Segnius Irritant: or Eight Primitive Folk-lore Stories/Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared
Primitive Lapp and Slav Myths Compared.
An examination of the eight Slav fairy stories has constrained us to refer them to an Arctic origin. If the theory be correct, points of resemblance ought to be found between the primitive myths of the Arctic dwellers and our Slav folk-lore. The myths of the Lapps, among the most northern nations of Europe, have lately been collected; the principal ones, embodied in poetical form, are given, translated literally from the German or Swedish into Italian, in Professor Mantegazza’s admirable little book “Un viaggio in Lapponia.” He ascribes to these legends a very great antiquity, believing the most primitive of them to date as far back as the neolithic period. Be this as it may, while it is very unlikely that Central Europe Slavs should have carried the legends in remote times into the Arctic circle, nothing is more likely than that dwellers in high latitudes, finding it cold there, and life difficult, should have drifted into warmer southern regions and brought their legends along with them. In fact, there is some evidence that this happened. About 10 or 15,000 years ago the climate of Belgium was much colder than it is now. It was inhabited by chamois, the ptarmigan, the ibex, and the reindeer, and also by a peaceful race of people, resembling in their physique the modern Lapps of Lapland. These people were gradually driven south about 10,000 years ago by their raw-boned Scottish neighbours, and settled in the Auvergne, Savoy, and the Maritime Alps. Between 20 and 80,000 years ago, Siberia was much warmer than it is now, and mammoths lived there. All at once, most likely in consequence of a sudden change in the distribution of sea and land, where the Caspian now is, combined with other causes, a sudden spell of cold weather set in, which killed all the mammoths, and ice-potted them in the frozen gravel of Siberia, which, since then, has never been warmer than it is at the present day. The difficulty is to believe that myths hatched 70,000 years ago could be orally transmitted down to the present day. But we know nothing of the longevity of oral traditions among illiterate nature-folk. It is a curious fact, which I do not pretend even to endeavour to explain, that the primitive Slav stories are more clearly hall-marked with the stamp of the long Arctic winter night than the (supposed) neolithic Lapp ones. They may have been deliberately touched up in later times, while the tradition of their Arctic origin was still fresh in men’s minds, although the stories themselves were circulating in Central Europe.
One of the most ancient of the Lapp poems is called “The Child of the Sun,” and the substance of it is briefly as follows:—The Child of the Sun goes on a voyage. After several years he reaches the dreadful land of the giant. The giant asks if he has come “to the table of death to nourish his (the giant’s) father, to give him (the giant) a mouthful to suck, to restore his tired brother, and set his brother-in-law on his legs again.” The Child of the Sun says that, on the contrary, he has come to marry the giant’s daughter. I ought to have said that this lady did the sewing and washing for the giant, who was blind, and she must soon have washed his shirts into holes, for she thumped and swabbed exactly as they wash to this day all over the North of Italy. On the Child of the Sun’s frank declaration, the daughter of the giant said it was a case of love at first sight, that she couldn’t wait, that they must be married that instant, and that she would speak to her papa about it, as well as her mamma, who was lying rolled up in sand and birch-bark (? dead or inebriated). “The giant, who meant to eat the hero, said: ‘Come, Child of the Sun, and see whose fingers are the most flexible.’” His daughter gives the hero an iron anchor to proffer the giant, who, on feeling it, declares him to be too tough for anything. On the advice of the daughter, the hero then gives the giant a barrel of fish-oil (as wedding food), one of tar as wedding drink, and a horse as a tit-bit. The giant is thus made maudlin drunk, and in this condition unites the happy pair, and loads their ship with bits of gold and silver; besides this the bride takes “three pine-wood chests, blue, red, and white, respectively, containing war and peace, blood and fire, illness and death, and three knots containing breeze, wind, and storm, respectively.” When the hero and his bride have departed, her brothers, who were out walrus-hunting, return, and finding only “the smell and sweat” of her seducer, are riled. They give chase: the first knot is untied, a wind rises, and the lovers outstrip them; again close pressed, the lovers untie the second knot, and a powerful west wind blows; close pressed again, they untie the third knot, a tremendous north wind blows; the bride’s eyes flash fire as the light of dawn spreads, her two brothers are turned into two rocks, even their copper-coloured skiff becomes a rock visible with the other two to this day at Vake. After this she became as small as other human beings, and gave birth to the sons of Kalla—i.e., a race of royal heroes.
This poem belongs to the three-months winter fairy story of the three volume novel type: examples—Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes and the Three Citrons. In the speech of the giant: “Hast thou come to the table of death?” etc., we have the Lapp form of Jezibaba’s stereotyped phrase: “Fly! fly! here there is not one little bird, much less one little human being; and when my son comes home he will eat you.” In the orally collected Venetian variants it occurs with unfailing regularity in the formula: Tanti annie tanti anni e nessuno ha picchiato à questa porta, in King Raven, the King of the Beans, and many others. In the incident of the anchor it is needless to point out that we have the Lapp form of the incident of the flute in Jank a Hanka, the Upper Lusatian equivalent of the German Hans and Grettel. The gingerbread-maker is fattening the children up to eat them, and requests Hans to put out his finger to see if he is yet fat enough ; he proffers his shepherd’s pipe, and old Wjera hacks away at it, and says: “Oh! no, he's much too tough yet.” In the way the heroine saves her lover from being eaten, we have a primitive form of the incidents at the castle of the wind, the moon, and the sun in King Raven: one of the Venetian variants of the Three Citrons. The three chests, blue, white, and red, seem to correspond to the castles of lead, silver, and gold; the dark moon, the light moon, and the sun periods; the three knots to the cutting open of the three citrons—perhaps blood oranges. It was a primitive Lapp superstition that three knots tied in a handkerchief steeped in the blood of a virgin had this power of raising storms. Many similar superstitions occur in Lapland, which are exactly remirrored in Latin ones as given by Pliny. They are common in Venice to this day. The untying of the winds is an incident that has assumed various forms. We have it in the first book of Virgil’s Æneid. It occurs again in the legend of the Argonauts, so strikingly similar to this Lapland poem. When Æetes pursues the Argonauts on their homeward journey, Medea dismembers her young brother Absyrtos, and throws his limbs into the sea. Æetes stops to pick up the remains of his child, and Jason and Medea escape. We have seen the legend in a different form in the story of the Miraculous Hair. There are, in fact, a whole crop of stories in which the lovers escape the sorceress by throwing behind them a brush, a mirror, and a razor, which change into thickets, a lake, and a quantity of razors; the witch trips over these and is cut to pieces. In the Polish story of the Skeleton King, we find even the indignation at the sweat and smell of the fugitive reproduced. Before flying from her father’s house, the princess spits upon the pane of glass; she and her lover then locked the door and fled. The spittle at once froze. When the servants of King Skeleton go to summon the prince they find the door locked ; and when they summon the prince it exclaims: “Immediately.” After being once or twice choused in this way they break open the door, and find the spittle splitting with laughter on the frozen pane. When the father pursues the lovers the princess first changes herself into a river and her lover into a bridge across it; next they change into a wood; and lastly the princess changes herself into a church, and her lover into the bell, and in this way they escape. In place of the castle of lead in the Siebenbürgen variant is a copper-coloured well into which the hero dips his hand, which also becomes copper-coloured. In the Servian legend of the Two Brothers, again, the brother who goes by the lower road, the three days’ journey through the other world, comes to a lake which he has to swim across, and when he comes out he and his dog are all gilded. In the Virgin Mary Godmother (Upper Lusatian) the naughty godchild thrusts its finger through the keyhole of the forbidden chamber, and the finger remaining gilded, the Virgin Mary thereby discovers her disobedience. In the story of the Argonauts the copper-man Talos attempts to prevent the landing of the crew in Crete, but Pœas, father of Philokletes, managed to hit the copper-man’s single vein running from neck to heel, with the bow of the Sun-god Herakles (or Melcarth). Talos fell and died. In this Lapp legend the two brothers pursue the child of the Sun and their sister In a copper-coloured ship. All these yellow and copper-coloured objects seem to be symbols or reminiscences of the Arctic Aurora Borealis.
The next Lapp poem in length is called the Son of Pissa Passa. Pissa, we are told, was chief of the villages of the land of the sun; Passa, daughter of the chief of the lands of night. When they married they swore on the bear-skin that not a sparkle of the second world should shine on the one who broke his oath. Unluckily a statu (some sort of magician or ogre) killed Pissa, and stole his herds and wealth; and Passa fled, enceinte, with what remained. The son, when born, asked who his father was: the mother says he had none. “Bosh,” says the precocious youth, “everything has a father.” Then he goes and kills a bear, brings it home, and asks his mother for hot bread, and again: “Who is my father?” “Pissa Passa, my son!” “Where did he go?” “The old man of the black mountain slew him, and stole our herds and wealth; that’s why I don’t like you to go on the high, sparkling mountains.” The son begs to be armed with his papa’s stick and helmet of war; goes and challenges the old man of the mountain. One of his servants, Hurry, thunders; another, Hurry-skurry, lightens; and one, Ilmaratje, pours torrents of water. The old man asks what the hero is like? Hurry-skurry says: “He’s a head taller than anybody else, and very cock-a-hoop.” The old man orders a dinner of a whole young reindeer, his coat of mail, bows, arrows, spears, and lances. The youth approaches and sees a pointed skull encircled by poisonous snakes, from which boys are taking the venom for the arrows. The youth challenges the old man to combat (1) on the surface of the water (no answer); (2) to take headers (no answer); (8) to box (no answer). He then asks whose the skull is, and is told Pissa Passa’s. He then challenges the old man with the bow. The old man shoots; the youth catches the arrow and breaks the point against a stone, exclaiming: “Old man, what turned the point?” The old man replies: “The teeth of Pissa Passa.” The same happens with the bolt and the lance. The old man then issues for a hand-to-hand combat, and is soon disarmed. His life is spared, and the herald, in a magnificent speech, glorifying the power and mercy of the one invisible and spiritual God, urges him to repent. He does so, and soon after dies. The poem concludes: “He, the hero, had conquered the storm, and reconciled the dead, one with the other. He embraced his mother, he, the excellent man of the south, of the north, of the house of the reunion of the peoples.” Thus, in this noble Lapp poem, dating perhaps from the Neolithic epoch, the doctrine of the forgiveness of our worst enemies was inculcated, at all events many thousand years before the birth of Christ.
As will be at once apparent, it belongs to the epic fairy myth group of the Father Know-All type, beginning with the birth of the hero and something mysterious about that birth. In the details and development of the myth there is not very much to connect it with our Slav myths. The hero, however, as in Golden Locks, George and his Goat, Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes, etc., has his three faithful helpmates, Hures, Hureskutje and Ilmaratje. There is no anti-climax.
The next poem is called the Daughter of the Sun, and is founded on a Lapp superstition that anyone who can embrace her will be wealthy. She appears as a beautiful shiny maiden seated on a rock. Owing to the climate of the Arctic circle, or its proximity to the magnetic pole, or perhaps to both causes together, the hyperborean peoples are liable to hallucinations, whatever that may mean. Only a few years ago a Lapp clergyman saw the Daughter of the Sun seated, stole behind her to embrace her and struck his head against a rock., In the poem the seer succeeds in embracing her; she tells him to follow her, and by no means to look back. He follows, but looks back, and the front of his herd of reindeer disappears. A storm occurs, he looks back again and the middle of the herd become wild reindeer. The Daughter of the Sun then goes home with him and bids him close every chink of his tent. He does so, but the sun still shines through a small crevice, whereupon the Daughter of the Sun kisses him and vanishes. In the morning he looks out of his tent and finds the rest of his herd of reindeer turned to stone, so that it made you shudder to look at them.
This story has nothing very closely in common with our eight Slav myths, except the central figure, so strikingly similar to the figure of the Lorely, or the Maiden of the Miraculous Hair. Those who favour the theory of the separate genesis of similar myths will prefer to see here only a coincidence. In the next poem, however, the points of resemblance between the Lapp and its Slav (Moravian) equivalent are so striking that I shall give the two stories almost in full. They belong to the group of burlesque fairy myths, having their point of origin at the rescue of Plavachek.
The Man in the Big Fur Coat; or, The Stupid Man.
The boys and girls used to play and sing, run skipping and wrangle here and there, and leave traces of their feet at the margins of the springs. The Statu prepared his traps of iron, placed them near the water, hid them in the mud. The old Lapp perceived the hidden traps of the eater of men, hid himself in his tight fur coat, and placed himself in the trap of the bear. Statu visits his traps. Aha; the old friend has taken the bait; he is dead here. The Statu takes him home and hangs him to the roof above the smoke. The youngest Statu says: “Look how he whimpers and grunts!” The other (the elder) son: “Thou whimperest and gruntest thyself; not at all this gift of God.” The old Lapp thinks: “Of God even he knows something.” Statu: “Yes, yes; he begins already to liquefy.” Behind the mill he splits wood for the trough, chops it, trims the branches, splits and cuts, carries it to a trough near the back door. To the elder son: “Dear child, bring me the axe (out of the hut).” The old Lapp carries away the axe. The younger Statu: “Father, now he’s looking up; now he’s moving; now he seizes even the axe.” Statu chuckles, sings and plays; he does not hear, observe, or know anything. The old man strikes the elder youth on the head and kills him. Statu finds that he dallies, sings and waits. He says to the younger son: “Bring me the axe, quick, quick.” The old Lapp then split open this child’s head too, took out the brains and severed the windpipe. Statu (listening): “They loaf round all the angles, they wave their heads and eyes; I myself wish to take the axe.” The old man awaits with care with the axe behind the door of the possu, waits and moves here and there. He let fall a splitter on the head of the terrible one, split the large skull, tore away the eyes and nose, shed the blood of the devourer of men, and the blood coloured the soil. (The old Lapp carries out the fallen one, cuts him in pieces and throws them one after the other to [1]Ludac, who in the meantime had come home). Ludac taps on the ground here and there, snuffs, noses, and gloats over that which enters the possu. She resumes the prey, beats it with her hands and cries in anger: “Throw me reindeer’s hoofs and not stockinged feet.” (She continues while she proceeds to eat the soup prepared from her husband and children): “How good it is; but yet it has a queer taste of its own!” (The Lapp takes the eyes of the woman, which lie under the door, fries them in a frying pan, and she perceives it and enquires: “What is it that explodes, crackles and hisses; what is it that fizzles on the charcoal, bursts, brawls, goes click clack? Look, O my eyes, become clear under the door; become clear, O my eyes, O my sparks.” The Lapp: “He has dipped the flesh of thy husband thy eyes in the fat and has eaten them.” Ludac: “In his stomach are my eyes, O my husband, my little owlet,[2] dear boy, my little one. (The man in the fur coat, the Lapp, goes away making merry).
The Moravian variant of this poem is called Budulinek, and is as follows:
There was once a grandfather and grandmother, and they had Budulinek. They boiled him a nice dish of soup, and said: “Budulinek, don’t open to any one.” After this they went away into the wood. When they had gone away came Mrs. Foxey, tapped at the door and cried: “Open! Budulinek.” Budulinek replied: “I won’t open,” and Foxey cried: “Do open, and I’ll give you a ride on my little tail!” Budulinek wanted to have a ride on Foxey’s little tail, forgot grandfather’s warning and opened. Foxey walked into the room and gobbled up all his nice soup. When grandfather and grandmother came home they enquired: “Budulinek, who has been here?” Budulinek said: “Foxey has been here, and has gobbled up all my nice soup.” They said: “There, you see; did we not tell you not to open to any one.” The next time they boiled him pap, and exactly the same thing happened.
The third day they cooked him a nice stew of pears and went into the wood. When they were gone, again came Foxey, and cried: “Budulinek! open, I will give thee a ride on my little tail.” Budulinek replied: “Thou wilt never give me a ride, I know.” Foxey promised she would, and he opened to her. Foxey entered and gobbled up the nice stewed pears. Budulinek seated himself on her tail, and Foxey gave him a ride; but after this she ran off with him, and carried him away into her earth.
When grandfather and grandmother came home and did not see Budulinek, they bethought them at once where Budulinek was. They took a hatchet, a pot, and a fiddle, and went to the fox’s hole. When they came in front of the fox’s hole grandfather began to play his nice little fiddle. Grandmother drummed rub-a-dub on the pot, and sang thereby as follows:
Three little foxes now within,Four little foxes live within,
And the fifth is Budulinek;
We’ve a nice new violin
And a really fine bubinek[a small drum or tambourine].
And so the old fox said to to the young she-fox: “Just go and peep out to see what that is.” The young fox ran out. And as she ran out of the hole grandmother chopped off her poor little head and flung it under the pot. After this grandfather went on playing. Grandmother drummed rub-a-dub, and sang:
Three little foxes now within,
And the fourth is Budulinek:
We’ve a nice new violin
And a really fine bubinek.
The third little fox shares the same fate as the previous one, and then the second; for the old fox again said to her: “Those scamps there are dancing; just go and take a peep to see what it’s all about.” She went; and as she crept out of the hole grandmother cut off her poor little head and threw it under the pot. Grandfather again played, grandmother drummed rub-a-dub, and sang. Then the old she-fox said: “I must go out there myself.” But as she came out grandmother cut off her head too, and threw it under the pot. After this, grandfather and grandmother crept into the fox-hole and found Budulinek. He sat there in a corner and cried for his grandfather and grandmother, and for not having obeyed them. They took him and brought him home, and from that time forth Budulinek has been obedient and got on well.
In another rambling Lapp poem called the Song of the Lamenting Kaskias, occurs the following: “. . . He threw me into the river. The pike took me into his custody; he placed me under his liver, where I remained a year. . . .” After that the malignant man laid his nets and caught the pike, and the hero lived three years in a house. He was then enclosed three years alive in a coffin. The malign man’s son then comes flying in the form of a black-cock. To the malign man’s great disgust, they quarrel about it, and various things happen. Here the pike saviour corresponds closely to the friendly pike Piecuch spares in the Polish story, and which afterwards obeys all his behests when called upon.
These are the principal narrative poems given by Mantegazza; the others are shorter Iyrics, often shrewdly and accurately describing fish and animals, as, e.g., the wolf, the salmon, and the reindeer: their habits and habitats. We come now to the three prose fairy stories, of which a translation is given. The first is called the Giant whose life was hid in a hen’s egg. I give it only slightly abbreviated. It is from Uts-zok:
A woman had a husband who, for seven years, had been in constant war with a giant. The woman pleased the giant, who wanted to get rid of the husband, and at last, after seven years, succeeded in killing him. But she had a son, who, when grown up, endeavoured to avenge the death of his father by killing the giant. But he never succeeded. It seemed just as though there was no life in the giant.
“Dear mama,” said the boy one day, “perhaps thou knowest where the giant conceals his life?”
The mother knew nothing, but promised to enquire; and one day when the giant was in a good humour, did so.
“Why do you ask me?” said the giant.
“Because,” replied the woman, “if you or I were in any danger, it would be a consolation to know that your life was well defended.”
The giant had no suspicion, and recounted as follows: “In the middle of a sea of fire there is an island, in the island a barrel, in the barrel a sheep, in the sheep a hen, in the hen an egg, and in the egg exists my life.”
Having discovered the secret, the mother confides it to her son. “Then,” said her son, “I ought to choose me helpmates, with whom I may cross the sea of fire.” He hired a bear, a wolf, a falcon, and a yunner (a large kind of sea bird), and they set off. He sat under an iron tent with the falcon and the yunner to prevent being burnt, and made the bear and wolf row.
This is why the bear has dark brown fur and the wolf brown spots about the shoulder; for both have made a journey in the middle of a sea of fire, the waves of which burnt like the flame.
And so they reached the island. When they had found the barrel, the bear knocked the bottom out with his paw. Out of the barrel leapt the sheep. The wolf pursued the sheep and rent it. From the sheep out flew the hen. The falcon seized it and tore it to pieces. In the hen was an egg, which fell into the sea and foundered. The yunner dived for it. The first time he remained a long time under water, but not being able to stay so long without breathing, returned to the surface. Having recovered breath he dived again, and remained longer under water than the first time, but still did not find the egg. The third time he remained under water longer than the two preceding times, and this time found the egg at the bottom of the sea. When the youth saw that the yunner had found the egg, he was delighted. They made a fire and put the egg in the middle to burn it. This done they returned home. As soon as they reached the shore whence they set out, the youth hastened home, and then he saw that the giant was burning like the egg in the island. The mother was delighted at the return of her son. “Thanks, dear son, for you have triumphed over the life of the giant.” There was yet a little life in the giant. “What folly was mine,” he exclaimed, “to let myself be wheedled into telling the secret of my life to this malign woman!”
Then the giant seized his tube of iron (with which he used to suck the blood of people), but the woman had put one end of it in the fire. Thus he sucked up fire and cinders, and burnt both within and without. At last the fire went out, and with it was spent the life of the giant.
This story occurs in the Cyrilian Serbian as the Dragoness and the Czar’s Son. It is manifestly a form of the Three Citrons legend. It is, briefly, as follows: A Czar had three sons; the first went out hunting, started and pursued a hare which arrived at a mill, turned into a dragoness and ate him. The same happened to the second son. The third son did not pursue the hare, but went after other game and at length reached the mill, and behold at the water mill an old woman (our old friend Jezibaba, in fact). The Czar’s son greeted her in God’s name: “God assist thee, aged mother.” And the old woman accepted the greeting, and responded: “God protect thee, little son!” Then the prince enquired: “Aged mother, where is my hare?” And she replied: “My little son, that was no hare, but was a dragoness! All this country she ravages and destroys.” Hearing this, the Czar’s son was somewhat troubled, and said to the old woman: “Well, what’s to be done? No doubt it is she who has killed my two brothers.” The old woman replied: “Alas! alas! there is no help; therefore, little son, go home while you are safe and sound, and not where they are.” Then he said to her: “Aged mother, do you know what? I’m certain you, too, would be glad to free yourself from this misfortune.” And the old woman hastened to reply: “Oh, my little son I should just think so. The dragoness would have seized me, too, but she has not yet had the chance.” Then he continued: “Hear well what I tell you; when the dragoness comes home ask her where her strength resides; and kiss all the place where she says her strength resides, as if from affection, until you discover where it is, and then, when I return, tell me where it is.” The Czar’s son then returns to the palace, and the old woman stays at the water mill. When the dragoness comes home the old woman begins to ask her: And where has it been, the dear? And whither away so far? And why won’t it tell me where it goes? And the dragoness replies: “Oh Lord, old mother, I go a long way.” Then the old woman begins to coax and wheedle. “And why does it go so far? and why won’t it tell its old baba where its strength resides? Why, if I knew where its strength resides, I don’t know what I should do for joy; I should go and kiss the place all over.” At this the dragoness laughed, and said: “Look! there’s my strength in yonder fireplace!” Then the old woman goes and embraces and kisses the fireplace all over. And when the dragoness sees it she burst out laughing, and exclaims: “You silly old woman; my strength isn’t there. My strength is in yonder tree.” The old woman now began to embrace and kiss the tree, and the dragoness again burst out laughing and said: “Get away, you old noodle, my strength isn’t there! A long way off, in the next czarstvy near the imperial city is a lake (the bridge near the palace of the three kings, in the kingdom of the Sun-horse), in that lake is a dragon, and with the dragon a wild boar, and with the wild boar a dove; in the dove is my strength.” The old woman having discovered the secret, confides it to the Czar’s son, who goes to the next kingdom and engages himself with the king of it as his shepherd. The shepherd takes with him two greyhounds to chase the boar, a falcon to chase the dove, and bagpipes. The first two days the fight with the dragoness results in a draw, but the third day the shepherd obtains permission to take the king’s daughter. He bids her at the critical moment of the fight kiss him on the cheek, the eye, and the forehead. This she does, and he flings the dragoness to the height of heaven. She falls on the ground and is broken to pieces. Out of her springs the boar; the greyhounds catch the boar and rend it. Out of it flies the dove. The falcon catches it and brings it to the prince. The Czar’s son says to it: “Now, tell me where my brothers are?” And the dove replies: “I will, only don’t do anything to me. Hard by your father’s city is a water mill, and at that water mill are three willow saplings; cut down those three saplings, and smite upon the rocks; immediately the iron door of a vast underground storey will open. In that underground storey are a host of people, old and young, rich and poor, small and great, women and maidens enough to found a considerable czarstvy. There your brothers are.” When the dove had explained everything, the Czar’s son instantly wrung its neck. The hero and heroine then returned to the palace, the hero triumphantly tootling the bagpipes; and the readers will of course divine the termination of the story.
It is unnecessary to insist upon the identity of this Slav and the Lapp story, which is too obvious to require comment; nor need any more be said of the various phials and bottles hid in lions’ heads, etc., which contain the life of the wicked Magi in the Venetian variants. We have had an instance in the story of the Twelve Brothers, where the twelfth sister wheedles the magician into telling her where his life resides, and betrays it to the twelfth brother, who is thus enabled to set free the other eleven brothers and sisters whom the magician had turned to stone. We have thus traced the legend from the Arctic circle to the shore of the Mediterranean. In the Serbian story it is interesting to observe how the grave of the Arctic winter sun, whose return is allegorized in so many ways in these stories, and which has given us so many enchanted castles, of which the castle of iron, with its frozen warriors, is the prototpye, is here transforming itself into the place of eternal torment of our genial Christian theology. I quote another Serbian story called the Devil and the Archangel, partly because it illustrates this metamorphosis, and partly because it shows that the egg which fell into the sea of fire in the Lapp story, symbolizes the sun. The yunner’s three attempts to recover it correspond to the plucking of the three hairs in Father Know-All, and to the three days’ struggle at the bridge in the Sun-horse, to the invariably triple form of the three days’ struggle for the light at the re-appearance of the sun from its Arctic underworld.
When the devils revolted and fled to the earth, they brought the sun with them, and the Czar of the devils stuck it on a pike, and carried it over his shoulder. But when the world began to disgust God so that he wished to burn it up by means of the sun, he sent his Holy Archangel on to the earth, and the Archangel began to fraternize with the Czar of the devils: but the Czar of the devils perceived what the other wanted, and carefully kept on his guard. Going thus about in the world they came to the sea and prepared to bathe, and the devil flung the spear with the sun on it upon the ground. After bathing a little, says the Holy Archangel: “Suppose we dive to see who can go the deepest.” And the devil replies: “Come along, then.” So the Holy Archangel dives and brings up a sponge in his teeth. Now it is the devil’s turn, but he fears lest the Archangel filch the sun while he is diving. Just then an idea strikes him. He spits on to the ground, and from the spittle forms a magpie to watch the sun while he is under water; but the Holy Archangel makes the sign of the cross over the sea, and ice forms upon the surface twelve ells in thickness; then he seizes the sun and carries it to God, and the magpie begins to cry out. When the devil hears the magpie’s voice he knows what it means, and hastens back at full speed. But rising to the surface, he finds it hard frozen, and cannot get out. So down he goes again to the bottom, fetches a stone, breaks the ice, and hurries after the Holy Archangel. Away runs the Archangel and the devil after him. Just as the Holy Archangel is stepping up to God in heaven with one foot, that moment the devil catches him up, and with his nails pinches a large piece of flesh out of the soles of both his feet. When the Archangel, thus wounded, comes into the presence of God, he complains thus: “What am I to do, O God, thus deformed as I am.” And God said: “Never fear! I wish to arrange that all people should have a dent like a small valley in the soles of both feet.” And so God formed them, and in all people is formed on the soles of both their feet a depression like a small valley. And thus it has remained even down to the present day.
This curious legend, which does not tend to raise one’s opinion either of Christian honesty or of the sublimity of Christian imagination—we are a long way from the Herald’s speech in the Lapp pagan poem—seems to show a consciousness of what was probably the case, that our primitive ancestors were flat-footed, as many negro races and the anthropoid apes are to this day (Lombroso). If so, just as Erlik in the Siberian legend helped semi-simian humanity out of its monkey-fleeces to higher things, so this Serbian devil was no inconsiderable stepping-stone in the triumphant upward march of human evolution.
The next story—the Woman of the Sea from Naessebegy—is one of that large class of which El Granchio (the crab), and a Slavonic one, the Frog, are examples. The hero is conducted to a palace under the sea by a mermaid, and presented with a heap of silver and a large golden cup, which once stood on the table of a king. These stories seem to be expansions of the third task in the three days’ struggle for the light, when the hero fishes up a gold ring from the bottom of a black sea with the help of a pike or a boon companion.
The third story is called the Poor Boy, the Devil, and the City of Gold (from Karasjok). A poor and a rich man go out fishing; the rich man is fortunate, the poor man catches nothing. Then he hears a voice: “Promise me what your wife carries under the heart and you shall be rich” [Jephthah’s daughter: El mezo (Venetian) etc.]. The man catches a fish full of gold coins, and makes his fortune. He finds his wife enceinte. Fifteen years after the devil comes and claims the boy. The rest of the story is one of the innumerable variants of the Three Citrons—the three volume novel form of fairy story. Taking it all together, it belongs therefore to the epic fairy story type, beginning as it does with the birth of the hero, and something miraculous connected with it.
We have now compared the principal fragments of ancient Lapp literature with the Slavonic folk-lore, and have shewn beyond the possibility of cavil how close is the connection between the two.
In conclusion, a few words may be said of the Lapp superstitions, which may perhaps be traced in our Slav variants of Lapp nature myths. They are not very numerous, perhaps, in part because the records of Lapp mythology are few and rapidly perishing.
1. When the noaide’s, or Lapp magician’s soul, during the mesmeric trance passed into Saivvo, the subterranean Lapp elysium, it was conducted by a Saivvo-bird or fish. The fish was either piscine or vermiform. In the Venetian variant (El Mezo) of the Polish Hloupy Piecuch, the wonder-working pike is exchanged for an equally thaumaturgic eel. A reminiscence of the primitive Lapp idea may perhaps have contributed to the choice of pike and eels, as well as to the serpent in the story of Golden Locks.
2. Originally the Lapps adored the sun, and a fragment of the ancient belief is preserved to this day in the custom of smearing the walls of the round hut with butter, that the sun may melt it after the long Arctic winter night. In the Vedas, one of the epithets of the day is the extraordinary one of buttery dawn, which may be a reminiscence of this primitive Lapp rite.
8. The magicians kept magic flies in bags, which they let out to produce skin diseases in their enemies. An allusion to these magic flies may perhaps be traced in the flies in Golden Locks.
4. The Lapps believed in auguries by means of birds, a superstition which developed to such vast proportions in the classic world. In the Serbian legend we have the various legends of miraculous cocks, in Polish Iskrzytski, in Czech the Raras and Setek legends, in Slovenian Vtacok Bracok (bird-brother), and numerous other stories in which the hero or heroine is murdered and transformed into a bird. Specially noticeable is the transformation at will of the seer in the Sun-horse into a green bird. It was the special sign of a good noaide or Lapp magician to be able to change at will into the form of an animal or bird. Some of them could, it was pretended, change into as many as six different animals. Setek, the little boy with chicken claws, a regular enfant terrible reappears in Venetian folk-lore as Mazzariol, an old man who would turn into a baby, and let himself be washed and dandled by some good housewife, and then run off in his true form and stand in the street and laugh at her credulity.
5. In the root the woodman brings home in Otesanek and trims to form a little baby, which his wife puts to bed, feeds it with pap, and causes to come to life and grow into a veritable enfant terrible, may perhaps be traced a faint reminiscence of the pagan Lapps’ wooden idols which were formed out of the roots of birch trees.
We have thus traced our hypothetical primitive Arctic winter weather myth or fairy story, the source of all our principal literary forms and the most essential of our religious beliefs and superstitions to the creative minds of Arctic Mongols, and the influence upon them of the peculiar seasons of the Arctic circle. With the rude plan of the primitive Arctic myth the foundation is laid for a scientific study of folk-lore myths. Placing them in their natural groups (see plan) and arranging them in these according to the latitude of the place where they were collected, and then comparing the myths of each group minutely among themselves, it will, perhaps, be possible to reconstruct the primitive annual solar Arctic winter myth or weather allegory, which, if it actually existed, is the most ancient piece of literature in the world, compared to which Egyptian hieroglyphics are modern history. This re-constituted myth may possibly lead to the conviction that some seventy or more thousand years ago the climate of Siberia was temperate, and the Arctic circle was the centre of civilisation of a Turanian people like the present Samoyedes, of which the reconstituted myth is a relic, and of the warmer weather that prevailed there in those days. The civilisation of these ancient Turanians was not only high latitude but high. They were small with very round heads; swearing, theft and murder, and deeds of violence were unknown, or almost unknown among them. Their religion consisted of a high order of spiritualism (the latitude and proximity of the magnetic pole rendering their nervous systems peculiarly sensitive) and absolute freedom in the indulgence of the amorous passions, love and happiness were the sole objects aimed at in their state of organization; war was unknown ; the illusion of the death and burial of the sun in the Arctic winter night, and its subsequent resurrection in spring was the basis of their religion.
From geometrical considerations, the round-headed type of human beings must be the highest, because a spherical skull, other things being equal, contains the greatest amount of brains. The present predominance of the Aryans (i.e., elliptical skull-folk) is due to their aptitude for motion consequent upon their well developed cerebellums. How deeply seated is this instinct in us is shewn in every department of our science, the last word of which is motion in a medium. When we have resolved even thought itself into the motion or electrical discharges of its molecules, we assume we have penetrated as far as human intellect can go; it does not occur to us to proceed in the opposite direction, and endeavour to express cosmical energy in terms of thought. But when all the problems of mechanical locomotion have been solved, there will be no further use for our physical and mental restlessness, with its nomad instinct; and our science of motion and locomotion having been learned and adopted by the round-headed Turanian races, ours may be destined to die out or become absorbed in theirs, our rôle on earth being accomplished. The age of peace, impossible to our combative type of humanity, may then perhaps dawn, as well as that of freedom for the emotions, and therefore of relative happiness. Once again things will be as they were in that long past golden age of the Arctic world, when, just as the moon was a pledge and earnest in the long Arctic winter night of the reappearance of the sun, so the orgies and beanfeasts of that long jovial winter midnight were the pledge and earnest of the resurrection of ove and its perpetual enjoyment after death:
The moon and its broken reflection,
And its shadows shall appear,
As the symbol of love in heaven,
And its wavering image here.