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Popular Tales from the Norse

S >> Sir George Webbe Dasent >> Popular Tales from the Norse




These general observations, then, and this rapid bird's eye view, may
suffice to show the common affinity which exists between the Eastern
and Western Aryans; between the Hindoo on the one hand, and the
nations of Western Europe on the other. That is the fact to keep
steadily before our eyes. We all came, Greek, Latin, Celt, Teuton,
Slavonian, from the East, as kith and kin, leaving kith and kin
behind us; and after thousands of years the language and traditions
of those who went East, and those who went West, bear such an
affinity to each other, as to have established, beyond discussion or
dispute, the fact of their descent from a common stock.




DIFFUSION

This general affinity established, we proceed to narrow our subject
to its proper limits, and to confine it to the consideration,
_first_, of Popular Tales in general, and _secondly_, of
those Norse Tales in particular, which form the bulk of this volume.

In the first place, then, the fact which we remarked on setting out,
that the groundwork or plot of many of these tales is common to all
the nations of Europe, is more important, and of greater scientific
interest, than might at first appear. They form, in fact, another
link in the chain of evidence of a common origin between the East and
West, and even the obstinate adherents of the old classical theory,
according to which all resemblances were set down to sheer copying
from Greek or Latin patterns, are now forced to confess, not only
that there was no such wholesale copying at all, but that, in many
cases, the despised vernacular tongues have preserved the common
traditions far more faithfully than the writers of Greece and Rome.
The sooner, in short, that this theory of copying, which some, even
besides the classicists, have maintained, is abandoned, the better,
not only for the truth, but for the literary reputation of those who
put it forth. No one can, of course, imagine that during that long
succession of ages when this mighty wedge of Aryan migration was
driving its way through that prehistoric race, that nameless
nationality, the traces of which we everywhere find underlying the
intruders in their monuments and implements of bone and stone--a race
akin, in all probability, to the Mongolian family, and whose
miserable remnants we see pushed aside, and huddled up in the holes
and corners of Europe, as Lapps, and Finns, and Basques--No one, we
say, can suppose for a moment, that in that long process of contact
and absorption, some traditions of either race should not have been
caught up and adopted by the other. We know it to be a fact with
regard to their language, from the evidence of philology, which
cannot lie; and the witness borne by such a word as the Gothic Atta
for _father_, where a Mongolian has been adopted in preference
to an Aryan word, is irresistible on this point; but that, apart from
such natural assimilation, all the thousand shades of resemblance and
affinity which gleam and flicker through the whole body of popular
tradition in the Aryan race, as the Aurora plays and flashes in
countless rays athwart the Northern heaven, should be the result of
mere servile copying of one tribe's traditions by another, is a
supposition as absurd as that of those good country-folk, who, when
they see an Aurora, fancy it must be a great fire, the work of some
incendiary, and send off the parish engine to put it out. No! when we
find in such a story as the Master-thief traits, which are to be
found in the Sanscrit _Hitopadesa_ [4], and which reminds us at
once of the story of Rhampsinitus in Herodotus; which are also to be
found in German, Italian, and Flemish popular tales, but told in all
with such variations of character and detail, and such adaptations to
time and place, as evidently show the original working of the
national consciousness upon a stock of tradition common to all the
race, but belonging to no tribe of that race in particular; and when
we find this occurring not in one tale but in twenty, we are forced
to abandon the theory of such universal copying, for fear lest we
should fall into a greater difficulty than that for which we were
striving to account.

To set this question in a plainer light, let us take a well-known
instance; let us take the story of William Tell and his daring shot,
which is said to have been made in the year 1307. It is just possible
that the feat might be historical, and, no doubt, thousands believe
it for the sake of the Swiss patriot, as firmly as they believe in
anything; but, unfortunately, this story of the bold archer who saves
his life by shooting an apple from the head of his child at the
command of a tyrant, is common to the whole Aryan race. It appears in
Saxo Grammaticus, who flourished in the twelfth century, where it is
told of Palnatoki, King Harold Gormson's thane and assassin. In the
thirteenth century the _Wilkina Saga_ relates it of Egill,
Völundr's--our Wayland Smith's--younger brother. So also in the Norse
Saga of _Saint Olof_, king and martyr; the king, who died in
1030, eager for the conversion of one of his heathen chiefs Eindridi,
competes with him in various athletic exercises, first in swimming
and then in archery. After several famous shots on either side, the
king challenges Eindridi to shoot a tablet off his son's head without
hurting the child. Eindridi is ready, but declares he will revenge
himself if the child is hurt. The king has the first shot, and his
arrow strikes close to the tablet. Then Eindridi is to shoot, but at
the prayers of his mother and sister, refuses the shot, and has to
yield and be converted [_Fornm. Sog._, 2, 272]. So, also, King
Harold Sigurdarson, who died 1066, backed himself against a famous
marksman, Hemingr, and ordered him to shoot a hazel nut off the head
of his brother Björn, and Hemingr performed the feat [Müller's _Saga
Bibl._, 3, 359]. In the middle of the fourteenth century, the
_Malleus Maleficarum_ refers it to Puncher, a magician of the
Upper Rhine. Here in England, we have it in the old English
ballad of _Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough_, and _William of
Cloudesly_, where William performs the feat [see the ballad in
Percy's _Reliques_]. It is not at all of Tell in Switzerland
before the year 1499, and the earlier Swiss chronicles omit it
altogether. It is common to the Turks and Mongolians; and a legend of
the wild Samoyeds, who never heard of Tell or saw a book in their
lives, relates it, chapter and verse, of one of their famous
marksmen. What shall we say then, but that the story of this bold
master-shot was primaeval amongst many tribes and races, and that it
only crystallized itself round the great name of Tell by that process
of attraction which invariably leads a grateful people to throw such
mythic wreaths, such garlands of bold deeds of precious memory, round
the brow of its darling champion [5].

Nor let any pious Welshman be shocked if we venture to assert that
Gellert, that famous hound upon whose last resting-place the
traveller comes as he passes down the lovely vale of Gwynant, is a
mythical dog, and never snuffed the fresh breeze in the forest of
Snowdon, nor saved his master's child from ravening wolf. This, too,
is a primaeval story, told with many variations. Sometimes the foe is
a wolf, sometimes a bear, sometimes a snake. Sometimes the faithful
guardian of the child is an otter, a weasel, or a dog. It, too, came
from the East. It is found in the _Pantcha-Tantra_, in the
_Hitopadesa_, in Bidpai's _Fables_, in the Arabic original of
_The Seven Wise Masters_, that famous collection of stories
which illustrate a stepdame's calumny and hate, and in many mediaeval
versions of those originals [6]. Thence it passed into the Latin
_Gesta Romanorum_, where, as well as in the Old English version
published by Sir Frederick Madden, it may be read as a service
rendered by a faithful hound against a snake. This, too, like Tell's
master-shot, is as the lightning which shineth over the whole heaven
at once, and can be claimed by no one tribe of the Aryan race, to the
exclusion of the rest. 'The Dog of Montargis' is in like manner
mythic, though perhaps not so widely spread. It first occurs in
France, as told of Sybilla, a fabulous wife of Charlemagne; but it is
at any rate as old as the time of Plutarch, who relates it as an
anecdote of brute sagacity in the days of Pyrrhus.

There can be no doubt, with regard to the question of the origin of
these tales, that they were common in germ at least to the Aryan
tribes before their migration. We find those germs developed in the
popular traditions of the Eastern Aryans, and we find them developed
in a hundred forms and shapes in every one of the nations into which
the Western Aryans have shaped themselves in the course of ages. We
are led, therefore, irresistibly to the conclusion, that these
traditions are as much a portion of the common inheritance of our
ancestors, as their language unquestionably is; and that they form,
along with that language, a double chain of evidence, which proves
their Eastern origin. If we are to seek for a simile, or an analogy,
as to the relative positions of these tales and traditions, and to
the mutual resemblances which exist between them as the several
branches of our race have developed them from the common stock, we
may find it in one which will come home to every reader as he looks
round the domestic hearth, if he should be so happy as to have one.
They are like as sisters of one house are like. They have what would
be called a strong family likeness; but besides this likeness, which
they owe to father or mother, as the case may be, they have each
their peculiarities of form, and eye, and face, and still more, their
differences of intellect and mind. This may be dark, that fair; this
may have gray eyes, that black; this may be open and graceful, that
reserved and close; this you may love, that you can take no interest
in. One may be bashful, another winning, a third worth knowing and
yet hard to know. They are so like and so unlike. At first it may be,
as an old English writer beautifully expresses it, 'their father hath
writ them as his own little story', but as they grow up they throw
off the copy, educate themselves for good or ill, and finally assume
new forms of feeling and feature under an original development of
their own.

Or shall we take another likeness, and say they are national dreams;
that they are like the sleeping thoughts of many men upon one and the
same thing. Suppose a hundred men to have been eye-witnesses of some
event on the same day, and then to have slept and dreamt of it; we
should have as many distinct representations of that event, all
turning upon it and bound up with it in some way, but each preserving
the personality of the sleeper, and working up the common stuff in a
higher or lower degree, just as the fancy and the intellect of the
sleeper was at a higher or lower level of perfection. There is,
indeed, greater truth in this likeness than may at first sight
appear. In the popular tale, properly so called, the national mind
dreams all its history over again; in its half conscious state it
takes this trait and that trait, this feature and that feature, of
times and ages long past. It snatches up bits of its old beliefs, and
fears, and griefs, and glory, and pieces them together with something
that happened yesterday, and then holds up the distorted reflection
in all its inconsequence, just as it has passed before that magic
glass, as though it were genuine history, and matter for pure belief.
And here it may be as well to say, that besides that old classical
foe of vernacular tradition, there is another hardly less dangerous,
which returns to the charge of copying, but changes what lawyers call
the _venue_ of the trial from classical to Eastern lands.
According to this theory, which came up when its classical
predecessor was no longer tenable, the traditions and tales of
Western Europe came from the East, but they were still all copies.
They were supposed to have proceeded entirely from two sources; one
the _Directorium Humanae Vitae_ of John of Capua, translated
between 1262-78 from a Hebrew version, which again came from an
Arabic version of the 8th century, which came from a Pehlvi version
made by one Barzouyeh, at the command of Chosrou Noushirvan, King of
Persia, in the 6th century, which again came from the _Pantcha
Tantra_, a Sanscrit original of unknown antiquity. This is that
famous book of _Calila and Dimna_, as the Persian version is
called, attributed to Bidpai, and which was thus run to earth in
India. The second source of Western tradition was held to be that
still more famous collection of stories commonly known by the name of
the 'Story of the Seven Sages,' but which, under many names--Kaiser
Octavianus, Diocletianus, Dolopathos, Erastus, etc.--plays a most
important part in mediaeval romance. This, too, by a similar process,
has been traced to India, appearing first in Europe at the beginning
of the thirteenth century in the Latin _Historia Septem Sapientum
Romae_, by Dame Jehans, monk in the Abbey of Haute Selve. Here,
too, we have a Hebrew, an Arabic, and a Persian version; which last
came avowedly from a Sanscrit original, though that original has not
yet been discovered. From these two sources of fable and tradition,
according to the new copying theory, our Western fables and tales had
come by direct translation from the East. Now it will be at once
evident that this theory hangs on what may be called a single thread.
Let us say, then, that all that can be found in _Calila and
Dimna_, or the later Persian version, made A.D. 1494, of Hossein
Vaez, called the _Anvari Sohaïli_, 'the Canopic Lights'--from
which, when published in Paris by David Sahid of Ispahan, in the year
1644, La Fontaine drew the substance of many of his best fables.--Let
us say, too, that all can be found in the _Life of the Seven
Sages_, or the Book of Sendabad as it was called in Persia, after
an apocryphal Indian sage--came by translation--that is to say,
through the cells of Brahmins, Magians, and monks, and the labours of
the learned--into the popular literature of the West. Let us give up
all that, and then see where we stand. What are we to say of the many
tales and fables which are to be found in neither of those famous
collections, and not tales alone, but traits and features of old
tradition, broken bits of fable, roots and germs of mighty growths of
song and story, nay, even the very words, which exist in Western
popular literature, and which modern philology has found obstinately
sticking in Sanscrit, and of which fresh proofs and instances are
discovered every day? What are we to say of such a remarkable
resemblance as this?

The noble King Putraka fled into the Vindhya mountains in order to
live apart from his unkind kinsfolk; and as he wandered about there
he met two men who wrestled and fought with one another. 'Who are
you?' he asked. 'We are the sons of Mayâsara, and here lie our
riches; this bowl, this staff, and these shoes; these are what we
are fighting for, and whichever is stronger is to have them for his
own.'

So when Putraka had heard that, he asked them with a laugh: 'Why,
what's the good of owning these things?' Then they answered
'Whoever puts on these shoes gets the power to fly; whatever is
pointed at with this staff rises up at once; and whatever food one
wishes for in this bowl, it comes at once.' So when Putraka had
heard that he said 'Why fight about it? Let this be the prize;
whoever beats the other in a race, let him have them all'.

'So be it', said the two fools, and set off running, but Putraka
put on the shoes at once, and flew away with the staff and bowl up
into the clouds'.

Well, this is a story neither in the _Pantcha Tantra_ nor the
_Hitopadesa_, the Sanscrit originals of _Calila and Dimna_.
It is not in the _Directorium Humanae Vitae_, and has not passed
west by that way. Nor is it in the _Book of Sendabad_, and
thence come west in the _History of the Seven Sages_. Both these
paths are stopped. It comes from the _Katha Sarit Sagara_, the
'Sea of Streams of Story' of Somadeva Bhatta of Cashmere, who, in the
middle of the twelfth century of our era, worked up the tales found
in an earlier collection, called the _Vrihat Katha_, 'the
lengthened story', in order to amuse his mistress, the Queen of
Cashmere. Somadeva's collection has only been recently known and
translated. But west the story certainly came long before, and in the
extreme north-west we still find it in these Norse Tales in 'The
Three Princesses of Whiteland', No. xxvi.

'Well!' said the man, 'as this is so, I'll give you a bit of
advice. Hereabouts, on a moor, stand three brothers, and there they
have stood these hundred years, fighting about a hat, a cloak, and
a pair of boots. If any one has these three things, he can make
himself invisible, and wish himself anywhere he pleases. You can
tell them you wish to try the things, and after that, you'll pass
judgment between them, whose they shall be'.

Yes! the king thanked the man, and went and did as he told him.

'What's all this?' he said to the brothers. 'Why do you stand here
fighting for ever and a day? Just let me try these things, and I'll
give judgment whose they shall be.'

They were very willing to do this; but as soon as he had got the
hat; cloak, and boots, he said: 'When we meet next time I'll tell
you my judgment'; and with these words he wished himself away.

Nor in the Norse tales alone. Other collections shew how thoroughly
at home this story was in the East. In the Relations of _Ssidi
Kur_, a Tartar tale, a Chan's son first gets possession of a cloak
which two children stand and fight for, which has the gift of making
the wearer invisible, and afterwards of a pair of boots, with which
one can wish one's self to whatever place one chooses. Again, in a
Wallachian tale, we read of three devils who fight for their
inheritance--a club which turns everything to stone, a hat which
makes the wearer invisible, and a cloak by help of which one can wish
one's self whithersoever one pleases. Again, in a Mongolian tale, the
Chan's son comes upon a group of children who fight for a hood which
makes the wearer invisible; he is to be judge between them, makes
them run a race for it, but meanwhile puts it on and vanishes from
their sight. A little further on he meets another group, who are
quarrelling for a pair of boots, the wearer of which can wish himself
whithersoever he pleases, and gains possession of them in the same
way.

Nor in one Norse tale alone, but in many, we find traces of these
three wonderful things, or of things like them. They are very like
the cloth, the ram, and the stick, which the lad got from the North
Wind instead of his meal. Very like, too, the cloth, the scissors,
and the tap, which will be found in No. xxxvi, 'The Best Wish'. If we
drop the number three, we find the Boots again in 'Soria Moria
Castle', No. lvi. [Moe, Introd., xxxii-iii] Leaving the Norse Tales,
we see at once that they are the seven-leagued boots of Jack the
Giant Killer. In the _Nibelungen Lied_, when Siegfried finds
Schilbung and Niblung, the wierd heirs of the famous 'Hoard',
striving for the possession of that heap of red gold and gleaming
stones; when they beg him to share it for them, promising him, as his
meed, Balmung, best of swords; when he shares it, when they are
discontent, and when in the struggle which ensues he gets possession
of the 'Tarnhut', the 'cloak of darkness', which gave its wearer the
strength of twelve men, and enabled him to go where he would be
unseen, and which was the great prize among the treasures of the
dwarfs[7]; who is there that does not see the broken fragments of
that old Eastern story of the heirs struggling for their inheritance,
and calling in the aid of some one of better wit or strength who ends
by making the very prize for which they fight his own?

And now to return for a moment to _Calila and Dimna_ and _The
Seven Sages_. Since we have seen that there are other stories, and
many of them, for this is by no means the only resemblance to be
found in Somadeva's book [8] which are common to the Eastern and
Western Aryans, but which did not travel to Europe by translation;
let us go on to say that it is by no means certain, even when some
Western story or fable is found in these Sanscrit originals and their
translations, that that was the only way by which they came to
Europe. A single question will prove this. How did the fables and
apologues which are found in _Aesop_, and which are also
found in the _Pantcha Tantya_ and the _Hitopadesa_ come West?
That they came from the East is certain; but by what way, certainly
not by translations or copying, for they had travelled west long
before translations were thought of. How was it that Themistius, a
Greek orator of the fourth century [J. Grimm, _Reinhart Fuchs_,
cclxiii, Intr.] had heard of that fable of the lion, fox, and bull,
which is in substance the same as that of the lion, the bull, and
the two jackals in the _Pantcha Tantya_ and the _Hitopadesa_?
How, but along the path of that primaeval Aryan migration, and by
that deep-ground tone of tradition by which man speaks to man, nation
to nation, and age to age; along which comparative philology has, in
these last days, travelled back thither, listened to the accents
spoken, and so found in the East the cradle of a common language and
common belief.

And now, having, as we hope, finally established this Indian
affinity, and disposed of mere Indian copying, let us lift our eyes
and see if something more is not to be discerned on the wide horizon
now open on our view. The most interesting problem for man to solve
is the origin of his race. Of late years comparative philology,
having accomplished her task in proving the affinity of language
between Europe and the East, and so taken a mighty step towards
fixing the first seat of the greatest--greatest in wit and wisdom, if
not in actual numbers--portion of the human race, has pursued her
inquiries into the languages of the Turanian, the Semitic, and the
Chamitic or African races, with more or less successful results. In a
few more years, when the African languages are better known, and the
roots of Egyptian and Chinese words are more accurately detected,
Science will be better able to speak as to the common affinity of all
the tribes that throng the earth. In the meantime, let the testimony
of tradition and popular tales be heard, which in this case have
outstripped comparative philology, and lead instead of following her.
It is beyond the scope of this essay, which aims at being popular and
readable rather than learned and lengthy, to go over a prolonged
scientific investigation step by step. We repeat it. The reader must
have faith in the writer, and believe the words now written are the
results of an inquiry, and not ask for the inquiry itself. In all
mythologies and traditions, then, there are what may be called
natural resemblances, parallelisms suggested to the senses of each
race by natural objects and every-day events, and these might spring
up spontaneously all over the earth as home growths, neither derived
by imitation from other tribes, nor from seeds of common tradition
shed from a common stock. Such resemblances have been well
compared by William Grimm, [_Kinder and Hausmärchen_, vol. 3, _3d_
edition (Göttingen, 1856) a volume worthy of the utmost attention.]
to those words which are found in all languages derived from the
imitation of natural sounds, or, we may add, from the first lisping
accents of infancy. But the case is very different when this or that
object which strikes the senses is accounted for in a way so
extraordinary and peculiar, as to stamp the tradition with a
character of its own. Then arises a like impression on the mind, if
we find the same tradition in two tribes at the opposite ends of the
earth, as is produced by meeting twin brothers, one in Africa and the
other in Asia; we say at once 'I know you are so and so's brother,
you are so like him'. Take an instance: In these Norse Tales, No.
xxiii, we are told how it was the bear came to have a stumpy tail,
and in an African tale, [9] we find how it was the hyaena became
tailless and earless. Now, the tailless condition both of the bear
and the hyaena could scarcely fail to attract attention in a race of
hunters, and we might expect that popular tradition would attempt to
account for both, but how are we to explain the fact, that both
Norseman and African account for it in the same way--that both owe
their loss to the superior cunning of another animal. In Europe the
fox bears away the palm for wit from all other animals, so he it is
that persuades the bear in the Norse Tales to sit with his tail in a
hole in the ice till it is fast frozen in, and snaps short off when
he tries to tug it out. In Bornou, in the heart of Africa, it is the
weasel who is the wisest of beasts, and who, having got some meat in
common with the hyaena, put it into a hole, and said:

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