stories referred to by Mr. Hartland are based. Nor do I see anything in the Algonquin or Sicilian stories that can require us to regard them as marking stages of development of the forbidden chamber myth, or otherwise than as different modes of representing the same idea of the evil of giving way to the feeling of undue curiosity.[1]
That large classes of folk-stories were framed to convey a moral lesson may be shown by reference to the fables ascribed to Æsop, which were intended to inculcate "tales of practical morality, drawn from the habits of the inferior creation." Again, if we refer to the Folk-Tales of India, translated from the Buddhist Jâtaka, and contributed by the Rev. Dr. Richard Morris to the Folk-Lore Journal, we see that many of those birth-stories contain one or more gâthâs enforcing a moral or practical lesson. As an example may be quoted the last verse of the Daddabha Jâtaka,[2] or "The Flight of the Beasts," which runs—
"But they who walk in virtue's pleasant paths
Full wary are; in calmness they delight,
In time of dread no cowardice they show,
But stand full firm, and none can them beguile."
The moral of the Sumsumâra Jâtaka, or "The Monkey that left its heart on a tree," is of a different character. Speaking to the crocodile the Bodhisat in the form of an ape says [ante, vol. iii. p. 128]:—
"Oh! a precious big body you've got it is true,
Yet little good sense[3] to match it have you.
To shoot one you tried, O false crocodile,
So you have I tricked, now go where you will."
The headings of other stories sufficiently declare the moral they are designed to enforce. Thus, we have the value of kind words, no evil deed is unseen, pride will have a fall, the punishment of avarice, &c.
- ↑ This lesson is taught also by the Kafir story of The Bird that made milk, where children suffer for their disobedient curiosity in looking at a bird, on which depended their father's well-being, and which answers therefore to the elf of the Algonquin.—Kafir Folk-Lore, by George McCall Theal, p. 29.
- ↑ The Folk-Lore Journal, vol. iii. p. 124.
- ↑ In Grimm's "King of the Golden Mountain" the giants say "little men have often wise heads."
