Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning

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FAIRY TALES, THEIR ORIGIN AND MEANING

With Some Account of Dwellers in Fairyland

BY

JOHN THACKRAY BUNCE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

The substance of this volume was delivered as a course of
Christmas Holiday Lectures, in 1877, at the Birmingham and
Midland Institute, of which the author was then the senior
Vice-president. It was found that both the subject and the
matter interested young people; and it was therefore thought
that, revised and extended, the Lectures might not prove
unacceptable in the form of a Book. The volume does not pretend
to scientific method, or to complete treatment of the subject.
Its aim is a very modest one: to furnish an inducement rather
than a formal introduction to the study of Folk Lore; a study
which, when once begun, the reader will pursue, with unflagging
interest, in such works as the various writings of Mr. Max-Muller;
the "Mythology of the Aryan Nations," by Mr. Cox; Mr. Ralston's
"Russian Folk Tales;" Mr. Kelly's "Curiosities of Indo-European
Folk Lore;" the Introduction to Mr. Campbell's "Popular Tales of
the West Highlands," and other publications, both English and
German, bearing upon the same subject. In the hope that his
labour may serve this purpose, the author ventures to ask for
an indulgent rather than a critical reception of this little
volume.

BIRMINGHAM,
September, 1878.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
ORIGIN OF FAIRY TALES--THE ARYAN RACE: ITS CHARACTERISTICS, ITS
TRADITIONS, AND ITS MIGRATIONS

CHAPTER II.
KINDRED TALES FROM DIVERS LANDS

CHAPTER III.
DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: STORIES FROM THE EAST

CHAPTER IV.
DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: TEUTONIC, SCANDINAVIAN, ETC.

CHAPTER V.
DWELLERS IN FAIRYLAND: CELTIC, THE WEST HIGHLANDS

CHAPTER VI.
CONCLUSION-SOME POPULAR TALES EXPLAINED.

INDEX

CHAPTER I.

ORIGIN OF FAIRY STORIES.

We are going into Fairy Land for a little while, to see what we
can find there to amuse and instruct us this Christmas time.
Does anybody know the way? There are no maps or guidebooks, and
the places we meet with in our workaday world do not seem like
the homes of the Fairies. Yet we have only to put on our Wishing
Caps, and we can get into Fairy Land in a moment. The house-walls
fade away, the winter sky brightens, the sun shines out, the weather
grows warm and pleasant; flowers spring up, great trees cast a
friendly shade, streams murmur cheerfully over their pebbly beds,
jewelled fruits are to be had for the trouble of gathering them;
invisible hands set out well-covered dinner-tables, brilliant and
graceful forms flit in and out across our path, and we all at once
find ourselves in the midst of a company of dear old friends whom
we have known and loved ever since we knew anything. There is
Fortunatus with his magic purse, and the square of carpet that
carries him anywhere; and Aladdin with his wonderful lamp; and
Sindbad with the diamonds he has picked up in the Valley of
Serpents; and the Invisible Prince, who uses the fairy cat to get
his dinner for him; and the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, just
awakened by the young Prince, after her long sleep of a hundred
years; and Puss in Boots curling his whiskers after having eaten
up the ogre who foolishly changed himself into a mouse; and Beauty
and the Beast; and the Blue Bird; and Little Red Riding Hood, and
Jack the Giant Killer, and Jack and the Bean Stalk; and the Yellow
Dwarf; and Cinderella and her fairy godmother; and great numbers
besides, of whom we haven't time to say anything now.

And when we come to look about us, we see that there are other
dwellers in Fairy Land; giants and dwarfs, dragons and griffins,
ogres with great white teeth, and wearing seven-leagued boots;
and enchanters and magicians, who can change themselves into any
forms they please, and can turn other people into stone. And
there are beasts and birds who can talk, and fishes that come
out on dry land, with golden rings in their mouths; and good
maidens who drop rubies and pearls when they speak, and bad ones
out of whose mouths come all kinds of ugly things. Then there
are evil-minded fairies, who always want to be doing mischief;
and there are good fairies, beautifully dressed, and with
shining golden hair and bright blue eyes and jewelled coronets,
and with magic wands in their hands, who go about watching the
bad fairies, and always come just in time to drive them away,
and so prevent them from doing harm--the sort of Fairies you see
once a year at the pantomimes, only more beautiful, and more
handsomely dressed, and more graceful in shape, and not so fat,
and who do not paint their faces, which is a bad thing for any
woman to do, whether fairy or mortal.

Altogether, this Fairy Land that we can make for ourselves in a
moment, is a very pleasant and most delightful place, and one
which all of us, young and old, may well desire to get into,
even if we have to come back from it sooner than we like. It is
just the country to suit everybody, for all of us can find in it
whatever pleases him best. If he likes work, there is plenty of
adventure; he can climb up mountains of steel, or travel over
seas of glass, or engage in single combat with a giant, or dive
down into the caves of the little red dwarfs and bring up their
hidden treasures, or mount a horse that goes more swiftly than
the wind, or go off on a long journey to find the water of youth
and life, or do anything else that happens to be very dangerous
and troublesome. If he doesn't like work, it is again just the
place to suit idle people, because it is all Midsummer holidays.
I never heard of a school in Fairy Land, nor of masters with
canes or birch rods, nor of impositions and long lessons to be
learned when one gets home in the evening. Then the weather is
so delightful. It is perpetual sunshine, so that you may lie out
in the fields all day without catching cold; and yet it is not
too hot, the sunshine being a sort of twilight, in which you see
everything, quite clearly, but softly, and with beautiful
colours, as if you were in a delightful dream.

And this goes on night and day, or at least what we call night,
for they don't burn gas there, or candles, or anything of that
kind; so that there is no regular going to bed and getting up;
you just lie down anywhere when you want to rest, and when you
have rested, you wake up again, and go on with your travels.
There is one capital thing about Fairy Land. There are no
doctors there; not one in the whole country. Consequently nobody
is ill, and there are no pills or powders, or brimstone and
treacle, or senna tea, or being kept at home when you want to go
out, or being obliged to go to bed early and have gruel instead
of cake and sweetmeats. They don't want the doctors, because if
you cut your finger it gets well directly, and even when people
are killed, or are turned into stones, or when anything else
unpleasant happens, it can all be put right in a minute or two.
All you have to do when you are in trouble is to go and look for
some wrinkled old woman in a patched old brown cloak, and be
very civil to her, and to do cheerfully and kindly any service
she asks of you, and then she will throw off the dark cloak, and
become a young and beautiful Fairy Queen, and wave her magic
wand, and everything will fall out just as you would like to
have it.

As to Time, they take no note of it in Fairy Land. The Princess
falls asleep for a hundred years, and wakes up quite rosy, and
young, and beautiful. Friends and sweethearts are parted for
years, and nobody seems to think they have grown older when they
meet, or that life has become shorter, and so they fall to their
youthful talk as if nothing had happened. Thus the dwellers in
Fairy Land have no cares about chronology. With them there is no
past or future; it is all present--so there are no disagreeable
dates to learn, nor tables of kings, and when they reigned, or
who succeeded them, or what battles they fought, or anything of
that kind. Indeed there are no such facts to be learned, for
when kings are wicked in Fairy Land, a powerful magician comes
and twists their heads off, or puts them to death somehow; and
when they are good kings they seem to live for ever, and always
to be wearing rich robes and royal golden crowns, and to be
entertaining Fairy Queens, and receiving handsome brilliant
gifts from everybody who knows them.

Now this is Fairy Land, the dear sweet land of Once Upon a Time,
where there is constant light, and summer days, and everlasting
flowers, and pleasant fields and streams, and long dreams
without rough waking, and ease of life, and all things strange
and beautiful; where nobody wonders at anything that may happen;
where good fairies are ever on the watch to help those whom they
love; where youth abides, and there is no pain or death, and all
trouble fades away, and whatever seems hard is made easy, and
all things that look wrong come right in the end, and truth and
goodness have their perpetual triumph, and the world is ever
young.

And Fairy Land is always the same, and always has been, whether
it is close to us--so close that we may enter it in a moment--or
whether it is far off; in the stories that have come to us from
the most ancient days, and the most distant lands, and in those
which kind and clever story-tellers write for us now. It is the
same in the legends of the mysterious East, as old as the
beginning of life; the same in the glowing South, in the myths
of ancient Greece; the same in the frozen regions of the
Scandinavian North, and in the forests of the great Teuton land,
and in the Islands of the West; the same in the tales that
nurses tell to the little ones by the fireside on winter
evenings, and in the songs that mothers sing to hush their babes
to sleep; the same in the delightful folk-lore that Grimm has
collected for us, and that dear Hans Andersen has but just
ceased to tell.

All the chief stories that we know so well are to be found in
all times, and in almost all countries. Cinderella, for one, is
told in the language of every country in Europe, and the same
legend is found in the fanciful tales related by the Greek
poets; and still further back, it appears in very ancient Hindu
legends. So, again, does Beauty and the Beast, so does our own
familiar tale of Jack the Giant Killer, so also do a great
number of other fairy stories, each being told in different
countries and in different periods, with so much likeness as to
show that all the versions came from the same source, and yet
with so much difference as to show that none of the versions are
directly copied from each other. Indeed, when we compare the
myths and legends of one country with another, and of one period
with another, we find out how they have come to be so much
alike, and yet in some things so different. We see that there
must have been one origin for all these stories, that they must
have been invented by one people, that this people must have
been afterwards divided, and that each part or division of it
must have brought into its new home the legends once common to
them all, and must have shaped and altered these according, to
the kind of places in which they came to live: those of the
North being sterner and more terrible, those of the South softer
and fuller of light and colour, and adorned with touches of more
delicate fancy. And this, indeed, is really the case. All the
chief stories and legends are alike, because they were first
made by one people; and all the nations in which they are now
told in one form or another tell them because they are all
descended from this one common stock. If you travel amongst
them, or talk to them, or read their history, and learn their
languages, the nations of Europe seem to be altogether unlike
each other; they have different speech and manners, and ways of
thinking, and forms of government, and even different looks--for
you can tell them from one another by some peculiarity of
appearance. Yet, in fact, all these nations belong to one great
family--English, and German, and Russian, and French, and
Italian, and Spanish, the nations of the North, and the South,
and the West, and partly of the East of Europe, all came from
one stock; and so did the Romans and Greeks who went before
them; and so also did the Medes and Persians, and the Hindus,
and some other peoples who have always remained in Asia. And to
the people from whom all these nations have sprung learned men
have given two names. Sometimes they are called the Indo-Germanic
or Indo-European race, to show how widely they extend; and
sometimes they are called the Aryan race, from a word which is
found in their language, and which comes from the root "ar," to
plough, and is supposed to mean noble, or of a good family.

But how do we know that there were any such people, and that we
in England are descended from them, or that they were the
forefathers of the other nations of Europe, and of the Hindus,
and of the old Greeks and Romans? We know it by a most curious
and ingenious process of what may be called digging out and
building up. Some of you may remember that years ago there was
found in New Zealand a strange-looking bone, which nobody could
make anything of, and which seemed to have belonged to some
creature quite lost to the world as we know it. This bone was
sent home to England to a great naturalist, Professor Owen, of
the British Museum, who looked at it, turned it over, thought
about it, and then came to the conclusion that it was a bone
which had once formed part of a gigantic bird. Then; by degrees,
he began to see the kind of general form which such a bird must
have presented, and finally, putting one thing to another, and
fitting part to part, he declared it to be a bird of gigantic
size, and of a particular character, which he was able to
describe; and this opinion was confirmed by later discoveries of
other bones and fragments, so that an almost complete skeleton
of the Dinornis may now be seen in this country. Well, our
knowledge of the Aryan people, and of our own descent from them,
has been found out in much the same way. Learned men observed,
as a curious thing, that in various European languages there
were words of the same kind, and having the same root forms;
they found also that these forms of roots existed in the older
language of Greece; and then they found that they existed also
in Sanskrit, the oldest language of India--that in which the
sacred books of the Hindus are written. They discovered,
further, that these words and their roots meant always the same
things, and this led to the natural belief that they came from
the same source. Then, by closer inquiry into the _Vedas_, or
Hindu sacred books, another discovery was made, namely, that
while the Sanskrit has preserved the words of the original
language in their most primitive or earliest state, the other
languages derived from the same source have kept some forms
plainly coming from the same roots, but which Sanskrit has lost.
Thus we are carried back to a language older than Sanskrit, and
of which this is only one of the forms, and from this we know
that there was a people which used a common tongue; and if
different forms of this common tongue are found in India, in
Persia, and throughout Europe, we know that the races which
inhabit these countries must, at sometime, have parted from the
parent stock, and must have carried their language and their
traditions along with them. So, to find out who these people
were, we have to go back to the sacred books of the Hindus and
the Persians, and to pick out whatever facts may be found there,
and thus to build up the memorial of the Aryan race, just as
Professor Owen built up the great New Zealand bird.

It would take too long, and would be much too dry, to show how
this process has been completed step by step, and bit by bit.
That belongs to a study called comparative philology, and to
another called comparative mythology--that is, the studies of
words and of myths, or legends--which some of those who read
these pages may pursue with interest in after years. All that
need be done now is to bring together such accounts of the Aryan
people, our forefathers, as may be gathered from the writings of
the learned men who have made this a subject of inquiry, and
especially from the works of German and French writers, and more
particularly from those of Mr. Max Muller, an eminent German,
who lives amongst us in England, who writes in English, and who
has done more, perhaps, than anybody else, to tell us what we
know about this matter.

As to when the Aryans lived we know nothing, but that it was
thousands of years ago, long before history began. As to the
kind of people they were we know nothing in a direct way. They
have left no traces of themselves in buildings, or weapons, or
enduring records of any kind. There are no ruins of their
temples or tombs, no pottery--which often helps to throw light
upon ancient peoples-no carvings upon rocks or stones. It is
only by the remains of their language that we can trace them;
and we do this through the sacred books of the Hindus and
Persians-the _Vedas_ and the _Zend Avesta_--in which remains of
their language are found, and by means of which, therefore, we
get to know something about their dwelling-place, their manners,
their customs, their religion, and their legends--the source and
origin of our Fairy Tales.

In the _Zend Avesta_--the oldest sacred book of the Persians--or
in such fragments of it as are left, there are sixteen countries
spoken of as having been given by Ormuzd, the Good Deity, for
the Aryans to live in; and these countries are described as a
land of delight, which was turned, by Ahriman, the Evil Deity,
into a land of death and cold; partly, it is said, by a great
flood, which is described as being like Noah's flood recorded in
the Book of Genesis. This land, as nearly as we can make it out,
seems to have been the high, central district of Asia, to the
north and west of the great chain of mountains of the Hindu
Koush, which form the frontier barrier of the present country of
the Afghans. It stretched, probably, from the sources of the
river Oxus to the shores of the Caspian Sea; and when the Aryans
moved from their home, it is thought that the easterly portion
of the tribes were those who marched southwards into India and
Persia, and that those who were nearest the Caspian Sea marched
westwards into Europe. It is not supposed that they were all one
united people, but rather a number of tribes, having a common
origin--though what was this original stock is quite beyond any
knowledge we have, or even beyond our powers of conjecture. But,
though the Aryan peoples were divided into tribes, and were
spread over a tract of country nearly as large as half Europe,
we may properly describe them generally, for so far as our
knowledge goes, all the tribes had the same character.

They were a pastoral people--that is, their chief work was to
look after their herds of cattle and to till the earth. Of this
we find proof in the words and roots remaining of their language.
From the same source, also, we know that they lived in dwellings
built with wood and stone; that these dwellings were grouped
together in villages; that they were fenced in against enemies,
and that enclosures were formed to keep the cattle from straying,
and that roads of some kind were made from one village to
another. These things show that the Aryans had some claim to the
name they took, and that in comparison with their forefathers,
or with the savage or wandering tribes they knew, they had a
right to call themselves respectable, excellent, honourable,
masters, heroes--for all these are given as probable meanings
of their name. Their progress was shown in another way. The
rudest and earliest tribes of men used weapons of flint, roughly
shaped into axes and spear-heads, or other cutting implements,
with which they defended themselves in conflict, or killed the
beasts of chase, or dug up the roots on which they lived. The
Aryans were far in advance of this condition. They did not, it
is believed, know the use of iron, but they knew and used gold,
silver, and copper; they made weapons and other implements of
bronze; they had ploughs to till the ground, and axes, and
probably saws, for the purpose of cutting and shaping timber.
Of pottery and weaving they knew something: the western tribes
certainly used hemp and flax as materials for weaving, and when
the stuff was woven the women made it into garments by the use
of the needle. Thus we get a certain division of trades or
occupations. There were the tiller of the soil, the herdsman,
the smith who forged the tools and weapons of bronze, the joiner
or carpenter who built the houses, and the weaver who made the
clothing required for protection against a climate which was
usually cold. Then there was also the boat-builder, for the
Aryans had boats, though moved only by oars. There was yet
another class, the makers of personal ornaments, for these
people had rings, bracelets, and necklaces made of the precious
metals.

Of trade the Aryans knew something; but they had no coined
money--all the trade was done by exchange of one kind of cattle,
or grain or goods, for another. They had regulations as to
property, their laws punished crime with fine, imprisonment, or
death, just as ours do. They seem to have been careful to keep
their liberties, the families being formed into groups, and
these into tribes or clans, under the rule of an elected chief,
while it is probable that a Great Chief or King ruled over
several tribes and led them to war, or saw that the laws were
put into force.

Now we begin to see something of these ancient forefathers of
ours, and to understand what kind of people they were. Presently
we shall have to look into their religion, out of which our
Fairy Stories were really made; but first, there are one or two
other things to be said about them. One of these shows that they
were far in advance of savage races, for they could count as
high as one hundred, while savages can seldom get further than
the number of their fingers; and they had also advanced so far
as to divide the year into twelve months, which they took from
the changes of the moon. Then their family relations were very
close and tender. "Names were given to the members of families
related by marriage as well as by blood. A welcome greeted the
birth of children, as of those who brought joy to the home; and
the love that should be felt between brother and sister was
shown in the names given to them: _bhratar_ (or brother) being
he who sustains or helps; _svasar_ (or sister) she who pleases
or consoles. The daughter of each household was called _duhitar,_
from _duh_, a root which in Sanskrit means to milk, by which we
know that the girls in those days were the milking-maids.
Father comes from a root, _pa_, which means to protect or
support; mother, _matar_, has the meaning of maker."[1]

Now we may sum up what we know of this ancient people and
their ways; and we find in them much that is to be found in
their descendants--the love of parents and children, the
closeness of family ties, the protection of life and property,
the maintenance of law and order, and, as we shall see
presently, a great reverence for _God_. Also, they were well
versed in the arts of life--they built houses, formed villages
or towns, made roads, cultivated the soil, raised great herds
of cattle and other animals; they made boats and land-carriages,
worked in metals for use and ornament, carried on trade with
each other, knew how to count, and were able to divide their
time so as to reckon by months and days as well as by seasons.
Besides all this, they had something more and of still higher
value, for the fragments of their ancient poems or hymns
preserved in the Hindu and Persian sacred books show that they
thought much of the spirit of man as well as of his bodily
life; that they looked upon sin as an evil to be punished or
forgiven by the Gods, that they believed in a life after the
death of the body, and that they had a strong feeling for
natural beauty and a love of searching into the wonders of
the earth and of the heavens.

The religion of the Aryan races, in its beginning, was a very
simple and a very noble one. They looked up to the heavens and
saw the bright sun, and the light and beauty and glory of the
day. They saw the day fade into night and the clouds draw
themselves across the sky, and then they saw the dawn and the
light and life of another day. Seeing these things, they felt
that some Power higher than man ordered and guided them; and to
this great Power they gave the name of _Dyaus_, from a root-word
which means "to shine." And when, out of the forces and forms of
Nature, they afterwards fashioned other Gods, this name of Dyaus
became _Dyaus pitar_, the Heaven-Father, or Lord of All; and in
far later times, when the western Aryans had found their home in
Europe, the _Dyaus pitar_ of the central Asian land became the
Zeupater of the Greeks, and the Jupiter of the Romans; and the
first part of his name gave us the word Deity, which we apply to
_God_. So, as Professor Max Muller tells us, the descendants of
the ancient Aryans, "when they search for a name for what is most
exalted and yet most dear to every one of us, when they wish to
express both awe and love, the infinite and the finite, they can
do but what their old fathers did when gazing up to the eternal
sky, and feeling the presence of a Being as far as far, and as
near as near can be; they can but combine the self-same words
and utter once more the primeval Aryan prayer, Heaven-Father,
in that form which will endure for ever, 'Our Father, which art
in Heaven.'"

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