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Cornell University Library 
 PA 6209.M5 1887 
 
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The Marriage^ of 
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Xlbe mevc psscbe. 
 
 " Whither goest thou elate 
 
 In thy rich array ? " 
 " I will seek at heaven's gate 
 
 To the Gods to pray 
 
 " If so be their festival 
 I may look upon, 
 Where an earthly maiden shall '. 
 Of a God be won. 
 
 " Who upon the Gods might gaze 
 At their banqueting, 
 Should go joj^ul all his days, 
 For so high a thing." 
 
 " Friend, there is no banquet spread, 
 Fallen hath the night ; 
 Gods and Goddesses have fled. 
 Ended is delight." 
 
 — May KENDAtL. 
 
Cupid and pescbe. 
 
 Once in a city of old 
 Lived a king and a queen : 
 These had three fair daughters, 
 But the fairest of all was the third, — 
 How, in the ages of gold, 
 Where summer meadows were green, 
 By welling of pastoral waters 
 Did the story begin to be heard ? 
 
 Surely the world was good, 
 And lip and passion and speech 
 Still seemed to sparkle and quiver 
 In sunlit dew of the mom ; 
 And the wood-nymphs danced through the wood, 
 And the sea-wind sang to the beach. 
 And the wise reeds talked in the river. 
 When this tale came to be born. 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHE. 
 
 No I in an age like ours, 
 Dull, philanthropic," effete, 
 From the dust of a race grown stupid 
 And a language deep in decay. 
 Sudden, with scent as of flowers. 
 With song as of birds, the sweet 
 Story of Psyche and Cupid 
 Strangely sprang into day. 
 
 Seventeen centuries more 
 Have given their sands to the sum 
 Of kings and queens passed over, 
 And cities of long ago. 
 And still to our ears as of yore 
 The musical soft words come, 
 Whose magic the earliest lover 
 Knew, and the last will know. 
 
 — ^J. W. Mackail. 
 
Zbe Cupid of Uosdas. 
 
 The good old classic mind delights 
 In myths of Venus and her rites, 
 
 And Psyche and her wrongs : 
 I've read of ruthless Gods who laugh'd 
 At Cupid's bow and Cupid's shaft, 
 
 In story-books and songs. 
 
 My six-years-old — a child of grace, 
 Is off across the beds to chase 
 
 A butterfly : Anon 
 The imp wiU catch it by its wing, 
 And so you see this kind of thing 
 
 Is always going on ! 
 
 — F. Locker-Lampsok. 
 
XLbe /iBgtbologlst anO ipsBcbe. 
 
 O Butterfly of Fable, flown 
 
 From what strange chrysalis unknown, 
 
 Across the empires overthrown, 
 
 Thou flittest with thy fairy wings 
 Above the strifes of creeds and kings, 
 Above the wrecks of mortal things. 
 
 Thou, in thine air of endless peace 
 Hast seen the nations rise and cease, 
 Egypt and India, Rome and Greece, 
 
 And now hast come within the scope 
 
 Of those that peep, and pry, and grope : 
 
 Thou art beneath the microscope ! 
 
 b 
 
X THE MYTHOLOGIST AND PSYCHE. 
 
 Art fixed within a little room 
 
 That looks on London's glare and gloom ; 
 
 Yet Science cannot smirch thy bloom. 
 
 But thou \wilt spread thy wings on high, 
 A floating flower 'twixt earth and sky — 
 No man may break this Butterfly I 
 
 A. L. 
 
 Wipereum ^alum. 
 
 The Folklorist it is one's bounden duty, 
 If not to cherish, to consult at least ; 
 
 But, though I'm sure that Psyche was a Beauty, 
 I cannot think that Cupid was a Beast I 
 
 W. H. Pollock. 
 
ROBERT BRIDGES. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The version of Cupid and Psyche here reprinted 
 is from a volume entitled "The XL Bookes of 
 the Golden Asse, contoining the Metamorphosie 
 of Lucius Apuleius, enterlaced with sondrie plea- 
 saunt and delectable Tales, with an excellent 
 Narration of the Mariage of Cupido and Psiches, 
 set out in the, iiii., v., and vi. Bookes. Trans- 
 lated out of Latine into Englishe by WiUiam 
 Adiington, Imprinted at London, in Fleet 
 streate, at the sign of the Oliphante, by Henry 
 Wykes, Anno 1566 " (4to, B.L.). This is the 
 first edition of Adlington's translation. In the 
 Register of the Stationers' Company is recorded, 
 " Ed. of Henry Wekes, for his lycense for prynt- 
 inge of a boke intituled the hole boke of lucious 
 apelious of the golden asse, viijd." 
 
 The clerk of the Stationers appears to have 
 
xiv PREFACE. 
 
 been a man of only average intelligence and 
 education. Other editions were published, by 
 How for A. Veale, London, in 1571 ; by V. 
 Symmes, London, in 1596; and by Harper, for 
 Alchom, London, 1639. There were also edi- 
 tions in 1582 and 1600. The edition used 
 in this reprint is that of 1596. The copy em- 
 ployed was given to me by my friend Mr. Eobert 
 Bridges, author, among other poems, of Eros and 
 Psyche (G. Bell & Sons, London, 1885). It 
 is a quaint, much-handled text, somewhat cut 
 into by the binder's plough. The copy of 1566 
 in the British Museum is very clean, in old red 
 morocco. I have heard of no other copy outside 
 great libraries except one of 1639, for which a 
 London bookseller demands a considerable price. 
 Mr. Huth had no copy. As to William Ad- 
 liugton, who wrote the Golden Asse that Shake- 
 speare must have read, if he read Apuleius in 
 English, next to nothing is known. The pedi- 
 grees of the sixteenth century show AdUngtons 
 in Cheshire and Lancashire. In Tanner's Bib- 
 Uotheca Britannico-Hibemica (London, 1748) 
 we find (p. 9), "Adlington (Guliehnus) in 
 coUegio Universitatis Oxon, bonis Uteris operam 
 dedit 18 Sept. hdlvi. quae fuit data epistolsa 
 
PREFACE. XV 
 
 dedicatoriae. Transtulit in sennonem Anglicum 
 Lucii Apuleii adnum aureum, lib. xi. Pr. ded. 
 Comiti Sussex." " Whether he was a graduate 
 of this university I know not," Nat Southwell 
 tells us in his supplement to Bib. Soe. Jem. 
 
 There ends our knowledge of William Ad- 
 lington, slight enough certainly. In the dedioar 
 tion to the Earl of Sussex (first edition) he 
 dates his letter " From Universitie Colledge in 
 Oxforde, the seventeenth of September 1566." 
 We thus learn that Adlington stayed up in the 
 Long Vacation. If he worked like most English 
 translators of his time, he probably used the 
 French version of 15 18 or of 1553. He refers 
 to "the French and Spanish translations " in his 
 preface, but he certainly did not translate directly 
 from the Spanish Historia de Lucio Apuleyo of 
 155 1. 1 Jean Maugin, called Le Petit Angevin, 
 had rhymed the tale of Cupid and Psyche in 
 1546. The prettiest title of all that the pretty 
 pair's adventures have worn in literature is 
 " L' Adolescence amoureuse de Cupido aveo 
 Psyohd, outre le vouloir de la diesse V6nus, sa 
 m&re, decrite en prose" (Lyon, Fr. Juste, 1536). 
 
 Cupid and Psyche have inspired countless 
 ^ Antwerp, En casa de luan Steelsio. 
 
xvi PREFACE. 
 
 works of modem art, from Le Petit Angevin to 
 Moli^re, and from Kaphael to Mrs. Tighe, whose 
 MS. Psyche I bought lately at a stall. The 
 versions by Mr. Eobert Bridges, by Mr. William 
 Morris, and by Mr. Pater (prose, in Marius the 
 Epicurean), are close and beautiful. Mr. Burne 
 Jones has made an interesting series of drawings, 
 not engraved, for the story. 
 
 For the design of Psyche and Proserpina I 
 am indebted to my friend Mr. W. B. Eichmond ; 
 for the etching of Venus and the Sea-guU, to Mr. 
 Vereker Hamilton ; for the sketch on the cover 
 (Puss in Boots in a Folk-lore Library), to Mr. 
 Jacomb Hood ; while Mr. Gosse kindly lent me 
 a copy of a drawing of Prudhon's, reproduced in 
 the headpiece of The Marriage of Cupid and 
 Psyches. 
 
 A. L. 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHE. 
 
 " There was a Jcing and a queen. 
 As many ane's heen ; 
 Few have we teen, 
 At few may we see." 
 
 So runs the rhyme of the old Morayshire nursery 
 tale, Eashin Cootie ; so it jingles from childhood 
 in one's ear. 
 
 Erant in quadam civitate rex et regina, the 
 old woman's tale begins in Apuleius, with the 
 same immemorial formula. Even in the earliest 
 words of the narrative the mdrchen declares 
 itself, and, as the plot is developed, we, like 
 Charles Perrault, recognise in Gujpid and Psyche 
 a conte oi traditional popular tale.^ 
 
 Nothing in it but the names of the hero 
 and heroine and of the gods connects the legend 
 
 1 See Meyer, Essays widStudien, p. 197 (Berlin, 1885), 
 and Perrault'a preface to Griselidis (1695). 
 
iviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in Apuleius with the higher mythology of the 
 Olympian consistory. It would, therefore, be 
 waste of time to search for a Platonic allegory 
 in the mdrchen, or to linger over the history of 
 Eros, of Cupid, in ritual, myth, and art. It is 
 not as the world-making Eros, moving over 
 chaos and fashioning the egg of the universe, 
 that Eros figures in this story. Nor has he any 
 necessary connection with the Eros whom the 
 people of Thespia worshipped in the shape of 
 an unhewn stone.'- 
 
 In Apuleius, Cupid is hut the Invisible Bride- 
 groom of so many household tales, though he is 
 clothed, for the purposes of the author, with the 
 name and attributes of Aphrodite's winged boy. 
 The story would run more simply if all the 
 characters were unnamed; if Cupid's mother 
 were only the jealous mother-in-law, not Aphro- 
 dite, more concerned about the beauty of a 
 maiden rival than even about the marriage of 
 her son. 
 
 The purpose of this essay, therefore, is to 
 trace the various forms and fortunes of the 
 
 ' See Furtwangler in Roscher'a Ausfilhrliehei Lexi- 
 ion der Mythologie, s. t. Eros, with the author's theory 
 of a Xhracian origin of the ciilt. 
 
INTRODUCTION. six 
 
 popular tales which, among various Aryaa and 
 non-Aryan peoples, correspond more or less 
 closely to the fable of Cupid and Psyche. 
 The general conclusions which we shall try to 
 establish are : first, that the essential features 
 of the tale are not peculiar to Aryan peoples 
 only, but that they are found in stories from 
 all quarters ; secondly, we shall try to show 
 that these essential features might occur to 
 the human fancy anywhere — granted certain 
 rules and forms of society. It will thus not 
 be absolutely necessary to suppose that the tale 
 was invented once for aU, and spread from one 
 single original centre, though this may have 
 been the case. But if the story was thus 
 transmitted from one people to another all over 
 the world, we argue that there is no good evi- 
 dence that India was its birthplace. This theory 
 is opposed to the idea maintained by M. 
 Cosquin in his learned and valuable Contes de 
 Lorraine.^ M. Cosquin's belief is that India was 
 the birthplace of the primitive form of Cupid 
 and Psyche, and that where the tale occurs 
 elsewhere, it has been borrowed from India of 
 the historic period. Fortunately, there is not 
 1 Paris, 1886. 
 
XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 much need of controversial argument as to the 
 point -whence we start in , the discussion. M. 
 Cosquin agrees with us in considering Psyche et 
 Oupido a mere corde, or marchen, or popular tale. 
 Indeed, the story avows itself for anilis jdhula, 
 and is put by Apuleius into the mouth of one 
 of the class which everywhere preserves such 
 traditions — the class of grandmothers and old 
 women. "This so-called myth," says M. Cos- 
 quin, "only touches the Greek and Eoman 
 mythology hy virtue of the names of the persons. 
 It is merely a conte populaire, brother of many 
 contes that yet live in popular tradition, and 
 the primitive shape of the story, altered in 
 several ways in the Latin narrative, we can 
 readily reconstruct." ^ 
 
 Things " primitive " are not so easily " recon- 
 structed " by a generation that has wandered so 
 far from, and forgotten so much of, the begin- 
 nings of the race as ours. We do not pretend 
 in the following study to "reconstruct the 
 primitive form " of the fable. No races that can 
 properly be called " primitive " are known to 
 science. The rudest shape of story analogous to 
 Oupid and Psyche that can now be found among 
 '■ Cmtes de Lorraine, ii. 225. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxi 
 
 contemporary peoples may be a great advance 
 on some older form of the legend. It will be 
 enougb for ns to try to detect the oldest ideas 
 that occur in the tale, to exhibit them as they 
 inspire the incidents, and to seek for the origin 
 of the ideas in certain demonstrable condi- 
 tions of human intellect, human manners, and 
 human society. Beyond this it would be de- 
 sirable, were it possible, to trace the wanderings 
 of the legend from its original birthplace (if 
 that could be discovered), or to show that the 
 essential parts of the narrative might (at a cer- 
 tain stage of human culture) have been sepa- 
 rately invented anywhere. 
 
 Before a writer like M. Cosquin can " easily 
 reconstruct the primitive form " of the conte, 
 and before we can attempt the humbler yet 
 difficult task of disengaging, analysing, and 
 tracing the fortunes of the various essential ideas 
 of which the eonte is the sum, it is necessary to 
 determine what those essential ideas are. In an 
 investigation of this sort, one writer wiU perhaps 
 maintain that one incident or idea is essential 
 which another student wUl regard as acciden- 
 tal. Again, we may see strong analogies and 
 resemblances between stories of widely sundered 
 
xxii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 peoples ■where another investigator sees nothing 
 of the kind. Thus, for instance, M. Cosquin 
 tells us, -when we adduce American parallels, as 
 we think them, of European marchen, that " the 
 so-called resemblances have no relation to that 
 identity of form and matter noted in certain 
 European, Asiatic, and African collections," aU 
 affected, as he thinks, by Indian influences. ^ 
 All that we bring forward in that kind, says 
 OUT critic, is "vague, without characteristic touch, 
 or is purely imaginary." Where there are excep- 
 tions, where our American eoiite, for example, 
 is undeniably akin to an European confe, M. 
 Cosquin explains the resemblances by a theory 
 of "comparatively recent importation," or bor- 
 rowing. 
 
 As it is our intention to elucidate the story of 
 Cupid and Psyche by a comparison of tales and 
 ideas found in America and in Southern Africa, 
 as well as in countries nearer home, and easily 
 within - the reach of Indian influences, it is 
 necessary to make a stand here and defend the 
 method employed. 
 
 In the savage — say American or South African 
 —stories which we shaU introduce, we do not 
 ' Contes de Zorraine, i. xiv. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxiii 
 
 pretend always to find " cette identity de fond 
 et de forme que I'on constate dans les collections 
 de contes europ^ens, asiatiques, africains," men- 
 tioned by M. Cosquin. Let us take a race living 
 in the hunter state, without settled homes, with- 
 out hereditary government, almost without pro- 
 perty, and depending for food more on the chase 
 than on agriculture. If that race has a native 
 story, we can hardly expect it to tally throughout 
 with a eonte in the mouths of a much more civi- 
 lised people. There will inevitably be vast dif- 
 ferences of manners, even if the fundamental 
 notions are the same. Again, it is a notorious 
 fact that the conte, even in Europe and India, even 
 among the old civilisations, is, like man, ondoyant 
 et divers, Contes are fluctuating and unstable in 
 plot, though they all contain different arrange- 
 ments of the same scanty stock of incidents and 
 ideas. Even in European marchen this is true. 
 A tale will start with a certain opening, that, 
 let us say, of the man with three daughters. 
 Then it wiU glide either into one of the f ormulse 
 in which an unkind stepmother appears, or into 
 a story of adventures to be achieved by each of 
 the three daughters, in which only the youngest 
 usuaUy succeeds, or into the narrative in which 
 
xxiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 a giant or fiend claims one of the three. Any of 
 these points having been reached, more cross- 
 roads branch off in every direction. 
 
 The successful girl may marry a husband and 
 suffer from, his jealousy, excited usually by his 
 mother ; or she may be persecuted by a false or 
 substituted bride who takes her place, or her 
 sisters may be jealous of and thwart her ; or, if 
 she was seized by the giant or fiend, she may 
 elope from him with a brother of her own or 
 with a lover, and then we probably meet the 
 formula of the flight, aided by magical objects 
 which the runaway pair throw behind them. 
 When the flight is successful, the story may 
 end, or lady and lover may be separated because 
 the man has allowed- some one or some beast 
 to kiss him. Then the assistance of friendly 
 animals, or of animals whom the hero or heroine 
 has aided, and who are grateful, may come in 
 usefully. There are dozens, if not hundreds, 
 of other ways in which any popular tale^ start- 
 ing from whatever formula you please, may 
 journey to any end you like, always by well- 
 known paths and through familiar adventures. 
 Thus Madame d'Aulnoy easily combines, iaFinette 
 Cendron, Hap o' my Thumb with Cinderella. A 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxy 
 
 popular tale is like a knight or lady of romance. 
 Setting out from palace or hovel, it comes to a 
 forest and a place where three ways meet. Any 
 one of these roads presently leads to a spot where 
 three more paths meet, any one of which may 
 be chosen, and so forth till the end. 
 
 Thus, when we adduce an American or African 
 eonte as a parallel to an European eonte, we must 
 not be understood to assert that the stories cor- 
 respond throughout part by part. There will be 
 what we at least consider an essential correspon- 
 dence of ideas and incidents ; but these may be 
 combined into narratives very unlike each other. 
 The same phenomenon occurs in European and 
 Indian tales. We might give examples from M. 
 Cosquin's own variants; for example (i. 73), where 
 he compares a French and a Persian story, and 
 admits " la ressemblance, sans doute, est ^loign6e." 
 He also admits that isolated incidents recur in 
 very various combinations (L 170); and if he 
 offers, as grandes analogies, the resemblance be- 
 tween Firosette and the end of Cupid and Psyche, 
 he should not be, in the matter of analogies, very 
 difficult to satisfy (ii. 236). 
 
 We assert, then, not our power of bringing 
 forward American or South African tales exactly 
 
 c 
 
xxvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 corresponding in matter and in arrangement to 
 European tales, but our power of adducing from 
 American or South African eontes examples of 
 ideas and incidents whicli are strictly analogous 
 to those that occur in European folk-lore. Even 
 more might be asserted, but for the present it is 
 enough to promise resemblance in the essential 
 conceptions of those popular romances. As to 
 the question of "recent borro-wing " or "impor- 
 tation," the answer to that will vary according 
 to the evidence in each case. No doubt stories 
 may be borrowed by red men, black men, or 
 yellow men from white soldiers, or travellers, or 
 trappers, who may tell them round the camp- 
 fire ; but it would be less easy to show that in 
 recent times the whole large legendary stock of 
 the Kaffirs, for example, could have been bor- 
 rowed from whites with whom they had few and 
 gfflierally hostile relations. Nor will it be readily 
 demonstrated that American, or African, or in- 
 sular races would adopt the nursery tale of some 
 beach-comber or hunter into the sacred body 
 of their tribal myths, and chant it in songs or 
 hymns. 
 
 In such cases the borrowing, if borrowing 
 there is, must have been achieved long ago. It 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxvii 
 
 is not so easy, with labour and pains, to teach 
 savages a few simple stories from the Bible. 
 Why, then, should slight, and perhaps unfriendly, 
 contact with Europeans who make no attempt to 
 teach be sufficient to impart dozens of European 
 tales to Zulus or Pawnees 1 Firm believers in 
 the recent borrowing of marchen by savages from 
 Europeans do not regard the circumstances in 
 which these tales are discovered. For example, 
 it may be pleaded that the Zulus recently bor- 
 rowed their immense stores of marchen from 
 Dutch or English colonists, and then touched 
 them up with native local colour. But all col- 
 lectors find that savages are very shy of talking 
 about their legends. They neither divulge nor 
 receive them readily. " It is not common to 
 meet with a man who is well acquainted with 
 them or who is wUling to speak of them in any 
 other way than as something which he has some 
 dim recollection of having heard his grandmother 
 relate." ^ AnilesfahuloB I This is not the attitude 
 men would adopt towards newly learned Euro- 
 pean stories. However, the hypothesis of recent 
 borrowing must be attested separately in each 
 instance by such evidence as may be accessible. 
 1 Callaway, Nnrsery Tales of the Zulus, p. l.' 
 
xxviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Having thus expressed our theory as to what 
 is common between savage and European folk- 
 tales, namely, the essential ideas, the essential 
 incidents (not necessarily presented in the same 
 combinations throughout), let us ask what are 
 the essential ideas and incidents in Cupid and 
 Psyche. 
 
 Keduced to its naked elements, the story 
 tells of a king with three daughters, of whom 
 the youngest, Psyche, was so adored for her 
 beauty that she excited the jealousy of Venus. 
 The goddess, therefore, bade her mischievous son, 
 Cupid, make the girl lose her heart to the meanest 
 of men. An oracle now ordered the king to 
 lead his daughter as a bride to a mountain-top, 
 where she should espouse vipereum malum, some 
 strange supernatural horror. Psyche, being left 
 alone, is wafted into a Happy Valley, and borne 
 to a palace where unseen ministers attend her. 
 She is visited in the dark by her husband, who 
 departs unseen before the dawn. He warns her 
 not to communicate with her sisters, and especi- 
 ally never to listen to any curious (juestioning 
 about his own bodily form. Psyche does every- 
 thing she is forbidden to do. Her sisters visit 
 her, envy her, and torment her with inquiries. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxix 
 
 They assure her that her lord is indeed a hideous 
 and knotted snake, as the oracle foretold. Then 
 "Psyche misella, ut pote simplex et animi tenella." 
 " Poor simple Psyche " listens to them, arms her- 
 self -with a dagger and a lamp, and, while he 
 sleeps, looks upon her bridegroom. A burning 
 drop of oil awakens Cupid, and he flies away. 
 Psyche seeks him everywhere, but is brought to 
 the presence of angry Venus, who sets her the 
 task of assorting all manner of mixed grains into 
 several heaps. The ants do this task for her. 
 A talking reed helps her in her next task, to 
 bring the golden wool of certain fairy sheep. In 
 her third task an eagle draws for her water from 
 the river of Styx. In her fourth task a tower 
 takes voice and instructs her how to fetch in 
 safety from Hades the pyx of Proserpine. Her 
 perils and temptations in Hell are described by 
 way of warning ; but she yields to her curiosity, 
 6pens the pyx, faUs senseless, is restored by 
 Cupid, is endowed with immortality, and received 
 among the gods. 
 
 These incidents may now be arranged for- 
 mally : 
 
 I. Incident of the youngest daughter whose 
 beauty awakens jealousy. 
 
XXX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 a. Marriagfe to a husband who must not be 
 looked upon. 
 
 3. Jealousy of elder sisters. 
 
 4. The husband disappears when his prohibi- 
 tion is neglected. 
 
 5. Search for the husband, 
 
 6. Jealousy of husband's mother, who sets 
 heroine dangerous tasks, on pain of death if 
 they are not accomplished. 
 
 Tasks : — 
 
 a. To sort out grains of every ^eeies from 
 
 a fieap. 
 This is done by aid of ants. 
 
 b. To fetch a golden fleece. 
 
 Done by. aid of a reed. 
 
 c. To fetch water of Styx. 
 
 Done by aid of an eagle. 
 
 d. To visit Hell and bring a pyoe, not to be 
 
 opened. 
 Done by aid of a talking tower. 
 
 This adventure includes : (a) Meftisal to do in 
 Hades things usually meritorious in folk-tales, 
 namely, to assist men and animals in distress; 
 (b) In Hades Psyche is not to accept dinner, 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxxi 
 
 but to ask for a crust ; nor ia she to sit down on 
 a soft seat, — molUter assidere, 
 
 7. Reconciliation with Cupid through his 
 pity of heroine when punished for curiosity in 
 opening pyx. 
 
 In the fable these are the main incidents, 
 and these, again, might be reduced in number to 
 the following : — 
 
 1. Sisters jealous of the youngest child. 
 
 2. Marriage to a husband who is not to be 
 seen, and his flight when looked upon. 
 
 3. Jealousy of mother-in-law and her imposi- 
 tion of dangerous tasks. 
 
 4. Accomplishment of tasks by supernatural 
 aid. 
 
 5. Visit to HelL 
 
 6. Punishment of curiosity. 
 
 7. Happy conclusion. 
 
 If we consider these incidents attentively, we 
 shall find in them the expression of the follow- 
 ing ideas : — 
 
 a. Elder sisters are apt to be jealous of a 
 fortunate junior. 
 
 6. In certain cases wives are not to look on 
 husbands, who are usually of some spiritual race. 
 
xxxii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 c. Motliers-in-law are jealous of the beloved 
 of their son. 
 
 d. Enmity expresses itself in putting the 
 hated person to do desperate or impossible feats '> 
 failure is to be punished by death. 
 
 e. Animals can assist their favourites. 
 
 /. Hell may be visited by the living under 
 certain restrictions, such as not to eat the food 
 of the dead. 
 
 g. Curiosity (as in the forbidden room in the 
 Barhe Bleue set of stories) is severely punished. 
 
 Of these ideas, some are merely moral obser- 
 vations of the facts of life, and might be made 
 as well in modem London as in a Greek city or 
 a Zulu kraaL The moral ideas are (a, c, g) the 
 jealousy of elder sisters, the jealousy of mothers- 
 in-law, the folly of curiosity in forbidden things. 
 Clearly these notions might be illustrated by a 
 tale in any part of the world, but the jealousy of 
 elder sisters is likely to he strongest in countries 
 where the youngest child is the more favoured 
 and the heir.i 
 
 ^ This is the custom called Borough, English, Jiing- 
 stem Becht, Juvagnerie or Maimeti. Cf. Liebrecht, Z^^r 
 Volkshunde, p. 431 ; P. Viollet, Pricu de VHistoire dm 
 Droit Framiais, p. 725 ; Elton, Origins of Englith Siitory, 
 pp. 185-198} Callaway, Nursery Tales of Zvlta, p. 65. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxxiii 
 
 It may be conjectured that the natural jealousy 
 of a mother-in-law does not more easily become 
 affection in countries where mothers-in-law and 
 daughters-in-law are forbidden to speak to each 
 other. As to the wickedness of curiosity in 
 opening a forbidden room, tasting a forbidden 
 fruit, opening a forbidden box, bathing in for- 
 bidden water, the myths of the origin of death, 
 Hebrew, Greek, Ked Indian, Ningpho, and 
 Murri, all attest the universality of this idea. 
 In all these cases, death is introduced to the 
 world because a prohibition of an act, in itself 
 harmless, was disregarded through curiosity.^ 
 Even so Psyche was dying, as the penalty of 
 opening the pyx of Proserpine, when Cupid, 
 deus ex machina, came to her rescue. 
 
 Three, then, of the ideas which suggest three 
 main incidents in Cupid and Psyche are moral, 
 and of the sort known in archseology as "uni- 
 versally human." They might anywhere be 
 illustrated in a romanca A fourth idea is obvi- 
 ously drawn from ordinary human passions, as 
 they would find vent in a certaia state of society. 
 (d), "Enmity declares itself by putting the 
 hated person to do desperate feats." Nov, in 
 1 Lang, Za Afythologie, p. 200. 
 
xxxiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 civilised life, we seldom have the chance of 
 Betting our critics -or other detestable persons on 
 risking their lives by perilous adventure. Only 
 kings and colonels in the army have oppor- 
 tunities of this sort, as in the case of Uriah the 
 Hittite. But in early times of absolute autho- 
 rity the notion is ^miliar. Jobates, in the 
 Miad, does not slay Bellerophon, but sends him 
 to fight the Amazons and kill the Chimsera.^ 
 The notion supplies most of the incidents in 
 M. Cosquin's Lorraine tale Le ■ Roi d'Angle- 
 terre (i. 32), ■where the jealousy of the hunch- 
 back urges the King of England to make the 
 hero risk his life in impossible adventures. 
 The idea occurs in Zululand. M. Cosquin will 
 perhaps not maintain that the Zulu tales were 
 borrowed from India in the historic period. 
 In any case,^ we have the old woman sending 
 her detested son-in-law to bring, not a golden 
 fleece, not the head of a Chimsera, but " the 
 liver of an Ingogo," a fabulous Zulu monster.^ 
 
 1 Iliad, vL 179. 
 
 " Callaway, p. 170. 
 
 ' Compare, in Eihemian Tales, " The Black Thief ; " ia 
 Tales from the West HigWmds (Campbell) the story of 
 Ma<ilain Direacb, ii. 328. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxxv 
 
 The various adventures which Jason has to 
 achieve at the hidding of Metea are another case 
 in point. So are the perilous feats of Siati i in 
 one of the traditional Songs of the People of 
 Samoa. It is needless to multiply examples 
 from European mdrchen, Probahly it will not 
 he denied that the idea of thus getting rid of 
 a foe, either by his death in a wild adventure 
 or by slaying him for failure, might anywhere 
 naturally occur to the mind of men in an age 
 of absolute authority. As to the character of the 
 perilous feats, they diifer in different cases, but 
 usually include some supernatural adventures. 
 Among these is the desperate (/) Journey to 
 Hell. Here the incident could not exist but for 
 the belief that Hell may be visited by living 
 persons, who may return safely if they do not 
 taste the food of the dead. These ideas are 
 constantly found among the Finns, the Ojibbe- 
 ways, the races of the Solomon Islands, and in 
 Scotland, where the caution of Thomas the 
 Ehymer will be remembered. In Samoa, too, 
 in the hostile god's house, Siati is coimselled to 
 " eat nothing he hands you, and never to sit 
 on a high seat," as Psyche in Hades has to 
 1 Turner's Samoa, p. 102. 
 
xxxvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 refuse food or molliter assidere.^ Even Perse- 
 phone cannot wholly escape from Hades be- 
 cause there she tasted the seed of a pomegranate. 
 The idea, then, that the living may go to Hell 
 and return safely so long as they refuse to taste 
 dead men's meat is found in ancient Greek heroic 
 myth in the Hymn of Demeter ;. is found by 
 Kohl among Ojibbeways, and by Codrington 
 in Melanesia, and in Finland declares itself in 
 the Kcdewala, where Wainamoinen visits the dead 
 in Pohjola. The converse story of the natives 
 in New Zealand declares that the dead are afraid 
 of the cooked food of the living. Nor is this 
 all. In New Zealand, too, if a comer to the world 
 of shades eats their food, he can never return to 
 life.^ In New Zealand Te Atarahi visited the 
 dead, and returned because, when he reached 
 Eeigha, his kinsfolk there bade him not to touch 
 the food, and sent him back to the land of 
 light. 
 
 We have now examined five of the seven 
 essential ideas in the mdrehen of Cupid and 
 
 ' See note to La Chatte Blanche, Cosquin, ii. lo. 
 
 '' Shortland's Maori Sdigion and Mythology, p. 45 ; 
 Traditions and Swperstitiom of the New Zealandert, p. 
 150 e< acq. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxxvii 
 
 Psyche. We have seen that three of them (the 
 jealousy of sisters, the jealousy of mothers-in- 
 law, and the crime of curiosity) are ordinary 
 human notions, which may occur anywhere, and 
 anywhere may offer motifs for fiction. The 
 fourth idea (that of getting rid of a foe by putting 
 him on perilous tasks) is equally natural in a 
 state of society where opportunity serves. As a 
 motif of fiction, it is older than Homer ia Greece ; 
 it is found in Zululand, in a Samoan song, in 
 the West Highlands, and elsewhere. The fifth 
 essential idea (that Hell may be visited by those 
 who refuse to taste the dead men's meat) is found 
 in the Homeric hymn, and in the Eleusinian 
 ritual and the Finnish epic, as well as among 
 Ojibbeways and Maoris, and Scotch and Mela- 
 nesians. Thus there remain only two of the 
 seven essential ideas and incidents of Cupid and 
 Psyche, which we have not shown to be natural 
 either to all men, or to all men under absolute 
 government, or to most men with pre-christian 
 ideas of the state of the dead. 
 
 Of the two remaining ideas, neither is natural 
 to civilised men in modern society, but both are 
 familiar to many widely-scattered peoples in 
 various degrees of culture. The first is (e) 
 
xxxviji INTRODUCTION. 
 
 animals-^that is, beasts, birds, and fishes — can 
 powerfully or magically assist their friends. 
 
 Evidence on this head is too copious to be 
 offered at full length. The whole of the tote- 
 mistic peoples in America, Africa, India, Aus- 
 tralia regard their protecting and guardian beasts 
 as serviceable friends. All the members of North 
 American tribes possess, in addition to the totems 
 of their stock, their private Manitous, who appear 
 to them in visions during the fast at the time 
 of puberty. " The early missionaries found great 
 difficulty in getting the natives to give up these 
 guardian spirits, which J^ey thought visited 
 them, and gave them valuable information." ^ 
 The Lapps and Finns have their friendly beasts 
 and birds, which assist them in difficulty, and 
 which they call Saivos.^ There is nothing im- 
 natural in these notions, or when, for example, 
 the Australian consults the native bear in any 
 difficulty, as the Lapps, according to a voyager 
 of the seventeenth century, always solemnly con- 
 sulted their black cats ! The whole of savage 
 thought is profoundly penetrated, as Mr. Tylor 
 
 ' Dorman, Origin of Primitive Superstitions, quoting 
 Jones's OjMeways, p. 270. 
 ^ Castren, Varies, iiber die Pin. Myth., p."l39. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxxix 
 
 says, by belief in tbe " personal intercourse be- 
 tween men and animals." Men are fabled to be 
 descended from animals ; tbey put tbemselres 
 under the protection of animals ; theic souls re- 
 appear in tbe shapes of animals. That animals 
 should assist men in distress, as the wild duck 
 helped the Ojibbeway, as the fly helped the Zulu, 
 is, therefore, to men in a barbarous state of culture, 
 the most natural thing in the world.^ In the 
 introduction to Mrs. Hunt's translation of Grimm's 
 Household Tales we have offered a small collec- 
 tion of examples of the savage belief in kinship 
 and friendship with the beasts, and of friendly 
 and helpful beasts in savage stories. A kangaroo 
 helps a human member of the Kangaroo stock 
 in Australia.^ Sir George Grey found that the 
 beast after which each stock is named is the 
 "friend" or "protector" of his kindred. An 
 American example is offered by Long.* The 
 wizards among the Eskimo send animals to do 
 their bidding.* In an Eskimo marehen a friendly 
 wolf helps the hero. Mice and frogs do the 
 
 1 Callaway, p. 299. 
 
 ' Fison, Journal Anthrop. Inst., November 1883. 
 
 3 Voyage), p. 86. 
 
 ■' Eink, Talcs and Traditiont of the Eskimo, p. 53. 
 
xl INTRODUCTION. 
 
 same in Kaffir and Zulu stories.* Beavers and 
 sturgeons aid tlie heroine among the Samoyeds,^ 
 as ants aided Psyche. 
 
 It seems plain that these incidents in romance, 
 horn of the universal superstition ahout per- 
 sonal intercourse between man and the lower 
 animals, might he found wherever such ideas 
 prevail or have prevailed, and need not have 
 been borrowed from India. 
 
 There remains only one essential incident to 
 be criticised, namely, (6), the prohibition im- 
 posed by the husband on his bride. She is not 
 to inquire about his form nor to look on his 
 face. 
 
 Manifestly it is on this incident that the whole 
 story hinges, for if Psyche had been permitted to 
 behold Cupid, she, like the knife-grinder, would 
 have had no story to tell. Now, while most 
 of the other ideas in the tale are comparatively 
 natural, and (given the early belief in the human 
 qualities and magical powers of the lower ani- 
 mals) are sufficiently intelligible, a rule which 
 prohibits the bride and bridegroom to behold 
 each other face to face appears quite arbitrary 
 
 ' Theal, p. 47 ; Callaway, p. 93. 
 ' Caatren, Sam. March., story ii. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xU 
 
 and absurd. 1 It is necessary, therefore, to ask, 
 Do we know any country or people among whom, 
 in any age, a prohibition or taboo of this kind 
 has actually existed 1 It is certain that stories, 
 like all other exercises of the human mind, must 
 reflect the ideas and manners of the people who 
 have developed them. If a nuptial taboo has 
 anywhere placed absurd bars on the daily life of 
 bridegroom and bride, that taboo will be reflected 
 in story, just as chaperons have a place in modern 
 novels of manners. Again, if absurd laws of 
 married life appear constantly in stories, a pre- 
 sumption rises that they once existed in real 
 fact. 
 
 All this branch of the subject has been exa- 
 mined in our Custom and MythJ^ As the 
 statements made there have not been disputed, 
 to our knowledge, it wUl suffice to recapitulate 
 them briefly. 
 
 Among peoples known to us from history, 
 from actual contact, and from the evidence of 
 native popular poetry, the following taboos or 
 
 ' In Apuleius the prohibition seems to be understood 
 as a device of Cupid's for making love anonymously, and 
 without offending Venus. 
 
 2 London, 1884, pp. 64-86. 
 
 d 
 
xlii INTRODUCTION, 
 
 customary svipeistitiotis restrictions on freedom 
 of married intercourse have been noted : — 
 
 I. Ysma India. 
 
 "Let me never see you without your royal 
 garments, for this is the custom of women." 
 
 The authority is the Brahmana of the Yajur 
 Veda, translated by Mr. Max Muller.^ In this 
 example the speaker is a member of a spiritual 
 race, TJrvasi, an Apsaras, or " kind of fairy " 
 ■woman. The evMom, however, is asserted as 
 binding on women in general. 
 
 2. Africa. 
 
 " Wives never permit their husbands to see 
 them unveiled for three years after marriage." 
 This evidence is from Job Ben Solomon, a native 
 of Buuda in Futa.^ 
 
 3. South Africa. 
 "As a rule, the bridegroom never sees his 
 bride." ^ 
 
 ' Selected Essays, i. 408. "Denn das ist der Brauch 
 bei tins Gotterfranen." — Meyer, Essays und Studien, 
 p. 206. 
 
 2 Astley, Voyages, ii. 24. 
 
 ' South African Folk-lore Journal, 1879, p. 46. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xliii 
 
 4. TiMBUCTOO. 
 
 " The betrothed is not allowed to see his in- 
 tended during the day. ... If he is obliged to 
 come out of his hut, he covers his face. ... He 
 remains with his wife only till daybreak,'' 
 
 5. The Torubas. 
 
 " Conventional modesty forbids a woman . . . 
 even to see her husband, if it can be avoided." ^ 
 
 These are somewhat extreme examples of a 
 taboo which, in America, took a milder form. 
 Lafitau says of the Iroquois : " They dare not 
 go to the cabins of their wives except ia the 
 darkness of night." ^ This rule of manners, 
 again, is found among the ancient Spartans.* 
 
 6. Andaman Islands. 
 
 Among the Andamanese Mr. Man finds similar 
 reserve. 
 
 In Australia the god Pundjel has a wife 
 whom he may not see ! 
 
 ' Bowen, Central Africa, p. 303. 
 ' Mceurs des Sauvages, i. 576. 
 
 ' Plutarch, Zycurgus, p. IS ; Xenophon, Z>e liep. Lac, 
 i. S- 
 
xUv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The presumption laised by all these examples, 
 drawn from scattered races, is that restrictions 
 on the conduct of married people, restrictions 
 unknown to civilised modem Europe, have been 
 common enough even in India and in Greece. 
 The appearance of such a restriction in stories, 
 when the marriage is between a mortal and a 
 being of a spiritual race, may therefore not im- 
 possibly reflect an actual trait of manners.^ 
 
 The taboo or mystic restriction which forbids 
 husbands and wives to look on each, other in 
 certain circumstances is not the only rule of this 
 kind. We find that the pair are forbidden to 
 speak to each other for a certain time, or that 
 the woman may not call her husband by his 
 name. 
 
 7. Miletus. 
 
 Herodotus tells us that in Miletus the women 
 had made and handed down to their daughters 
 the rule that none should ever sit at meat with 
 her husband or call her husband by his name. 
 Herodotus explains this Milesian custom (which 
 clearly was not common among Greeks) by the 
 story that the lonians defeated the Carians and 
 
 ^ A competent study of the use of the VeU in mar- 
 riage ceremonies might throw light on all thia subject. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xlv 
 
 wedded the Carian women, who avenged them- 
 selves by hereditary sulks. Now it is not be- 
 yond possibility that the origin of this custom 
 may be derived from the hostility between the 
 clans of husbands and wives in days when 
 marriage was usually made by capture. We 
 find' the rule in Zululand, where not only the 
 name of the husband, but all words with a simi- 
 lar sound, are hlonipa'ed or tabooed to the wife. 
 A Kaf&r bride is not called by her own name in 
 her husband's village. Probably the world-wide 
 dread of using personal names, which it were 
 superfluous to illustrate by examples, is at the 
 bottom of these prohibitions. Some other cause 
 led the Bulgarian newly -wedded to abstain, 
 sometimes for nine months, from talking to each 
 other. This rule, at least, may be inferred from 
 the passage of the popular song in which the 
 mother of the girl, wooed by the sun, says, 
 "Speak not for nine months to thy father-in- 
 law, mother-in-law, or husband." Here is found 
 a curious detail of language, in which Bulgarians 
 and Zulus approach as closely as if one had 
 directly borrowed from the other. The Zulu 
 word for the prohibition of the use of the hus- 
 band's name is hlonipa = "to be bashful, to 
 
xlvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 keep at a distance through, timidity, to shun 
 approach, to avoid mentioning one's name, to he 
 respectful." ^ The Bulgarian word for the taboo 
 on conversation between bride and bridegroom 
 is gorefct ^ to be bashful, to show respect.* 
 Thus Monipa might be rendered gorejd, in Bul- 
 garian, and gorejd, Monipa iu Kaffir. M. Dozon 
 remarks that silence between bridegroom and 
 bride for a month after marriage is still a wide- 
 spread custom.^ The rule as to silence for nine 
 months,' if ever it existed, would remind the 
 reader of a common formula in mdrehen. "The 
 spell which binds the enchanted or supernatural 
 husband usually snaps when his long-persecuted 
 wife gives birth to a child."* Thus, in the 
 Breton tale we are told that in the kingdom of 
 Naz a man may not see Ms wife till she has 
 borne him. a child.' Sir John Lubbock reports 
 a similar custom as actually existing among the 
 Circassians,* 
 
 1 Max Miiller, Science of Language, iL 39, note 45, 
 quoting Dohne. * Dozon, Joe. cit. 
 
 3 Dozon, Chansons Pop. Bulg., 1875, p. 172. 
 
 * Balstori, " Beauty and the Beast," Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury, December 1 879. 
 
 = S^billot, Contes de la Hwuie Bretagne, p. 183. 
 
 ' Origin of Civilisation, p. 75. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xlvii 
 
 Here, then, are examples of odd proliibitionB 
 ■which, are, or have been, in force among various 
 peoples. We shall now examine these and 
 similar taboos as they occur in popular tales or 
 mdrchen. 
 
 The ancient Indian story which turns on a pro- 
 hibition to see the husband naked has already been 
 noticed. It is the tale of Urvasi and Pururavas in 
 the Brahmana. Here the wife is of a spiritual 
 race, and it is plain enough that her legend included 
 the incident of the winged maiden captured by a 
 mortal.! In a story of modem India the girl is 
 forbidden to see her husband, and also forbidden 
 to ask him what his name is.* In a Sicilian story 
 the taboo is laid on asking the husband's name.^ 
 In Denmark, a wolf-husband forbids his wife to 
 see him; she is never to strike a light in the dark 
 when he is by her.* The spiritual wife in the 
 famous tale of M^lusine may be seen by her 
 husband, but, like the husband of Urvasi, may 
 not be seen without her raiment. In the Welsh 
 tales two prohibitions must be respected by 
 
 ' Rig-Veda, x. 95. 8, 9. 
 
 ^ Axiatie Journal, N. S. , vol. ii. 
 
 » Pitr^ Nuovo Saggio, v. 
 
 * Grundtvig, i. 252. 
 
xlviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 mortal lovers of fairy brides : they may not 
 utter the names of their wives, nor touch them 
 with iron.i The^taboo on the name is familiar 
 in custom. It is known in countries as widely 
 severed as Polynesia, China, and Zululand.^ 
 
 Without multiplying examples, it may now be 
 taken as proved that certain very strange laws 
 of married life have actually prevailed among 
 widely scattered peoples, savage and civilised. 
 Moreover, the same rules are declared, in the 
 popular tales of many people, to be binding be- 
 tween wife and husband, especially when one of 
 the pair is of a fairy or supernatural race. The 
 presumption is that the rule or taboo was intro- 
 duced into romance by persons who were familiar 
 with it, or something analogous to it, in actual 
 practice. Men and women who had traditional 
 scruples against naming each other, or against 
 the modern familiarity of wedded life, introduced 
 these scruples with supernatural sanctions into 
 fiction. If this be admitted, then every essen- 
 tial idea and incident in the story of Cupid and 
 
 1 Cymmrodor, iv. 2. 
 
 ' Max Miiller, Science of Language, ii. 26 ; Chips, ii. 
 216 ; " Euphemisin and Tabu in China," Fdh-Lore Record, 
 January 1887. 
 
INTRODUCTION. xlii 
 
 Psyche, however strange and fantastic it may 
 appear to us, must once have seemed natural to 
 all the various peoples who had odd laws of 
 nuptial manners, and believed in magically help- 
 ful animals, in the pre-Christian Hades, and in 
 the existence of a fairy or spiritual race capable of 
 inter-marriage with human beings. Not one of 
 all these notions is peculiar to any single people. 
 In different proportions they are found actively 
 existing in the religion, magic, and social man- 
 ners of Knns, Greeks, Chinese, Hindus, Eskimo, 
 Australians, Bulgarians, Iroquois, Torubas^ and 
 Andamanese. It wUl be hard, therefore, to 
 show that incidents based on these ideas are the 
 peculiar property of any one historic people, 
 have been developed in one historic centre, and 
 thence have been borrowed in historic times by 
 all the races familiar with them. 
 
 Yet M. Cosquin believes that India of the 
 historic age is the centre and fountain-head of 
 the mdrchen, which are fuU of these ideas. Let 
 us see what arguments he employs to prove his 
 case in the example of Cupid and Psyche. They 
 chiefly rest on the " Indian character " of the 
 separable husk or skin, worn by the mysterious 
 husband, and on the "Indian feature" of the 
 
1 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 grateful beasts. The two Lorraine contes of his 
 valuable collection to -which M. Cosqnin compares 
 Cupid and Psyche are Le Loup Blanc (LXIIL) 
 and Firosette (LXV.). The former is a story of 
 the type of Beauty and the Beast A man with 
 three daughters goes on a voyage, and is asked 
 by the youngest to bring her home the talking 
 rose. This he gathers in the garden of the 
 white wolf, who commands him to return with 
 the first person he meets at home. This person 
 is the youngest daughter. When she is brought 
 to the wolf, he imposes on them silence as to his 
 enchanted castle. At supper he appears as a 
 ieau seigneur, and becomes the girl's lover. All 
 day he is a white woK again. The father goes 
 home and tells his daughters where he has left 
 their sister. One of them visits the home of 
 the white wolf, who dies at his mistress's feet as 
 soon as his secret is revealed. 
 
 Here the existence of a secret enchanted castle, 
 of a mysterious husband, and of a sister whose 
 indiscretion ruins everything, is all that reminds 
 us of Cupid and Psyche. The promise of the 
 traveller to bring the first person he meets is a 
 distortion of the " Jephtha formula," which itself 
 is a moral warning against rash tows, combined 
 
INTRODUCTION. U 
 
 with a Teminiscence of human saciifice. Starting 
 from this tale, M. Cosquin adduces a Basque 
 story,^ in which the owner of the enchanted 
 castle is a huge serpent, who offers marriage. 
 At the altar he becomes un beau prince, and 
 gives his wife the serpent-skin he used to wear, 
 with orders to burn it. The charm is thus 
 broken, and he retains his human form. Again, 
 in the modem Indian tale of Tulisa, the myste- 
 rious husband whose name is hidden becomes a 
 serpent when it is revealed. The heroine, in her 
 search for him, is aided by squirrels whom she 
 has helped in a difficulty of their own. 
 
 From these stories M, Cosquin derives some of 
 his arguments in favour of the Indian origin for 
 Gupid and Psyche. Though Cupid is not a ser- 
 pent, there is a trace of this notion in the words 
 which describe the mysterious lover as vipereum 
 malum. It is extremely probable that this was 
 the original form of the mdrehen ; it is not so 
 probable that the form is purely Indian. True, 
 the Basque idea of the envelope or " husk," the 
 serpent-skin which the lover can put on and off, 
 is found in India in the Pantschaiantra,^ as it is 
 
 ^ Webster, p. 167. 
 ' Benfey, ii. p. 144. 
 
lii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 in Zululand. A Brahman's wife, childless, at 
 last bears a serpent. He marries, throws off his 
 serpent-skin at night, and when it is burned by 
 his wife the charm breaks, as in the Basque. A 
 living Indian marehen^ has the same formula, 
 with a monkey and a monkey-skin in place of a 
 serpent-skin and a serpent. In a third Indian 
 example we find a Gandharva who wears an ass's 
 skin (peau d'dne), but leaves his earthly bride 
 for ever when the skin is burned by his wife's 
 mother. In Servian ^ folk-lore the story of the 
 serpent and serpent-skin recurs. A goat-husband 
 and goat-skin appear in Eussia.^ A pumpkin- 
 husband appears in "Wallachia. There is an 
 iron-stove-husband in German.* The Hurons 
 would have seen no harm in an iron-stove-hus- 
 band ; they habitually married their girls, with 
 a formal ceremony, to their JisMng-nets / Once 
 the Net complained that he had lost his wife, 
 and that a new maiden must be found for him.^ 
 It may be asked, how do all those stories of 
 
 • Miss Maive Stokes, No. lo. 
 » Vouk, No. 10. 
 
 ' Ralston, " Beauty and the Beast," Nineteenth Cen- 
 tury, December 1 8, 1878, p. 998. 
 
 * Grimm, No. 127. 
 
 ' Lallemant, Relation de la Nouvelle France, 1639. 
 
introduction: liU 
 
 mysterious husbands enveloped in the skins of 
 serpents, goats, donkeys, pumpkins, and mon- 
 keys help M. Cosquin's argument? How do 
 they prove an Indian origin ? It is not easy to 
 answer the question. He himself merely re- 
 marks (ii. 229) : "Here, we think, is a restora- 
 tion of the primitive form of Psyche in an 
 important point. The monster to whom the 
 king has to give his daughter is a serpent, but 
 a serpent that, beneath his scaly skin, hides a 
 beautiful young man, and this primitive form is 
 peculiarly Indian " (et cette forme primitive est 
 tout indienne "). He also refers to Benfey 
 (Pantsehatantra, i. 254).^ But where is the 
 
 ' The whole topic of the appearance of human beings 
 in bestial form is curiously treated by M. Cosquin. He 
 says : " This belief in metempsychosis is peculiarly In- 
 dian, It is not one of the ideas that can have been 
 common to the Aryan tribes before their separation. M. 
 Benfey has remarked that, outside of India, it is not 
 found in any Indo-European people, except perhaps late 
 among the Celts." Benfey suggests that the notion 
 may ha,ve been borrowed from Egypt ; M. Cosquin thinks 
 the Aryans may have borrowed it from the aborigines of 
 India [Contea de Lorraine, 1. xxxii. xxxiv.). Can these 
 learned authors be unaware that metempsychosis is prac- 
 tically an universal element in the belief of all the lower 
 races ? " The lower psychology, drawing no definite line 
 of demarcation between the souls of men and of beasts, 
 
liv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 pioof that the notion of a man in bestial form, 
 serpentine or asinine, goat or monkey, who can 
 slip off the form with the skin or hide of the 
 beast is peculiar to India 1 
 
 These ideas are no more peculiar to India than 
 to America or Africa. Notions like this are 
 found in abundance in all backward countries. 
 The idea that a man or woman may marry a beast 
 is common to the conies of every people. The 
 idea that a man or woman may slip on and off 
 the characteristics and powers of a bird or beast, 
 as the skin of the beast is doffed or donned, 
 occurs all over the world in myths, and analogous 
 conceptions are practically preserved in ritual 
 and in magic. 
 
 We shall illustrate these statements by ex- 
 amples. There are here two peculiarities of mar- 
 chen to be examined : (i.) that men and women 
 may intermarry with animals ; (2.) that human 
 beings may assume and lay aside the characteris- 
 tics and the powers of beasts and birds as they 
 assume and lay aside the skins of those creatures. 
 
 can at least admit without difficulty the transmission 
 of human souls into the bodies of the lower animals " 
 (Tylor, Prim, Oult, ii. 6). Ahts, Aztecs, Eskimo, Bechua- 
 nas, Abipones, Zulus, Dyaks, did not borrow the idea from 
 Buddhists, Khonds, or Egyptians ! But cf. Pantsch. i. 265. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Iv 
 
 (i.) The first idea is merely one of many ex- 
 amples of early belief in perfect commnnity of 
 nature with the lower animals, and even with 
 inorganic nature. This belief is practically uni* 
 versal among the backward races. It cannot be 
 more forcibly stated than in the Australian ex- 
 pression that a man and his totem (kdbong, 
 wingong), and all the other birds, elements, and, 
 natural objects in his division of the great clan 
 of the world, are tumanemg (" of one flesh "). 
 " They two shall be one fiesh," says Holy Writ, 
 speaklCig of man and wife. Kow in Australia a 
 man may be " of one flesh '' with crows, crayfish, 
 wallabies, trees, and what not.^ It is needless to 
 accumulate here the proofs of the same behef in 
 kinship from I^orth and South America, Africa, 
 and India, wherever full-blown totemism is 
 found. Necessarily it follows that man and beast, 
 being of one flesh, can intermarry, and this behef 
 would survive in myth after it had ceased to 
 exist in any other shape.^ Other examples of 
 this notion of animal kindred are found in the 
 
 1 Kamilaroi and Kumai, Fison and Howltt, pp. i68, 
 169. 
 
 * Liebrecht, Zur VolJcshunde, has some curious (and 
 disgusting) lore on this topic, p. 395. 
 
Ivi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Malagasy, Aino, and Syrian custom of establish- 
 ing blood-brotlierliood with beasts, or of appoint- 
 ing a woman to be '' the mother " of the bear 
 whom the Ainos sacrifice, or of the locusts whom 
 the Syrians destroyed.^ 
 
 The mythical expressions of this belief, or 
 rather a few instances of them, are collected in 
 our introduction to Mrs. Hunt's Grimm (pp. 65, 
 66). In most North American myths the tale 
 of the origin of the tribe starts with a marriage 
 between a man and a woman or a dog, or coyote, 
 or musk-rat. In New Zealand, " whilst Tawaki 
 was of human form his brethren were sharks ; 
 there were mixed marriages among them." ^ The 
 custom of marrying girls formally to inanimate 
 objects appears to survive in India, judging from 
 questions in an ethnological circular issued in 
 1886 by Mr. Eisley from Daqeeling. In the 
 marehen of savages, girls marry frogs and pigeons 
 in Zululand, elephants among the Hottentots, 
 eagles and whales among the Eskimo, and an 
 Ojibbeway weds a female beaver.^ We are all 
 
 ' Lagarde, HdiqititB Juris Ecdesiaitici Antiquissimw, 
 Miss Bird's Journal, pp. 96, 97. Professor Robertson 
 Smith supplied the information from Lagarde. 
 
 2 Taylor, New Zealand, p. 134. 
 
 ' Grimm, ul sup-a, p. 65, with authorities. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ivii 
 
 familiar with Greek myths in which women 
 have intrigues with bulls, serpents, ants, dogs, 
 swans, horses, and so forth, though in Greece 
 these beasts are explained as disguises of Zeus, 
 Apollo, Of Poseidon. From all these facts it is 
 difficult to derive M. Cosquin's conclusion that 
 there is anything peculiarly Indian in these ab- 
 surd ideas. Any other universal form of early 
 human ignorance and superstitious fancy might 
 as well be claimed as a pecuUarly Indian in- 
 vention. 
 
 (2.) But it may be urged, perhaps, that what 
 is peculiarly Indian in the marchen is not the 
 idea of marrying a girl to one of the lower 
 animals, but the idea that a man may be mira- 
 culously concealed under the bestial hide, and 
 may be able to shift his nature as he shifts his 
 skin. This position must be examined. 
 
 If we can demonstrate the existence of a 
 widely diffused belief that bestial attributes and 
 accomplishments may be assumed by donning the 
 skin of the beast, if we can show that some such 
 notion declares itself in ritual and magical prac- 
 tice, and reveals itself in myth all over the 
 world, then the contention that the notion is 
 peculiarly Indian vnll appear highly improbable. 
 
Iviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Students of litual aie familiar with a cere- 
 mony analogous to this belief in skin-shifting. 
 Among many widely scattered peoples the skin 
 of a slain or sacrificed animal is assumed by the 
 slayer or the celebrant, not as a garment merely, 
 but with a ritual and mystical significance. A 
 familiar example is the rite called vejSj/^s/v, in 
 the Dionysiac service. The victim is the ti^gos 
 or fawn, and the fawn or other victim is also 
 mystically the god.^ In the Dea Syria, Lucian 
 speaks of the celebrant dragging the skin of the 
 slain ram over his own head and shoulders. 
 Compare the passage in Aglaophamus, pp. 183- 
 186, the goat-skin of Juno, the Albogalereum 
 pileum, or cap of Diales Flamines, made out of 
 the skin of the white victims of Zeus. Among 
 the Huarochiris, a civilised pre-Inca people of 
 the West Pacific coast, the slayer of a lion was 
 privileged to wear the lion's skin in sacred fes- 
 tivals. The creator-hero of the race was once 
 courteously addressed by a lion, and gave the 
 beast various privileges : " Those who kill you 
 shall wear your head over their own, and your 
 
 ' "Dionysos selber Stier, Zicklein ist," Roscber, Aus- 
 fiihr. Lexik., p. 1059. See also Pollux, ap. Lobeck, 
 Aglaoph., p. 653, 77 iraTupiKTj i<r8iis ve^ph, alyij, Kalrpayij. 
 
INTRODUCTION. lix 
 
 skin shall cover them. ... He who would do 
 this must first sacrifice a Uama." ^ A Babylonian 
 cylinder (Menant., Meaherehes, it 49) shows the 
 celebrant covered with a fish-skin or with a 
 great mask representing a fish. Similar masks, 
 made of tortoise-shell, are worn in the religious 
 dances of the natives of the Torres Straits, and 
 may be seen in the British Museum. In Mexico, 
 the Aztec celebrants danced in the flayed skins of 
 the human victims.'' This was a frequent rite ; 
 the meaning was that the human victim repre- 
 sented the god or goddess, and the celebrants (as 
 in the ceremonies where the god is eaten)' brought 
 themselves closer to the divine nature by wearing 
 the skin of the victim-deity.* Some Californian 
 tribes of to-day have a similar sacrament in 
 honour of a bird, a kind of vulture or buzzard. 
 The Acagchemem maintain that the same bird 
 is sacrificed every year and in each village. His 
 skin is worn by the celebrant,^ 
 
 ^ Francisco de Avila, 1608, in Rites of the Tncaa 
 (Hakluyt Society), p. 128. 
 
 ' See for example, Sahagun, ii. 2, it. 30. 
 
 ' Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 436. 
 
 * Robertson Smith, Encyc. Brit., s. v. " Sacrifice." " The 
 religious meaning of putting on the skin of an animal is 
 identification with the animal." 
 
 " Toscuna, Account of Indians of California, chap. ix. 
 
Ix INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In ttese and similai rites the object of wear- 
 ing the skin of the victim is apparently either 
 to propitiate him into the belief that he is not 
 dead after all, or to enter into and participate 
 in his mystic nature. This was clearly the 
 object of the Hirpi, whose name means the 
 Wolves, and who, in compliance, as they said, 
 with an oracle bidding them "imitate wolves," had 
 a yearly wolf-dance.^ The Nootkas of the North- 
 West American, coast also have their wolf-dance, 
 a religious ceremony in which they "wear wolf- 
 skins with masks over their faces, representing 
 the head of that animal." " The same Nootkas 
 dress the dead bear in the garb of a human 
 chief. The Arcadian priest of Demeter, in her 
 solemn service, wore a mask representing the 
 goddess; the priest was the goddess for the 
 moment.^ 
 
 From these and other instances it is plain 
 enough that the wearing of the skin of a slain 
 animal is believed to have ritual efficacy of one 
 sort or another. Doubtless, many shades of 
 opinion prevail on the subject among the people 
 
 1 Servius, ^neid, xi. 785. 
 " Jewett's Adventures, p. 136. 
 ' Pauaanias, viii. 15. i. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ixi 
 
 who, in various countries, practise these cere- 
 monies. 
 
 Turning from ritual (which merely demon- 
 strates the existence of the custom, and of some 
 mystical or magical significance attached to the 
 custom), we may examine cases of skin-wearing 
 and skin-shifting in myth. Is it a common 
 mythical idea that a man may put on and put 
 off, like the mysterious hushand of mdrcJten, the 
 character of a heast or bird with the skin of the 
 same animal! Certainly this idea is common, 
 usual, and widely diffused. It declares itself 
 in the Latin versipelUs, " skin-shifter." French 
 actors speak of entering dans la peau of this 
 or that character. Even so the versipelUs with 
 the skin assumes the character of the beast. The 
 newest folk-lore book come to hand gives an ex- 
 amplefrom a savage tribe of North-West America. ^ 
 A mythical hero finds the skin, feathers and all, 
 of a great white eagle. " II la prit, s'en rev§tit 
 comme d'un vetSment, afin de s'aider dans son 
 voyage, et vola vers un village qu'il apergut du 
 haut des airs." The man can take the eagle-skin 
 off again, and can resume it, and with it his power 
 
 1 Petitot, Tradition! Indiennea d/u Canada Nord-Ouest, 
 1887, p. 57- 
 
Ixii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of flight.^ Here is an example of the belief as 
 remote from Hindostan as may be. Could the 
 Dindji6 have borrowed it from historical India t 
 If we are to be told about borrowing at all, it 
 would be more plausible to maintain that the 
 Dindji6 inherited the idea of the eagle's coat 
 from Skralings, who learned it from the old 
 Norse settlers in Greenland. For "Woden, when 
 he had drunk Suftung's mead, " turned himself 
 into his eagle-coat, and flew away as hard as he 
 could. But when Suftung saw the eagle's flight, 
 he betook himself to his eagle-skin, and flew 
 after him." ^ 
 
 From a people also Northern, but far removed 
 from Scandinavian influence, from the Thlinkeets 
 of the North Pacific coast, comes another example 
 of the use in myth of a separable skin. Yehl, 
 the hero of the Thlinkeets, and a ohUd of miracle, 
 became a mighty hunter. "One day a large 
 bird appeared to him ; ... its name was Crane, 
 that can fly to heaven. Tehl shot the bird, 
 skinned it, and whenever he wished to fly used 
 to clothe himself in its skin." In this gear, or 
 
 > Op. cU., p. 63. 
 
 2 The Edda, translated in Corput Poeticum Borede, i. 
 405. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ixiii 
 
 rather in that of a white bird, he visited Kha- 
 mikh the wolf, who kept all the fresh water in 
 his own well, and "filling himself to the very 
 beak,'' flew away with the spoils. He did not 
 escape without difficulty, as his feathers were 
 smoked black in Khanukh's fire, but, when he 
 did get off, he filled all the wella and creeks and 
 lakes and rivers with the water. It is a fine 
 case of " skin-shifting." 1 
 
 The notion of acquiring the accomplishments 
 of one of the lower animals by wearing its skin 
 recurs among the Bulgarians. Before Satanael 
 (Satan) was expelled from heaven, he was walking 
 one day, clothed in the skin of a diver, on the 
 shores of Lake Tiberias. The Eternal com- 
 manded him to plunge down to the bottom of 
 the lake, and bring up some of the fertilising 
 mud, which was then spread about, with satis- 
 factory agricultural results, all over the shores. 
 Thanks to the skin and feathers of the diver, 
 Satan achieved this adventure.^ Again, the 
 remote Voguls have the legend. Their hero, 
 Elempi, climbs in the form of a squirrel to the 
 
 1 Bancroft, Nat. Sacesof PatAfic Coatt, iii. 102, quoting 
 Holmberg, Ethn. Shiz., p. 61. 
 " M. de Charenoy, Une Legende Cosmogonique, p. 31. 
 
Ixiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 house of their god, -who happens to be roasting 
 a fish for dinner. The god gives Elempi a duck- 
 skin and a goose-skin ; he dresses in these, and 
 is enabled to dive like the bird in whose feathers 
 he is attired. 1 
 
 This idea has now been shown to exist among 
 Scandinavians, Slavs, Voguls, Thlinkeets, and 
 Dindjies. There is nothing in the belief which 
 does not harmonise with early magical concep- 
 tions, founded, as these are, on the association 
 of ideas. " Just as the modem clairvoyant pro- 
 fesses to feel sympathetically the sensations of a 
 distant person, if communication be made through 
 a lock of his hair," so the savage mind has an 
 idea of obtaining the powers and accomplish- 
 ments of beast or bird by virtue of communica- 
 tions made through the skin of the animal. These 
 are " such arguments from analogy as the edu- 
 cated world has painfuUy learned to be worth- 
 less." " As a final example of the common belief 
 in the magical efficacy of wearing a beast's skin, 
 whereby his faculties and appearance are acquired, 
 
 ' Charenoy, op. cit., p. 7, quoting Luoien Adam, "Une 
 Gendse Wogoule," Hev. de Philol. et Eth/n., i. 10, Paris, 
 1874. 
 
 « Prim. Cult., ii. 116. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ixv 
 
 the superstition of Lyeanthropy might be studied. 
 "The expedients supposed to be adopted for 
 effecting change of shape," says Mr. M'Lennan, 
 " were commonly the putting on of a girdle of 
 the skin of the animal whose form was to be 
 assumed. . , . This last device is doubtless a 
 substitute for the assumption of an entire animal 
 skin, which also is frequently found." ^ In 
 his Booh of W<!re-wolves (p. i6) Mr. Baring 
 Gould says, " At times a dress of skin was cast 
 over the body, and at once the transformation 
 was complete." In Mr. Morris's Story of the 
 Volmngs, and in the Book of Were-wohes, is 
 translated a passage about men who had dealings 
 with witchcraft and wore wolf-skins, which were 
 hung up in the house with them, and by don- 
 ning these skins Sigmund and Sinfjotli became 
 wolves. Indeed, Sinfjotli carried the thing so 
 far as to become the father of nine wolf-whelps. 
 Seal-skins are used in the same way by the sub- 
 marine fairy folk of the Shetlands, as is shown 
 in a Shetland ballad in Professor Child's fourth 
 volume, p. 494. In magic, then, as in ritual 
 and in myth, the idea of assuming a beast's 
 hide is associated with the idea of assuming 
 ' "Lyeanthropy," Eneyc. Brit. 
 
Ixvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the whole character and aspect and faculties of 
 the creature. What in all this can be called 
 "peculiarly Indian"? In a score of places 
 we find this envelope "qu'on quitte k certains 
 moments, mais qu'on est diligent de reprendre." ^ 
 Thus it is only natural to expect to find such 
 ideas almost everywhere as survivals. The bur- 
 den of proof lies on a writer who, like M. Cos- 
 quin, would make India the fountain of such 
 conceptions. Why should notions common to 
 humanity be regarded as especially Indian 1 
 
 M. Cqsquin's second proof of the Indian origin 
 of the Psyche mdrcheri is based on the appear- 
 ance of helpful beasts. Ants and an eagle help 
 Psyche. M. Cosquin argues that a portion of the 
 fable, in which Psyche first obliged these crea- 
 tures, has dropped out, and that they really act 
 (though Apuleius does not say so) from motives 
 oi gratitude. Now the gratitude of heads, as 
 opposed to the ingratitude of men, is a favourite 
 Buddhist idea. Therefore helpful animals in 
 mdrchen are a trace of Buddhist influence, though 
 the story may not chance to mention that they 
 were helped by the hero before they became 
 helpers. 
 
 ' Cantes de Lorraine, i. xxxii. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ixvii 
 
 This partakes a little of the nature of a circular 
 argument. If the beasts are grateful, that is 
 Buddhistic ; if they are only helpful, that again 
 proves that they were originally grateful, though 
 the passage has been forgotten and lost. To all 
 this we can only reply, that helpful beasts, with 
 no gratitude in the matter, are more or less the 
 gods of most of the lower races ; that the beast 
 or bird is the distant ancestor, relation, and pro- 
 tector of man, who certainly did nothing for the 
 beast or bird. This is the fundamental idea of 
 the tptemistic peoples. Again, helpful animals, 
 who fish up and fashion the world, appear in 
 almost all savage cosmogonic myths, if we can 
 give such a grand name to these wild tales of the 
 beginning of things. Helpful beasts, not pre- 
 viously assisted, occur in M. Petitot's new collec- 
 tion of Eed Indian mdrchen from North-West 
 Canada. It will be hard to prove that all these 
 were imported from India. Nor, when we do 
 find animals, and even inanimate things like 
 trees, capable of gratitude in Bushman mdrchen, 
 must we necessarily believe that Indian ideas 
 have percolated to a race so remote and estranged. 
 Peoples who assign all human qualities to all 
 things, if they are themselves capable of grati- 
 
Ixviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tude, will necessarily fill their fables with grateful 
 animals, stones, trees, and what not, even if no 
 Buddhist influence ever came their way. There 
 is a well-known Kaffir example of trees — par- 
 ticularly sensitive plants — which were grateful 
 to people who did not ridicule them. It is The 
 Story of Five Heads?- The eldest daughter is 
 rude to a frog, to a mouse, and she laughs at the 
 trees ; she comes to grief. The younger sister is 
 civU to the frog, the mouse, and the trees, and 
 she succeeds, though, in the story, they are not 
 said to interfere visibly for her protection. In 
 this very story the husband is a five-headed 
 snake, who becomes a man when he meets the 
 wife that was polite to the plants and beasts. 
 
 As to this matter of the helpful beasts — 
 whether they were always helpful in the " primi- 
 tive version " iecaiise they were grateful, and 
 whether the incident is borrowed from India — 
 we have luckily a crucial test, or something very 
 like one. The southern coasts of the Peruvian 
 empire were won by the Incas (about three gene- 
 rations before the Spanish conquest) from an 
 earlier civilised race, whose ruined buildings and 
 irrigation works remain to testify to their great- 
 1 Theal, p. 49. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ixix 
 
 ness. Probably no one will venture to maintain 
 tbat this pre-Inca race, who retained their lan- 
 guage and myths after the Inca, as after the 
 Spanish domination, could have been in contact 
 with historic India. It would be difficult to find 
 a people more remote from Indian influences. 
 If this people, then, presents in its myths the 
 familiar incident of animals which assist the hero 
 in the execution of difficult tasks, it will be im- 
 possible to pretend that the story was borrowed by 
 the pre-Inca people from Buddhist legend. But 
 several examples of the incident occur in the 
 myths of this people — the Huarochiri Indians, 
 as the Spanish call them. Now these myths are 
 recorded in a MS. which Francisco de Avila, 
 a Spanish priest, wrote about 1608.^ If they 
 coincide, as they do, in character and details 
 with Indian and European mdrchen, the parti- 
 sans of an hypothesis of borrowing will have to 
 allege that the Huarochiri myths were borrowed 
 by the ancient people from the Spanish conque- 
 rors. There was time, it will be said, for this 
 borrowing. An account of Spanish efforts to 
 extirpate paganism in Huamachuco, a province 
 
 ^' Rites of the Incas (Hakluyt Society). The third docu- 
 ment in the volume. See Mr. Markham's preface. 
 
Ixx INTRODUCTION.- 
 
 adjacent to Huarochiri, was written as early as 
 i5S5-^ Here, then, the believers in the recent 
 importation of American myths will say, is a 
 period of fifty years in which the Huarochiri 
 Indians might readily assimilate European mdr- 
 chen, gathered from the Spanish soldiers and 
 settlers. It cannot be denied that this is pos- 
 sible, but, in the circumstances, is it probable, or 
 even plausible ? 
 
 Francisco de Avila, our informant, draws par- 
 ticular attention to the strong hold which their 
 native myths had on the people of the coast. 
 This tenacity of heathen tradition was the despair 
 of the missionaries. They could break the hua- 
 cos (idols and fetiches), but they could not so 
 readily make the Gospel and Genesis supplant 
 myth and legend. Nay, Avila was hopelessly 
 defeated in argument by his flock. Moreover, 
 the missionaries could not remove the great rocks 
 and permanent features of the landscape, and 
 huge pre-historio engineering works. Now it 
 was to the rocks, and valleys, and ancient monu- 
 ments of human skill that these myths were 
 attached, which, on M. Cosquin's theory, we 
 
 • Temaux Oompans, Recueil (1840), p. 85. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ixxi 
 
 presume muBt have been introduced by the 
 Spaniards. 
 
 Every one knows that in all countries myths 
 are narrated to account for the features of the 
 country, as in Scotland they tell how Michael 
 Scott split Eildon Hill into three separate peaks. 
 In the same way the prehistoric ruins of Tiryns 
 and MycensB are attributed to the mythical 
 Cyclopes. 
 
 It is almost impossible, perhaps, to maintain 
 seriously that an old and proud people like the 
 Huarochiri, deeply attached to their native tra- 
 ditions, would borrow household tales from their 
 detested alien conquerors and apply them as 
 explanations of the origin of their own valleys, 
 and rocks, and hills, and monuments of art. Yet 
 the myths of the Huarochiri must either have 
 been thus borrowed and thus adapted, or they 
 take their place with the mass of similar myths 
 whose uniformity, all the world over, it is so 
 difficult to explain. 
 
 It would occupy too much space to give those 
 various Huarochiri myths in all their details. 
 Suffice it to say, that one of the national heroes, 
 Huthiacuri, has a contest in skill with an op- 
 ponent, as Moses had with Jannes and Jambres. 
 
Ixiii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 One of the tests, as commonly happens in mdr- 
 chen, is the feat of building a house in a single 
 day. Huthiacuii cannot achieve it, but "in 
 perfect silence an kifinite number of birds, 
 snakes, and lizards completed the work." No- 
 body can deny that this is a regular normal 
 incident of European and of Indian mdrchen. 
 Nothing is said about gratitude on the part of 
 the beasts. They helped Huthiacuri as they 
 help a Einnish or Samoyed sorcerer. The friends 
 of the hypothesis of recent borrowing will argue 
 that the Huarochiri borrowed all the incidents 
 from the Spaniards. "We may reply in the words 
 of Avila, " tliese traditions are rooted in the hearts 
 of the peojple of this province, " Is it possible that 
 European mdrchen should so speedily take such 
 firm root in the hearts of this ancient people, 
 and should entwine themselves inextricably with 
 their myths of the origin of the world and of 
 their race 1 
 
 A still better test is furnished by the myths 
 about the drainage of the country. This vast 
 work was of prehistoric antiquity; its authors 
 were either the forces and convulsions of Nature 
 herself, or mere men of a forgotten generation. 
 The Huarochiri attribute the work to an early 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ixxiii 
 
 magical hero, Pariacaca, who answers to Yehl, 
 Qat, Cagn, Quahteaht, Prometheus, Prajapati, 
 and other demiurges of savage, Greek, and 
 Indian myths. But Pariacaca did not perform 
 his task of draining the valley by his own force 
 or skill He was aided hy helpful beasts, just 
 as Psyche was aided, or the hero of the Scotch 
 tale, Nicht, Nought, Nothing. All the beasts 
 and birds did the work for him, as all the 
 fishes drained the loch at the bidding of the 
 Scotch giant's daughter. The fox was at first 
 the directing spirit in this great engineering feat, 
 " and the people," says Avila, " to this day de- 
 plore that he should have been superseded." ^ 
 "The places " consecrated in these legends "are 
 still adored." 
 
 " Upon an opponent," says Mr. Matthew 
 Arnold, " one never does make an impression." 
 We cannot hope that those arguments and ex- 
 amples wiU convince opponents that American 
 may tally with European myths and mdrchen 
 where recent borrowing is out of the question. 
 But any person not committed to a theory wiU 
 probably admit that, in this case of the Huaro- 
 chirl, it is excessively unlikely that Spanish or 
 
 1 Rites oflneaa, p. 145. 
 
 / 
 
Ixxiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Basque mdrchen were hastily caught up by a pre- 
 Inca race, were attached to the figures of national 
 heroes, were used as explanations of natural 
 features or of ancient works, and were recited in 
 connection with places consecrated by religion. 
 "We may not quite agree with Mr. Max Miiller 
 that " nursery tales are generally the last things 
 to be borrowed by one nation from another." ^ 
 Mr. Ealston has quoted the case of a sailor or 
 " beach-comber," whose stock of tales and skill 
 in telling them made him the darling of an island 
 people in the Southern Seas. M. Cosquin men- 
 tions,' on the excellent authority of M. Lonrot, 
 a Finnish fisherman on the Lapland marches, 
 who had picked up a number of Norwegian and 
 Eussian tales from the conversation round the 
 camp-fire.2 Thus the borrowing of tales does 
 indubitably go on ; but from borrowing tales to 
 filling a national mythology and religion with 
 borrowed tales — and that in the space of fifty or 
 sixty years — is a long step. Once more, it is 
 indubitable that new myths cluster round old 
 names, and that new names also attract old 
 myths. But even so, is it likely that a people 
 very tenacious of their traditions would instantly 
 ^ Chips,'i\. 216. * Contes de Lorraine, i. xxxv. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ixxv 
 
 import the foreign idea of helpful animals into a 
 legend explanatory of the natural features and 
 ancient monuments of their country 1 The other 
 Huarochiri myths prove that, apart from this 
 idea of helpfulness, they took the prevalent early 
 view of the equality of man and beast. 
 
 The hypothesis of the universal borrowing of 
 marchen from India has to account for the pre- 
 sence of all the so-called Indian ideas, not only 
 in the marchen, but in the customs, superstitions, 
 ritual, and most sacred and ancient myths of the 
 remotest and rudest races. When a Bushman, 
 in any of the Bushman tales, hears that a man 
 has become a snake, he merely says that there 
 has been magic used. He is not at all surprised, 
 any more than a white man is surprised if any 
 one complains of indigestion. In M. Cosquin's 
 Lorraine tale, La Ghatte Blanche, the hero loses 
 his magically-given beauty, and reassumes his ugli- 
 ness when kissed by his grandmother. Mr. Theal 
 says, " A story is very common among the Kaffirs, 
 in which a man assumes the outward form of an 
 inferior animal, and, while partaking partly of 
 the nature of the beast, stiU retains the faculties 
 of a human being. Usually the man has been 
 bewitched by an enemy, and is ultimately restored 
 
Ixxvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to his human form by a kiss from a devoted 
 maiden." ' 
 
 The partisans, then, of a theory of borrowing 
 cannot confine their theory to marehen. The 
 so-called " Indian ideas " that inspire the mdrc^en 
 inspire also the religion, customs, rituals, divina- 
 tions, and superstition of Eskimo, Bushmen, Aus- 
 tralians, and Cahrocs. They have borrowed all 
 their ideas from Indian marehen if they have 
 borrowed anything. These ideas, employed in 
 romantic fiction, at once become marehen. The 
 coincidence of plot is certainly extraordinary, 
 nor would we for a moment deny that a plot so 
 complicated and peculiar as that of the Jason 
 formula may possibly have percolated slowly 
 through the world from a given centre ; but 
 nothing proves, nor even suggests, that India 
 was that centre. Again as to recent borrowing, 
 that becomes a question of evidence. 
 
 There must be plenty of such borrowing, 
 wherever men of various tribes meet round the 
 fire of a hunter's camp, wherever a negro nurse 
 tells Ananzi stories to a white child, who replies 
 and rewards the old woman with memories of 
 Grimm or Perrault. But to maintain that a 
 > SoiUh African FolJe-lore Journal, i. 5. 
 
INTRODUCTION. kxvii 
 
 large body of traditional tales, either preserved 
 in sacred hymns or intrusted to the memory 
 of " ancient dames," as among the Kaffirs, has 
 been recently borrowed from Europeans, is to 
 employ an argument that requires much evidence 
 to make it plausible. Where the tale (as in the 
 Kaffir Five Heads) is replete with references to 
 very peculiar tribal customs, there seems double 
 reason for scepticism as to recent importation. 
 Above all, when one reads such a tale as Ar- 
 terinos and Pulja,^ in which the children flee 
 from a mother who has become a cannibal, and 
 when one finds the same formula in Theal's 
 Kaffir Runaway Children, the probabilities of 
 borrowing seem actually reversed. If anybody 
 borrowed, the more civilised borrowed from the 
 less civilised this tale of a cannibal mother. It 
 is certain that South African tribes have relapsed 
 into cannibalism, as Red Indians have become 
 Weendigos, in this century. The idea of the 
 mother turned cannibal is therefore based on 
 historical experience in Africa. Such an expe- 
 rience can scarcely be recollected, perhaps, in 
 modern Greece. 
 
 Little more remains to do in this essay except 
 1 Von Hahn, i. I. 
 
Ixxviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to analyse the Zulu hint of Cupid and Psyche. 
 For the Zulu stories Dr. Callaway asserts " anti- 
 quity of origin " ^ •which would he incompatihle 
 with recent importation. The tale of Umtom- 
 binde (the tall maiden), is certainly rich in 
 purely Zulu features. The story begins with 
 the girl's resolution to go, like Janet in the 
 ballad of Tamlane, to a perilous place. As in 
 Campbell's Highland Tales (i. 82), and almost 
 in the same words, her father replies, " Nothing 
 goes to that place and comes back again." Finally, 
 the girl went to the place beside the river Ilu- 
 lunge, " not now known to the natives." After 
 an adventure of the " swallowing myth " class,^ 
 the heroine reaches the kraal where she is to be 
 married, but lo ! there is no bridegroom. The 
 youth on whom her heart was set, the youngest 
 prince, had disappeared as a child. The girl 
 stayed there, and meat and beer were placed 
 in her hut : these were nightly devoured by an 
 invisible being, even Unthlatu the lost prince. 
 One night he came in the dark and felt the 
 girl's face. " In the morning he went away, the 
 girl not seeing him. During all these days he 
 
 > N. T. Z., p. 2. 
 ' Custom and Myth, " The Myth of Cronus.'' 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ixxii 
 
 would not allow the girl to light a fire," clearly 
 lest she might see him by firelight. Next night 
 Unthlatu made the girl feel his body. He was 
 indeed vipereum malum. " The body was slip- 
 pery ; it would not allow the hands to grasp it." 
 A fire was lit, she saw he had a shining body. 
 His settle spoke, as in the Gaelic mdrchen, the 
 Battle of the Birds. The strange bridegroom 
 said that he had disappeared as a child because 
 his elder brothers were jealous of, and threatened 
 to choke him, because he would become king. 
 Unthlatu "was restored to his position as king," 
 and his mother to that of queen-mother. 
 
 But why did Unthlatu wear the slippery ser- 
 pent - skin 1 Because his mother's rivals had 
 given birth to beasts of various sorts. Unthlatu 
 was a lively child, and to avoid their jealousy 
 she had him sewn up in a boa's skin. Un- 
 thlatu, come to man's estate, was released by the 
 love of the tall girl Untombinde. 
 
 Here, in a rude savage guise (like the shining 
 prince in the serpent's skin), is one element of 
 Cupid and Psyche, Is the Ztilu mdrchen an 
 approximation to the " primitive form," or is it 
 a borrowed or transmitted tale adapted to Zulu 
 ideas, with the opening, the sisters, the search 
 
Ixxx INTRODUCTION. 
 
 for the husband, and the trials omitted, and 
 with a Zulu explanation of the invisibility of 
 the bridegroom? Who shall venture to assert 
 either opinion with dogmatic certainty! In- 
 deed, we do not offer any explanation 'of the 
 wide diffusion of the story of Oupid and Psyche. 
 All the essential ideas are common human pro- 
 perty. Could they have been combined into 
 the general formula of the marchen in different 
 places without any borrowing or transmission t 
 That is a point on which it is better to reserve 
 our belief. The past of humanity is so long, 
 tales may so easily pass from lip to lip (as mer- 
 chandise passes from hand to hand), stories may 
 so readily be carried by foreign slaves, by captured 
 wives, by stolen children, that one can never 
 definitely deny the possibility of filtration as 
 it were, from people to people. But that either 
 the whole story or the essential ideas have been 
 borrowed from historical India, that we do think 
 has been shown to be highly improbable. Nor 
 have we discovered anything to show why India 
 should be regarded as the fountain-head, not 
 only of marchen, but of most of the early ideas 
 on all subjects which are expressed in marchen. 
 A few remarks on the various shapes pf the 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ixxxi 
 
 story of Cupid and Psyche may end this etude. 
 Mr. Nutt points out to me that, in the majority 
 of cases, it is not the husband's mother (Venus 
 in Apuleius) who thwarts the course of true 
 love, but another lady with a jfille & marier. 
 This is the motive in Prince Wolf, East o' the 
 Sun and West o' the Moon, the Black Bull o' 
 Norroioay (especially in Kennedy's Fictions of the 
 Irish Celts, p. 97). What is peculiar to Apuleius 
 is the jealousy of Venus for her beauty's sake 
 and the worship transferred to Psyche. This 
 motive, as Mr. Nutt remarks, if originally part 
 of the story, would raise the presumption that 
 the original husband really was vipereum malum, 
 the serpent-lover. In that case, if the tale was 
 to follow the usual course, it would foUow that 
 even the vipereum malum must have been good 
 at heart and an enchanted person of distinction, 
 for the narrative could not go on if he were to 
 remain unsympathetic. 
 
 It will be noticed that, as Apuleius tells the 
 tale, there is only a social, and, one may say, 
 modern motive for Cupid's refusal to be seen. 
 He keeps himself dark, as a young marquis in a 
 novel marries under an assumed name, that his 
 bride may not disclose the glories of his birth 
 
Ixxxii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 and state, and get him into trouble with his 
 family. There is also a hint of a common 
 motive, the teaming against curiosity, that last 
 infirmity of Psyche's mind. 
 
 In most of the other European forms, the 
 husband is enchanted into an animal's shape, 
 compelled to enter dans la peau d!v,n autre, and 
 that other a beast or reptile. A moral motive is 
 introduced when (as in the Kaffir tales quoted 
 above) the affection or the kiss of a girl can 
 disenchant him. Indeed this is a repetition of 
 the idea in the Loathly Lady, Sir Gawaine's 
 bride, who is restored to beauty by the cour- 
 teous knight. 1 In the Zulu version the animal 
 disguise is worn, just as animal disguises are 
 worn in the old English poem of William and 
 the Werewolf, for the mere purpose of conceal- 
 ment ; but, in accordance with the prevalent 
 superstition about skins, the Zulu lover appears 
 to have acquired something of the characteristics 
 of the serpent, whose scales are his disguise and 
 protection against the intrigues of his jealous 
 brethren. In other cases the lover is hideous 
 or bestial in shape, to punish a " hasty word " 
 
 ' In Campbell's Dcmghter of King Under the Waves 
 (No. 86) this motif is combined with a M^lusine taboo. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ixxxiii 
 
 of his mother's, "'Would that I had a child, 
 were it only a pig or a viper." Here, again, 
 the motive is moral. 
 
 The orderliness of Psyche in the temple of 
 Ceres is conduct that, in the common run of 
 folk-tales, would have gained assistance for her, 
 and in these she would not have appealed in 
 vain to her lost husband's kindred. But when 
 the story was raised to Olympian circles (as Mr. 
 Arthur Pendennis elevated to the peerage the 
 characters in the original draught of Walter 
 Lorraine), then la haute politique of Olympus 
 interfered with the normal development of the 
 narrative. 
 
 It is curious to see how near the old unscien- 
 tific friends of fairy tales often came to correct 
 explanations of the motives. Perrault, Made- 
 moiselle L'H^ritier, the Ahh6 Villiers, and the 
 others of the seventeenth century, keep repeating 
 that the contes were originally meant to convey 
 moral lessons, and insisting with the Achilles of 
 F^nelon's Dialogues des Marts, that the Greek 
 heroic myths are only contes in literary disguise. 
 M. Comparetti, in his admirable JSdipo e la 
 Mitologia Gomparata,^ finds the moral motive 
 ' Pisa, 1867. 
 
Ixxxiv INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of the impossibility of evading destiny at the 
 root of the (Edipous saga. He discoTers the 
 same motive playing its part in Zulu marehen.^ 
 
 These considerations really explain many of 
 the problems in the study of popular tales. 
 They very frequently do illustrate moral ideas, 
 as the great ladies of Perrault's time discovered 
 when they played at the intellectual game of 
 telling conies. Do not be inquisitive ; do not try 
 to evade destiny ; be kindly, loving, and courte- 
 ous ; these morals are as obvious in Kaffir as in 
 Norwegian or Indian popular tales. But all are 
 provided with the "machinery" naturally in- 
 vented in the savage state of fancy, when no 
 line is drawn between man and the beasts, or 
 even things inanimate. " On n'inventerait plus 
 aujourd'hui de ces choses, si elles n'avaient 4t6 
 ■imagindes des long-temps," says Saint-Beuve in 
 his essay on Perrault^ That long-temps, in which 
 the speciosa miracula of talking beasts and trans- 
 formations Were invented, was the time when 
 men actually did talk to beasts, as the Aus- 
 tralians talk to the native bear, and actually did 
 conceive that their chiefs and conjurers could 
 
 ' Page 63. 
 
 ' Causeries dm Lundi, December 29, 1851. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Ixxxv 
 
 turn into wolves or panthers (aa among the 
 Ahipones and Balonda) before their very eyes. 
 The belief lasted so firmly, that St. Augustine 
 tells the tale of the father of Praestantius, who 
 was changed into a horse ; ^ and men were burned 
 all through the Middle Ages on charges which 
 now survive as incidents in nursery tales. 
 
 I am well aware that the suspense of judg- 
 ment is unwelcome to many readers. The study 
 of the fable of Cupid and Psyche offered here 
 does no more than show that the elements of 
 the tale are almost universally human, — in early 
 conditions of society. There is no attempt to 
 dogmatise as to the birthplace of the conte, we 
 are not even certain that — like the gods of 
 Greek myth and Mr. Gladstone — the conie has 
 not had many birthplaces. Possibly men may 
 some day discover some more definite tests than 
 we can apply ; meanwhile, if we have the dis- 
 comfort of suspense, we have also the pleasures 
 of hope. But we trust that the negative part, at 
 least, of our argument is fairly valid. There is 
 nothing peculiarly Indian in Cupid and Psyche. 
 
 Let us end with a warning which Charles 
 
 ' Dialogue de la Lycanthropie, par F. Claude Prieur, 
 Louvain, 1596, p. 36. 
 
Ixxxvi INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ITodier gives, — d propos de hottes — de sept lieues, 
 —in the catalogue of his library. ^ 
 
 " Je profiterai en passant de cette occasion, 
 puisqu'elle se prdsente, pour supplier] le lecteur 
 de ne pas croire que les Contes de Perrault 
 nous viennent en droite ligne des Indiens. Les 
 Indiens n'ont pas tout imaging, quoi qu'en puisse 
 dire I'Aoadtoie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres 
 ^ qui ces theories cmes foumiront longtemps 
 encore de savantes ^lucubrations, mais qui ne 
 parviendra pas ais6ment h, prouver que I'esprit 
 d'invention ait ^t6 r&ervd, par une faveur ex- 
 ceptioneUe, h, une seule branche de la famille 
 humaine.'' 
 
 ^ Description d'wne CoUeation de Mvres. Paris, 1844, 
 P- 309- 
 
THE MARRIAGE OF 
 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
I?!^^ ' 
 
 ^a^ 
 
 ^&^*^i»=^^ 
 
 ^^^^ 
 
 ^^^^^D 
 
 ^f^\ 
 
 ^^^^^j^f^^^^ 
 
 ^^% =«^^s,^ 
 
 ^^"^^^ 
 
 ^^^' 
 
 The Moll Pleafant and Deleaable 
 Tale of the Marriage of Cupid 
 and Pfyches. 
 
 ilHERE was Ibmetime a certaine 
 King inhabiting in the Weft parts 
 hauing to wife a noble dame, by 
 whom he had three daughters 
 exceeding faire : of whom the two elder were 
 of fuch comly fliape and beuty, as they excelled 
 all other women liuing, fo as they merited the 
 praife and commendation of euery perfon, and 
 deferuedly to be preferred aboue the refidue of 
 the common fort : yet the Angular pafling beautie 
 and maidenly maiefty of the yongeft daughter 
 fo far furmounted them two, as no earthly 
 
 creature 
 
3 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 creature could fufficiently exprefle or fet out 
 the fame, by reafoti whereof (after the fame of 
 this excellent maiden was fpread abroad in euery 
 part of the citie) the citizens and ftrangers there, 
 being inwardly pricked by the zealous afFeftion 
 to behold her famous perfon, came daily by 
 thoufands, hundreds and fcores to her fathers 
 pallace, and allonied with admiration of her in- 
 comparable beautie, did no leffe worfliip and 
 reuerence hit, with croffes figns and tolcens, and 
 other diulne adorations, according to the cuftome 
 of the olde ufed rites and ceremonies, than if 
 Ihee were Ladie Venus indeed. 
 
 Shortly after the fame fpread into the next 
 cities, and borduring regions, that the goddefle 
 whom the deep feas had borne and brought forth, 
 and the froth of the fpurging waues had nourilhed, 
 to the intent to fhew her magnificencie & diuine 
 power in earth, to fuch as earfl: did honor and 
 worlhip her, was now conuerfant amongft mortall 
 men, or elfe that the earthe & not the feas, by 
 a new concourfe and influence of the celeftiall 
 planets, had budded and yeelded forth a new 
 Venus, indued with the floure of virginitie : fo 
 
 daily 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 3 
 
 daily more and more increafed this opinion, and 
 now is her flieng fame' difperfed into the 'riext 
 Hand, and welnigh into euery parte and prouincet' 
 of the whole world. Whereupon innumerable 
 ftrangers reforted from far countries, aduenturing 
 themfelues by long iournies on land, and by great 
 perills on water, to beholde this glorious virgin. 
 By occafion whereof fuch a contempt grew 
 towards the goddefle Feniis, that no perfon tra- 
 ueled vnto the towne Paphos, nor to the ile 
 Gyndos, no nor to Cithera to worftiip her! Her 
 ornaments were throwne out, her temples de- 
 faced, her pillowes and cufhions torne, her 
 ceremonies neglefted, her images and ftatues 
 vncrowned, and her bare altars vnfwept, and 
 foule with the afhes of old burned facrifice : for 
 why euery perfon honored and worlhipped this 
 maide infteede of Venus. And in the morning 
 at her firft comming abroad, offered vnto her 
 oblations, prouided bankets, called hir by the 
 name of Venus that was not Venus indeed, and 
 in her honour prefented floures and garlands in 
 moft reuerent faihion. This fodaine alteration 
 of celeftial honor greatly inflamed the loue of 
 
 very 
 
4 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 very Fenus who vnable to temper herfelfe from 
 indignation, fhaking her head in raging fort,) 
 reafoned with herfelfe in this maner : Behold 
 the originall patent of all thefe elements, behold 
 J^e lady Fenus renowmed throughout all the 
 worlde, with whom a mortal maiden is ioyned . 
 now partaker of honor, my name regiftred in 
 the Citie of heauen, is prophaned & made vile 
 by terrene abfurdities : If I fhall fufFer anie 
 mortall creature to prefent my maieflie in earth, 
 or that any Ihal beare about a falfe furmifed Ihape 
 of my perfon : then in vaine did Paris that fliep- 
 herd (in whofe iuft iudgement and confidence 
 the great Jupiter had affiance) prefer me aboue 
 the refidue of the goddelfes, for the excellency 
 of my beauty : but flie, whatfoeuer flie be, that 
 hath vfurped mine honour, fliall fhortly repent 
 her of her vnlawfuU eftate : and by and by flie 
 called her winged fonne Cupid, rafli enough and 
 ha'rdie, who by his euil maners contemning al 
 publike iuflice and lawe, armed with fire and 
 arrowes, running up and downe in the nights, 
 from hoijfe to houfe, and corrupting the lawfuU 
 marriages of euerie perfon, doth nothing but 
 
 that 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. s 
 
 that which is euil, who although he were of 
 his owne proper nature futiicient prone to worke 
 mifchiefe yet fhe egged him forward with 
 words, and brought him to the Citie, and 
 fliewed him Pfyches (for fo the maide was 
 called) and hauing told the caufe of her anger 
 (not without great rage) I pray thee (quoth fhe) 
 my deer child by y° motherly bond of loue, by 
 the fweet wounds of thy pearcing darts, by the 
 pleafant heate of thy fire, reuenge the injurie 
 which is done to thy mother, by the falfe and 
 difobedient beautie of a mortall maiden, and 
 I praie thee without delay, that Ihe may fal 
 in love with the moft miferableft creature liuing, 
 the moft poore, the moft crooked, and the moft 
 vile, that there may be hone found in al the 
 world of like wretchednes. 
 
 When Ihe had fpoken thefe words (he imbraced 
 and kifled herjbnne, and took her viage towards 
 the Sea. When flie came vpon the fea, ftie began 
 to cal the gods and goddeffes who were obedient 
 to her voice. For incontinent came the daughters 
 of Nereus finging with tunes melodioufly : Por- 
 tunus with his briffeled and rough beard, Salita 
 
 with 
 
6 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 with her bofome ful of ftfti : Pcdemon, the driuer 
 of the Dolphin, the trumpetters of Triton, leaping 
 hither and thither, and blowing with heauenly 
 noife : Such was the companie that followed 
 Venus, marching towards the Ocean fea. In 
 the meane feafon Pfyches with al her beuty 
 receiued no fruit of honour : She was wondered 
 at of all, flie was praifed of all, but fhe perceiued 
 that no King nor Prince, nor any of the fuperiour 
 fort did repaire to woo her. Euerie one mar- 
 uelled at her diuine beutie, as it were fome 
 Image well painted and fet out. Her other two 
 fiflers that were nothing fo greatly exalted by 
 the people, were royaly maried to two kings, 
 but the virgin Pfyches fitting at home alone 
 lamenting her folitary life, and being difquieted 
 both in minde and bodie (although fhe pleafed 
 all the world) yet hated fhe her felfe her owne 
 beutie. Wherevpon the miferable father of this 
 vnfortunate fufpefting that the Gods and powers 
 of heauen did enuie her eflate, went unto the 
 towne called Milet to receiue the Oracle of 
 Apollo, where he made his praiers and offered 
 facrifice : and deiired a hufband for his daughter, 
 
 but 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 7 
 
 but Apollo though he were a Gretian, and of 
 the Countrie of Ionia, becaufe of the foundation 
 of Milet, yet he gaue anfwere in Latine verfe, 
 the fenfe whereof was this — 
 
 Let Pfyches corps be clad in mourning weede 
 And/ei on rocke of yonder hill aloft : 
 Her hufband is no wight of humane feede. 
 But Serfent dire, andfearce as may be thought. 
 Who flies with winges aboue in flarrie fkies. 
 And doth fubdue ech thing with fierie flight. 
 The Gods themfelves, and powers that feeme fo 
 
 wife. 
 With mightie loue befubiell to his might. 
 The riuers blacke and deadly flouds ofpaine, 
 And darknes eake as thral to him remaine. 
 
 The King, fometime happie, when he heard 
 the prophefie of Apollo, returned home fad and 
 forrowful, and declared to his wife the miferable 
 and vnhappie fate of his daughter j then they 
 began to lament and weepe, and paffed ouer 
 many dales in great forrow, but now the time 
 approched of Pfyches marriage, preparation was 
 made, black torches were lighted, the pleafant 
 fongs were turned into pitiful cries, the melodie 
 
 of 
 
8 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 of Hymeneus was ended with deadly bowlings, 
 the maiden that fhuld be maried did wipe her 
 eies with her vaile : all the familie and people 
 of the citie weeped likewife, and with great 
 lamentation was ordeined a remifle time for 
 that day, but neceffitie compelled that Pfyches 
 fliould be brought to her appointed place, 
 according to the diuine commandement. And 
 when the folemnitie was ended, they went to 
 bring this forrowfuU fpoufe, not to her mariage, 
 but to her finall end and burial. 
 
 And while the father and mother of Pfyches 
 did go forward weeping and crying to do this 
 enterprife, Pfyches fpoke unto them in this fort : 
 Why torment you your unhappie age with con- 
 tinual dolour? Why trouble you your Ipirits 
 which are more rather mine than yours ? Why 
 foile ye your faces with teares, which I ought to 
 adore & worfliip ? Why teare you my eies in 
 yours ? Why pul you your hoare haires ? Why 
 knock ye your brefla for me? Now you fee 
 the reward of my ex.cellent beutie; now, now 
 you perceiue (but too late) the plague of enuie. 
 When the people did honour me and call me 
 
 new 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 9 
 
 new Venus, then you ihould haue wept, then 
 you Ihould haue forrowed, as though I had 
 been dead : Now I fee, and perceiue, that I 
 am come to this miferie by the onely name of 
 Venus, bring me, and (as fortune hath appointed) 
 place me on the top of the rock. I greatly 
 defire to end my marriage, I greatly couet to 
 fee my hufband, why do I delay ? Why Ihould, 
 I refufe him that is apointed to deftroy al the 
 World ? Thus ended fhee her words and thruft 
 her felfe amongft the people that folowed : 
 
 Then they brought her to the appointed rock 
 of the high hil and fet her thereon and fo de- 
 parted. The torches and lights were put out with 
 the teares of the people, and euerie man going 
 home, the miferable parents welnigh confumed 
 with forrow, gaue themfelues to euerlafting 
 darknes. Thus poore Pfyches being left alone 
 weeping and trembling on the top of the rocke, 
 was blowne by the gentle aire and of ihrilling 
 Zephyrus, and carried from the hill with a 
 meeke wind, which retained her garments vp, 
 and by little and little brought her downe into a 
 deepe valie, where flie was laid in a bed of mofl. 
 
 fweet 
 
lo CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 fweet and fragrat floures. Thus faire Pfyches 
 being Iweetly couched among the foft and tender 
 hearbes, as in a bed of fweete and fragrant 
 flowres, and hauing qualified the troubles and 
 thoughts of her reftlefle mindj was now wel 
 repofed : And when flie had refreihed her felfe 
 fufficiently with fleepe, fhe rofe with a more 
 quiet and pacified minde^ and fortuned to efpie 
 a pleafant wood inuironed with great and mighty 
 trees : ftie efpied likewife a running riuer as 
 cleere as chriflal : In the middefl: of the wood, 
 welnigh at the fal of the riuer was a Princelie 
 edifice, wrought and builded not by the art 
 or hand of man, but by the mightie power 
 of God : and you would iudge at the firft entrie 
 therein, that it were fome pleafant and worthie 
 manfion for the powers of heauen. For the 
 embowings aboue were of Cetern and iuory, 
 propped and vndermined with pillars of gold, 
 and walles couered and feeled with filuer, diuers 
 forts of beafts were grauen and earned, that 
 feemed to encounter with fuch as entred in : all 
 things were fo curioufly and finely wrought, that it 
 feemed either to be the worke of fome demigod. 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. ii 
 
 or god himfelfe, the pauement was all of pretious 
 ftone, deuided and cut one from another, whereon 
 was earned diners kindes of pidtures, in fuch 
 fort, that blefled, and thrice blefled were they 
 which might go vpon fuch a pauement : Euery 
 part and angle of the houfe was fo wel adorned, 
 that by reafon of the pretious ftones, and in- 
 eftimable treafure there, it glittered and Ihone 
 in fvch fort, that the chambers, porches, and 
 doores, gaue light as it had bene the Sunne. 
 Neither otherwife did the other treafure of the 
 houfe difagree vnto fo great a maieftie, that 
 verily it feemed in euery point a heauenly pallaice 
 fabricate and builded for Jupiter himfelfe. 
 
 Then Pfyches moued with delegation, ap- 
 proched nigh, and taking a bold heart entered 
 into the houfe, and beheld euerie thing there 
 with great afFeftion, flie faw ftore houfes wroght 
 exceeding fine, and replenilhed with aboundance 
 of riches. Finally there could nothing be 
 deuifed which lacked there, but amongfl fuch 
 great flore of treafure, this was moft maruellous, 
 that there was no clofure, bolt, nor lock, to 
 keep the fame. And when with great plefure 
 
 fhe 
 
12 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 (he viewed al thefe things, Ihe heard a voice 
 without any bodie that faid: Why do you 
 maruell, madame, at fo great riches? Behold 
 al that you fee is at your commandement : 
 wherefore go you into the chamber and repofe 
 your felf vpon the bed, and defire what bath 
 you wil haue, and we whofe voices you heare, 
 be your feruants, and readie to minifter unto 
 you according to your defire : in the meane 
 feafon royal meats and deiniie diibes fhal be 
 prepared for you. Then Pfyches perceiued the 
 felicitie of diuine prouideftce, and according to 
 the aduertifements of the incorporal voices, fhe 
 firft repofed her felfe vpon the bed, and then 
 refreftied her bodie in the baines. This done, 
 flie faw the table garniftied with meate, and 
 a chaire to fit downe. When Pfyches was fet 
 downe, al fortes of diuine meats and wines were 
 brought in, not by any bodie, but as it were 
 with a winde, for flie could fee no perfon before 
 her, but onely heare voices on euery fide. After 
 that al the feruices were brought to the table, 
 one came in and fung inuifibly, another plaid 
 on the harp, but flie faw no man. The har- 
 
 monie 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 13 
 
 monie of the inftruments did fo greatly thrill 
 in her eares, that (although there were no man- 
 ner of perfon) yet feemed flie in the middeft 
 of a multitude of people. All thefe pleefures 
 finiflied, when night approched Pfyches went 
 to bed : and when flie was laid, that the fweete 
 fleepe came upon her: ftie greatly feared her 
 virginitie, becaufe flie was alone : then came 
 her vnknowne hufband and lay with her; and 
 after that he had made a perfect confumma- 
 tion of the mariage, he rofe in the morning 
 before day and departed. Soon after came her 
 inuifible feruants, prefenting to her fuch things 
 as were neceffarie for her bath and thus flie pafled 
 forth a great while and (as it happeneth) the 
 noueltie of things by continual cuftome did in- 
 creafe her pleafure, but fpeciaUy the found of the 
 inftruments was a cofort vnto her, being alone. ^ 
 
 During the time that Pfyches was in this place 
 of pleafure her father & mother did weepe and 
 lament, and her two lifters hearing of her moft 
 miferable, came with great dolor and forrow to 
 comfort and fpeake with their parents. The 
 night following Pfyches hufband fpake vnto her : 
 
 for 
 
14 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 for Ihee might feele his eies, his handSj and his 
 eares,) and faid, O my fweete fpoufe and deere 
 wife, fortune doth menace vnto thee imminent 
 perill and danger, whereof I wifli thee gentlie 
 to beware : For, know thou that thy lifters 
 thinke that thou art dead, be greatlie troubled, 
 and are come to the mountaine by thy fteppes, 
 whofe lamentations if thou fortune to heare, 
 beware that thou doe in no wife either make 
 anfwere or look up towards them, for if thou 
 do, thou flialt purchafe to me great forrow, 
 and to thy felf vtter deftruftion. Pfyches 
 (hearing her hulband) was contented to do al 
 things as he commanded. 
 
 After that he was departed and the night 
 paffed away, Pfyches lamented and cried al the 
 day following, thinking that now flie was paft 
 al hope and comfort, in that Ihe was clofed 
 within the walles of a prifon, depriued of 
 humane conuerfation, and commanded not 
 to aide her forrowful lifters, no, nor once 
 to fee them. Thus Ihe palTed al the day in 
 weeping, and went to bed at night, without 
 any refeftion of meate or baine. Incontinently 
 
 after. 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 15 
 
 after, came her hulband who (when he had 
 embraced her fweetely) gan fay : Is it thus, 
 that you performe your promife, my fweete 
 wife? What do I finde here? Paffe you al 
 the day and the night in weeping ? and wil 
 you not ceafe in your hufband's armes ? Go to, 
 do what ye wil, purchafe your own deftruc- 
 tion, and when you find it fo, remember my 
 words, and repent, but too late. Then flie 
 defired her hufband more and more, affuring 
 him that ftie fliould die, vnleffe he would grant 
 that flie might fee her fillers, whereby Ihe 
 might Ipeake with them and comfort them, 
 whereat at length he was contented, and more- 
 over he willed that flie fliould give them as 
 much gold and Jewells as flie would, but he 
 gaue her a further charge faying : Beware that 
 you couet not (being moved by the pernitious 
 counfell of your fifliers) to fee the fliape of 
 1 my perfon, left by your curiofitie you be de- 
 Ipriued of fo good & worthie eftate. Pfyches 
 being glad herewith, rendred vnto him moft 
 entire thanks, and faid : O fweete hufbad, I 
 had rather die then to be feperated from you, 
 
 for 
 
i6 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 for whofoeuer you be, I love and retaine you 
 within my heart, as if you were mine owne 
 fpirit or Cupide himfelfe : I praie you grant this 
 llkewife, that you would command your feruant 
 Women can Zephj/rus to bring my fifters down into the 
 be i" bed'' ^ally as he brought me, wherewithal fliee kiffed 
 him fwieetely & defired him gently to grant her 
 requeft, calling him her Spoufe, her fweete 
 heart, her ioy and her folace, whereby (he 
 enforced him to agree to her minde, and when 
 morning came, he departed away. 
 
 After long fearch made, the Sifters of Pfyches 
 came to the hill where Ihe was fet on the rocke, 
 crieng with aloud voice, in fuch fort that the 
 ftones anfwered againe : when they called their 
 fifter by her name, that their cries came to her 
 eares, flie came forth and faid : Behold here 
 is ihe for whom you weep, I pray ye torment 
 your felues no more, ceafe your weeping. And 
 by and by, flie commaunded Zephirus by the 
 appointment of her hufband to bring them 
 down : neither did he delay, for with gentle 
 blafts he retained them vp, and laid them foftly 
 in the vally. I am not able to expreffe the often 
 
 imbracing. 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 17 
 
 imbracing, kiffing and greeting, that was be- 
 tween them three, al forrows and teares were 
 then laid apart. Come in (quoth Pfyches) into 
 our houfe, and refrefli your afflifted mindes 
 with your fifter. Then fhe ftiewed them the 
 ftore houfes of treafure, ftiee caufed them to 
 heare the voices which serued her, the baine 
 was ready, the meats were brought in, and 
 when they filled themfelues with diuine delicats, 
 they conceiued great enuy within their hearts, 
 and one of them being very curious demanded 
 what her hufband was,, of what eftate, & 
 who was lord of fo precious a houfe. But 
 PJiches remembring the promife fhe made to 
 her hulband, fained that he was a yong man 
 of comely ftature, with a flaxen beard, & 
 had great delight in hunting in the hils and 
 dales by. And left by hir long talke, fhe 
 fhould be found to trip or faile in her words, 
 fhe filled their laps with gold, filuer, and 
 iewels, commanding Zephirus to carry them 
 away. 
 
 When they were brought vp to the moun- 
 taine, they went home to their own houfes, 
 
 and 
 B 
 
i8 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 and murmured with enuie that they bare againft 
 Pfyches faying: Behold cruell and contrarie 
 fortune, behold both we (borne all of one 
 parent) haue diuers deftinies, but ipecially we 
 that are the elder two, bee married to ftrange 
 hufbands, made as handmaidens, and as it 
 were banished from our countrey and friendes, 
 whereas our yonger .lifter hath fo great abun- 
 dance of trefure, and gotten a god to her 
 hufband, who hath no (kill to vfe fo great plenty 
 of riches : faw you not lifter what was in the 
 houfe ? what great ftore of iewels, what glitter- 
 ing robes, what gemmes, what gold we trod 
 upon? that (if flie haue a hulband according 
 as Ihe affirmeth) there is none that liueth this 
 day happier in all the world then Ihe: and 
 fo it may come to pafle, that at length, for the 
 great affeftion and loue which he may beare 
 to her, he may mal^e her a goddels, for (by 
 Hercules) fuch was her countenance, fo Ihe 
 behaued her felfe, that (as a goddefs) ftie had 
 voices to ferue her, and the winds obeyed her. 
 But I (poore wretch) haue firft married a huf- 
 band elder then my father, more balde then 
 
 a 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 19 
 
 a coote, more weake then a childe, that locketh 
 nie vp al the day in the houfe. 
 
 Then faid the other lifter: I am married 
 to a hulband that hath the gout, twofold, 
 crooked, not couragious in paying my debt, I 
 am faine to rub and mollifie his ftony fingers, 
 with diners forts of oiles, and to wrap them 
 in plaifters and felues, fo that I foile my white 
 and daintie hands with the corruption of filthy 
 clouts, not vfing my felfe like a wife, but more 
 like a feruant. And you (my fitter) feeme 
 likewife to be in bondage, wherefore I cannot 
 abide to fee our yonger fitter in fuch great 
 felicitie : faw you not (I pray you) how prowdly 
 and arrogantly flie handled vs euen now? and 
 howe in vanting herfelfe, fhe uttered hir prefiirap- 
 tuous mind, how flie caft a little gold into our 
 laps, and (being weary of our company) com- 
 manded we ftiould be borne and blowen away ? 
 Werely, I line not, nor am a woman, but I 
 will depriue her of all her bliffe : and if you 
 (my fitter) be fo farre bent as I, let vs confult 
 together, and not vtter our mind to any perfon, 
 no nor yet to our parents, nor tel that euer 
 
 we 
 
20 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 we law her : for it fufficeth that we haue feene 
 her, whom it repenteth to have feene : neither 
 let vs declare her good fortune to our father 
 nor to any other, fince as they feeme not happy, 
 whofe riches are vnknowen : fo fliall flie know 
 flie hath fifters (no abiects) but more worthy 
 then flie. Now let us go home to our hufbands, 
 and poore houfes, and when we are better 
 inftrufted, let vs returne to fuppreffe her pride : 
 So this euill counfell pleafed thefe two euil 
 women, and they hid the treafure that Pfyches 
 gaue them, and tare their haire, renuing their 
 falfe and forged teares. When their father & 
 mother beheld them weepe and lament ftill, they 
 doubled their forrows and greefes, but ful of 
 ire and force with enuie, they tooke their voiage 
 homeward, deuifing the flaughter and deftruftion 
 of their filter. 
 
 In the meane feafon the hulband of Pfyches 
 did warne her againe in the night with thefe 
 words : Seeft thou not (quoth he) what perill 
 and danger euil fortune doth threaten vnto thee, 
 whereof if thou take not good heed, it will 
 Ihortly come upon thee: for the vnfaithfiil 
 
 harlots 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 21 
 
 harlots do greatly indeuour to fet their fnares 
 to catch thee, and their purpofe is to make 
 and perfwade thee to behold my face, which 
 if thou once fortune to fee (as I haue often 
 told) thou flialt fee no more: wherefore if 
 thefe naughtie hagges, armed with wicked 
 minds, do chance to come againe (as I think 
 no otherwife but that they wil) take heed 
 that thou talke not with them, but fimplie 
 fufFer them to fpeake what they wil, howbeit 
 if thou canfl not refraine thy felf, beware that 
 thou haue no communication of thy hufband, 
 nor anfwere a word if they fortune to queftion 
 of me, fo wil we increafe our ftocke and this 
 young and tender child couched in thy body 
 that is young and tender (if thou conceale my 
 fecrets) fhal be made an immortal God, other- 
 wife a mortal creature. Then Pfyches was very 
 glad that flie Ihould bring forth a diuine babe, 
 and verie ioyful in that fhe Ihould be honoured 
 as a mother : flie reckoned and numbred care- so vfeth 
 
 yong wiues 
 
 fully the dales and months that palTed, & to do. 
 being never with childe before, did maruel 
 greatly, that in fo fmal a time, her body Ihould 
 
 fwel 
 
22 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 fwel fo big. But thofe peftilent and wicked 
 furies breathing out their ferpentine poifon, 
 tooke (hipping to bring their enterprife to paffe. 
 Then Pfyches was warned again by her hufband 
 in this fort : Behold the laft dayj the extreame 
 cafe, and the enimies of thy bloud haue armed 
 themfelues againft vs, pitched their camps, fet 
 their hoaft in aray, and are marching towards 
 vs, for now thy two fillers haue drawen their 
 fwords, and are readie to flay thee. O with 
 what force are you aifailed this day, O fweete 
 Pfyches, I pray thee to take pitie on thyfelf> 
 of me, and deliuer thy hufband and this Infant 
 within thy belly from fo great danger: and 
 fee not, neither heare thefe curfed women. 
 The child which are not worthie to be called thy filters, 
 
 taketh the ^ 
 
 fether"""^ for their great hatred, and breach of fifterly 
 amitie, for they wil come (like Syrens) to the 
 mountaine, and yeeld out their piteous and 
 lamentable cries. 
 
 When Pfyches had heard thefe words, flie 
 fighed forrowfully, and faid: O deare hufband, 
 this long time have you had experience and 
 trial of my faith, and doubt you not, but that 
 
 I 
 
CVPID AND PSYCHES. 23 
 
 I wil perfeuer in the fame, wherefore command 
 your wind Zephirus that he may do as he hath 
 done before, to the intent that where you haue 
 charged me, not to behold your venerable face, 
 yet that I may comfort my felfe with the fight 
 of my fitters, I pray you by thefe beutiful 
 haires, by thefe round cheekes, delicate and 
 tender, by your pleafant hot breafts, whofe fhape 
 and face I flial learne at length by the child 
 in my belly, grant the fruit of my defire, refrefh 
 your deere fpoufe Pfyches with ioy, who is 
 bound & linked vnto you for euer. I little 
 efteeme to fee your vifage and figure, little do 
 I regard the night & darknes therof, for you 
 are my only light. Her hufband being as it 
 were enchaunted with thele words, and com- 
 pelled by violence of her often imbracing (wiping 
 away her teares with his haire) did yield vnto 
 his wife. And when morning came departed 
 as he was accuftomed to do. 
 
 Now her filters arrived on land, and neuer 
 refted til they came to the rocke, without vifit- 
 ing of their father and mother, and leaped 
 downe raftily from the hill themfelues. Then 
 
 Zepkyrus 
 
24 CUPJD AND PSYCHES. 
 
 Zephyrus according to the diune commandment 
 brought them downe (though it were againft 
 his wil) and laied them in the vally without 
 any harme. By and by they went into the 
 pallace to their fitter without leaue, and when 
 there had eftfoones embraced their prey, and 
 thanked her (with flattring words) for the 
 treafure Which flie gaue them, they faid : O 
 deere filler Pfyches, know you that you are now 
 no more a child, but a mother : O what great 
 ioy bear you vnto vs in your belly : What a 
 comfort wil it be vnto al the houfe? How 
 happy fhal we be that fliall fee this infant 
 nourifhed amongft fo great plentie of treafure ? 
 that if he be like his parents, as it is neceflTary 
 he Ihould, there is no doubt but a newe Cupid 
 flial be borne : By this kind of meanes, they 
 went about to winne Pfyches by little and 
 little, but becaufe they were wearie with trauel, 
 they fate them downe in chaires, and after they 
 had waflied their bodies in baines they went 
 into a Parlour, where al kinds of meates were 
 ready prepared. Pfyches commanded one to 
 play with his harpe, it was done : Th6 imme- 
 
 diatly 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 2<, 
 
 diatly other fang, other tuned their inftruments, 
 but no perfon was feene, by whofe fweete har- 
 monic and modulation, the Sifters of Pfyches 
 were greatly delighted. Howbeit the wicked- 
 nes of thefe curfed women, was nothing fup- 
 preffed by the fwefete noife of thefe inftru- 
 ments, but they fettled themfelues to worke 
 their treafon againft Pfyches, demanding -who 
 was her hulband, and of what parentage : Then 
 flie (hauing forgotten by too much, fimplicitie 
 that which {he had Ipoken before to her huf- 
 band) inuented a new anfwer, and faid that her 
 hulband was of a great Prouince, a marchant, 
 and a man of a middle age, hauing his beard 
 enterfparfed with gray haires. Which when ftie 
 had fpoken, becaufe Ihe would haue no further 
 talke, Ihe filled their laps ful of Gold and Silver, 
 and bid Zephirus to beare them away. 
 
 In their return homeward, they murmured 
 with themfelues faying: How fay you, fitter, 
 to fo apparant a lie of Pfyches. For firft Ihe 
 faid, that her hufband was a young man of 
 flourifhing yeares and had a flaxen beard, and 
 now flie faith that it is halfe gray with age, what 
 
26 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 is be that in fo fhort ipace can become fo old ? 
 You flial finde it no otherwife, but that eyther 
 this curfed queane hath inuented a great lie, or 
 els that {he neuer faw the fhape of her huf- 
 band. And if it be fo that flie neuer faw him, 
 then verely fhe is maried to fome god, & 
 ^irfon""'""^ hath a young god in her belly, but if it be a 
 o'thlrs *' diune babe, & fortune to come to the eares of 
 my mother (as God forbid it fhould) then may 
 I go and hang myfelf, wherefore let us go to 
 our parents, and with forged lies let us colour 
 the matter. After they were thus inflamed and 
 had vifited their parents, they returned againe 
 to the Mountaine, & by the aide of the winde 
 Zephyrus, were carried down into the vally, 
 and after they had ftrained their eie lids to force 
 themfelues to weepe, they called vnto Pfyches 
 in this fort: Thou (ignorant of fo great euill) 
 thinkeft thyfelfe fure and happie, and fitteft at 
 home, nothing regarding thy peril, whereas we 
 go about thy affaires, and are carefull left any 
 harme fhould happen vnto thee, for we are 
 credibly informed, neither can we but vtter it 
 vnto thee, that there is a great Serpent, fill of 
 
 deadly 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 27 
 
 deadly poyfon, with a rauenous and gaping 
 throat, that lieth with thee euerie night, re- 
 member the oracle of Apollo who pronounced 
 that thou Ihouldeft be married to a dire and 
 fierce ferpent, and many of the inhabitants 
 hereby, and fuch as hunt about in the country 
 affirme that they faw him yefternight, returning 
 from pafture, and fwimming ouer the riuer, 
 whereby they do undoubtedly fay, that he will 
 not pamper thee long with delicate meates : 
 but when the time of deliuerance flial approch, 
 he will deuour both thee and the child, where- 
 fore aduife thyfelfe, whether thou wilt agree 
 vnto vs, that are careful for thy fafetie, and fo 
 auoid the peril of death, and be contented to 
 liue with thy fiflers, or whether thou wilt re- 
 maine with the Serpent, and in the ende be • 
 fwallowed into the gulfe of his bodie. And if 
 it be fo, that thy folitarie life, thy conuerfation 
 with voices, this feruile and dangerous pleafure, 
 and the love of the ferpent no more delight 
 thee : fay not but that we have plaied the parts 
 of natural fillers in warning thee. 
 
 Then the poore and fimple mifer Pfyches was 
 
 moved 
 
28 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 moved with the feare of fo dreadful words, and 
 (being amazed in her minde) did cleane forget 
 the admonitions of her hufband, and hir own 
 promife made vnto him. And throwing her 
 felfe headlong into extreame miferie, with a 
 wanne and fallow countenance fcantly vttering 
 a third word, at the length gan fay in this fort : 
 O my moft deare fiflers, I heartily thanke you 
 for your great kindnes towards me, and I am 
 now verely perfwaded, that they which haue 
 informed you hereof, haue informed you of 
 nothing but truth, for I neuer faw the Ihape of 
 my hufband, neither knew I from whence he 
 came, onely I heare his voice in the night, in- 
 fomuch that I have an vncertaine hufband, and 
 one that loueth not the light of the day, that 
 caufeth me to fufpeft that he is a beaft as you 
 affirme : moreover I greatly feare to fee him, 
 for he doth menace & threaten great euil 
 to me, if I ftiould go about to fpie and be- 
 hold his fliape, wherefore my louing fillers, if 
 you haue any remedy for your fifter in danger, 
 giue it now prefently. Then they opening the 
 gates of their fubtil minds, did put away al 
 
 priuy 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 29 
 
 priuy guile, and egged her forward in her 
 fearful thoughts, perfwading her to do as they 
 would haue hir : whereupon one of them began 
 to fay, becaufe that we little efteeme any peril 
 or danger to faue your life, we intend to {hew 
 you the beft way and meane as we may poffibly 
 do. Take a fharp rafer and put it vnder the 
 pillow of your bed, and fee that you haue 
 readie a priuie burning lampe with oile, hid 
 vnder feme part of the hanging of the chamber, 
 and (finely diflimuling the matter) when (ac- 
 cording to his cuftome) he commeth to bed and 
 fleepeth foundly, arife you fecretly, and with 
 your bare feete go and take your lampe with 
 the rafour in your right hand, and with valiant 
 force cut off the head of the poyfoned ferpent, 
 wherein we wil aide and affift you : and when 
 by the death of him you flial be made fefe, we 
 wil mary you to feme comely man. After they 
 had thus inflamed the heart of their Sifter (fearing 
 left fome danger might happen vnto them, by 
 reafon of their euill counfel) they were caried. 
 by the wind Zephirus to the top of the moun- 
 taine, and fo they ranne away and tooke Clipping. 
 
 When 
 
30 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 When Pfyches was left alone (fauing that 
 flie feemed not to be alone, being ftirred by 
 fo many furies) Ihee was in a tofling minde, 
 like the wanes of the fea, and although her 
 wil was obftinate, and refifted to put in execu- 
 tion the counfell of her lifters, yet flie was in 
 doubtfuU and diners opinions touching her cala- 
 mitie. Sometimes Ihe would, fometimes flie 
 would not, fometime .flie is bold, fometime flie 
 feares, fometime ftie miftrufteth, fometime flie 
 is moued, fometime flie hateth the beaft, fome- 
 time flie loueth her hufband, but at length 
 night came, when as fliee made preparation 
 for her wicked intent. Soon after her hufband 
 came, and when he had kifled and embraced 
 her, he fel afleepe. Then Pfyches (fomewhat 
 feeble in body and minde, yet mooued by crueltie 
 of fate) receiued boldnefle and brought forth 
 the lampe, and tooke the rafor, and fo by her 
 audacitie flie changed her kinde, but when flie 
 tooke the lampe and came to the bed fide flie 
 faw the mofl: meeke and fweeteft beaft of al 
 beafts, euen faire Cupide couched fairely, at 
 whofe fight the verie lampe increafed his light 
 
 for 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 31 
 
 for ioy, and the rafor turned his edge. But 
 when Pfyches faw fo glorious a bodie, ftie greatly 
 feared, and amafed in mind, with a pale coun- 
 tenance all trembling, fell on her knees and 
 thought to hide the rafor, yea verily in her 
 own heart, which fhe had vndoubtedly done, 
 had it not (throgh feare of fo great an enter- 
 prife) fallen out of her hand. And when flie 
 faw and beheld the beutie of this diuine vifage, 
 fhe was wel recreated in her minde, fhe faw 
 his haires of gold, that yeelded out a fweete 
 fauour: his necke more white then milke, his 
 purple che6kes, his haire hanging comly be- 
 hinde and before, the brightnes whereof dark- 
 ened the light of the lampe, his tender plume 
 feathers difperfed vpon his fhoulders like fhining 
 flowres & trembling • hither and thither, and 
 his other parts of his bodie fo fmooth and fo 
 foft, that it repented not Venus to beare fuch 
 a childe : at the beds feete lay his bowe, quiuer, 
 and arrowes, that be the weapons of fo great 
 a god, which when Pfyches did curioufly be- 
 hold, and maruelled at the weapons of her 
 hufband, tooke one of the arrowes out of the 
 
 quiuer. 
 
32 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 quiuer, and pricked her felfe withal, wherewith 
 ihe was fo griuoufly wounded, that the bloud 
 followed, and thereby of her owne accord Ihe 
 added loue upon loue, then more & more 
 broiling in the loue of Cupid, fliee embraced 
 and kifTed him a thoufand times, fearing the 
 meafure of his fleepe: but alas while (he was 
 in this great ioy, where it were for enuie, or 
 for defire to touch this amiable bodie likewife, 
 there fell out a drop of burning oile from the 
 lampe vpon the right flioulder of the god. O 
 ralh & bold lampe y* vile miniftrie of loue, 
 how durft thou be fo bold as to bum the god 
 of al fire ? Wheeas he inuented thee to y° in- 
 tent y' al loners might with more ioy paffe the 
 nights in pleafure. 
 
 The god being burned in this fort, and per- 
 ceiuing that promife was broken, fled away 
 without vtterance of anie word from the eies 
 and hands of his mofl; vnhappie wife. But 
 Pfyches fortuned to catch him (as he was rifing) 
 by the right thigh, & held him faft as he 
 flew aboue in the aire, til fuch time as con- 
 flrained by wearines, fhe let goe, and fel downe 
 
 vpon 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 33 
 
 vpon the ground: but Cupid followed her 
 downe and lighted upon the top of a ciprus 
 tree, & angerly fpake vnto her in this maner: 
 
 fimple Inches confider with thyfelfe, that 
 
 1 little regarding the commandement of my 
 mother, that willed me that thou fhouldeft 
 be married to a man of bafe & raiferable 
 condition, came myfelfe from heauen to loue 
 thee, wounding my owne bodie with my proper 
 weapons to hauve thee to my fpoufe, and feemed 
 I a beaft unto thee, that thou fliouldeft go about 
 to cut off my head with a rafor, who loued 
 thee fo wel? Did not I alwayes give thee in 
 charge ? Did not I gently wil thee to beware ? 
 but thofe curfed aiders & counfellers of thine 
 Ihal be worthily requited for their paines. As 
 for thee, thou fhalt be fufficiently puniflied by 
 my abfence : hauing fpoken thefe words he tooke 
 his flight into the aire. Then Pfyches fell flat 
 on the ground and as long as (he might fee her 
 hufband flie caft her eies after him into the 
 aire, weeping & lamenting piteoufly : but being 
 gone out of her fight, Ihe threw herfelfe into 
 the next running riuer, for the great anguifli 
 
 Ihe 
 c 
 
34 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 flie was in for the lacke of her hufband ; how- 
 beit the water would not fuffer her to be 
 drowned, but tooke pity vpon her in the honor 
 of Cupide, which accuftoraed to broile and 
 burne.the riuer, and fo threwe her vpon the 
 banke amongft the hearbs. Then Pan the 
 rufticall god fitting on the riuer fide, embracing 
 and teaching the goddefle Canna to tune her 
 fongs and pipes, by whom were feeding the 
 yong and tender goats, after that he perceiued 
 Pfyches in forrowful cafe, not ignorant (I knowe 
 not by what meanes) of her miferable eftate, 
 endeuoured to pacifie her in this fort : Oh faire 
 maid I am a rufticke and rude heardfman, how- 
 bait (by reafon of my old age) expert in many 
 things, for as farre as I can learne by coniefture, 
 which (according as wife men do terme) is 
 csflled diuination, I perceiue by your vncertain 
 gate, your pale hue, your fobbing fighes, and 
 your watrie eies, that you are greatly in love. 
 Wherefore hearken to me, and go not about to 
 flay yourfelfe, nor weepe not at all, but rather 
 adore and worfliip the great god Cupid, and 
 win him vnto you by your gentle promife of 
 
 feruice. 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 35 
 
 feruice. When the god of fliepheards had 
 fpoken thefe words, (he gaue no anfwere, but 
 made reuerence to him as to a god, and fo de- 
 parted. 
 
 After Pfyches had gone a title way ihee for- 
 tuned (unawares) to come to a Citie, where the 
 hufband of one of her fifters dwelled : which 
 when Pfyches underftoode, ftie caufed that her 
 fifter had knowledge of her comming, and fo 
 they met together, and after great embracing 
 and falutation, the fifter of Pfyches demanded 
 the caufe of her trauel thither: Mary (quoth 
 flie) do not you remember the counfel you gaue 
 me, whereby you would that I fhould kill the 
 beafl, who vnder colour of my hufband lay 
 with me euery night? You Ihall vnderfland, 
 that as foone as I brought forth the lamp to fee 
 and behold his fhape : I perceiued he was the 
 fonne of Venus, euen Cupid himfelfe that lay 
 with me. Then I being ftroken with great 
 pleafure, and defirous to imbrace him, could 
 not throughly affuage my delight, but alas (by 
 euill chance) the boiling oile of the lamp for- 
 tuned to fal on his flioulder, which caufed 
 
 him 
 
36 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 him to awake, who feeing me armed with fire 
 and weapon, gan fay. How dareft thou be fo 
 bold to do fo great a mifchiefe? depart from 
 me, and take fuch things as thou didft bring: 
 for I will have thy fitter (and named you) to 
 my wife, and flie fliall be placed in thy felicitie, 
 and by and by he commanded Zephirus, to 
 carry me away from the boundes of his houfe. 
 Pfyches had fcantily finifhed her tale, but her 
 fifter (pierced with carnall defire and wicked 
 enuy, ranne home and faining to her hufband 
 that ihe had heard word of the death of her 
 parents, took fliipping, and came to the moun- 
 Aseuerie taine. And although there blew a contrary 
 
 vertue is 
 
 rewarded winde, yct being brought in a vain hope flie 
 puniihed. '^"^^ : O Cupid take me a more worthie wife, 
 and thou Zephyrus beare downe thy miftrefle 
 & fo caft herfelfe downe headlong from the 
 mountaine, but fhe fell not into the valley 
 neither aliue nor dead for al the members and 
 partes of her bodie were tome amongeft the 
 rockes, whereby ihe was made a prey vnto the 
 birdes and wild beafts, as ihe worthily deferued : 
 Neither was the vengeance of the other delayed, 
 
 for 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 37 
 
 for Pfyches trauelling in the countrey, fortuned 
 to come to another citie, where her other fifter 
 did dwel, to whom when fhe had declared al 
 fuch things as fhe told her firft lifter, flie ranne 
 likewife vnto the rocke, and was flaine in like 
 fort. 
 
 Then Pfyches trauelled about in the country 
 to feek her huiband Cupid, but he was gotten 
 into his mothers chamber, and there bewailed 
 the forrowful wound, which he caught by the 
 cile of the burning Lamp. The white bird the 
 gull that fwims on the wanes of the water, flew 
 toward the Ocean Sea, where fhe found Venus 
 wafhing and bathing herfelfe : to whom fhe 
 declared that her fon was burned, and in danger 
 of death, and moreouer that it was a common 
 brute in the mouth of euerie perfon (who fpeake 
 euil of al the familie of Venus) that her fonne 
 doth nothing but haunt harlots in the moun- 
 taine, and vfeth himfelfe laciuioufly, as fhe vseth 
 to riot on the fea, whereby they faw, that they 
 are now become no more gratious, no more 
 plefant,~no more gentle, but evil, monfterous 
 and horible, moreouer that marriages are not for 
 
 any 
 
38 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 any amitie, or for loue of procreation^ but ful 
 of enuie, difcord & debate. This the curious 
 gul did clater in the eares of Finns, reprehending 
 her fonne. But Venus began to crie ?nd faid : 
 What hath my fonne gotten any loue ? I pray 
 (gentle birde that doeft ferue me fo faithfully) tel 
 me what fhe is, and what is her name that hath 
 troubled my fon in fuch fort, whether (he be any 
 of the Nymphs, of the number of the goddeffes, 
 of the companie of the Mufes, or of my mifterie 
 of the graces ? To whom the bird anfwered : 
 Madam I know not what flie is, but this I 
 know that Ihe is called Pfyches. Then Fenus 
 with indignation cried out : What is it fhe, the 
 vfurper of my beutie, the vicar of ray name? 
 What did he think that I was a bawd, by whofe 
 fliewe he fel acquainted with the maide ? 
 
 And immediately flie departed and went to 
 her chamber, where fhe found her Son wounded 
 as it was told her, whom when fhe beheld, fhe 
 cried out in this fort: Is this an honefl thing, 
 is this honorable to thy parents, is this reafon 
 that thou hafl violated and broken the com- 
 mandement of thy mother and foueraigne mifT- 
 
 tres? 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 39 
 
 tres ? And whereas thou fliouldeft haue vexed 
 my enemie with loathfome loue, thou haft done 
 contrary. For (being but of tender and vnripe 
 years) thou haft with too licencious appitite 
 embraced my moft mortal fo, to whom I ftial 
 be made a mother, and flie a daughter:, thou 
 prefumeft and thinkeft (thou trifling boy, thou 
 varlet and without al reuerence) that thou art 
 moft worthy and excellent, and that I am not 
 able by reafon of mine age to haue another 
 fonne, which if I might haue, thou fliouldeft 
 wel vnderftand, that I would beare a more wor- 
 thier then thou, but to worke thee a greater 
 defpite, I determine to adopt one of my feruants, 
 and to giue him thefe wings, this fire, this bow, 
 and thefe arrowes, and all other furniture which 
 I gaue thee, not for this purpofe, neither is any 
 one thing giuen thee of thy father to this intent : 
 but firft thou haft beene euil brought up, & 
 inftru6i:ed in thy youth, thou haft thy hands 
 readie, thou haft often offended thy ancients and 
 efpecially me that am thy mother, thou haft 
 perced me with thy darts, thou conteneft me as 
 a widow, neither doft thou regard to thy valiant 
 
 and 
 
40 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 and inuincible father, and to anger me more, 
 thou art amorous of wenches and harlots, but 
 I will caufe that thou Ihalt fhortly repent thee, 
 and that this marriage flial be deerely bought. 
 To what a point am I now driuen ? What 
 flial I do? Whither flial I go? How flial 
 I repreflfe this beaft ? Shal I alke aide of mine 
 enimie Sobrieiie, whom I haue ofte offended 
 to ingender thee? or flial I take counfel of 
 euerie poore ruftical woman ? No, no, yet had 
 I rather die, howbeit I will not ceafe my ven- 
 geance, to her muft I haue recourfe for help, 
 and to none other, (I mean a sobriety) who 
 may correft thee fliarply, take away thy quiuer, 
 depriue thee of thy arrowes, vnbend thy bow, 
 quench thy fire, and (which is more) fubdue 
 thy bodie with punifliment, and when that I 
 haue rafed, and cut off this thy haire, which 
 I have drefled with mine owne hands, and made 
 to glitter like gold and when I haue clipped 
 thy wings, which I myfelf have caufed to 
 burgen, then ftial I think to haue fufficiently 
 revenged myfelfe upon thee, for the iniurie 
 which thou haft done : When flie had fpoken 
 
 thefe 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 41 
 
 thefe wordes, fhe departed in a great rage out 
 of her chamber. 
 
 Immediately as flie was eoing away came Juno was 
 
 ' as/ daughter of 
 
 Juno and Ceres, demaunding the caufe of her o*u™fter^ 
 anger : then Venus made anfwere. Verily you j^piJ^' '° 
 are come to comfort my forow, but I pray wffc rai'ied"" 
 you with al diligence to feeke out one whofe Ofiris King 
 
 of Egypt : 
 
 name is Pfyches, who is a vagabond, and runneth *fJ5 J^'^^ 
 about the Countries, and (as I think) you are S'^^t'el? 
 not ignorant of the brute of my fon Cupid, 
 and of his demeanour, which I am afhamed 
 to declare : then they vnderftanding the whole 
 matter, endeuoured to mitigate the ire of Venus 
 in this fort. What is the caufe, Madame, or 
 how hath your fonne fo offended, that you 
 ihould fo greatly accufe his loue, and blame 
 him by reafon that he is amorous ? And why 
 fliould you feek the death of her whom he 
 doth fancie ? We moft humbly intreate you to 
 pardon his fault, if he have accorded to the 
 mindb of any maiden, what, do not you know 
 that he is a young man ? Or haue forgotte of 
 what yeares he is ? Doth he feeme alwaies vnto 
 you to be a child? You are his mother, and 
 
 a 
 
42 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 a kind woman, wil you continually fearch out 
 his daliance ? Will you blame his luxurie ? Wil 
 you bridle his loue? And wil you reprehed 
 your own art and delights in him ? What God 
 or man is he, that can endure that you Ihould 
 fowe or difperfe your feede of loue in euerie 
 place, and to make reftraint thereof within your 
 owne doores, certes you will be the caufe of 
 the fuppreffion of the publike places of young 
 dames. In this fort this goddefles endeuored 
 to pacifie her mind, and to excufe Cupid with 
 al' their power (although he were abfent) for 
 feare of his darts and Ihafts of loue. But Fenus 
 would in no wife affwage her heate, but (think- 
 ing that they did rather trifle and taunt at her 
 iniuries) fhe departed from them, and tooke her 
 voiage towards the fea in al hafle. 
 
 In the meane feafon Pfyches hurled herfelfe 
 hither and thither, to feeke her huftand, the 
 rather becaufe fhe thought, that if he would 
 not be appeafed with the fweete flatterie of his 
 wife, yet he would take mercie vpon her at her 
 feruile and continual praiers. And (efpying a 
 church on the top of a hie hil) fhe faid. What 
 
 can 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 43 
 
 can I tel whether my hufband and matter be 
 there or no > Wherefore flie went thitherward, 
 and with greate paine and trauel, moued by hope, 
 after that ftie climed to the top of the moun- 
 taine, flie came to the temple and went in, 
 whereas behold flie efpied flieffes of corn lying 
 on a heap, blades withered with garlands, and 
 reeds of barly, moreouer fhe faw hookes, fithes, 
 flckles, and other inflruments to reape, but 
 euirie thing laide out of order, and as it were 
 caft in by the hands of laborers' which when 
 Pfyches faw flie gathered vp, and put euerie 
 thing in order, thinking that flie would not 
 defpife or contemne the temples of any of the 
 gods, but rather get the fauour and beneuolence 
 of them al, by and by Ceres came in, and be- 
 holding her bufie and curious in her chappel 
 cried out afar off, and fayd : O Pfyches heedful 
 of mercie, Venus fearcheth for thee in euery place 
 to reuenge herfelfe and to punifli thee grieuv- 
 oufly, but thou haft more minde to be heere, 
 and careft for nothing lefle then for thy fafetie. 
 Then Pfyches fel on her knees before her, 
 watring her feete with her teares, wiping the 
 
 ground 
 
44 CVPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 ground with her haire, and with great weeping 
 and lamentation, defired pardon, faying : O great 
 and holy goddefs, I pray thee by the plenteous 
 and liberal right hand, by the ioiful ceremonies 
 of thy harueft, by the fecrets of thy Sacrifice, 
 by the flying chariots of thy dragons, by the 
 tillage of the ground of Sicilie, which thou haft 
 inuented, by the marriage of Proferpin, by the 
 diligent inquifition of thy daughter, and by the 
 other fecrets, which are within the temple of 
 Eleufis in the land of Athens, take pitie on me 
 thy feruant Pfyches, and let me hide myfelfe a 
 few dales amongft thefe fliefFes of come, until the 
 ire of fo great a goddefle be paft, or until that I 
 be refreflied of my great labour and trauel. Then 
 anfwered Ceres : Uerely Pfyches, I am greatly 
 moued by thy prayers and teares, and defire with 
 al my heart to aide thee, but if I fhould fuffer 
 thee to be hidden here, I fliould increafe the 
 difpleafure of my Cofin, with whom I have made 
 a treatie of peace, and an gncient promife of 
 amitie : wherefore I aduife thee to depart hence^ 
 and take it not in euil part in that I wil not fuffer 
 thee to abide and remaine here within my temple. 
 
 Then 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 45 
 
 Then Pfyches driuen away contrarle to her 
 hope was double afflicted with forrow, and fo 
 flie returned back againe. And behold fhe per-' 
 ceiued a farre off in a vally a Temple Handing 
 within a Foreft, faire and, curioufly wrought, 
 and minding to ouerpafle no place whether 
 better hope did direft her, and to the intent 
 Ihe would deiire pardon of euerie God, fhe 
 approached nigh vnto the facred doore, whereas 
 fhe faw pretious riches and vefliments ingrauen 
 with letters of gold hanging vpon branches of 
 trees, and the pofls of the temple teflifying the 
 name of the goddefTe Juno, to whom they were 
 dedicate, then fhe kneeled downe vpon her 
 knees, and embraced the Alter with her hands, 
 and wiping her teares, gan pray in this fort : O 
 deere fpoufe and fifter of the great God Jupiter 
 which art adored and worfhipped amongfl the 
 great temples of Samos, called upon by women 
 with child, worfhipped at high Carthage, be- 
 caufe thou werefl brought from heauen by the 
 lyon, the riuers of the floud Inachus do cele- 
 brate thee : and know that thou art the wife 
 of the great god, and the goddefTe of goddeffes : 
 
 all 
 
46 CVPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 all the eaft part of the world haue thee in 
 veneration, all the world calleth thee Lucina, 
 I pray thee to be my aduocate in my tribula- 
 tions, deliuer me from the great danger which 
 purfueth me, and faue me that am wearie with 
 fo long labours and forrow, for I know that it 
 is thou that fuccoreft and helpeft fuch women 
 as are with child and in danger. Then Juno 
 hearing the prayers of Pfyches, appeared vnto 
 her in al her royaltie, faying : Certes Pfyches I 
 would gladly help thee but I am afhamed to do 
 anything contrarie to the wil of my daughter 
 in law Venus, whom alwaies I haue loued as 
 mine owne child, moreouer I flial incurre the 
 daunger of the law, intituled, Deferiio corrupto, 
 whereby I am forbidden to retaine any feruant 
 fugitiue, againft the wil of his mafler. 
 
 Then Pfyches caft off likewife by Juno, 
 as without al hope of the recouerie of her 
 hufband, reafoned with herfelfe in this fort: 
 Now what comfort or remedy is left to my 
 aflBiftions, when as my prayers wil nothing 
 availe with the goddeffes : What flial I do : 
 Whither Ihal I go: In what caue or dark- 
 
 neffe 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 47 
 
 neffe (hall I hide my felfe, to auoid the 
 furor of Penus : Why do I not take a good 
 heart, and offer myfelfe with humilitie vnto 
 her, whofe anger I haue wrought : What do 
 I know whether he (whom I feeke for) be 
 in his mother's houfe or no? Thus being in 
 doubt, poore Pfyches prepared her felfe to her 
 owne danger, and deuifed how Ihe might make 
 her orifon and prayer vnto Fenus. After that 
 Fenus was wearie with fearching by fea and 
 land for Pfyches, ftie returned toward heauen, 
 and commaunded that one fliould prepare her 
 Chariot, which her hufband Vulcanus gaue vnto 
 her by reafon of marriage, fo finely wrought 
 that neither gold nor filuer could be compared 
 to the brightnefs thereof. Foure white Pigeons 
 guided the chariot with great diligence, and 
 when Fenus was entred in, a number of fpar- 
 rowes flewe chirping about, making iigne of 
 ioy, and all other kind of birds fang fweetly, 
 forefliewing the comming of the great goddeffe : 
 the clouds gaue place, the heauens opened, and 
 receiued her joyfully, the birds that followed, 
 nothing feared the Eagle, Hawkes, or other 
 
 rauenous 
 
48 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 rauenous foule of the aire. Incontinently flie 
 went unto the royal Pallace of the God Jupiter, 
 and with a proud and bold petition demanded 
 the feruice of Mercury in certaine of her 
 affaires, whereunto Jupiter confented, then with 
 much ioy, flie difcended from heauen with 
 Mercury, and gaue him an earneft charge to 
 put in execution hir words faying: O my 
 brother born in Arcadia, thou knoweft wel, 
 that I (who am thy fitter) did neuer enter- 
 prize to do anything without thy prefence, 
 thou knoweft alfo how long I haue fought for 
 a girle and cannot find her, wherefore there 
 refteth nothing eHe faue that thou with thy 
 trumpet do pronounce the reward to fuch as 
 take her, fee thou put in execution my com- 
 mandement, and declare that whatfoeuer he be 
 that retaineth her willingly, againft my will, 
 ftiall not defend himfelfe by any meane or ex- 
 cufation : which when ftie had fpoken, ftie de- 
 liuered- vnto him a libell, wherein was contained 
 the name of Pfyches, and the refidue of his 
 publication, which done flie departed away to 
 her lodging. By & by, Mercurius (not delay- 
 ing 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 49 
 
 ing the matter) proclaimed throughout al the 
 world, that whatfoeuer he were that could tel 
 any tidings of a king's fugitiue daughter, the 
 feruant of Venus, named Pfyches, ftiould bring 
 word to Mercurie, and for reward of his paines 
 he fhould receiue feauen fweete cofles of Venus. 
 After that Mercurie had pronounced thefe things 
 euery man was inflamed with dqfire to fearch 
 out Pfyches. 
 
 This proclamation was the caufe that put all 
 doubt frS Pfyches, who was fcantly come in 
 fight of the houfe of Venus, but one of her 
 feruants called Cujiome came out, who efpy- 
 ing Pfyches, cried with a loud voice, faying : 
 O wicked harlot as thou art, now at length 
 thou flialt know that thou haft a miftres aboue 
 thee. What, doft thou make 'thyfelfe ignorant 
 as though thou didft not vnderftand what trauell 
 we haue taken in fearchtng for thee : I am glad 
 that thou art come into my hands, thou art now 
 in the gulfe of hel, and {halt abide the pain and 
 punifhment of thy great contumacie, and there- 
 withal {he took her by the haire and brought 
 hir in, before the prefence of the goddelTe Venus. 
 
 When 
 
 D 
 
so CUPJD AND PSYCHES. 
 
 When Fenus fpied her, fhe began to laugh, 
 and as angrie perfons accufiome to do, {he 
 fliaked her head, & fcratched her right eare 
 faying : O goddeffe, goddeflfej you are now 
 come at length to vifit your hufband that is 
 in danger of death (by your means) be you 
 affured, I will handle you like a daughter, 
 where be my maidens Sorrow & Sadnefs : 
 To whom (when they came) flie delluered 
 Pfyches to be cruelly tormented, then they ful- 
 filled the commandement of their miftreffe, & 
 after they had piteoufly fcourged her with rods 
 & whips, they prefented her again before Venus. 
 Then fliee beganne to laugh again, faying : Be- 
 hold fhe thinketh (that by reafon of her great 
 belly which fhe hath gotten by playing the 
 wench) to moue me to pittie, and to make me 
 a grandmother to her child : Am not I happie, 
 that in the flourifhing time of al mine age, fhal 
 be called a grandmother, and the fonne of a vile 
 harlot fhall be accounted the nephew of Venus ? 
 Howbeit I am a foole to tearme him by the name 
 of my fonne, fince as the marriage was made 
 betweene vnequal perfons, in the field without 
 
 witneffes. 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 51 
 
 witneffes, and not by the confent of their 
 parents, wherefore the marriage is illegitimate, 
 and the child (that fhall be borne) a baftard, 
 if we fortuned to fufFer thee to line fo long 
 till thou be deliuered. When Fenus had fpoken 
 tbefe words (he leaped vpon the face of poor 
 Pfyches, and (tearing her apparel) tooke hir 
 by the haire, and dafhed her head vpon the 
 ground. Then flie tooke a great quantitie of 
 wheate, of barly, meale, poppy feede, peafon. 
 Unties, and beanes, and mingled them al to- 
 gether on a heape, faying : Thou euill fau cured 
 girle, thou feemefl. vnable to get the grace of 
 thy louer, by no other meanes, but onely by 
 diligent and painfiiU feruice, wherefore I wil 
 prooue what thou canfl: do, fee that thou fepa- 
 rate al thefe graines one from another, difpofing 
 them orderly in their quantitie, and let it be 
 done before night. When Ihe had appointed 
 this tafk vnto Pfyches, Ihe departed to a great 
 banket that was prepared that day. 
 
 But Pfyches went not about to diffeuer the 
 grain (as being a thing impoflible to be brought 
 to paffe by reafon, it lay fo confiifedly fcattred) 
 
 but 
 
52 CVPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 but being aftonied at the cruell commandement 
 
 of Fenus fate flill and faid nothing. Then the 
 
 litle Pifmire the Emote, taking pittie of her 
 
 great difficultie and labour, curfing the cruel- 
 
 neffe of the wife of Jupiter, and of fo euil a 
 
 mother, ran about hither and thither, and called 
 
 to her al the friends, yee quick fonnes of the 
 
 ground, the mother of all things, take mercie 
 
 on this poore maide efpoufe to Cupid, who 
 
 is in great danger of her perfon, I pray you 
 
 helpe her with al diligence. Incotinently one 
 
 came after another, difleuering and deuiding 
 
 the graine, and after that they had put each 
 
 kind of corne in order, they ran away againe 
 
 in al hafte. When night came Fenus returned 
 
 home from the banket wel tipled with wine, 
 
 fmelling of balme, and crowned with garlands 
 
 of rofes, who when flie efpied what Pfyches 
 
 had done, gan fay: This is not the labour of 
 
 thy hands, but rather of his that is amorous 
 
 of thee, then flie gaue her a morfel of browne 
 
 bread & went to fleep. In the meane feafon, 
 
 Cupid was clofed faft in the moft fureft chamber 
 
 of the houfe, partly becaufe he ihould not hurt 
 
 himfelf 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 53 
 
 himfelf with wanton dalliance, and partly be- 
 caufe he fliould not fpeak with his loue : fo thefe 
 two louers were deuided one from another. 
 
 When night was palTed Fentis called Pfyches, 
 and faid : Seeft thou yonder Foreft that extedeth 
 out in length with the riuer, there be great 
 flieepe fhining like gold, and kept by no manner 
 of pers5. I command thee that thou go thither 
 and bring me home fome of the wool of their 
 fleeces. Pfyches arofe willingly not to do her 
 commandement, but to throw her felf head- 
 long into the water to end her forrow. Then 
 a greene reede inspired by diuine inlpiration, 
 with a gratious tune and melodie gan fay: O 
 Pfyches I pray thee not to trouble or polute 
 my water by the death of thee, and yet beware 
 that thou go not towards the terrible flieepe 
 of this coaft, vntil fuch time, as the heate of 
 the funne be paft, for when the funne is in 
 his force, then feeme they moft dreadful and 
 furious, with their {harp horns, their ilonie fore- 
 heads, and their gaping throats, wherewith they 
 arme themfelues to the deflruflion of mankind : 
 but vntil they haue refreflied themfelues by the 
 
 riuer. 
 
54 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 riuer, thou maifl: hide thy felfe here by me, 
 vnder this great plaine tree, and as foone as 
 their great furie is pafl, thou maift go amongfl 
 the thickets and buflies vnder the wood fide 
 and gather the lockes of their golden Fleeces, 
 which thou fhalt find hanging vpon the briers. 
 Then fpake the gentle and benigne reed, fliewing 
 a meane to Pfyches to faue her life, which Ihe 
 bare wel in memorie, and with al diligence 
 went & gathered up fuch lockes as flie found, 
 and put them in her apron, and carried them 
 home to Venus. 
 
 Howbeit the danger of this fecond labour 
 did not pleafe her, nor giue her fufEcient witnes 
 of the good feruice of Pfyches, but with a fower 
 refemblance of laughter did fay : Of certaine I 
 know that this is not thy fact, but I wil proue 
 if thou be of fo flout a courage, and fingular 
 prudencie as thou feemeft. Then Venus fpake 
 vnto Pfyches againe laying : Seeft thou the top 
 of yonder great hil, from whence there run- 
 neth downe waters of blacke & deadly colour, 
 which nouriftieth the flouds of Styx & Cocytus, 
 I charge thee to go thither & bring me a 
 
 veffel 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 55 
 
 veffel of that water; wherewithal! Ave gaue 
 her a bottel of chriftal, menacing and threatning 
 her rigoroufly. The poore Pfyches went in al 
 haft to the top of the mountainj rather to end 
 her life than to fetch any water, and when 
 (he was come vp to the ridge of the hill, flie 
 perceiued that it was impoffible to bring it 
 to paffe : For flie faw a great rocke gufliing 
 out moft horrible fountaines of waters, which 
 ran downe and fell by many ftops and pafTages 
 into the vally beneath : on each fide fhee faw 
 great Dragons, ftretching out their long and 
 bloudie neckes, that neuer flept, but appointed 
 to keepe the riuer there: the waters feemed 
 to themfelues likewife faying: Away, away, 
 what wilt thou do ? flie, flie, or elfe thou wilt 
 be flaine. Then Pfyches (feeing the impofli- 
 bilitie of this aSaire) flood ftil as though flie 
 were transformed into a ftone, and although flie 
 was prefent in bodie, yet was flie abfent in 
 fpirit and fenfe, by reafon of the great peril 
 which flie faw, infomuch that flie could not 
 comfort her felfe with weeping, fuch was the 
 prefent danger that flie was in. But the royal 
 
 bird 
 
56 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 bird of Great Jupiter, the Eagle, reiiiembring 
 his old feruice which he had done, when as by 
 the pricke of Cupid he brought vp the boy 
 Ganimedes to the heauens, to be made the butler 
 of Jupiter, and minding to fliew the like feruice 
 in the perfon of the wife of Cupid, came from 
 the high houfe of the Skies, & faid vnto 
 Pfyches : O fimple woman without all ex- 
 perience, doeft thou thipke to get or dip vp 
 any drop of this dreadful water? No, no, 
 affure thyfelfe thou art neuer able to come 
 nigh it, for the Gods them felues do greatly 
 feare at the fight thereof. What, haue you not 
 heard, that it is' a cuftome among men to fweare 
 by the puifance of the gods, and the gods do 
 fweare by the maieftie of the riuer Stix P But 
 giue me thy bottel, and fodainly he tooke it, 
 and filled it with the water of the riuer, and 
 taking his flight through thofe cruel and hor- 
 rible dragons, brought it unto Pfyches : who 
 being verie joyful thereof, prefented it to Venus, 
 who would not yet be appeafed, but menacing 
 more and more, laid : What, thou feemefi vnto 
 me a verie witch and enchauntrefle, that bringeft 
 
 thefe 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 57 
 
 thefe things to pafle, howbeit thou fhalt do 
 nothing more. Take this box and go to Hell 
 to Proferpina, and delire her to fend me a little 
 of her beutie, as much as wil ferue me the 
 fpace of one day, and fay that fuch as I had is 
 confumed alway fince my fonne fel ficke, but 
 returne againe quicklie, for I mufl. dreffe my- 
 felfe therewithal, and goe to the Theatre of 
 the Gods. 
 
 Then poore Pfyches perceiued the end of all 
 fortune, thinking verely that (he fhould neuer 
 returne, and not without caufe, when as flie 
 was compelled to go to the gulfe and furies of 
 hell. Wherefore without any further delay, flie 
 went vp to an high tower to throw her felfe 
 downe headlong (thinking that it was the next 
 and readieft way to hel) but the tower (as in- 
 fpired) fpake vnto her faying: O poore mifer, 
 why goeft thou about to flay thy felfe? Why 
 deft thou raflily yield vnto thy laft perill & 
 danger ? Know thou that if thy fpirit be once 
 feparated from thy bodie, thou flialt furely go to 
 hell, but neuer to returne againe, wherefore 
 hearken to me : Lacedemon a Citie in Greece is 
 
 not 
 
58 CUPJD AND PSYCHES. 
 
 not fatre hence : go thou thither & enquire 
 for the hil Tenarus, whereas thou flialt find a 
 hold leading to hell, euen to the Pallace of 
 Pluto, but take heede thou go not with emptie 
 hands to that place of darknefle : but carrie two 
 fops fodden in the flour of barley and Honney 
 in thy hands, and two half pence in thy mouth. 
 And whs thou haft paffed a good part of that 
 way, thou flialt fee a lame Afle carrying of 
 wood, and a lame fellow driuing him, who 
 will defire thee to give him vp the flicks that" 
 fall downe, but pafle thou on, and do nothing. 
 , By & by thou flialt come vnto a riuer of hell, 
 whereas Charon is ferriman, who will firft haue 
 his fare paied him, before he wil carrie the 
 foules ouer the riuer in his boat, whereby you 
 may fee that auarice raigneth amongft the dead, 
 neither Charon nor Pluto will do anything for 
 naught: For if it be a poore man that would 
 pafs ouer & lacketh money he flial be com- 
 pelled to die in his iourney before they wil 
 fliew him any reliefe, wherefore deliuer to car- 
 raine Charon one of the halfpence (which thou 
 beareft for thy paflage,) and let him receiue it 
 
 out 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 59 
 
 out of thy mouth. And it (hal come to pafle 
 as thou fitteft in the bot thou flialt fee an old 
 man fwimming on the top of the riuer, holding 
 up his deadly hands, and defiring thee to receiue 
 him into the barke, but haue no regard to his 
 piteous crie: when thou art paffed ouer the 
 floud, thou fhalt eipie old women Spinning, 
 who will defire thee to helpe them, but beware 
 thou do not confent vnto them in any cafe, for 
 thefe and like baits and traps will Fenus fet to 
 make thee let fall one of thy fops, and thinke 
 not that the keeping of thy fops is a light matter, 
 for if thou leefe one of them thou flialt be 
 alTured neuer to returne again to this world. 
 Then flialt thou fee a great and maruailous 
 dogge, with three heads, barking- continually at 
 the foules of fuch as enter in, by reafon he can 
 do them no other harme, he lieth day & night 
 before the gate of Proferpina, and keepeth the 
 houfe of Pluto with great diligence, to whom 
 if thou call one of thy fops, thou maifl: haue 
 accefle to Proferpina without all danger: fliee 
 will make thee good cheere, and entertaine 
 thee with delicate meate and drinke, but fit 
 
 thou 
 
6o CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 thou upon the ground, and defire brown bread, 
 and then declare thy mefTage vnto hir, and 
 when thou haft receiued fuch beutie as {he 
 giueth, in thy returne appeafe the rage of the 
 dogge with thy other fop, and giue thy other 
 halfepenny to couetous Charon, and come the 
 fame way againe into the world as thou wenteft : 
 but aboue al things haue a regard that thou 
 looke not in the boxe, neither be not too curious 
 about the treafure of the deuine beautie. 
 
 In this manner the tower fpake vnto Pfyches 
 and aduertifed her what fhe fhoulde do : and 
 immediatly Ihe tooke two halfe pence, two 
 fops, and all things neceflarie, and went to the 
 mountaine Tenarus to go towards^ hel. After 
 that Pfyches had pafled by y* lame Affe, paid 
 her halfepgnie for paflage, neglefted the old 
 man in the riuer, denied to helpe the womfi 
 fpinning, and filled the rauenous mouth of the 
 dogge with a fop, (he came to the chamber of 
 Proferpina. There Pfyches would not fit in 
 any royall feate, nor eate any delicate meates, 
 but kneeled at the feete of Proferpina, onely 
 contented with courfe bread, declared her mef- 
 
 fege. 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 6i 
 
 fage, and afler fhe had receiued a miftical fecret 
 in a boxe, fhe departed, and flopped the mouth 
 of the dogge with the other fop, and paied the 
 boatman the other halfepennie. When Pfyches 
 was returned from hel to the light of the world, 
 fhe was rauifhed with great defire, faying : Am 
 not I a foole that knowing that I carrie here the 
 diuine beutie, wil not take a little thereof to 
 gamiih my face, to pleafe my loue withal ? 
 And by and by fhe opened the boxe where fhe 
 could perceiue no beutie nor anything elfe, 
 faue onely an infernall and deadly fleepe, which 
 immediatly inuaded all her members as foone 
 as the boxe was uncouered, in fuch fort that fhe 
 fel down upo the ground, and lay there as a 
 fleeping corps. 
 
 But Cupide being now healed of his wound 
 and maladie, not able to endure the abfence 
 of Pfyches, got him fecretly out at a window 
 of the chamber where hee was enclofed, and 
 (receiuing his wings,) tooke his flighte towardes 
 his louing wife, whom when hee had found, 
 hee wiped away the fleepe from her face, and 
 put it againe into the boxe, and awaked her 
 
 with 
 
62 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 with the tip of one of his arrowes, faying: 
 O wretched caitife^ behold thou werft welnigh 
 periflied againe, with the ouermuch curiofitie, 
 wel, go thou, and do thy meflage to my mother, 
 and in the meane feafon, I wil prouide for al 
 thinges accordinglie : wherewithal he tooke his 
 flight into the aire, and Pfyches brought her 
 prefent to Fenus. 
 
 Cupid being more & more in loue with 
 Pfyches, and fearing the difpleafure of his 
 mother, did pearce into the heauens, and ariued 
 before Jupiter to declare his caufe : then Jupiter 
 after that hee had eftfoones embraced him, gan 
 fay in this maner: O my welbeloued fonne, 
 although thou haft not giuen due reuerence and 
 honor vnto me as thou oughteft to do, but 
 haft rather ipoiled and wounded this my breft 
 (whereby the lawes and order of the Elements 
 and planets be difpofed) with continual aflaultes 
 of Terren luxuri and againft al lawes, and the 
 difcipline Julia, and the utility of the publilse 
 weale, in transforming my diuine beauty into 
 ferpents, fire, fauage beafts, birds, and into 
 BuUes. Howbeit remembring my modefty, and 
 
 that 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 63 
 
 that I haue nouriihed thee with mine own 
 proper hands I will doe and accomplifh all 
 thy deiire, fo that thou canil beware of fpitefuU 
 and enuious perfons. And if there be any- 
 excellent maiden of comely beauty in the 
 worlde, remember yet the benefit which I fhal 
 fhewe vnto thee by recompence of her loue 
 towards me again. When he had fpoken thefe 
 words he commanded Mercury to cal all the 
 Gods to counfell, and if any of the celelliall 
 powers did faile of appearance he would bee 
 condemned in ten thoufand pounds : which 
 fentence was fuch a terrour to al the goddefles, 
 that the high Theatre was repIeniOied. 
 
 And Jupiter beganne to fpeake in this fort : 
 O yee Gods, regiftered in the bookes of the 
 Mufes, you al know this young man Cupid 
 whome I haue nourifhed with mine owne handes, 
 whofe raging flames of his firft youth I thought 
 beft to bridle and reftraine. It fuflSceth that 
 hee is defamed in euery place for his adulterous 
 lining, wherefore all occafion ought to bee taken 
 away by meane of marriage : he hath chofen 
 a maiden that facieth him wel, and hath be- 
 
 reaued 
 
64 CUPID AND PSYCHES. 
 
 reaued her of her uirginity, let him haue her 
 ftill, and poffeffe her according to his owne 
 pleafure : then he returned to Venus, and fayd : 
 And you my daughter, take you no care, neither 
 feare the dilhonour of your progeny and eftate, 
 neither haue regard in that it is a mortal manage 
 for it feemeth vnto me, iuft, lawfull, and legi- 
 timate by the law ciuill. Incontinently after, 
 Jupiter commanded Mercurie to bring vp 
 Pfyches the fpoufe of Cupid, into the pallace 
 of heauen. And then he tooke a pot of im- 
 mortalitie, and faid: Hold Pfyches and drinke, 
 to the end thou maift be immortal, and that 
 Cupid may be thine euerlafting hufband. By 
 and by the great banket, and marriage feaft 
 was fumptuoufly prepared, Cupid fate down 
 with his deare fpoufe betweene his armes : Juno 
 likewife.with Jupiter, and al the other Gods in 
 order, Ganimedes filled the pot of Jupiter, and 
 Bacchus ferued the reft. Their drinke was 
 Nectar, the wine of the Gods, Vulcanus pre- 
 pared fupper, the howers decked up the houfe 
 with rofes and other fweet fmels, the graces 
 threw about balme, the mufes fang with fweet 
 
 harmony. 
 
CUPID AND PSYCHES. 6$ 
 
 harmony, Apollo tuned pleafantly to the Harpe, 
 Fenus danced finely: Satirus and Panifcus 
 plaide on their pipes: and thus Pfyches was 
 married to Cupid, and after ihe was deliuered 
 of a child wh5 we cal Pleafure. 
 
 Printed 6y BALLANTYNE, HANSOM & CO. 
 Edinburgh and London. 
 
r JUL g T90V