The Rumanian animal tales, which appear here for the
first time outside Rumania, are so weird, so different from any known
to the folk-lore of the West, that they arrest our attention and invite
close examination. They are, for the most part, not only beautiful in
themselves, but by reason of a peculiar flight of fancy and a powerful
imagination are so unlike anything known in other collections of
folk-lore that they raise problems far reaching, and, I venture to
think, of the highest importance to the study of popular literature. We
are moving in a religious atmosphere. Many of the tales start, as it
were, from the beginning of creation. God, the Apostles, the Evil One
seem to take a hand in the work and to rejoice more or less in the
labour of their hands. We have, besides, animal fables pure and simple,
tales designed for enjoyment, tales of fancy in which the nimble and
small creatures outwit the burly and heavy ones. We have also fairy
tales like those known to us in the West and made familiar to us by
numerous collections. A prominent characteristic is the childlike
simplicity of all the stories, the absence of any dualistic element. No
“moral” has been tacked on to these tales, and probably
they were not even intended to teach one. The questions which the study
of folk-lore has raised, whether anthropological, psychological, or
historical will be raised with a renewed force. I shall endeavour,
however briefly, to deal with some of the problems in the light which
this collection of Rumanian tales is able to shed upon the study of
folk-lore. [2]
The anthropological, historical and psychological problems
underlying our studies must be attacked—I venture to
think—from a fresh point of view. The view I hold is that the
European nations form one spiritual unit, and that within that unit the
various degrees of development through which one or the other has
passed are still preserved. I believe that we must study the
manifestations of the human spirit from a geographical angle of vision,
that this development has spread directly from one group of men
to another, and that, before going to the extreme ends of the earth for
doubtful clues, we must first try to find them, and perhaps we shall
succeed in finding them more easily and satisfactorily, among some of
the European nations whose folk-lore has not yet been sufficiently
investigated. We can find in Europe various stages of
“culture,” and these we must trace by slow descent to the
lowest rung of the ladder. At a certain stage of our descent we may
strike the stratum of Asiatic folk-lore which may lead us further in
our comparative study. Let me give some practical examples of my
meaning. The relation between man and animal has been the subject of
numerous highly speculative but none the less extremely interesting and
acute investigations. We have had Totemism, we have had Animism and
many other explanations, which by their number became simply
bewildering. Students have gone to the Bushmen of Australia, and to the
Red Indians of America for parallels and explanations, or for proofs of
their highly ingenious theories. But are there no animal and bird
stories in Europe which would show us how, to this day, the people
understand the relations between man and other living creatures, what
views they hold of birds and beasts and insects? Are the animals
humanised—using the word in the sense of impersonating a human
being? Do the people see any fundamental difference between the created
things? In the fairy tale, at any rate, no such definite clear-cut
distinction between man and animal can be discerned.
But at the root of many anthropological myths the animal is only a
disguised human being. The worth of these [3]Rumanian stories—culled
as they are from the mouth of the people—is their ability to show
how to this very day the people look upon the animal world. Perhaps
another view will ultimately find its way among the students of
folk-lore. What I am anxious to emphasise is the fact that there are,
for the investigation of folk-lore students, mines of untold wealth
that have hitherto not been sufficiently worked.
These tales represent one or more of the earlier stages of European
folk-lore. The elements, not yet quite closely moulded together, allow
us at times to lay bare the sources and thus trace the inner history of
this part of folk-lore. The people are confronted by a world filled
with weird and mysterious animals, birds, insects, each with their own
peculiarities to invite question.
Almost everything that is not of daily occurrence excites the
people’s curiosity, and they ask for an explanation of it; where
does this or that animal come from, and why has it this or that
peculiarity in its habits, colours, form and other matters? They are
very grateful for instruction. But it must be of a kind adapted to
their understanding. It must be plausible, even if it puts some strain
on their imagination. The more wonderful and weird that explanation,
the more easily it is accepted by the people, and the more firmly is it
believed. This question of “belief” has often been raised
in connection with fairy tales. It is asked whether the people believe
in the existence of fairies, monsters, marvellous and wonder-working
animals, in short, in all the mechanism of the fairy tale.
To this an unhesitating answer can be given in so far as these
Rumanian tales and legends are concerned. They are believed in
implicitly. They form an integral part—I feel almost inclined to
say they form an exclusive part—of the popular religious beliefs
of the folk. The people are neither too squeamish, nor too sophistical
in their faith, nor do they enquire too closely into the dogmatic
character of such beliefs or into the sources from which they have
come. [4]
In the East too the people, as a rule, are good-natured, and a good
story remains a good story, whether told by a believer or an
infidel.
The study of these tales promises to exceed by far in interest the
study of mere “fairy tales.” We are moving in a spiritual
world, which appears to be much more primitive in the animal tale than
in the fairy tale. We are getting much nearer to the very soul of the
people, to its power of imagination and abstraction. We can see more
clearly the manner of its working.
The comparative study of fairy lore has led to the surprising
recognition of the world-wide range of these tales. In spite of
investigations carried on for close upon a century, no satisfactory
solution has yet been found which would explain the appearance of one
and the same fairy tale at such widely separate parts of the world as
India and England. Various answers have been advanced in order to
explain this surprising similarity. And the same problem arises here.
This collection of tales, as already mentioned, contains two groups.
The larger group consists of the legend or creation stories—in
which, however, one section contains fairy tales though used also as
creation stories—and the other group consists of fables pure and
simple. It would be unscientific, I hold, to treat these groups on one
plane as if they were all contemporary in their origin. They may
represent various degrees either of local evolution, and if so, that
may be found to be the best solution, or they may have come in various
stages of transmission. The theory of migration has been applied
hitherto to the fairy tale. I am not aware that the history of the
popular fable has been attempted, still less that of the creation
legends, which have remained almost unknown until quite recently. I
will deal with each of these groups as far as possible separately, and
the conclusions drawn from each group will afterwards be merged into
one final conclusion established by the fact of their actual presence
in Rumanian popular lore.
Migration, no doubt, offers the best solution of the riddle set by
the fairy tale. No one, unless he solves the riddle of [5]the heroine
in the fairy tale, can win her. But still the opinion of scholars is
divided. The mistake, I venture to think, has been that all the tales
called by this title, and even culled from the mouth of the people,
have been treated on one general principle, without recognising the
possibility that there may be divers layers, some older, some of a more
recent date. This probability seems to have been entirely overlooked.
That which holds good for one cycle need not hold equally good for
all the rest. But the question of the central origin of tales
must not be confused with that of their transmission. Thus a tale may
originate in India or Egypt, but once it has started on a journey of
its own it will be carried, chiefly by word of mouth, from country to
country. And as its structure is loose, a mere framework with a very
simple plot, it will assimilate other elements and undergo those
manifold changes, the investigation of which is the delight and despair
of the folk-lorist.
We are now faced by a new set of stories, some of which are mere
tales, while others are of a more legendary character. I class under
the latter heading all those in which the religious element stands out
prominently. They have assumed their actual form no doubt probably
under the powerful sway of some religious influence. The peculiar shade
of religious teaching which has moulded the actual form of these
legendary stories, and which is of decisive importance in our
investigation, will be discussed more fully later on, after we have
been able to dispose of other solutions offered by the explanation of
the origin of these tales. It will then be possible to approach the
question of the fairy tales from the coign of vantage gained.
Within this class of tales there are some in which the legendary
character is not so pronounced, where the tale is intended to explain
certain peculiarities of animals. These seem to be of so primitive a
character that the closest parallels can only be found among primitive
nations. Here a new problem sets in—the problem of origins. For
curiously enough a striking similarity cannot be denied to the
[6]Rumanian, Indian, African and possibly American
tales. But the similarity is only in the aim. The other nations ask
precisely the same questions about the animals with which they are
familiar, and they endeavour to give an answer to their query. The
parallelism is in the question. Are we, then, to treat these tales in
the same manner as the “fairy tales” and account for that
similarity in the same manner as that of fairy tales gathered from
distant regions? Or, in other words, have we here another set of tales
which have been carried chiefly by word of mouth from one country to
another? Are these stories also new witnesses to the process of
“migration”? And are we, then, to assume that this theory
of migration should be applied to these animal tales, as it has been to
the fairy tale? Or, are we to assume that the unity of the human soul
works on parallel lines in divers countries among divers nations not
otherwise connected with one another? If not, how is this similarity to
be explained? True, the parallelism between Rumanian and Indian tales
is not so close as it is between the “fairy tales.” For the
animals are often not the same. They are everywhere local beasts. This
change in the animals chosen may be due to different circumstances and
local assimilation. It is quite natural that for a tiger and jackal, a
wolf and a fox might have been substituted when the animal tale reached
Europe, for the tale had to be localised in order to preserve its
interest in a new atmosphere. One need not go very far to find the same
change taking place even in written literature. The jackals in the
frame story of the Panchatantra become “foxes” in Kalila Wa
Dimna in the European versions. Or, to take another example, in the
famous parable of the “man in the pit” in the Barlaam
Josaphat legend the furious elephant becomes a camel, however
incongruous the substitution may appear. If such changes could take
place in the written literature in which the incidents are fixed, how
much more easily could it take place when a story is carried only by
word of mouth? Then the substitution of a familiar animal for one
unknown would be quite natural. The people want to know the reason
[7]for the peculiarities of those animals that they
know. They are not likely to care much for unknown fauna. Unless those
other animals are of a purely mythical and fantastical character, and
as such appeal to the universal imagination, there is no room in
the popular mythology for animals of foreign countries.
If, then, we admit that these animal fables have been brought to
Europe in the same manner as the fairy tales, by means of oral
transmission, then they have preserved their original character and
their primitive form less modified than has happened in the case of the
fairy tale, for reasons which would have to be explained. The only
other suggestion is that these legends and animal tales are of a local
origin, the product of the poetical imagination of the Rumanian
peasant, and as such quite independent of any other source. If this is
not acceptable we must admit a continuous stream of popular tradition,
setting in at a time not yet determined and spreading from East to West
or from South to North, the direction of the stream having been
determined by the presumable centre of origin in Asia, before or
contemporary with the spread of the real fairy tales.
But, it might be argued, as has been also done in the case of the
fairy tales, that these stories are the product of individual efforts
of local myth-makers and popular poets, that they are purely indigenous
in origin. One cannot deny that the people could invent such stories.
Some one must have invented them, and why could they not have been
invented by the Rumanian peasant independently of the Indian story
teller?
The cosmogonic setting invalidates this suggestion. Such a setting
presupposes a definite set of ideas about the beginnings of things
which are neither spontaneous nor indigenous. All that can be said is
that, once the impulse had been given, the imagination of the people
followed the lead and worked in its own way on the given lines. This is
the general trend of real popular lore. Each nation mints in its own
fashion the gold brought from elsewhere, and places its own imprint
upon it. [8]
This view I find myself unable to accept. It could be entertained
only and solely if no parallels whatsoever could be found anywhere to
some at least of the more important and characteristic creation tales,
fairy tales and fables.
The question then remains, Where do these tales come from? Are they
indeed the expression of the primitive mind, and if so, have we to
recognise these specific Rumanian beast tales as so many indigenous
products of the primitive Rumanian mind?
Tylor, in his Primitive Culture (i. 3 ed. 410 ff.), discusses
at some length the beast tales found among primitive peoples, tales
that as yet are not the excuse for a moral and have not been reduced to
the background of an allegory. He takes his examples from the North
Indians of America, from the Kamtchadals of Kamtchatka and from the
inhabitants of Guinea. These stories are thus, as it were, the
primitive expression of the myth-making imagination of peoples in which
the animal stands in as close a relation as any human being. Be this as
it may, the conclusions drawn by Tylor rest on this evidence gathered
only from so-called dark ages. He is not aware of any such tales among
the nations of Europe, who certainly cannot be classed among the
primitive peoples. And on the other hand he is fully alive to the fact
that a number of such beast tales have been worked up in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries in the famous epic of Reynard the Fox.
The question arises, Whence came some of the incidents believed to
be more ancient? They lead us straight to the supposition that such
animal tales in a primitive form must have existed among the peoples of
Europe, even as far west as Flanders and France. They were afterwards
woven into one consecutive narrative, conceived in a spirit of satire
on existing social and clerical conditions. A “moral” has
thus been introduced into a set of more ancient tales. But of this
anon. In view of these Rumanian tales we can no longer be content to
leave the question of the compilation of Reynard where Tylor has
left it. The new materials now [9]at our disposal allow us to follow it
much further and to arrive at conclusions differing from those of
Tylor. From the moment that we find in Europe similar beast tales to
those found among primitive peoples in other parts of the world, we are
confronted by a new problem. We may recognise the same spiritual agency
at work: we may see the same action of the mind, asking everywhere for
an explanation of the phenomena from beast and bird, from sky and sea.
Thus far the minds of all the nations run on parallel lines. The
differentiation begins with the answer, and here, then, the problem
sets in. How many nations give the same answer, and in so doing form,
as it were, a group by themselves? How old is this or that answer or
the tale that contains it? And what is the form in which it is given?
Is it a fable or has it a religious colouring? In endeavouring to reply
to these queries we find ourselves face to face with the problems of
indigenous character, primitive origin, independent evolution and
question of survival. We are thus brought face to face with yet another
theory—the theory of survivals—the most important of all,
which sways the trend of the study of modern folk-lore. I must deal
with it here at some greater length. I mean, of course, the theory that
sees in every manifestation of the popular spirit, in every story, in
every ballad or song, a survival from hoary antiquity, a remnant of
prehistoric times, to which the people have clung with a marvellous
tenacity, although they have entirely forgotten its meaning. Out of an
unconscious antiquarian weakness they are supposed to have preserved
every fossil even if and when it had become burdensome to them. But it
must not be forgotten that the people retain only those practices and
beliefs by means of which they hope to obtain health, wealth and power,
and they will take care not to jeopardise such benefits by any neglect.
So long as these results are expected, the people will cling
tenaciously to the beliefs which promise them the greater gifts. It is
not impossible that such beliefs, being too deeply rooted, might
survive local political changes. [10]
But in order to survive, two conditions are essential, continuity of
place and continuity of ethnical unity. The religious continuity is
also an important condition, though not by any means so essential. The
clash of two or more religious doctrines causes on the one hand the
destruction of the official system of religious ceremonies and
practices, and on the other drives to the bottom that mass of
ceremonies from the observance of which benefits to health and wealth
are expected. In the moment when the belief in their efficacy has gone
they disappear without leaving a trace. Very little, if anything,
survives. It is a fallacy to believe, as is now the fashion, that
without such continuity any real survival can take place. This theory
has been carried to extreme lengths, without the slightest
justification. It all rests on finely spun hypotheses in which time and
space have entirely disappeared.
No connecting link has been brought forward to bind the present to
the past. However plausible some aspects of the “vegetation
god” may appear, one must remember the essential fact, that there
is now not a single nation in Europe living on the soil where such
practices as the slaying of an annual king god has been practised, if,
indeed, they have ever been practised, beyond a very strictly limited
area in Asia Minor and possibly in Sicily or Italy. With whom could
such practices survive, for example, in Bulgaria or even in Thrace? It
is known that the population there has changed its character many
times, even within the last eight hundred years. There is such a medley
of races, some old, some new, that it would be impossible to expect
survivals from the Pelasgian or Dacian past. Nor would they have
anything in common. The Rumanians of Latin origin are certainly not the
oldest inhabitants of Rumania. If, then, each of these ethnical unities
had separate practices or, to come nearer to our subject, separate
tales and stories marked with its own individuality, it might perhaps
be argued that these stories and popular beliefs are survivals from
prehistoric times, remnants of a past long forgotten, embodying a
folk-lore and popular psychology which date back to remote antiquity.
[11]None of these nations, and, in fact, none of the
modern nations of Europe, reach back to any extreme antiquity, nor are
they homogeneous in their ethnical character nor the descendants of the
autochthonous inhabitants. There may be a few rare strains of other
blood in the modern admixture, but not of any decisive character,
certainly it is not strong enough to have preserved any survivals.
True, many of the modern practices are no more of yesterday than
these tales and stories are, but again, they are certainly not so old
as a modern school of thought endeavours to make out. Comparatively
modern nations, often alien to the soil which they inhabit, none of
them of a pure unmixed origin, cannot have retained beliefs, tales,
etc., of which their forefathers knew nothing. They could not have laid
stress on things which had disappeared with the nations whom their
successors or victors had destroyed. If, then, we find that these
nations of diverse origins and of diverse times possess a certain stock
of folk-lore in common, it follows naturally that they must have
obtained it in common at a certain definite period, when in spite of
their ethnical and possibly political differences they were all
subjected together to one pervading influence. A great spiritual force
moulded them at one and the same time, and this produced one common
result, which, in spite of its genetic unity, would have allowed a
certain latitude for individual development. If, as I assume, it was
the all-pervading influence of religious sects which stretched from far
East to extreme West and embraced all the cultured nations of Europe,
impressing them with the same seal—a certain popularly modified
Christianity embellished with legends and tales appealing to the
imagination, containing a strong didactic and ethical strain,
propounding a new solution of the world’s problem suited to the
understanding of the people, accounting satisfactorily for the evil in
the world, warding off the effects of these spirits of evil—then
it is small wonder that their teaching sunk deeper into the heart of
the people and brought about that surprising spiritual unification in
the religion of the masses which survives in folk-lore. [12]
They would thus date from more or less the same period, when the
whole of Europe felt the influence of teachings which lasted two to
three centuries at least, quite long enough to leave indelible
traces.
It is not to be denied that among these tales some may belong to an
anterior period. The newer facts had in some cases been grafted on
older ones. Some remnants of ancient myths had survived the first
process of forcible Christianisation. But only there where ancient
paganism can be shown to have flourished when this new wave of
proselytism set in, only there might one be able to discover such
traces. These are the local incidents, the local colouring, which give
to each tale its own popular character without changing its substance.
Such process of assimilation is akin to the other before mentioned,
viz. the substitution of the European fauna for Asiatic or Indian
animals. Though references to ancient Greek myths occur in these
stories, yet in spite of that the Rumanian versions approximate more
closely to the later Byzantine than the ancient classical forms. The
transformation sets in practically where the Middle Ages part from
antiquity. Here is yet another proof for the more recent phase of this
popular literature.
A grave danger threatens the scientific character of folk-lore, if a
wrong method of investigation be persisted in much longer. I refer to
the system of haphazard comparisons arising out of the view that
everything done and every rite kept by the folk must of necessity be a
survival from extreme antiquity and belong to a period anterior to our
modern civilization—a fossil from the age of man’s
childhood embedded in layers of more recent date. For proof of this
theory parallels are sought and found among primitive nations, or those
who we believe have not yet left the rude stage of primitive culture.
If, then, something is found among them which resembles closely or
remotely any of the customs, tales, and beliefs, in our own midst, we
are convinced that these customs, tales or beliefs are really remnants
of an older stage, through which the modern nations have passed before
they reached the present [13]stage of development, and which they
have cherished and kept unchanged throughout the ages. The history of
comparative philology offers the best analogy for the demonstration of
the futility of such reasoning. Nothing contributed so much to make the
study of comparative philology a laughing-stock as this endeavour to
build up theories of the origin of the language on such arbitrary
foundations.
How deceptive such haphazard similarities can be is best
demonstrated by the endeavours to derive all the European languages
from the Hebrew. This was believed to have been the original language
which Adam spoke. Nothing more natural, then, than to trace all the
languages back to the Hebrew, which moreover was a holy language. Much
ingenuity and immense learning were spent—nay wasted—for
centuries in this undertaking. The most trifling incident, the most
superficial identity in sound or meaning was looked upon as complete
evidence. It has taken close upon half a century to demolish this
fabric of philological fallacy, and to place comparative philology on a
sound basis. We know now that similarities in different languages may
be the result of independent evolution.
The similarities are often quite superficial. No one would, for
example, compare a modern English word with an old Latin or Greek stem
or with any archaic dialect of these languages, without showing the
gradual development of our modern word. He would take it back step by
step, and then compare the oldest English form with a contemporary
form. Most of the European languages, as we now see, are derived from
one common stock, more archaic than any of them. No one would now trace
a French word directly to that old Indo-European root, without going
first to the Latin; and so with every other language belonging to the
same group. Each nation has put the seal of its own individuality on
its language, which it has moulded and shaped according to its own
physiological and psychical faculties. The one will have retained more
primitive forms; for example, local and historical as well as ethnical
continuity have kept the Italian much closer [14]to the
Latin than Spanish or Portuguese. No one dreams to-day of reducing a
French word to a Hebrew root, despite any similarity of form which they
might have in common.
We can go now one step further and suggest a common origin for the
Indo-European and Semitic groups of languages, a unity which lies
beyond the time of their separation, and it is the dream and aim of
comparative philology to attain this goal.
Returning now to our science of folk-lore, we have a perfect analogy
in the study of comparative philology briefly sketched above. The
analogy is so complete that it is almost unnecessary to elaborate it in
detail. It is obvious that safety and scholarship lie in the following
line of investigation. A European group of folk-lore must first be
established, and the dependence on an earlier common stock
demonstrated. But the historical connection stands foremost, and the
fixing, more or less definitely, of the time of its appearance in the
form in which it now exists. In adopting this line of investigation, it
will then become unscientific to postulate early survivals for elements
that may date from a comparatively recent period, and for which an
explanation can be found by this historical and comparative study. And
just as it has happened in the case of the study of comparative
philology, so it will happen that we shall be in a much better position
to separate and to appreciate the individual character of the folk-lore
of each nation, the form which the common stock assumes under the
psychical and cultural conditions which characterise its spiritual
life. This method will give us also the key to the ethno-psychology,
the ultimate aim and goal of folk-lore studies. No doubt some higher
unity may possibly emerge out of this historical investigation, for
which again the study of comparative philology offers us the best
parallel. Separate groups may be formed of European and Asiatic
folk-lore. The artificial geographical division need not form the
separating barrier either in folk-lore, or, as has been proved, in the
study of language. But to continue the method of haphazard parallelism
and indiscriminate comparison [15]between old and new will be
indefensible. It will be found that even in the so-called immutable
East continual changes have taken place which do not allow us to assume
favourable conditions of continuity and “survivals.” Still
less is this the case with the peoples who concern us more directly,
the inhabitants of the south-eastern part of Europe. One has only to
cast a glance at the medley of nationalities inhabiting the Balkan
Peninsula and the neighbourhood to realise the profound differences of
faith, origin and language of Greeks and Albanians, Slavs and
Rumanians, Hungarians and Saxons, and one is forced to the conclusion
that whatever these may possess in common is not a survival from olden
times, but must have come to them at a time when they were all living
together in that part of Europe, subject to one common influence strong
enough to leave an indelible impression on their imagination.
This result is unavoidable if we remember also the past history of
these countries. They have been swept over by nations, one more
barbarous than another, one more ruthless than another, and none
remaining there long enough to become a decisive factor in the
formation of the existing nationalities. Dacians and Pelasgians, Romans
and Goths, Petchenegs and Cumans, Alans and Huns, Tartars and
Hungarians, Bulgars, Slavs and Turks have succeeded one another with
great rapidity, not to mention the numerous colonies of Armenians,
Syrians and Gipsies planted in the heart of the Byzantine Empire by the
foreign rulers on the throne of Byzantium. It would be a sheer miracle
if anything of ancient times could have survived. Assuming even the
theoretical possibility of such a miracle—and those who hold
strongly to such a theory of unqualified survivals evidently do believe
in such miracles—even then it will remain to be shown, with whom
these ancient beliefs and tales originated and survived. The romantic
legend may have, and practically has, been forgotten in its entirety.
Out of one of the episodes have grown the popular Rumanian poems of the
Wanderer. [16]
If folk-lore is to become an exact science I venture to think that
the problem of survivals will have to undergo a serious re-examination.
We shall have to revise our views and try to define more precisely the
method according to which we ought to label certain practices, customs
and tales as survivals, and also to determine the period to which such
survivals may be ascribed. A primary condition consists in establishing
historical continuity and ethnical unity.
If nations of diverse origin and of different ages possess the same
tales and practices, it follows that this common property cannot be a
survival, but each must have received all these at a certain fixed date
simultaneously, quite independent of their own ethnical or historical
and local past. All of them must have been standing under one and the
same levelling influence. This new influence may have brought with it
some older elements belonging to different traditions and to a
different past, and introduced them among these nations, as in the case
of the Barlaam legend or that of the legend of St. George and the
Dragon; but though locally accepted and assimilated they are not
original constituent elements of the local folk-lore of these nations.
These were only adopted and assimilated materials brought from
elsewhere. They are not local survivals.
The analogy between the study of folk-lore and that of comparative
philology can be pursued profitably much further. It may prove of
decisive importance. It is not an indifferent question as to whether
language and ethnic character are interchangeable terms. Russified
Tartars, Magyarised Rumanians, Anglicised Hindoos will speak Russian,
Hungarian or English as the case may be, but this will not change their
ethnical character. They will remain what they were: Tartars, Rumanians
or Hindoos. Thus also nothing can be proved for the specific origins of
folk-lore if found among any one of these nations; it may be just as
much Tartar as Russian, Rumanian or Hungarian, etc., for it can easily
have been taken over with the language.
The fact that these tales are found in Rumania and are told by
Rumanian peasants is in itself not yet sufficient proof of [17]their
indigenous origin. We are taken out of the region of hypothetical
speculation into that of concrete facts by modern philology. In the
first place, it is put on record, on the irrefutable evidence of the
modern languages themselves, that there is no nation in Europe which
speaks a language of its own so pure as to be free from admixture with
foreign elements. All owe their very origin, in fact, to this clash of
languages, which was the determining factor in their creation and form.
English is typical in that respect in the west, and Rumanian in the
east of Europe. Both languages have been born through the combined
forces of at least two different languages. In England, through the
violent Norman conquest, French was superimposed upon Anglo-Saxon. In
Rumania, through peaceful penetration and religious influence, Slavonic
became part of the Rumanian language.
If, then, we should examine each of the European languages to find
the various elements of which they are composed, we should be able to
trace the origin of much that is also the spiritual property of these
nations. Every word borrowed from another language represents a new
idea, a fresh notion taken from elsewhere and embodied. We can study
the history of nations from their vocabulary. We can trace the
migrations of the Gipsies by the foreign words now in their language.
The proportion of these alien elements helps us to determine the period
which elapsed since they went from one nation to another. The large
number of Rumanian words in the Gipsy language shows that the Gipsies
must have lived a long time peaceably among the Rumanians, and the
Rumanian words in all the dialects of the Gipsy, from Spain to Siberia,
are conclusive evidence for the fact that Rumania was a centre of
diffusion for the European Gipsy. And yet step by step one can follow
up a modification; small at the confines of the Balkans, it grows
greater the further it is carried westwards.
The conclusion is obvious. In Rumanian, the language is
preponderantly of a Latin origin, but other tongues come in to make up
its present character. A comparatively large [18]proportion of the popular language—which
alone is of importance—is Slavonic; then follow in decreasing
proportions Hungarian, modern Greek, Turkish and Albanian elements, but
scarcely any trace of a more ancient local language. In the Hungarian
language there is a large proportion of Slavonic, then of Rumanian and
German elements. The other languages of the Balkans show a similar
mixture of heterogeneous influences. So thorough has been this process
of assimilation that the original Tartarian language of the Bulgars,
who hailed from the Volga—hence their name—has entirely
disappeared. The same has happened with the Cumans in Hungary. If there
is anything tenacious it is undoubtedly the human language, the means
of satisfying one’s daily wants. And yet there is constant change
and assimilation going on all the time, one nation borrows freely from
its neighbour and enriches its own treasury with the possessions of the
others. How easily, then, could a philologist of the eighteenth
century, who wanted to compare these languages among themselves, by
collecting similar words haphazard prove that Rumanian was Turkish,
that Hungarian was Slavonic and that Bulgarian was Greek, or on finding
some Albanian words in Rumanian and Bulgarian how easily could he
declare these languages to be survivals of the ancient mythical
Pelasgians with whom the Albanians were connected. Thanks to our modern
comparative science these languages are placed on their proper basis,
and the words and elements are sifted and separated from one another.
Each one by the form in which it appears in the other languages yields
to the scholar the secret of the time when it was adopted. Having got
thus far, we may now apply these results to the question which is
before us, viz. the origin of these tales and apologues.
It is obvious that where new words went, stories could also go, and
very likely did go. It is clear that the presence of a large number of
foreign elements in the language denotes a peaceful intercourse between
these nations, long enough and intimate enough to make them borrow
freely from one another and to become fixed into one spiritual unity.
[19]
If a language contains a large number of foreign elements, no one
can deny the direct influence which the latter has exercised upon the
former. Words, then, are not a mere combination of sounds, they are the
outward expression of the mind. They are the materialised spirit of the
nation, and whither they go that spirit also goes. Spirit communes thus
with spirit. There is and there has always been such a give and take.
And it is for us to follow up this constant barter, in which the richer
unhesitatingly parted with their treasures to the poor, for the more
they gave the more was left with them, as is meet in the charmed realm
of folk-lore.
These nations learn from one another not only words, but the
thoughts and ideas expressed in words. The proportion of these
linguistic elements in the vocabulary connotes the proportion of
influence upon the other people. It must not be forgotten that we are
dealing with illiterate nations, and with “oral”
literature. It takes less time and it requires less influence to
disseminate a tale than to disseminate a language and cause it to be
acquired. The difficulty of borrowing is thus obviously eliminated. We
have the fact that even the language had been borrowed and thoroughly
assimilated. No archaic linguistic element has been found in these
languages. And it is therefore not possible to postulate for the tales
and apologues survivals of such antiquity as is now so often
assumed.
Two more points stand out clearly from this investigation into the
history of the language: First, the existence of numerous layers in the
modern languages, some elements being older, others of a more recent
origin. There is no uniformity either in language or in literature, no
contemporary unity of all the elements, but as far as can be seen none
are very old, except a few stray elements of an older period which may
have survived, always subject to the two fundamental conditions,
ethnical and geographical continuity.
The second point is the principle of concentric investigation. If
tales and apologues are borrowed, then those nearest the centre will
preserve the original form less changed; and the [20]further
a tale travels—always by word of mouth—the more it will
lose of its original character and the more it will become mixed up and
contaminated with other tales which have undergone a similar emaciating
and attenuating process.
Following up, then, this line of investigation, our first endeavour
is to find out whether there are parallels to these Rumanian animal
tales among the nations round about, and if so, how far they agree with
the Rumanian, and how far they differ. The fact itself that parallels
exist would be an additional proof that we are dealing here with matter
introduced from elsewhere, matter that has been transmitted from nation
to nation and possibly may have also reached the west of Europe,
although very few traces have been preserved to this day. This is not
yet a question of origin, but the next step towards the solution of the
problem. For obviously, if these tales had been imported, their origin
must be sought elsewhere. If we then compare Rumanian tales with those
of the ancient Byzantine Empire and especially with those of the modern
Greeks, then, in our case, it might be argued that the Greeks were the
repositories of ancient folk-lore. The logical conclusion would be that
these tales must be found most profusely and in a more archaic form in
the folk-lore of modern Greece, and that the variants and parallels
among the other nations must show a distinct falling away from the
original types. Literary tradition or written folk-lore is, of course,
excluded from this investigation, for once folk-lore becomes fixed by
being written in a book it is no longer subject to any appreciable
change.
We are dealing here exclusively with the oral folk-lore of
illiterate peoples. The relation between written and oral folk-lore and
the mutual influence of one upon another will be incidentally touched
upon in connection with the tales themselves. But, curiously enough, a
comparison of these stories with the known and published tales of
modern Greece is thoroughly disappointing. Only very few bird
tales—no insect or beast tales—seem to have been preserved,
and these mostly in Macedonia, the population of which is
overwhelmingly [21]Slavonic, but scarcely any from among the Greeks
proper inhabiting European Greece. On the other hand, those few tales,
which have been mentioned by Abbott and Hahn, are very significant.
They show the profound difference which separates these modern bird
tales from the “Metamorphoses” known in ancient Greek
mythology. A goodly number of changes into animals are recorded in
ancient Greek literature.—The story of Philomela and Halcyon is
sufficiently well known.—All these are, with perhaps a few
exceptions, the results of the wrath of an offended god, rewards for
acts of personal kindness or for steps taken to assuage physical pain.
They are all strictly individual in character, and while none of them
is intended to explain the origin of bird, beast or insect, still less
are they of the “creation” type, in which each animal
stands as the beginning of its species. And even in those few tales in
which supernatural beings are mentioned, very little of the
“Moirai” or goddesses of fate appears in the Greek form,
though the belief in them is now very strong among modern Greeks. Even
then these “Moirai” differ considerably from those of
ancient Greek mythology. Their attributes differ and their appearance
and shape have nothing in common with those of classical antiquity. The
name also has assumed a peculiar significance, different from that of
ancient times. This, then, is all which the modern Greeks have retained
of the ancient goddesses of fate; none of the other neighbouring
nations knows the “Moirai” by name. They have other
goddesses of fate, Vilas or Zanas, etc. Charon, who is now the angel of
death among modern Greeks, is remembered by them also as the boatman
who carries the souls over the waters of forgetfulness. The boatman
alone may still be found in one tale or another retaining something of
the Greek local colour. But no other direct parallels are found among
the animal tales of modern Greece. Much greater, on the contrary, is
the approximation with the Slavonic nations south and north of
Rumania.
Turning, then, from the Greek to the Slavonic tales, we shall find a
much larger number of parallels between them and the [22]Rumanian. In the collection of South Slavonic
tales and fables published by Krauss only one or two real
“creation” tales are found, and others are pure and simple
animal tales of the type of the “Gnat and the Lion,”
“The Wedding Feast of Tom,” etc., agreeing more or less
with the Rumanian versions. They prove thereby the popular character of
the Rumanian tales; yet they differ sufficiently from them—as is
shown later on,—when they are quoted in connection with the
above. One of the creation stories is that of the sheep which,
according to the South Slavonic tale, was made by the Evil One, when he
boasted that he could improve on God’s creation.
Incidentally I may mention the collection of tales from the Saxon
colony in Transylvania, collected by Haltrich. There is not one single
“creation” tale among them. Only two of the Rumanian animal
fables find their parallels in that collection. Turning to the Russian
tales, notably the great collection of Afanasiev, we shall find a large
number of animal tales, including also a number of
“creation” tales. In the former the central figures are, as
in the South Slavonic, Rumanian, Saxon, etc., the fox, the bear, the
wolf, the hedgehog and sometimes domestic animals, the dog, the cock,
the hen, the duck, etc. The same can be said also of tales collected
from the Lithuanians, Letts and Ruthenians, and to a smaller degree of
those from the Poles and Czechs. All, however, have retained definite
traces of such animal tales and legends. The animal character has been
thoroughly preserved. The fox is generally the “clever”
animal, but is, as often as not, outwitted by smaller animals or by
man. The general trend of these animal tales is to pit the cunning of
the smaller and weaker against that of the more powerful animal and to
secure the victory for the former. It is so natural for the people, who
live under the despotism of the mighty and powerful, to rejoice in
seeing the discomfiture of the great and stupid brought about by the
wit and cunning of the small and despised, and answers so aptly to
their feelings.
In these tales, which belong to the group of animal fables, we are
in a different atmosphere, far removed from that of the [23]creation
legend. We are approaching that phase in the evolution in which the
animal stands for a disguised human being, which, in spite of its
appellation, speaks and acts entirely in accordance with human ways and
notions. These have not yet been found among the Rumanians and those
nations whose folk-lore shows close affinity with theirs.
Having thus far established that these animal tales, fables and
creation legends are neither of a local nor an indigenous origin, nor
survivals from a remote past, and also that the Rumanian tales do not
stand isolated, but form part of a group of tales and legends common to
most of the nations surrounding Rumania in a more or less complete
degree, it behoves us to endeavour to trace these tales to their
probable origin, and also to account for the shape which they have
assumed, as shown in the course of this investigation. These tales
among the Eastern nations of Europe are so much akin to one another
that they must have reached these nations almost simultaneously. All
must have stood under the same influence, which must have been powerful
and lasting enough to leave such indelible traces in the belief and in
the imagination of the people.
A great difficulty arises, when we attempt to define the influence
which brought these stories and fables to the nations of the near East
and thence to the West. Some have connected them with the invasion of
the Mongols. If similar tales could be found among them, such a date
might fit also the introduction of the animal tales into Eastern
Europe, especially if they had originally a Buddhist background.
Nothing, in fact, could apparently harmonise better with the Buddhist
teaching of Metempsychosis and the principle of man’s
transformation into beast in order to expiate for sins committed than
some of these tales.—Of course, Egyptian influences cannot be
overlooked in this connection. I may refer to them later on.—The
burden of the majority is indeed that the birds and insects are, in
fact, nothing else than human beings transformed into ungainly shapes
for some wrong which they have done. [24]
Many theories have been put forward on the mediation, among them
also the theory of transmission by the Gipsies. These came first to
Thrace, and lived long enough among the nations of the Balkans, in
Rumania and Russia, to have exercised a possible influence upon them.
But this theory can be dismissed briefly. The Gipsies are not likely
carriers of folk-tales. They came too late, and their march through
Europe is nothing if not a long-drawn agony of suspicion, hatred,
persecution.
Some occult practices may have been taken over by some adepts of the
lower forms of magic, and possibly Playing Cards, originally an oracle
of divining the future, may have been brought by the Gipsies to Europe,
but popular tales, though they possess a good number, have certainly
not been communicated to Europe by them. They never had the favourable
occasion for meeting the people on a footing of equality, or of
entering with them into any intimate intercourse.
The Gipsy of the Rumanian fairy tale is mostly a villain, and is
merely the local substitute for the Arab or Negro of the Eastern
parallels. In the Rumanian popular jests the Gipsy is always the fool.
From such as these the people would have nothing to learn.
Next the Mongolian theory has long been put forward as a plausible
explanation, for it has been believed that Russia formed one of the
channels of transmission. This latter assumption, however, rests on a
geographical misconception, and also on a want of historical knowledge.
Up to comparatively modern times, the whole of the South of Russia was
inhabited by Tartars, and the Mongolian influence upon Russia could not
pass the border of the so-called White Russia. Nor can a temporary
invasion of Europe by the Mongolians, who left ruin and desolation
behind them, have been the means by which such tales could be
introduced. They are told at the peaceful fireside or in the
spinning-rooms, and are not carried by the wings of the arrow sped from
the enemy’s bow, nor are they accepted if presented on the point
of the sword. They [25]are frightened away by the din of battle.
Years must pass ere the blood is staunched, the wounds healed, and only
after peaceable concord and social harmony have been established, can a
spiritual interchange take place; this was impossible between Russians
or Mongols. We must look elsewhere, then, for a possible channel of
transmission, always subject to the theory of
“migration.”
Besides, to Kieff, the centre of Russian inspiration, the place
hallowed by the minstrels and poets, the Mongols never came. The only
influence which prevailed there was that of Byzance, and to that we
shall have to look as the channel of transmission and the centre of
dissemination of these tales and legends. These had come from Asia,
carried on the crest of the wave of that religious movement known as
Manichaeism and Bogomilism, and from there they started their
triumphant course throughout Europe. They came along with other
religious legends, carried by the current of thought which also taught
the doctrine of Dualism and Metempsychosis. This is the only possible
source for most of the legends and tales found among the Rumanians and
Slavs, and, as will be seen, it must have been the primary source for
such tales in the West of Europe.
A dualistic heterodox teaching with such a background reached from
the confines of India far into the South of France across central
Europe. It was probably the same agency which transformed the life of
Buddha into the legends of the saints Barlaam and Josaphat.
Nor is this the only legend invented, manipulated and circulated by
the numerous Gnostic sects. Those who have studied the history of the
apocryphal literature are fully aware of the apocryphal Gospels, Acts
of the Apostles and of the rest of the apocryphal tales which were
already put on the “Index,” in the first centuries of the
common era.
Some of the cosmogonic tales of the dualistic origin of the world,
of the influence of the Evil Spirit, of the origin of the Bee, the
Glow-worm, the Wolf and others show unmistakably such a Gnostic origin.
[26]
It is therefore not too much to assume that they have been brought
to Europe and disseminated by the same agency. These sectaries alone
came into direct contact with the masses of the people. They preached
their doctrines to the lowly and the poor. They were known themselves
as the pure (Cathars) and the poor (Pobres). They alone
reached the heart of the people, and were able to influence them to a
far higher degree than the murderous Mongols, or other nations that
ravaged the country.
The dualistic tales connected with the story of the Creation are
found also among other nations, especially among those in Russia and in
the countries which belonged to the ancient Persian Empire.
Dähnhardt, who has made the investigation of such legends and
tales the object of special study (Natursagen, i.;
Berlin 1907), comes to the same conclusion that they rest ultimately on
the Iranian dualism of the Avesta. He believes that Zoroastrian
teaching has penetrated far into the North and West, and has produced
these peculiar dualistic cosmogonic legends.
The point to bear in mind in this investigation of the origin of the
Rumanian tales and legends is not so much to trace the remote possible
source of dualism, but the immediate influences which have been brought
to bear upon the shape which these legends have taken. This is the
salient problem. Dähnhardt, of course, discusses the further
development of the dualistic conception, through Manichaeism and
Bogomilism, and thus far is helpful in establishing the connection
between Iran and Thrace, and in strengthening the argument that we must
trace a number of these “creation” legends to the
propaganda of these sects.
It must be remembered that these tales in the European versions have
a thoroughly Christian aspect. They presuppose the existence of God and
His saints; nay, they show a close acquaintance with apocryphal
narratives, which have gathered round the canonical biblical stories
and episodes. The Evil Spirit is a clearly-defined personality, and his
antagonism to God is not of the pronounced acute controversial
[27]type as is the Angromainya who, in the teaching of
the Avesta, is the direct opponent and almost negative of God.
A complete transformation had taken place ere these tales became the
property of the Rumanian peasants, and for that, also, of the Russian
and other North-Eastern peoples, who also have similar tales akin to
certain of the cosmogonic legends—to which reference will be made
at the proper place in the short notes to the stories themselves. It
will not be disputed that some of them are imported, i.e. belong
to the circulating stock of popular literature. Mongolian
influence—as already remarked above—is entirely excluded,
in spite of Dähnhardt. The Mongols never came in direct contact
either with the Rumanians or with the nations of the Balkans, who also
possess a number of similar tales, and must have derived them from
another source, more direct and, as will be seen, more complete than
the versions published by Dähnhardt from Russia, Lithuania,
Finland and Esthonia, not to speak of Northern Asiatic nations. Of real
animal tales there are only a few among those studied by
Dähnhardt, such as a peculiar version of “the Bee and
Creation,” very much shorter than the Rumanian version; then a
version of the creation of the Wolf and the Lamb, and of the
Goat’s knees. These are all taken by Dähnhardt from
South-Slavonic and Albanian collections, again corroborating the view
that we have to look to the Balkans as the immediate centre of this
class of “creation” tales, and then further back to Asia
Minor.
The appearance of the “Creation” legends in a
compilation of the seventh or eighth century is not to be taken as the
date of their origin. They may be very much older, and no doubt are,
and may have formed part of a primitive Physiologus in which the origin
as well as the peculiarities of the various birds and beasts were
described. This is not the place to discuss the remarkable history of
the Physiologus. The only point to be noted is that the symbolical and
allegorical interpretation of the tales contained in the Physiologus is
of a strictly religious Christian character. [28]
The absence from the popular literature of such bird and beast tales
as are found in the Physiologus—the Bestiaires of the
West—is not surprising, for the Physiologus deals mostly with
animals and birds which are of an outlandish character. Very few have
any reference to the animals with which the people are familiar, and in
which alone they take an interest.
Though the book was known also among the Rumanians, only a faint
trace of it could be detected among the popular tales in the present
collection. The oldest Fathers of the Church made use of this
Physiologus in their homilies, and the other sects have no doubt done
the same. Some of the creation legends may have found their way into
the old legendary homiletical interpretation of the creation, like the
Hexameron of Basil, and other kindred compilations. All these tales
form part of a wider cycle of allegorised animal fables. In Jewish
literature a collection of Fox fables is mentioned as early as the
second or third century.
Indian literature is full of such animal tales, approximating often
to some of the Rumanian fables. The collections of Frere, Temple,
Steele, Skeat, and Parker abound in such animal tales, in which the
more nimble and quick-witted, though small and weak, animal regularly
gets the best of the bigger and stronger, yet duller and slower rival.
No moral lesson is squeezed out of the tales, and the animal is not a
thinly-disguised human being. Yet there can be no greater fallacy than,
guided by this similarity, to assume a direct Indian origin for the
Rumanian fables.
None of these animal tales finish with the usual
“moral,” known to us from Aesop onward. Nor do the people
seem to be influenced by these artificial fables. In the literary
European fable the animal is merely a disguised human being. The
animals are performing acts which have nothing of the animal in them.
The Indian and Oriental fable differs in this respect from the
European, inasmuch as in a good number of them the animal character of
the performing beasts is faithfully preserved. Exactly the same happens
with the Rumanian animal fables. The cat [29]does not play the
rôle of the queen, and the fox is not a sly courtier. Cat is cat,
and fox is fox. And yet they were not unaware of the fables of Aesop. I
have found these fables in many old Rumanian manuscripts, and one of
the first printed popular books of the country was the Collection of
Aesop.
Unquestionably a good many proverbs are intimately connected with
tales. The “moral” in Aesop has often dwindled down to a
simple proverb, or has expanded out of it. These proverbs are, as it
were, succinct conclusions drawn out by the people. Anton Pann (in the
middle of the last century)—to whom the Rumanian popular
literature will for ever remain indebted—therefore calls his
Collection of Proverbs and Tales “Povestea
vorbii,” i.e. “The tale which hangs by the
Proverb.” One and all of the hundred tales found in the second
and last edition of this book are mostly of a purely popular origin.
The process throughout is not to invent a story for the moral, but the
“moral,” such as it is, is to flow naturally from the
story.
This is not the place to discuss the origin of the animal fable in
general. But one cannot overlook the fact that all the Indian
fables—with the exception of some embodied in the
Panchatantra—are found in modern collections. All that we know of
them is that they live actually in the mouth of the modern people. They
may be old, they may be of more recent date.
Against these modern collections must be set now the story of
Ahikar, which carries us back at least to the fifth century
B.C., and is thus far the oldest record of
animal tales. It has become one of the popular stories which circulated
in a written form, and became the source of many a quaint proverb, as
probably also of some animal tales.
The recent discovery among the Papyri of Elephantine in Southern
Egypt of the Story of Ahikar has carried back the knowledge of
allegorical beast fables to at least the fifth century B.C. For not only do we find in that story the prototype of
the life of Aesop, but also a number of maxims [30]and
saws, and not a few beast tales, which are mentioned by Ahikar in order
to teach his ungrateful nephew Nadan. We find there, e.g. the
prototype of “pious” wolf, who appears in the Ahikar story
as an innocent student, but who cannot take in the lesson given to him,
his mind wandering to the sheep. There are other wolf, fox, rat and
bird fables in the Rumanian and, still more so, in the Oriental and
other versions. Ahikar himself relates the beast tales, allowing Nadan
to draw the lesson. By the manner in which these tales are referred to,
it is obvious that they must have been well known tales current among
the people.
The real importance of this discovery lies in the fact that we have
here a number of cleverly-used popular animal tales, more than two
thousand years old, whose home was in all probability Syria or Egypt,
embedded in a collection which has deeply influenced the apocryphal
Book of Tobit, and to a certain degree even the writers of the New
Testament, as shown by Professors Rendel Harris and Conybeare in the
Introduction to their edition of the Story of Ahikar (second
edition). The claim for an Indian origin of these fables will have to
be abandoned, unless someone could show older writings from India, and
the possible road by which these fables could have reached the Western
shore of Asia Minor and been taken up by the peoples of Syria and Egypt
at such an early date. It is not at all unlikely that some of the
fables, just as they travelled westwards, also travelled eastwards and
found a home in India as they found a home in Rumania and Russia. If
one remembers now that the fabulous “Life” of Aesop
ascribed to Planudes is almost identical with part of that of Ahikar,
as I have shown, as far back as 1883 in my History of the Rumanian
Popular Literature (Bucharest 1883, p. 104 ff.), it will not be
difficult to account for the West-Asiatic origin of the fables
themselves.
From a Rumanian MS. of the eighteenth century, I have since
published the fuller narrative of that version in an English
translation (the Journal of the Royal As. Soc., 1900, pp.
301–319). The two tales contained therein have also been
[31]reprinted here at the end of the collection,
especially as they vary somewhat from the other ancient and
mediæval recensions of the Story of Ahikar. This story has become
one of the Rumanian popular chap-books in the shortened version of
Anton Pann. The practical application of the fable, the
“moralisation,” is a second stage, limited, as it seems, to
the purely literary composition. The people put their own
interpretations upon the fables and often dispensed with any such
interpretations.
We are brought back again to the same centre, Syria and Byzance, for
the dissemination of these fables. Such tales were then within the
reach of the teaching of the various sects, such as Manichaeans,
Bogomils, Cathars, etc., and travelled with them from East to West,
where they met the other current of the Aesopian fables transmitted to
the West through Latin and Arabic sources. According to this theory the
religious sectarians made deft use also of animal tales, for the
purpose of inculcating a moral, of drawing a lesson, of holding up the
Church and State to the ridicule and contempt of the masses, and thus
creating the animal satire, the best type of which is the cycle of
Reynard the Fox. I am not oblivious of the fact that an
allegorical use has been made of animal tales in the Arabic literature,
such as the “Judgment of the Animals,” under the title of
Hai ben Yokdhan, written in Arabic by Ibn Tophail, translated
into English by Simon Ockley in 1711, in which the lion holds a court,
and animal after animal appears to accuse man; or the collection of
Sahula (thirteenth cent.) in his ancient apologue Mashal
ha-kadmoni. But there is no real connection between this cycle and
that of Reynard the Fox.
Any reference to the epic of Reynard the Fox must be
incidental. It can only be alluded to here, and not followed up in
detail. A real Western origin for these tales, taking them separately
or as “branches,” as they appear in the old French
versions, has not been found, nor any explanation for their sudden
appearance in the eleventh or twelfth century. [32]
There are two or three points in connection with this cycle which
have to be kept steadily in view. In the first place its almost
complete independence of the purely Aesopian fable with its polished
form, with its thinly-disguised human attributes, and with its stilted
and stiff “moral.” Though modified somehow in Babrius,
Avianus, even Marie de France and Berachya, this latter cycle belongs
more to the literary class. The “clerks” could not take
umbrage at them. Not so the tales in the Reynard cycle. They are
thoroughly popular. The animals retain their natural attributes, they
act as they are expected to do, and they are utilised in the same
manner as “political broadsides” were in later times. The
human beings represented in these “satirical sheets” are
disguised as animals, and not the animals disguised as human beings.
There lies the profound difference between these two sets of beast
tales.
And because of their animal propensity, the human beings are
ridiculed and lampooned in the form of animals and held up to the scorn
and laughter of the reader. The bad man, as in the old story of Ahikar,
is likened to the beast, and chastised accordingly. The popular origin
and character of this kind of satire is self-evident. Courtiers and
clerks would not attempt such persiflage of their superiors, and
certainly not in so sustained a manner.
Of the men thus ridiculed none are so virulently assailed as the
Clergy. People do not mind occasionally a slight skit on priests and
other privileged classes, and there are abundant fabliaux which leave very little to be desired from the point
of view of ridicule. But to have singled out the Clergy for such
unmeasured vituperation shows a deliberate attempt to lower and destroy
the influence and authority of the Church in general and of its
ministers in particular. Only partisans of heterodox teaching could
find pleasure and profit in applying the beast tales to break down the
walls of the Church. Only men in contact with the masses could throw
that leaven of critical examination into the hearts of the people and
open their eyes by means of animal [33]tales to the weaknesses and
vices of their official clergy. Such outspoken criticism seldom comes
from within. It is often imported wholesale from without, or at least
comes from an opposing quarter. In their polemical propaganda these
heterodox teachers brought and used also some of those fox tales for
which, significantly enough, parallels are to be found mostly in
Slavonic tales from Russia and the Balkans.
If such be the partial origin of these Reynard tales, one can easily
understand why they appeared in the eleventh or twelfth century, and
notably in the countries then the very centres of such heterodox
teaching: South of France, Flanders and elsewhere. A very remarkable
fact seems to corroborate this hypothesis. One of the presumed authors
of a “branch” of the French Reynard cycle, Pierre
Cloot, was burnt in Paris in 1208 for heresy. Here we have a man who
paid with his life for his heretic faith, actually working on these
tales. It may be a mere coincidence, still some connection between the
Reynard poem and “heretics” cannot be denied.
With the victory of the Church, Reynard nearly disappeared,
yet that satirical leaven has continued to work in those political
animal broadsides, which stretch from the “Who killed Cock
Robin?” in England to “Who killed the Cat?” in Russia
among the Russian broadsides.
There remains now still one section of these Rumanian tales to be
considered, that in which the origin of the animal is closely connected
with what is commonly known as the fairy tale. It is just in this fact
that the pre-eminence of these tales can be found. It is like a window
through which the East is looking westwards. It is noteworthy that the
“fairy tales” found here connected with the origin of the
birds and beasts do not stand so isolated as the legends. To more than
one of them parallels may be adduced from other than Eastern
collections. In spite of similarity, they differ, however, in many
points so profoundly that they lead to a very serious question. It
cannot be passed over, though [34]it cannot be treated here at such
length as the problem raised would demand. To put it briefly, the
difference between these fairy tales and those of the West, is that in
these versions of the former a “moral” or perhaps a
plausible reason is given to the fairy tale which is often missing in
the general form of the fairy tales.
The question has been asked repeatedly, “What is the meaning
of such and such a tale,” e.g. the
“Cinderella” tales or “Bluebeard”? To Miss
Cox’s indefatigable labour we owe a monumental investigation of
the first-mentioned tale, and yet for all that the main question has
remained unanswered. This is but one example out of many.
Every collection of fairy tales teems with them. Of course, the
æsthetic pleasure of seeing innocence triumphant and virtue
rewarded might be a sufficient motive, and no doubt often is. The
people like to see, in the imaginary tale, a vindication of the justice
which they often miss in real life. The adventurous hero will also
appeal to the chivalrous instincts of the people, and especially to the
young. Such tales as the epic romances of old require no further
explanation. Still there are a good many fairy tales the reason and
meaning of which are anything but clear. If it can now be shown that
there is a cosmogonic background, or one which gives the clue to it,
inasmuch as it tells the “origin” of certain creatures,
such a tale is at once its own explanation and justification: if
e.g. the final development of “Cinderella” is not
that she becomes the wife of a prince, but that she becomes the
“dove” or the “sparrow,” then
“Cinderella” assumes a definite meaning. Under other
influences, when such heterodox teachings cannot be tolerated by the
powers that be, obviously the creation tales, with this specific
character, had to lose their “tail,” as the stork does in
the story, and hence the fairy tale became partly meaningless. Thus, if
the “Bluebeard” could no longer be “a
cannibal,” as in the tale No. 83, such a person not being
tolerated in a modern state, except as a wizard, lycanthropos, or
werwolf, he had to be changed into what he is now. The modern
[35]“Bluebeard” is a mere pale reflex of
the original monster. He does not even make the flesh creep
sufficiently. This watering down may have taken place also in other
tales which appear to us without any sense. They have lost that
decisive part which gave point to the story.
I am fully aware of the objection which could be raised against this
view of the original character of some of our fairy tales. It might be
urged with some show of plausibility that the process might have been
an inverse one, that the popular story-teller used a fairy tale to tack
on his moral, that the question of the origin of the bird or insect was
an “after-thought,” and did not belong originally to the
tale. Theoretically, such an objection could be urged, and it might
even gain in force if applied to the fairy tales of the West. Andersen,
not to speak of minor poets, would supply a proof of it. But we must
bear in mind that we are dealing with the unsophisticated people, who
would not use the folk-lore material in the manner of the literary
artist. They have no preconceived idea to which a tale or legend is
made artificially to fit. Moreover, these tales and legends are
believed in implicitly. They bear the stamp of their primitiveness.
They do not represent a later degree of development, such as the
parallels from the West often show. The existence side by side with
them of other creation tales of animals is an additional support of the
view that the fairy tales have not been “edited” or adapted
to cosmogonic purposes to explain the origin of beast and bird.
Fairy tales are, as a rule, taken out of the range of the survival
theory. The similarity of fairy tales, so striking among a large number
of nations, precludes the possibility of seeing in them local
survivals, and yet it appears unscientific to separate one section of
oral literature from the other. The line of demarcation between
creation legend and creation fairy tale is so thin that it is often
indistinguishable. Both spring from the same root, and the theory that
endeavours to explain the origin of the one must also be applicable to
the other. [36]
In the theory of survivals, however, no attempt is made to deal at
the same time with the question of origins. It has not yet been made
clear, by any of the more prominent representatives of the theory of
survivals, how the similarity in customs and ceremonies is to be
explained, in tales and fables, between the most diverse nations living
separated from one another. If these survivals represent local
tradition, which has persisted throughout the ages, how, then, does it
come to pass that they should resemble so closely other ceremonies and
customs observed by different nations also as local traditions? Is it
to be inferred that at some distant time, far back in the prehistoric
ages, some such ceremonies were used, that, in spite of evolution and
separation, they have survived everywhere almost unchanged, in spite of
the profound modifications of the nations in their ethnical, political
and religious status? Either they are local inventions, in which case
they could not resemble any other, or they all go back to one common
stock, and have survived in such a miraculous manner contrary to every
law of human nature. The only explanation feasible and satisfactory is,
I believe, the theory of transmission from nation to nation; those
resembling one another closely in modern Europe are not of so early an
age as has hitherto been assumed, but have come at a certain time from
one definite centre, and were propagated among the nations, and
disseminated by means of a great religious movement at a time when the
political and national consolidation of the peoples of Europe had
already assumed a definite shape.
To this conclusion we are forced by the examination of these
Rumanian animal tales in their manifold aspect, “creation”
tales, fables, fairy tales. They are all more or less of comparatively
recent origin. They owe their actual shape to the dualistic teaching of
the Manichaeans and Bogomils. They have come by these intermediaries of
the religious sects from Syria and the Balkans. These tales stopped
first among the nations in the Near East, and then by the same agency
were carried to the extreme West. Only in such wise can we [37]explain
the appearance of these tales—whatever their archaic character
may be—among nations of comparatively recent origin like those
now under consideration, Rumanians, Bulgars, Russians and even Saxons
and Hungarians. This is the only possible explanation of the very
remarkable dualistic character, and of the peculiar teachings embodied
in these tales. For, whatever these nations have in common, there
cannot be any question of survivals, for the reasons advanced above.
All the nations are comparatively modern. It is impossible to assume
that what might be a Latin survival among the Rumanians could be so
closely connected with what might be a Turanian survival among the
Bulgars or a Pelasgian survival among the Albanians. There might be
found among these tales traces of more ancient beliefs, myths and
customs, just as it is possible to find similar traces among the
folk-lore of the nations of the West. But what I contend is that these
are not local survivals—that, whatever their primitive
character may be, they need not originally belong to the nations among
whom they are found now. They were brought by the same movement that
brought the tales and legends, customs and ceremonies. The new and the
old were carried along by the same stream of tradition and religious
influence. An adjustment and readjustment of materials, the placing of
layer upon layer, localisation and assimilation then took place. But
these are rocks swept along by the stream and deposited far away from
the place of origin, or, to take another simile, that of the insect and
the amber. The amber has been carried from the North Sea many centuries
ago, nay, thousands of years ago, along the trade routes from North to
South, and has found its way also to ancient Egypt. Embedded in the
amber we have here and there a North European insect which was caught
at the time when the amber was still a liquid, and, imprisoned in it,
became fossilised, and was carried a long distance. If found, then,
among the beads in the tombs of the ancient Pharaohs, no one could say
that that insect was of Egyptian origin, or that fly a remnant of the
local [38]fauna. It had come thither together with the amber
that carried it, and may have remained there if the amber had
decayed.
In the same manner ancient customs, ancient beliefs and ancient
tradition have been caught in the liquid tales, apologues and legends,
like the fly in the amber, and carried along with them from East to
West. In this manner they may perhaps be termed survivals, but
survivals of a different kind than has been assumed hitherto. They have
survived only as long as they were tolerated in the lore of the
people.
Hand in hand with dissemination go the assimilation and localisation
of these diverse elements. It is impossible to do more within the
compass of this introduction than merely touch the fringe of a
far-reaching problem which arises from the examination of these
peculiar beast and bird tales. One of the most instructive examples of
this religious syncretism, of the manner in which it has influenced the
people, and the form in which it has been preserved, localised, and
assimilated, among them, is shown to advantage in the stories of the
origin of the Glow-worm and in the stories of the Bee. Some of the
cosmogonic legends of the Rumanians are also found among the Balkan
people. They are a fragmentary reflex of a great conception of the
world. If I may use the mystical and symbolical language of the
legends, they are also sparks from a great light that had fallen down
from heaven. The creation of man, the fall of the angels, are here
curiously blended together. They represent part of the teaching that
went under many names but, in essence, was one. That is, of course, the
belief in the dualism of the creative powers, the good God and the
wicked one, styled Satan.
From these tales and legends, which are derived from well-known
apocryphal writings, we can see how deeply the latter have entered the
life of nations which have not yet fallen under the unifying sway of
strict dogmatism, and how unable the people are to grasp the higher
spiritual interpretations of the dogmas and practices of the Church.
[39]
From a purely dogmatic point of view, all these tales are rank
heresy; but who among the simple folk knows the distinction between
orthodox and heretical teaching? The people are more easily disposed
towards a simple philosophy which explains satisfactorily the phenomena
of life. They listen with pleasure to tales of imagination. One of the
fundamental theories of Gnosticism or, rather later, of dualism, is
this peculiar conception of the creation. The world is divided between
the power of light and the power of darkness. The latter is anxious to
participate in the possession of light, and for that reason steals
some, which it breaks up into sparks and covers over with thick matter
so that it may not escape. These sparks are the human soul deeply
embedded in human clay, anxious always to be reunited with the ancient
glory.
In this Gnostic teaching we have the very source of the legend of
these angelic sparks now relegated to glow-worms, originally placed in
other “earthly worms”—the human race. We hear,
moreover, the faint echo of the fall of the angels and of the angels of
a lower rank inhabiting (and ruling) the planets and the stars. We even
have the legend, found in the Book of Enoch, of the angels who
fell in love with a woman and remain upon earth as evil spirits, whilst
she is translated to heaven and becomes a star. The interest lies not
only in the fact that these ancient religious conceptions have been so
faithfully preserved among the people, but also in the manner of their
preservation. They have been adapted to the understanding of the folk,
and, from dogmatic teachings, they have become beautiful popular
legends. But the inner meaning has been entirely lost. The old sparks
have been embedded in very thick clay indeed, as can be seen in the
treatment meted out to God, Christ, the Virgin, the Apostles and
Saints. They are greeted with an apparent lack of reverence and respect
that must disturb the equanimity of people of a Puritanic mind. The
gods could not have been put on a footing of greater familiarity; it
almost borders on the burlesque. Primitive nations show the same
apparent [40]want of respect to their gods, idols or fetishes,
and we are inclined to put them on a lower scale of faith and reverence
than the peoples of Europe.
A better knowledge of the life and religion of the peoples in the
East and of the Eastern part of Europe would soon change such a view.
In fact, I believe, that if we could descend to the lower depths of the
masses of Western Europe, and especially of those in Catholic
countries, and get a peep into their innermost soul, we should not find
it very different from that of the Slav and the Rumanian. The Saints
are not treated differently in Spain and in Italy on the one hand, or
in Rumania and in Bulgaria, or even Russia, on the other. They have all
the same essential conditions in common, viz. all have a Pantheon of
Saints of various degrees and of both sexes. In Protestant countries
the people have been impoverished. All the saints have been driven
away; a cold abstract spirituality has taken their place, and yet depth
of fervour and strength of belief cannot be denied to these Eastern
peoples. There is, moreover, a sufficient fund of humour and innate
rectitude to keep them at a certain level of morality and albeit free
from the hypocrisy of the so-called higher civilization. So that,
if the Rumanians take liberties with God and the Church and the Saints,
and pay homage to the Devil by mocking and laughing at the jokes which
God performs for his confusion, it is all done more in the spirit of
good-natured banter, not in that of polemical or fanatical intolerance.
Why should the poor Devil not also occasionally have a good time? He is
always sure to be outwitted in the long run.
I am fully aware of the objection that may be raised against
attributing so much influence to the activity and propaganda of the
heretical sects. It may be argued, that their influence was not in any
way commensurate with the results ascribed to them, that they did not
carry the masses with them to such an extent as to leave indelible
traces on their religious life and popular imagery. Some may go so far
as to look upon their activity as similar to that of some of
[41]the mendicant friars during the Middle Ages. Yet
the mendicant friars were able to exercise a tremendous influence upon
the people and, helped by other political powers, they were able to
create a movement which led up to the Crusades. It seized upon the
masses of Europe with an irresistible force. In a minor, yet no less
effective manner, the same agencies were able to arm the Kings of
France against the Albigenses in Provence. Church history, however,
shows very clearly that the power of the Manichaeans was so great that
it has taken the Church many centuries to bring the fight to a
satisfactory close.—The Cathars (pure) have given the name Ketzer
to the German heretics, and every language in Europe shows traces of
this heretic nomenclature.—The struggle was a terrible and a long
one, and if it had not been for the secular arm which placed itself at
the service of the Church for political reasons, who knows whether the
Romish Church would have come out victorious in the struggle?
The question may be asked, How did it come about, that the teaching
of an obscure sect could be propagated from the Black Sea to the
Atlantic and could win the support of so many peoples? The answer lies
in a fact which has hitherto been entirely ignored. The connection
between Arianism and Manichaeism in Europe has to my mind not yet been
even hinted at; yet there must have been a very close and intimate one.
Arianism, in fact, prepared the ground for the new wave of heretical
teaching which, a few centuries after the former’s official
extinction, followed in its wake. No one has, as yet, endeavoured to
trace the effect which the Arian teaching has had in Europe when it
became the national faith of the Goths. In them we have a nation which,
from the third century to the end of the sixth, practically dominated
central Europe. It established more than one kingdom between the Black
Sea and the Atlantic, in Illyricum, in Northern Italy, one of might and
strength in the South of France in Provence, with its headquarters in
Toulouse. It had overflowed into Spain, and broke down only after the
invasion of the Arabs. These Goths are described as rude barbarians,
because [42]they differed in their life, and probably in their
original forms of faith, from the Greeks and the Romans. The modern
idea is that their original home was somewhere in the North-West of
Europe, that they came along the Vistula, and then migrated to the
country between the Don and the Ural.
This is not the place to discuss the question of their original
home, yet the whole history of the migration of the nations shows that
the movement came also from the same direction as that of the other
nations which followed upon one another from east to west, and that
these migrations were prompted by tremendous political changes among
the nations of Central Asia. It is therefore probable that the Goths
migrated from the western shore of the Caspian Sea, somewhere near Lake
Ascanius—hence the confusion—then to the countries between
the Ural and Don, and thence by slow degrees southwards and westwards.
This would explain many obscure points in the migration of the Goths.
Be it as it may, we find them in the second century settled in those
very countries in which we now find the Ruthenians and the Rumanians,
and stretching further into Pannonia. The Goths are said to have
adopted Christianity towards the end of the third century, as it is
alleged, by priests and lay Christians brought as captives from
Cappadocia and other parts of Asia Minor. As early as the Council of
Nicæa, 325, a Gothic bishop is mentioned among the signatories to
the decrees. An outstanding figure of the Gothic Christians was
Ulfilas, who, owing to pressure from the non-converted section of the
Goths, crossed the Danube and settled at the foot of Mount Haemus (the
Balkans) in the middle of the fourth century. He had become converted
to the Arian doctrine, and took part in the Council under the Emperor
Valens, which was held in Constantinople in 358.
Theodosius, who became the Great after his recantation of Arianism,
towards the end of the fourth century, promulgated decree after decree,
one more drastic than the other, for the persecution and extirpation of
this heresy; in fact, he was the very first to establish an inquisition
of faith. The example [43]set by Theodosius was followed afterwards by
the Catholic Emperors and Kings of the West, even down to the Holy
Office, as the Inquisition was afterwards called. But, in spite of
this, Arianism spread among the Goths, and, whatever were their
political vicissitudes, they kept staunch to this peculiar form of
Christianity, the greatest and most powerful enemy of the orthodox and
Catholic Church. They spread eastwards and westwards, partly as vassals
of the Huns and partly acting quite independently under their own kings
and rulers. They overran the Balkan peninsula, destroying every heathen
temple, and not sparing Catholic churches. They then sacked Rome,
entered Gaul, and occupied the South of France, with Toulouse as the
capital. They spread into Burgundy and conquered Spain. It took many
battles and many centuries to break the political power of the Goths.
It was rather the subtle influences of the Catholic women than
religious conviction that brought about the conversion to Catholicism
of the Gothic rulers in Spain and Italy. The Catholic Church, in the
year 507, armed the Frankish King Clovis—who adopted
Catholicism—against the Gothic Arian King Alaric, and thus
brought about the first “crusade” between Catholics and
heretics in the country north of the Pyrenees. A crusade was to be
renewed hereafter for a second time against the Albigenses in the very
same country and against the very same cities. Unfortunately very
little is known of the beliefs and practices of the half-heathen,
half-Christian Goths. The fact, however, remains that they held on to
their faith for many centuries in spite of the official conversion of
the leaders. In Burgundy, Arianism persisted down to the sixth century,
and among the Lombards (merely another tribal name for Goths) in
Northern Italy, it persisted to the eighth century.
Meanwhile, other nations poured into the Balkans. Whether they
entirely annihilated the Goths, or whether they assimilated with them,
will remain a problem unsolved. Very few Gothic words can, however, be
traced among the nations of the Balkans. The Slavs, probably coming
from Pannonia, [44]are first noticed in large numbers in the fifth
and the sixth centuries. The Bulgars from the old haunts of the Goths
near the Volga came in the seventh century. The last heathen king was
Boris, who was converted to Christianity in the middle of the ninth
century. No sooner has Christianity an official status among the
Bulgars than we hear of the heresy of the Bogomils and Cathars
spreading among them to such an extent that they almost overthrew the
orthodox Church. The break between the eastern and western
Churches—between Constantinople and Rome—at the end of the
ninth century also contributed, in a way, to weaken the allegiance of
the faithful to the orthodox Church, and the manner in which the
Orthodox vilified the Catholics must have been quite sufficient to
reconcile the people to heterodox doctrines. Manichaeans and Bogomils
took advantage of the schism and the violence of the two parties to win
the people over to their tenets. Bogomilism in a slightly varied form,
as Cathars and Albigenses, etc., spread henceforth from east to west,
following exactly the same course as that taken by the Goths in their
migration from east to west. The ground had been prepared for them, the
seed had been sown, and the work was made easy for them by the
preceding Arians.
There is one feature in this schismatic movement, the importance of
which cannot be appraised too highly. The Word of God was taught in the
vernacular, the Bible and, along with it, uncanonical writings, were
translated into the vernacular. While the Orthodox and Catholic
Churches kept strictly to Greek and Latin as the language of Scripture
and Service, the Arians no doubt, on the contrary, allowed the people
to pray and to learn in their own language. It was the outstanding
merit of Ulfilas that he translated the Bible into Gothic. This
practice of translating the word of God into the vernacular remained a
distinctive characteristic of the schismatic Arians and other
sectaries. They were thus able to reach the heart of the people much
more easily than the Catholic and Greek clergy, and to exercise a
lasting influence upon the masses, far deeper than that of the
representatives [45]of a creed taught in a foreign tongue. This also
continued to keep the Arian-Goths away from the Catholic Church for
many centuries. The change, which came later on, was due to two
causes—the conversion of the kings and rulers, and, to a far
larger degree than has hitherto been recognised, the loss of the
Teutonic language. The Goths slowly forgot their own language and
adopted that of the nations in whose midst they lived as a
minority.
This explains much more satisfactorily than has hitherto been
attempted the mysterious disappearance of the Goths after the official
conversion of Recared in Spain, and the overthrow of Alaric by Clovis
in the beginning of the sixth century in the South of France. In Italy
they kept to their Arianism under the name of Lombards, down to the
eighth century. It must not, however, be assumed that with the public
disappearance of Arianism and that of the Goths as a ruling nation, the
Arian heresy and all that it brought to the people had also
disappeared. That teaching could not easily be uprooted. It was merely
driven underground. The Catholic Church was satisfied with having
obtained an official public victory. Then followed a slow process of
extirpation. The writings of the schismatics were hunted up and
destroyed, and thus the wells of heresy were dried up. The people were
weaned from their errors by the convincing power of sword and faggot.
But so long as these sinners did not belong to the higher classes, the
Church winked at their aberrations, especially when they kept quiet and
were not aggressive in their action.
Thus the fire of heresy smouldered on under the ashes of the
autos-da-fé until it was fanned again into a
mighty blaze through the Cathars and Albigenses. The ground was
prepared for their reception by the Arianism of the Goths, and by the
Manichaean propaganda, which had penetrated into Europe from the West
as early as the fourth century.
It is important in this connection to refer, however briefly, to the
Priscillianites in Spain, who flourished from the middle of the fourth
to the second half of the sixth century, close [46]upon two
hundred years. The founder was Priscillianus (d. 385) a man of noble
birth and great achievement. He was a great scholar, and had become
acquainted with Gnostic and Manichaean doctrines. He was accused of
heresy, and was the first Christian who was executed by Christians for
preaching a different form of creed. The accusations made against him
and his followers were precisely the same which were raised centuries
afterwards against the Cathars and Albigenses, and no doubt just as
false. From them we learn, however, that he had apocryphal books and
mystical oriental legends, which he used for his teaching, and which
were believed by his followers. It took two, or close upon three
centuries, before the public traces of Priscillianism disappeared from
Spain and Gaul. The followers, probably, shared the fate of the Gothic
Arians settled in these countries. Then the conquest of Spain by the
Arabs or Moors prevented the Catholic Church from further sifting the
chaff from the grain. No doubt a good number of so-called heretics, who
could not enter the bosom of the Catholic Church, embraced Islam, just
as a good number of prominent Cathars in Dalmatia and Bosnia preferred
to become Mohammedans after the conquest of the country by the Turks
rather than become united with the Orthodox Church. When the Cathars
started their propaganda, they followed, as it were, in the track of
the Goths. They occupy exactly the same tracts of land as those held
for so many centuries by the former, and without a doubt they found
there remnants of the old heresy, popular legends and beliefs, even
tales and mystical as well as mythical songs, all so many welcome pegs
on which to hang their own teaching. It may in a way have been a kind
of revival, in which what had been preserved by the descendants from
the Goths of old was blended with the new matter brought afresh from
the East. Unfortunately—as already remarked—too little is
known of the beliefs and practices of the Goths in their pagan state
and afterwards as Arian Christians. That they, in spite of being
“rude barbarians,” had also some theological treatises is
evident from Anathema No. 16 of the [47]Council of Toledo (589), when
Recared forswore his Arianism and became a fervent Catholic. The
anathema runs against “the abominable treatises which we composed
to seduce the provincials into the Arian heresy.” Many such
compositions, especially in the vernacular, must be meant here; they
all fell under the ban.
The Cathars followed the same practice and were zealous propagators
and translators of the Bible and Apocrypha into the vernacular. They
knew the Bible so well that in disputations with the Catholic clergy
the latter were easily beaten. Almost every one of the
“forbidden” books, i.e. forbidden by the Orthodox
and Catholic Church, was preserved in old Slavonian (and Rumanian)
translations, and some are to be found this very day among the holy
books of the Russian schismatics. Nay, even the oldest French
translation of the Bible was the work of Albigenses. So much did this
affect the Catholic Church that she excommunicated it, and forbade the
people to read the Bible at the Council of Toulouse in 1229; the Bible
in the vernacular having before been ordered to be burned publicly by
the decree of the Church.
No wonder, therefore, at the popularity of these sectaries and the
immense influence they wielded upon the popular mind and imagination.
And if it be true that Arius set forth his religious views in doggerel
rhymes to be sung to popular tunes by the sailors and labourers, then
he initiated a movement which has continued ever since in religious
minstrelsy, and is practised amongst others, by the Russian blind
beggar-minstrels and other popular ballad singers on festive occasions
among the Rumanians and southern Slavs. Nothing, in fact, could better
serve the purpose of propaganda than such songs. They would appeal at
once to the primitive, unlettered nations, specially amongst those who
had such mythological epics of their own. The rude barbarians would be
deeply impressed, and they would very easily adopt such songs and the
teaching they contained. We can then easily understand a Volsunga
Saga or a similar [48]saga originating under such influences, or
moulded in accordance with such new models. Neither the Orthodox nor
the Catholic Church knows of such popular religious songs of an epic
character, filled with the mysteries of the Holy Writ, much less of any
filled with mysteries from the apocryphal and legendary writings. They
have no more than Church hymns sung in the Church, only on special
occasions, together with a certain psalmody chanted by the officiating
clergy. And when these Greek (or Syriac) hymns were translated into
Slavonic or Rumanian, they practically lost their tune and their
inspiration, and they were recited with a peculiar monotonous
cantilation. Quite otherwise were the popular carols, and the popular
epic ballads with a distinctive religious background and full of
wonderful incidents from the life of the saints. Unlike the former,
they are not congregational litanies, but purely popular songs and
ballads, devoid of any official or liturgical character. This may also
explain the origin of the so-called Ambrosian chant as an attempt on
the part of St. Ambrose of Milan to counteract the other popular chants
by introducing, as it were, congregational singing into the Church. But
there it remained, whilst the other spread and has retained its
original popular character. Thus, through Gothic Arianism, a certain
continuity of the dualistic and peculiar schismatic form of religious
teaching has been established.
Moreover, an historic explanation has been found for the origin and
spread of these doctrines, tales and fables. Put to the test, these
beast tales yield a dogmatic system which approximates in many points
to such heterodox teaching. The old Ebionite conception of Jesus, taken
up by Arius and afterwards adopted by the Manichaeans, sees in him only
a deified human being, and very little more can be found in these
tales. Jesus is seldom mentioned, and even then is more like a deified
all-powerful human being. God Himself is often treated as a simple
human being, almost like the Ialdabaoth of the Gnostics or the inferior
God of the Manichaean doctrine. With this, agrees also the notion of
the dualism in [49]the creation of the world, i.e. that the
evil creatures, wolves, poisonous snakes, etc., are the work of the
Evil One. This was also the view held by the Priscillianites. There
seem to be, also, reminiscences of such myths as “the world
tree,” the wolf, etc., which are found in Teutonic mythology and
which may also be of an Oriental origin. The Rumanian tales are almost
a running commentary on Grimm’s German Mythology (Germ.
4th ed. 1876, ch. xxiii. pp. 539–581), which ought to be read in
conjunction with the present volume. The legend of the Cuckoo, the
hoopoe referred to by Grimm, can be read here under No. 43.
It is significant that there is not a trace of Mariolatry in these
tales and fables. If anything, St. Mary appears in a character far from
loveable. She is easily offended, she does not spare her curses, she
takes umbrage easily at the slightest mishap. She is altogether very
disagreeable, just as in the apocryphal literature, where there is not
much room for her. Her intercession is invoked only in some Rumanian
charms and spells in a peculiar stereotyped form. But of real worship
there is scarcely any trace. Quite different is the position which the
Catholic Church assigned afterwards to St. Mary. She has become there
second to none outside the Trinity.
More prominently almost than any of these points, stands out the
fact that, underlying these creation and other tales, is the belief in
the transmigration of the human soul into an animal body—the
well-known belief in Metempsychosis, or change of human beings into
animals, so important a feature of Manichaean teaching, in which all
the heretical sects seem to have shared.
It is impossible now to follow this question further. I am satisfied
to have indicated the rôle which the Goths may have played in the
preparation for the dissemination of special myths and legends, branded
as heretical, which other sectaries had brought from the East and
propagated in the West of Europe.
As to possible ethnical and geographical continuity, it [50]may be
remarked that the places where these tales are found were also the
homesteads of the Goths, in which they dwelt for at least two or three
hundred years. They were then after a short interval almost supplanted
by the Slavs. It is a moot point how long the Rumanians have dwelt
there, and when they were converted to Christianity. Not a single old
Teutonic word has hitherto been found in the Rumanian language. Any
direct contact or convivium of any length of time is thus excluded. The
tales may have been remnants carried along from Illyricum across the
Danube by the new missionaries of the dualistic doctrine. The problem
would be less intricate if we only knew anything definite about Gothic
heathen and Christian mythology.
With the Cathars and Bogomils we are on more solid ground. This new
stream of similar traditions was brought by a similar religious
movement and was propagated by identical means—viz. writings and
songs in the language of the people, legends and tales and a simple
creed understood by all.
It may be asked, if this theory is correct, if these tales and
legends were brought first into Thrace and then spread from that
country to the other nations, how does it come to pass that so few
traces of them can be found in Greek folk-lore? Paradoxical as it may
sound, the absence of such creation and other legends and tales from
the Greek folk-lore is, if anything, a further proof of the accuracy of
the theory advanced. It must be remembered that there was no more
ruthless persecution of ancient paganism, idolatry, ceremonies and
legends than that carried out by the Greek Church against anything that
reminded them of the Hellenic or pagan past. Nothing was spared,
neither shrines nor books. The Greek’s subtle mind devised the
first thorough system of heresy-hunting and persecution. It ranged from
polemical and harmless dialogues to the handing over of the so-called
heretics to fire and sword. The secular power was there more than
anywhere else the representative of the religious power, and justified
its existence, as it were, only as the executor of the Church’s
mandate. [51]
One has only to read about the innumerable decrees of councils and
synods, to see the way in which Manichaeism, Arianism and Gnosticism in
every shape and form were mercilessly uprooted, and to understand that
this fight did not stop at Bogomilism. The polemics were carried out
even down to the time of Eutemios Zygabenos and even the Emperors on
the throne of Byzance did not consider it below their dignity to combat
heretical teaching, the followers of which were given no pardon. There
was also another factor which militated against the success of the
Gnostic teaching—the literary past of the Greeks. To the
circulation of apocryphal books and legendary tales, the Greeks were
able to oppose a vast literary array. In Greece the Bogomils did not
deal with simple-minded, illiterate folk at the beginning of whose
literature they stood; on the contrary, they had to fight against an
ancient influential literature, and against minds trained in the
subtlest dialectics. They could not, therefore, succeed so easily, if
at all.
Quite different were the conditions of the other nations with which
they came in contact. None of these had yet more than the very
beginnings of a literature. They were rude, simple-minded folk, and
wherever the Greek Church or Greek Emperors did not wield any influence
at all, as it happened in the Bulgaro-Vallachian kingdom established by
Peter and Asan (1185 to 1257), the Bogomils had an easy task. For
centuries, then, the Rumanians formed with the Bulgarians not only a
religious, but also a political unity. The Bulgaro-Vallachian kingdom
stretched from the Haemus to the Carpathians, and down to the end of
the seventeenth century Slavonic was the official language of State and
Church in Rumania. There could not have been a more close intimacy than
between these two nations, despite the difference of the language which
each of them spoke. They had their literature in common, and no doubt
shared the same traditions. Bogomilism was just as rife in Vallachia as
it was in Bulgaria. Even the written literature of Rumania shows how
profound its influence has been: still more [52]so does
the oral literature of tales and legends, of fables and beliefs. Though
the Bogomils did not bring Christianity to these peoples, for they were
Christians, they brought at any rate a kind of religion to the mass of
the folk. It was one of their own making and in their own image. It was
clothed in beautiful tales, and answered the expectations of the rank
and file, satisfied their curiosity, and gave them a glimpse of the
moral beauty underlying the work of creation. In a way, it tended to
purify the heart and to elevate the soul by allegories, parables and
apologues, and thus it found ready acceptance, and struck deep root in
the heart of the people, unaffected by decrees of Councils and by the
fanatical intolerance of the established Church.
Not so successful, therefore, if successful at all, was the fight of
the Greek Church against the heretical sects even in the Balkan
Peninsula, where they were so numerous and so powerful. They persisted
down to the time of the capture of Constantinople and the Turkish rule.
A large number of the aristocracy in Bosnia and Dalmatia still adhered
to the teaching of the Cathars, and when the Turks occupied the country
in the sixteenth century, the majority of them embraced Islam, instead
of entering either the Catholic or the Greek Church. A whole mass of
apocryphal and spurious literature placed on the Index, has been
preserved in Slavonic and Rumanian texts with outspoken dualistic
views. Many of them have found their way into the Lucidaria, or
“Questions and Answers,” a kind of catechism, very popular
among the nations of the Balkans, the Rumanians and the Russians.
Similar Lucidaria were known in the West, but there they have
been thoroughly expurgated, whilst, in the above-mentioned
“questions,” many an answer is found to which no orthodox
Church would subscribe, but which form now a popular living belief
among these nations. The political lethargy which settled upon most of
these nations after the Turkish conquest created a happy brooding-place
for such tales, and thus it can easily be understood why they have
[53]lived to this very day practically undisturbed and
little changed.
To those who have followed the history of the religious development
of the Russians, it will therefore not be surprising to find among
their popular tales a number of variants closely allied to the Rumanian
animal tales, and, what is of the utmost importance in this connection,
not a few of the “creation” tales. No country perhaps has
been so much torn by religious discussions and sects as Russia. The
number of sects is legion. The most extraordinary notions, extreme
views on dogma and practice, heterodox principles expressed in worship,
belief and popular song or tale are all found in Russia: unadulterated
Dualism, Bogomilism, Manichaean teaching are openly professed by a
number of the sects persecuted and condemned by the Orthodox Church.
Almost all the books condemned as heretical in the early Indices Expurgatoria put forth by Councils and Church
Assemblies, have been preserved almost intact in the old Slavonic and
Russian language, and the religious and epic songs of the
“blind” minstrels of Russia are full of the legendary lore
of those heterodox sects. This fact has been established beyond doubt
by the researches of Russian scholars, and notably by Wesselofsky.
Among the Russians, then, we find the nearest parallels to the Rumanian
“creation” stories; a clear evidence of common origin, both
drawing upon the same source of information; the religious in the form
of apologues, legends and tales, so prominent a feature of heterodox
propaganda.
The weapons used by the Catholic Church in its persecution of
heretical sects are, almost every one of them, borrowed from the Greek
armoury. One learns to know this fact more and more from a closer
enquiry into the inner history of Byzance, its laws, decrees,
administration and practice. And, precisely the same influence
destroyed later the heretical teaching in the West as it destroyed it
among the Greeks. The power of the Church and the secular arm were both
used ruthlessly for exterminating any idea or any belief that ran
counter to the doctrines taught by the established Church. [54]The
Cathars had also a much more difficult task in converting the East of
Europe, inasmuch as they were also confronted there by some amount of
literary tradition. Illiterate as were the masses, there were still
among them and among their clerics, men of ability, men of learning,
men trained in the scholastic schools, able, if not to refute, at any
rate to confuse, the strange doctrine.
All these forces combined, produced in the East the same result as
they have produced among the Greeks. We are thus on the track of one of
the most important sources of Western European folk-lore, always
remembering that the medium in which this propaganda flourished
differed considerably in the West from that in the East. In the former
such propaganda met with a more ancient layer of well-established
literary tradition. The Catholic Church, as mentioned above, was first
in possession. It was not a tabula rasa on which the
new teaching could be written, but yet that which existed was
profoundly modified and a new fund of highly poetic yet popular
material was added to the small store of knowledge possessed by the
common people. But in time the Church took up the challenge, and
remorselessly hunted down the apostles of popular heterodox teaching,
just as the Greeks had done, going even further. It punished with sword
and fire the followers of unauthorised practices, and branded every
deviation from the strait path as rank heresy. The books containing
legends and tales were burnt, and their possessors were often treated
in like fashion.
Inquisition, Church and other influences helped, as already
mentioned, to destroy them. In the tragedy of heresy-hunting and
burning of witches, the charge of devil worship was the basic
principle, the chief head of accusation. It was clearly devised against
the followers of the dualistic teaching. To tell a tale like any of
these Rumanian “creation” tales, would have been inviting
the heaviest punishment—to believe in it would have meant sure
death. No wonder that they disappeared quickly, or were changed into
harmless satires, as in the Reynard Cycle, or were even used for
political cartoons, [55]in broadsides, like the Cock Robin Cycle in
the time of Charles II., which, when transplanted to Russia, became a
political lampoon on Peter and his Court.
Heresy-hunting becomes a popular distraction only when the official
clergy find it profitable to make it so, and when the people are made
to trace their own ills and troubles, their losses in field and stable,
to the evil machinations of these tools of the devil. So long as they
are not suffering in body or purse, the folk are absolutely indifferent
to dogmas, and they will eagerly accept anything that pleases them. It
will therefore not come as a surprise, in view of what has been stated,
if we find some weird conceptions among the Rumanian peasantry.
Studied from the point of view of heresiology or rather of popular
psychology, some of these tales will appear to us as so many living
records of the great spiritual movement, which for centuries dominated
Europe, and which has since died out.
Too little attention has been given hitherto to the influence of
those numerous sects, which stretched from Asia Minor to the south of
France, and overflowed even into England. Their dualism, the strong
belief in the Power of Evil, Satan and his host, the consequent duty of
the faithful to banish him or to subdue him, thus developed into belief
in sorcery and witchcraft, with the attending horrors of the
Inquisition.
Then came a period of wider education still less tolerant of old
women’s superstition and nursery tales. What was left still
standing has been, and is being, finally destroyed by our modern
schools and schoolmasters. From this dire fate, the folk-lore of the
nearer East has as yet been preserved. The importance of the study of
folk-lore has happily been recognised in those countries, early enough
to stop the blight which had set in and which threatened to destroy it
more ruthlessly than even in the West. The modern “man of
science” is a more relentless iconoclast than the religious
fanatic. He starts from the mind in his attempt to destroy folk-lore,
using to this end cold reasoning, logical conclusions, spiritual
[56]prepossession and intolerance. The religious
fanatic starts from the heart, with overwhelming passion, fiery zeal,
unreasoning hatred, from which there is a possible escape for mysticism
and mythical lore, whilst from the former there is none. Happily, our
science of folk-lore with its deep sympathy and profound appreciation
of these manifestations of the popular psyche has come in the nick of
time to rescue from total extinction what the schoolmaster and the
heresy-hunter have not yet annihilated.
I turn now to another aspect of these bird and beast tales. If, as I
believe, they show us what is at the back of the mind of the people,
they are of invaluable service to the student of anthropology, above
all to him who seeks enlightenment in the grave problems of education
and civilization; and they are not without importance for the solution
of political problems.
Attempts are made—well meant, no doubt—to foist that
state of culture which the West calls “modern
civilization,” or “civilization” pure and simple,
upon the reluctant people of the Near and Far East. We are forgetful of
the fact that these nations have had a civilization of their own, and
that something more important is included in this forcible change than
the change of a dress.
As the outcome of a long-drawn battle between feudalism and modern
society, as a result of political and economic evolutions, the
civilization of the West, when introduced among nations that have not
gone through the same experience, acts like the Juggernaut car, which
crushes under its wheels the worshippers of this new god and destroys
at the same time the foundations of the old order of things. Only
students of folk-lore, those who try to reach the hidden depths, nay,
to penetrate the inner soul of the people, are in a position to judge
of the results of these civilizing attempts. They can compare the past
with the present, and draw a proper balance between gain and loss. Are
the people happier, more contented, more moral, and even more religious
after the change, than they were before it? Surely not. [57]And if
not, why not? The answer is very simple: because in this violent change
no tenderness is shown to those beliefs and practices which are dear to
the people and which help to lighten the burden of life by innocent
mirth and the wholesome play of fancy. Wire brooms may sweep well; but
they may do it too well, and they can sweep everything away, leaving
the home bare and the gardens stripped of every leaf and flower.
A few words concerning the order and grouping of these tales. They
have been arranged in three main groups. The first comprises those
tales which I have characterised as creation legends. In them the
origin of birds, beasts and insects is explained as the result of some
direct act of God, or the Saints, or the Devil. An attempt has been
made to follow a certain chronological order. Those tales stand first
in which God is acting at the beginning of the creation. Then,
following the Biblical order, the legends connected with the persons of
sacred history from Adam to the Apostles, including St. Mary and St.
Anne. Mystical Christmas carols or rather epic ballads, in which
similar subjects are treated, have been inserted between the legends.
The second section comprises such legends as are more like fairy tales.
The mythical personages are no longer those known through the
Scriptures. On the contrary, there are in these tales reminiscences of
ancient heathen gods and heroes, chief among them being Alexander the
Great.
In the third section the animal fables are grouped together. It is
the literature of the apologues without any framework or moral setting.
The parallels, as far as could be found, are given briefly at the end
of each legend, tale or fable. I have striven to be concise in my
references to the best-known collections of tales, such as Grimm, Hahn,
Cosquin, and Gonzenbach, where the student of fairy tales can easily
find the whole comparative literature.
For the genuine and unadulterated popular origin of these tales I
can vouch absolutely. Some I have heard in my early youth, but the
majority have been culled from the works [58]of S. Fl. Marian
(Ornitologia poporană Română, 2 vols.,
Cernăuţĭ 1883; and Insectele, Bucharest
1903), than whom a more painstaking trustworthy collector could not be
imagined. Some have been taken from the Folk-lore reviews,
Şezatoarea, ed. by A. Gorovei (i.–xii., Fălticeni
1892 to 1912), and Ion Creanga, published by the Society of that
name (i.–viii., Barlad 1908–1915). Anton Pann (Poveste si istoriaire, Bucharest 1836) has given us a few
stories, as well as A. and A. Schott (Walachische
Maehrchen, Stuttgart and Tübingen 1845). The Pilgrimage of the
Soul is from S. Mangiuca, Călindariu, pe. 1882,
Braşiovu 1881 and the Story of Man and his Years, No. 113, from M.
Gaster, Chrestomatie Romăna, vol. ii., Bucharest
1891. These tales have been collected from every country where
Rumanians live, not only in the Kingdom of Rumania, but also from the
Rumanians of Transylvania and Bukovina, as well as from the
Kutzo-Vlachs of Macedonia.
I have added a few charms and also a few more mystical religious
songs and carols, which throw light on some of the beliefs underlying
the tales and legends, taken mostly from the great collection of G.
Dem. Teodorescu (Poesii Popularare Romăne,
Bucharest 1885).
In some cases I have given also variants of the same tale.
I have endeavoured to render the stories as faithfully as the spirit
of the Rumanian and English languages allows, and I fear that I have on
sundry occasions forced the latter in my desire to preserve as far as
possible the quaintness and the flavour of the Rumanian original.
There is one characteristic feature in the collection of animal
tales and legends given here, upon which I should like to lay great
stress, and that is the complete purity which pervades them all. There
is no playing with moral principles. No double meaning is attached to
any story: and this, to my mind, is the best proof of their popular
origin. These tales are not sullied by a morbid imagination, nor
contaminated by sexual problems. The people are pure at heart and in
the stories their simplicity and purity appear most beautifully.
[59]
In these tales and legends we have syncretism in full swing. It is
not a picture of the past which we have to piece laboriously together
from half-forgotten records, from writing half obliterated by the
action of time and by changes which have swept over those nations of
the past, whose life and thought we are endeavouring to conjure up and
to understand. In our midst, at our door, under our own eyes, this
process of mixing and adjusting, of change and evolution, of
differentiation, combination and assimilation is still going on. It is
a wonderful picture for any one who is able to discover the forces that
are at work, who can trace every strand of the webbing, every thread in
the woof and warp, to its immediate and to its remoter source. We see
the shuttle of human imagination, of human belief, flying busily
through the loom, charged at one time with one thread, at another with
a different one. Many of the ways of the human mind meet here, cross
one another, and new roads are thus created by busy wayfarers. And thus
paganism sustains a busy and robust life. The old Pantheon is still
peopled with the old gods, or, shall we better say, the Pandaemonium in
its highest and best sense is displaying itself with unexpected vigour.
The heathen gods, the Christian saints, God and the devil legends,
fairy tales, oriental imagery, mystical traditions and astrological
lore are all inextricably blended together. The line of demarcation
between man and animal has not been clearly drawn, or it has not yet
been attempted. These multifarious elements have not yet been
combined into one homogeneous structure. The problem arises whether
other nations have also passed through a similar mental and psychical
process; whether they have had a similar Pandaemonic mixture, out of
which their more colourless folk-lore had been distilled in the
crucible of “civilization.”
Primitive people can often hear the footfall of men by putting the
ear to the ground. We may, by putting an ear to the ground, hear the
footfalls of the Past, and listen to the echo before it dies away into
eternity. [61]
