may melt it after 
 
116 Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared. 
 
 the long Arctic winter night. In the Vedas, one of the epithets of 
 the day is the extraordinary one of buttery dawn, which may be a 
 reminiscence of this primitive Lapp rite. 
 
 3. The magicians kept magic flies in bags, which they let out to 
 produce skin diseases in their enemies. An allusion to these magic 
 flies may perhaps be traced in the flies in Golden Locks. 
 
 4. The Lapps believed in auguries by means of birds, a super- 
 stition which developed to such vast proportions in the classic 
 world. In the Serbian legend we have the various legends of 
 miraculous cocks, in Polish Iskrzytski, in Czech the Earas and 
 Setek legends, in Slovenian Vtacok Bracok (bird-brother), and 
 numerous other stories in which the hero or heroine is murdered 
 and transformed into a bird. Specially noticeable is the trans- 
 formation at will of the seer in the Sun-horse into a green bird. 
 It was the special sign of a good noaide or Lapp magician to be able 
 to change at will into the form of an animal or bird. Some of them 
 could, it was pretended, change into as many as six different 
 animals. Setek, the little boy with chicken claws, a regular enfant 
 terrible reappears in Venetian folk-lore as Mazzariol, an old nian 
 who would turn into a baby, and let himself be washed and dandled 
 by some good housewife, and then run off in his true form and stand 
 in the street and laugh at her credulity. 
 
 5. In the root the woodman brings home in Otesanek and trims 
 to form a little baby, which his wife puts to bed, feeds it with pap, 
 and causes to come to life and grow into a veritable enfant terrible, 
 may perhaps be traced a faint reminiscence of the pagan Lapps' 
 wooden idols which were formed out of the roots of birch trees. 
 
 We have thus traced our hypothetical primitive Arctic winter 
 weather myth or fairy story, the source of all our principal literary 
 forms and the most essential of our religious beliefs and super- 
 stitions to the creative minds of Arctic Mongols, and the influence 
 upon them of the peculiar seasons of the Arctic circle. With the 
 rude plan of the primitive Arctic myth the foundation is laid for a 
 scientific study of folk-lore myths. Placing them in their natural 
 groups (see plan) and arranging them in these according to the 
 latitude of the place where they were collected, and then comparing 
 the myths of each group minutely among themselves, it will, 
 perhaps, be possible to reconstruct the primitive annual solar Arctic 
 winter myth or weather allegory, which, if it actually existed, is the 
 most ancient piece of literature in the world, compared to which 
 Egyptian hieroglyphics are modern history. This re-constituted 
 myth may possibly lead to the conviction that some seventy or 
 more thousand years ago the climate of Siberia was temperate, and 
 the Arctic circle was the centre of civilisation of a Turanian people 
 like the present Samoyedes, of which the reconstituted myth is a 
 relic, and of the warmer weather that prevailed there in those days. 
 The civilisation of these ancient 'Turanians was not only high 
 latitude but high. They were small with very round heads ; 
 swearing, theft and murder, and deeds of violence were unknown, or 
 
Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared. 117 
 
 almost unknown among them. Their religion consisted of a high 
 order of spiritualism (the latitude and proximity of the magnetic 
 pole rendering their nervous systems peculiarly sensitive) and 
 absolute freedom in the indulgence of the amorous passions, love 
 and happiness were the sole objects aimed at in their state of organi- 
 zation ; war was unknown ; the illusion of the death and burial of 
 the sun in the Arctic winter night, and its subsequent resurrection 
 in spring was the basis of their religion. 
 
 From geometrical considerations, the round-headed type of 
 human beings must be the highest, because a spherical skull, 
 other things being equal, contains the greatest amount of brains. 
 The present predominance of the Aryans {i.e., elliptical skull-folk) is 
 due to their aptitude for motion consequent upon their well 
 developed cerebellums. How deeply seated is this instinct in us is 
 shewn in every department of our science, the last word of which is 
 motion in a medium. When we have resolved even thought itself 
 into the motion or electrical discharges of its molecules, we assume 
 we have penetrated as far as human intellect can go ; it does not 
 occur to us to proceed in the opposite direction, and endeavour to 
 express cosmical energy in terms of thought. But when all the 
 problems of mechanical locomotion have been solved, there will be 
 no further use for our physical and mental restlessness, with its 
 nomad instinct ; and our science of motion and locomotion having 
 been learned and adopted by the round-headed Turanian races, 
 ours may be destined to die out or become absorbed in theirs, our 
 role on earth being accomplished. The age of peace, impossible 
 to our combative type of humanity, may then perhaps dawn, as 
 well as that of freedom for the emotions, and therefore of relative 
 happiness. Once again things will be as they were in that long 
 past golden age of the Arctic world, when, just as the moon was a 
 pledge and earnest in the long Arctic winter night of the reappear- 
 ance of the sun, so the orgies and beanfeasts of that long jovial 
 winter midnight were the pledge and earnest of the resurrection of 
 ove and its perpetual enjoyment after death : 
 
 The moon and its broken reflection, 
 And its shadows shall appear, 
 
 As the symbol of love in heaven, 
 And its wavering image here. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 The Herald's speech, from the Lapp poem " The Son of Pissa Passa " 
 (supposed to date from the Neolithic epoch) : 
 
 I. 
 
 God alone can give remission. 
 When his lightnings he hath hurled, [night ; 
 
 And has planted the odours of shame in the soul and laid bare the abyss of its 
 When the conscience is seared by his levin and his spiritual power unfurled. 
 He alone can cancel, pardon, cleanse from hate and re-unite. 
 
 II. 
 He alone is in himself, not as I or thou is he — 
 
 Not as thou or I designing — 
 He alone enlightens, pardons. 
 All things for the best combining. 
 III. 
 But with joy must we receive him 
 As the heart's most precious treasure — 
 Its divinest cup of pleasure. 
 
 IV. 
 Have a care, or the levin shall fall, and the blight 
 Of its spells hurl thee prone to the nethermost night ; 
 For the souls of the next world are proof 'gainst decay 
 When the flesh and the bones shall have mouldered away. 
 
 V. 
 Space no more their home is, rooks cannot arrest them, 
 
 Nor the stream retain them, nor the ocean drown them. 
 Like the thoughts' swift shuttle, through all space they wend them. 
 
 Suns and constellations, moon and earth that crown them. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Time no more they reck of, time has passed behind them ; 
 
 And in dreaming 
 They reveal them to the moon-struck spirits. 
 
 Now in touch no longer with our world of seeming. 
 
 VII. 
 They are souls o' the mirk whom Ilmaracca healed. 
 
 Sad shades of ill omen, blackened, blasted, sear, 
 Naked as the daylight — good and ill revealed — 
 
 Space no more contains them, nor the circling year. 
 
 VIII. 
 Some have donned the heavenly vesture. 
 Some the sombre weeds of night. 
 And have changed into forms of abhorrent despair and for ever and ever at strife ; 
 
 Taste no more the sweet concord of love, unredeemed evermore to the light ; 
 Warfare, vain recriminations, are for aye their death in life. 
 
 IX. 
 
 He, the father of the heaven, in himself is all in all. 
 
 Not as we and you ; the rolling 
 Sphere of day and night sustaining. 
 
 And the spirit-world controlling. 
 
APPENDIX II. 
 
 A LIST of tte fairy stories in D. G. Bernoni's collections, showing 
 their relation to similar Slavonic ones : 
 
 First Collection. 
 
 The Two Waiters. — In part is the story of Boccaccio and Cym- 
 beline. Its relation to the Sun-horse type of story is shewn by the 
 king going to a hut, where he leaves his robes for seven years, seven 
 months, and seven days. Its more modern character by the title 
 I due camerieri. 
 
 The Shark. — In part the Virgin Godmother (Upper Lusatian) ; 
 in part Halek's modern story Under the Hollow Tree, itself derived 
 from ancient folk-lore sources. Compare the Shepherd's Pipe (Polish), 
 Bracok Vtacok (Slovenian), The Tinkling Linden (Upper Lusatian), 
 etc. 
 
 The Devil. — This is the Blue Beard story, itself related to the 
 Virgin Godmother, the Sun-horse, and the Zlata pava (golden or 
 darling pea-hen ; Slovenian). 
 
 A Holiday Dinner. — The most modern travesty of George and 
 his Goat (Domaslik Bohemian). 
 
 Twelve Girls in Child. — Of the Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes 
 class. 
 
 Bestianelo. — This is Foolish Greta. 
 
 The Fisherman's Wife. — This is a local legend of an unfaithful 
 wife, exposed by a priest. It contains of Slavonic fairy stories 
 only the triple element to connect it with the Arctic myth. 
 
 Consa Cenere. — Cinderella (Bulgarian: Popelka). 
 
 Ari Ari Caga Danari. — Obreohu hybej se, Beat-stick (Kasubian). 
 
 The Beast with the Seven Heads. — George and his Goat, and 
 Perseus and Andromeda. 
 
 The Madcap. — Local. 
 
 The Parsley. — Connected by El Mezo with Hloupy Piecuch 
 (Polish). The number seven occurs in it. In part The Miraculous 
 Hair (Serbian) ; in part The Skeleton King or Prince Unexpectedly 
 (Polish). 
 
 Good as Salt. — In part Boccaccio's Merchant of Genova, and 
 thus a variant of JE I porno d'oro (Bernoni's third and last collection), 
 that is The Shepherd's Pipe (Polish). 
 
 Cipro Candia e Morea. — 'This is a modernized form of the Tink- 
 ling Linden and the Virgin Mary Godmother. 
 
 The Three Old Women. — A burlesque fairy story. Compare the 
 Three Fates. 
 
 The King of the Beans. — Distantly related to the Three Citrons. 
 
 King Bufone. — Of the El Granchio type. Belated to the Golden 
 Treasure (Upper Lusatian). 
 
120 Appendix II. 
 
 The Girl with Four Eyes. — In part the Tinkling Linden ; in part 
 The Devil (Polish). 
 
 The Friulan. — Local. 
 
 Maszariol. — The Venetian Baras or Setek (Bohemian), Iskrzytski 
 (Polish). 
 
 Second Collection. 
 
 The Five Ells of Cloth. — The introduction is the same as that of 
 the Devil and the Shoemaker (Moravian). The story is the Polish 
 Jalmuzna (Alms). 
 
 El G-iusto (The Just). — This is the Moravian Godmother Death. 
 
 How the Bace of the Friulani were Born. — ^Local. 
 
 Siropa de barcaezo le fieve descazzo (Barge sirop drives away 
 fever). — Local. 
 
 San Querin. — Local and Comic. The element three occurs in the 
 beans, scarlet-runners, and corn, which connect it with the Three 
 Citrons, etc. 
 
 Vigna era e vigna son. — No apparent relation to Slav folk-lore. 
 It is connected, however, with the two Zodiacal signs, Leo and 
 Virgo. 
 
 / orfaroni. — Local. 
 
 Go gerimo vivi (When we were alive). — Comic. Local. 
 
 The Three Brothers. — ^Burlesque, but connected by the triple 
 element with the Slav and Arctic solar myth. 
 
 The Biddle. — No apparent relation to the Slav. 
 
 The Three who go to the Pope of Borne. — Comic. 
 
 The Three Goslings and the Cock. — These two stories belong to 
 the Budulinek (Moravian), and Otesanek (Bohemian) group. 
 
 Petin Petelo and Galeto e Sorzeto. — This is our " Fire burn stick, 
 stick beat dog." 
 
 Nono Gocon. — A degraded form of E^ Corvo and the Three Citrons. 
 
 Bosseto.— In part Budulinek; in part a corrupted form of Hank 
 a Janka. Comic. 
 
 Sorzeto e Luganega. — An amusing variety of Petin Petelo. 
 
 La Mosca. — The same as Tin Vecieto birbo. (Bernoni ; last 
 collection). 
 
 The Three Sisters. — Long, Broad, and Sharp-Byes. The flask 
 of water giving life connects it with the next story, and this with 
 the Dragon and Czar's son (Serbian), which in turn links it to the 
 Lapp — The giant who preserved his life in an egg. 
 
 The Twelve Brothers and the Twelve Sisters. — As the last. It 
 contains also the principal incident of the Spirit of the Unburied 
 one (Polish), and that of Joseph and his Brethren, but in a form 
 which shows that this last is really an allegory of the dubious 
 victory of the spring at the beginning of the year. The youngest of 
 the twelve brethren thrown into the well by them, and saved from 
 it by the spirit of the Unburied one whom he had buried, is the 
 Hero of vitality who buried the Sun in winter, and in return is 
 saved from the spring flood by it in spring. 
 
 f. 
 
 I'q 1 1 
 
Appendix II. 121 
 
 Beknoni's Third (and last) Collection. 
 
 The Basket of Flowers is George and his Goat. 
 
 Apple and Bind. — This is the Two Brothers (Serbian), it also 
 occurs in English folk-lore. 
 
 A Wife who won't eat. — The Golden Pea-hen (Slovenian). 
 
 77ie Golden Apple. — The Shepherd's Pipe (Polish). Note the 
 name of the Venetian variant connects the Polish story v^ith the 
 annual Arctic myth. • 
 
 Bela la mare ma piu bela la fia. — (Pair the mother but fairer the 
 daughter). In part The Virgin Mary Godmother. In part Father 
 Know-All. In part the Tinkling Linden. 
 
 Tlie Wind is the Skeleton King. Points of resemblance with 
 Father Know-All, the Three Citrons, and the Miraculous Hair. 
 
 The Enchanted Bing. — Traces of the Virgin Mary Godmother. 
 
 Gasa cucagna. — The Golden Spinneress (Slovenian), becoming, in 
 the last stage of its eventful history, Shakespeare's Taming of the 
 Shrew. 
 
 El Mezo (The half). — Hloupy Piecuch. 
 
 The Crab. — A form of the Golden Treasure ; some points of 
 resemblance to the Miraculous Hair. 
 
 The Love of the Three Oranges. — The Three Citrons. 
 
 The Sister Dimib for Seven Years. — The seven connects it with 
 the SuQ-horse. It continues as the Three Citrons, then turns into 
 the Virgin Mary Godmother, to end something like the end of the 
 Merchant of Genova (Boccaccio). 
 
 The Dead Man. — A blending of the general idea of the Sleeping 
 Beauty legend, with a close reproduction of the anti-climax of the 
 Three Citrons. 
 
 Goat's Head and Hare's Ears. — More or less a variant from the 
 Three Sisters, which see. 
 
 King Grow. — A variant of the Three Citrons ; but it has preserved 
 its Prologue. 
 
 Un veiceto birbo. — Comic. 
 

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