 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Popular Tales from the North by Sir George Webb Dessant. Section 1, Notice to the Second Edition The first edition of these tales being exhausted and a demand having arisen for a second. The translator has thought it right to add 13 tales which complete the translation of a Spjarnsen and Mohs collection and to strengthen the introduction by working in some new matter and by working out some points which were only slightly sketched in the first edition. The favor with which the book was welcomed makes it almost a duty to say a word here on the many kind and able notices which have been written upon it. The duties are not always pleasant but the fulfillment of this at least gives no pain because without one exception every criticism which the translator has seen has shown him that his prayer for gentle readers has been fully heard. It will be forgiven him, he hopes, when he says that he has not seen good ground to change or even to modify any of the opinions as to the origin and diffusion of popular tales put forth in the first edition. This indeed has been said by others for those views what has been urged against them with all kindness and good humor. In one or two cases has not availed at all to weigh down mature convictions deliberately expressed after the studies of years backed as they are by the researchers and support of those who have given their lives to this branch of knowledge. And now before the translator takes leave of his readers for the second time he will follow the lead of the good godmother in one of these tales and forbid all good children to read the two which stand last in the book. There is this difference between him and the godmother. She found her foster daughter out as soon as she came back. He will never know it if any bad child has broken his behest. Still he hopes that all good children who read this book will bear in mind that there is just as much sin in breaking a commandment even though it be not found out and so he bids them goodbye and feels sure that no good child will dare to look into those two ruins. If after this warning they peep in they may perhaps see something which will shock them. Why then print them all some grown readers ask? Because this volume is meant for you as well as for children and if you have gone ever so little into the world with open eyes if you must have seen yes every day things much more shocking because there's nothing immortal in their spirit because they are intrinsically valuable as illustrating manners and traditions and so could not well be left out because they complete the number of the Norse originals and leave none untranslated. At last though not least because the translator hates family versions of anything family Bibles family Shakespeare's those who with so large a choice of beauty before them would pick out and gloat over this or that coarseness or freedom of expression I like those who in reading the Bible should always turn to Leviticus or those whose Shakespeare would open of itself at Pericles Prince of Tear such readers the translator does not wish to have. End of section 1 Please visit LibreVax.org Read by Varene Real Popular Tales from the Norse by Sir George Repticent Section 2 Notice the first edition These translations from Norse folklore collected with such freshness and faithfulness by M. M. S. Björmsen and Moë have been made at various times and at long intervals during the last 15 years a fact which is mentioned only to account for any variations in style at all of which, however, the translators unconscious their critical eye may detect in this volume one of them, the Master Thief has already appeared in Blackwood's magazine for November 1851 from the columns of which Periodical is now reprinted by the kind permission of the proprietors the translator sorry that he has not been able to comply with the suggestion of some friend upon whose goodwill he sets all store who wished him to change and soften some features in these tales which they thought likely to shock English feeling he has, however, felt it to be out of his power to meet their wishes for the merits of an untaking of his kind rests entirely on its faithfulness and truth and the man who, in such a work, willfully changes or softens is as guilty as he who puts bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter of this guilt, at least, the translator feels himself free and, perhaps, if any, who may be inclined to be offended at first they'll take the trouble to read the introduction, which precedes and explains the tales they may find not only that the softening process would have sparked these popular traditions for all except the most childish readers but that the things which shock them at the first blush are, after all, not so very shocking for the rest, it all becomes him to speak of a way in which his work has been done but every reader will only bear in mind that this, too, is an enchanted garden in which whoever dares to pluck a flower does it at the peril of his head and if he will then read the book in a merciful and tender spirit he will prove himself what the translator most longs to find a gentle reader and both will part on the best terms End of Section 2 Section 3 of Popular Tales from the Norse This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Popular Tales from the Norse by Sir George Webb Dassen Section 3, Introduction Part 1, Origin The most careless reader can hardly fail to see that many of the tales in this volume have the same groundwork as those with which he has been familiar from his earliest youth They are nursery tales, in fact, of the days when there were tales in nurseries old wives' fables which have faded away before the light of gas and the power of steam It is long indeed since English nurses told these tales to English children by force of memory and word of mouth In a written shape we have long had some of them, at least, in English versions of the Conte de la Merloi of Perot and the Conte de Fe of Madame Dalloy Those tight-laced, high-heeled tales of the teacup times of Louis XIV and his successors in which the popular tale appears to as much disadvantage as an artless country girl in the stifling atmosphere of a London theatre From these foreign sources after the voice of the English reciter was hushed and it was hushed in England more than a century ago Our great-grandmothers learnt to tell of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast of little red riding-hood and blue-beard mingled together in the cabinet de Fe with Sinbad the Sailor and Aladdin's wondrous lamb For that was an uncritical age and its spirit breathed hot and cold east and west from all quarters of the globe at once using the traditions and tales of all times and countries into one incongruous mass of fable as much tangled and knotted as that famous pound of flax which the lassie in one of these tales is expected to spin into an even wool within four and twenty hours No poverty of invention or want of power on the part of translators could entirely destroy the innate beauty of these popular traditions but here in England at least they had almost dwindled out or at any rate had been lost sight of as home growths We had learnt to buy our own children back disguised in foreign garb and as for their being anything more than the mere pastime of an idle hour as to their having any history or science of their own such an absurdity was never once thought of It had indeed been remarked even in the eighteenth century that dreary time of indifference and doubt that some of the popular traditions of the nations north of the Alps contained striking resemblances and parallels to stories in the classical mythology but those were the days when Greek and Latin lorded it over the other languages of the earth and when any such resemblance or analogy was observed it was commonly supposed that that base-born slave, the vulgar tongue had dared to make a clumsy copy of something peculiarly belonging to the twin tyrants who ruled all the dialects of the world with a pedant's rod At last, just at the close of that great war which western Europe waged against the genius and fortune of the first Napoleon just as the eagle, Prometheus and the eagle in one shape was fast-fettered by sheer force and strength to his rock in the Atlantic there arose a man in central Germany on the old Thuringian soil to whom it was given to assert the dignity of vernacular literature to throw off the yoke of classical tyranny and to claim for all the dialects of Teutonic speech a rite of ancient inheritance and perfect freedom before unsuspected and unknown it is almost needless to mention this honored name for the furtherance of the good work which he began nearly fifty years ago he still lives and still labors there is no spot on which an accent of Teutonic speech is uttered where the name of Jacob Grimm is not a household word his general grammar of all the Teutonic dialects from Iceland to England has proved the equality of these tongues with their ancient classical oppressors his antiquities of Teutonic law have shown that the codes of the Lombards, Franks and Goths were not mere savage brutal customaries based as had been supposed on the absence of all law and rite his numerous treatises on early German authors have shown that the German poets of the Middle Age Godfrey of Strasburg Wolfram von Eskenbach Hartmann von der Au Walter von der Vogelweide and the rest can hold their own against any contemporary writers in other lands and lastly what rather concerns us here his Teutonic mythology his Reynard the Fox and the collection of German popular tales which he and his brother William published have thrown a flood of light on the early history of all the branches of our race and have raised what had come to be looked on as mere nursery fictions and old wives fables to a study fit for the energies of grown men and to all the dignity of a science in these pages where we have to run over a vast tract of space the reader who wishes to learn and not to cavill and for such a loneliness introduction as intended must be content with results rather than processes and steps to use a homely likeness he must be satisfied with the soup that is set before him and not desired to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled when we say therefore that in these latter days the philology and mythology of the East and West have met and kissed each other that they now go hand in hand that they lend one another mutual support that one cannot be understood without the other we look to be believed we do not expect to be put to the proof how the labors of Grimm and his disciples on this side were first rendered possible by the linguistic discoveries of Anquotile du Perron and others in India and France at the end of the last century then materially assisted and furthered by the researchers of Sir William Jones, Colbrook and others in India and England during the early part of this century and finally have become identical with those of Wilson, Bob, Lassen and Max Mueller at the present day the affinity which exists the mythological and philological point of view between the Aryan or Indo-European languages on the one hand and the Sanskrit on the other is now the first article of a literary creed and the man who denies it puts himself as much beyond the pale of argument as he who, in a religious discussion should meet a grave divine of the Church of England with a strict contradictory of her first article and loudly declare his conviction that there was no God in a general way then we may be permitted to dogmatize and to lay it down as a law which is always in force that the first authentic history of a nation is the history of its tongue we can form no motion of the literature of a country apart from its language and the consideration of its language necessarily involves the consideration of its history here is England for instance with a language and therefore a literature composed of Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Norse and Romance elements is not this simple fact suggestive of nay, does it not challenge us to an inquiry into the origin and history of the races who have passed over our island and left their mark not only on the soil but on our speech again to take a wider view and to rise from archaeology to science what problem has interested the world in a greater degree than the origin of man and what toil has not been spent in tracing all races back to their common stock the science of comparative philology the inquiry not into one isolated language for nowadays it may fairly be said of a man who knows only one language that he knows none but into all the languages of one family and thus to reduce them to one common center from which they spread like rays of the sun if it has not solved is in a fair way of solving this problem when we have done for the various members of each family what has been done of late years for the Indo-European tongues its solution will be complete in such an inquiry the history of a race is in fact the history of its language and can be nothing else for we have to deal with times antecedent to all history properly so called and the stream which in later ages may be divided into many branches now flows in a single channel from the east then came our ancestors in days of immemorial antiquity in that great dawn of time of which all early songs and laze can tell but of which it is as impossible as it is useless to attempt to fix the date impossible because no means exist for ascertaining it useless because it is in reality a matter of utter indifference when as this tell-tale crust of earth informs us we have an infinity of ages and periods to fall back on whether this great movement this mighty lust to change their seats seized on the Aryan race 100 or 1000 years sooner or later but from the east we came and from that central plain of Asia now commonly called Iran Iran the habitation of the tillers and earers of the earth as opposed to Turin the abode of rustless horse-riding nomads of Turks in short for in their name the root survives and still distinguishes the great Turinian or Mongolian family from the Aryan, Iranian or Indo-European race it is scarce worthwhile to inquire even if inquiry could lead to any result what cause set them in motion from their ancient seats whether impelled by famine or internal strife starved out like other nationalities in recent times or led on by adventurous chiefs whose spirits chafed at the narrowness of home certain it is that they left that home and began a wandering westwards which only ceased when it reached the Atlantic and the northern ocean nor was the fate of those they left behind less strange at some period almost as remote as but after that at which the wanderers for Europe started the remaining portion of the stock or a considerable offshoot from it turned their faces east and passing the Indian Caucasus poured through the defiles of Afghanistan crossed the plain of the five rivers and descended on the fruitful plains of India the different destiny of these stocks has been wonderful indeed of those who went west we have only to enumerate the names under which they appear in history Celts, Greeks, Romans, Tutans, Slavonians to see and to know at once that the stream of this migration has borne on its waves all that has become most precious to man to use the words of Max Mueller they have been the prominent actors in the great drama of history and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of active life which with our nature is in doubt they have perfected society and morals and we learn from their literature and works of art the elements of science the laws of art and the principles of philosophy in continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and Mongolian races these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilization commerce and religion we may add that though by nature tough and enduring they have not been obstinate and self-willed they have been distinguished from all other nations and particularly from their elder brothers whom they left behind by their common sense by their power of adapting themselves to all circumstances and by making the best of their position while they have been teachable ready to receive impressions from without and when received to develop them to show the truth of this we need only observe that they adopted Christianity from another race the most obstinate and stiff-necked the world has ever seen who trained under the old dispensation to reserve the worship of the one true God were too proud to accept the further revelation of God under the new and rejecting their birthright suffered their inheritance to pass into other hands such then has been the lot of the western branch or of the younger brother who like the younger brother whom we shall meet so often in these popular tales went out into the world with nothing but his good heart and God's blessing to guide him and now has come to all honor and fortune and to be a king ruling over the world he went out and did let us see now what became of the elder brother from home some time after his brother went out and then only made a short journey having driven out the few aboriginal inhabitants of India with little effort and following the course of the great rivers the eastern Aryans gradually established themselves all over the peninsula and then in calm possession of a world of their own undisturbed by conquest from without and accepting with apathy any change of dynasty among their rulers ignorant of the past and careless of the future they sat down once for all and thought thought not of what they had to do here that stern lesson of everyday life which neither man nor nations can escape if they are to live with their fellows but how they could abstract themselves entirely from their present existence and immerse themselves wholly in dreamy speculations on the future whatever they might have been during their short migration and subsequent settlement it is certain that they appear in the Vedas perhaps the earliest collection which the world possesses as a nation of philosophers well may Professor Mueller compare the Indian mind to a plant reared in a hot house gorgeous in color, rich in perfume precocious and abundant in fruit it may be all this but it will never be like the oak growing in wind and weather striking its roots into real earth and stretching its branches into real air beneath the stars and sun of heaven and well does he also remark that a people of this peculiar stamp was never destined to act a prominent part in the history of the world nay, the exhausting atmosphere of transcendental ideas could not but exercise a detrimental influence on the active and moral character of the Hindus in this passive abstract unprogressive state they have remained ever since stiffened into casts and tongue tied and hand tied by absurd rites and ceremonies they were heard of in dim legends by Herodotus they were seen by Alexander when that bold spirit pushed his phalanx beyond to the limits of the known world they trafficked with Imperial Rome and the later empire they were again almost lost sight of and became fabulous in the middle age they were rediscovered by the Portuguese they have been alternately peaceful subjects and desperate rebels to us English but they have been still the same immovable and profound they have been still the same immovable and unprogressive philosophers though akin to Europe all the while and though the Highlander who drives his bayonet through the heart of a high caste sepoy mutineer little knows that his pale features and sandy hair and that dusk face with its raven locks both come from a common ancestor away in Central Asia many, many centuries ago but here arises the question what interest can we the descendants of the practical brother heirs to so much historical renown possibly take in the records of a race so historically characterless and so sunken reveries and mysticism the answer is easy those records are written in a language closely allied to the primeval common tongue of those two branches before they parted and descending from a period anterior to their separation it may or it may not be the very tongue itself but it certainly is not further removed than a few steps the speech of the immigrants to the west rapidly changed with the changing circumstances and various fortune of each of its waves and in their intercourse with the aboriginal population they often adopted foreign elements into their language one of these waves it is probable passing by way of Persia and Asia Minor crossed the Hellespont and following the coast threw off a mighty rill in the times as Greeks while the mainstream striking through Macedonia either crossed the Adriatic or still hugging the coast came down on Italy to be known as Latins another passing between the Caspian and the Black Sea filled the steps around the Crimea and passing on over the Balkan and the Carpathians towards the west became the great Teutonic nationality which under various names but all closely akin filled when we first in historical times the space between the Black Sea and the Baltic and was then slowly but surely driving before them the great wave of the Celts which had preceded them in their wandering and which had probably followed the same line of march as the ancestors of the Greeks and Latins a movement which lasted until all that was left of Celtic nationality was either absorbed by the intruders or forced aside and driven to take refuge in mountain fastnesses and outlying islands besides all these there was still another wave which is supposed to have passed between the Sea of Aral and the Caspian and keeping still further to the north and east to have passed between its kindred Teutons and the Mongolian tribes and so to have lean in the background until we find them appearing as Slavonians in the scene of history into so many great stocks did the western Arians pass each possessing strongly marked nationalities and languages and these seemingly so distinct that each often asserted that the other spoke a barbarous tongue but for all that each of those tongues bears about with it still and in earlier times no doubt or still more plainly about with it infallible evidence of common origin so that each dialect can be traced up to that primeval form of speech still in the main preserved by the Sanskrit by the southern Aryan branch who careless of practical life and immersed in speculation have clung to their ancient traditions in tongue with wonderful tenacity it is this which has given such value to Sanskrit a tongue of which it may be said that if it had perished the son would never have risen on the science of comparative Bellology before the discoveries in Sanskrit of Sir William Jones Wilkins Wilson and others the world had striven to find the common ancestor of European languages sometimes in the classical and sometimes in the Semitic tongues in the one case the result was a tyranny of Greek and Latin over the nonclassical tongues and in the other the most uncritical and unphilosophical waste of learning no doubt some striking analogies exist between the Indo-European family and the Semitic stock just as there are remarkable analogies between the Mongolian and Indo-European families but the ravings of Valenci in his effort to connect the peoples with Venetian are an awful warning of what unscientific inquiry based on casual analogy may bring itself to believe and even to fancy it has proved 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 Hindu on the one hand and the nations of western Europe on the other that is the fact to keep steadily alive we all came Greek, Latin, Celt, Tutan, 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 End of Section 3 Section 4 of popular tales from the north this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Andy Yu Popular Tales from the north by George Dessent Section 4 Introduction Part 2 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 north tales in particular which formed the bulk of this volume the first place then the fact which remarked of 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 change of evidence of a common origin between the east and the west and even the obstinate adherence 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 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 the 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 the corners of Europe as laps and fins and bass no one we say can suppose for a moment that in the long process of contact and absorption some traditions of earlier race should not have been caught up and adopted by the other we know it to be a fact with regard to the language from the evidence of philosophy which cannot lie and the witness born by such a word as the gothic actor for father where Mongolian has been adopted in preference to an Aryan word is irresistible on that point but that apart from such natural assimilation all the thousand shades of resemblance and affinity which and flicker through the whole body of popular tradition in the Aryan race as the aurora plays and frashes in countless ways afterward the northern heaven should be the result of mere servile copying of one tribes tradition 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 to work of some incendiary and send off the parish engine to put it out not when we find in such a story as the master thief traits which are to be found in the Sanskrit Hiddupedesia and which reminds us as one of the story of Remcinatus in Herodotus which are also to be found in German Italian and Framish popular tales but told in all with such a variation 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 20 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 that 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 feet 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 and sexual grammaticals who first in the 12th century where it is told of Panatoki, King Harold Gomsons, Thane and assassin in the 13th century the volcano saga relates it of Eagle who learns our Weyland Smith younger brother so also in the North saga of St. Olaf, King and eager for the conversation of one of his heathen chiefs Andredi competes with him in various athletic exercises first in swimming and then in archery after several famous shots on either side the king challenges Andredi to shoot a tablet off his son's head without hurting the child Andredi is ready but declares he will revenge himself in the child if the child is hurt the king has the first shot and his arrow strikes close to the tablet then Andredi is to shoot but at the players of his mother and sister refuses the shot and has to yield and be converted so also King Harold Sigartuson who died in 1066 back himself against a famous marksman Hemminger and ordered him to shoot a hazelnut off the heads of his brother and Hemminger performed defeat in the middle of the 14th century the Maldives malefic carom refers it to puncher a magician of the upper Rhine here in England we have it of Adam bell Clem of the and William of cloud asleep where William performs defeat it is not at all of tell in Switzerland before the year 1499 and the earlier Swiss chronicles omitted all together it is common to the Turks and the Mongolians and a legend of the wild Sam or yes who never heard of tell or saw a book in the lives we laser chapter and verse of one of the famous marksman what shall we say then but the story of this bold master shot was primeval amongst many tribes and races and that it only crystallize itself round the great name of tell by that process of attraction which invariably leads a grateful people to throw such mythic rest such garlands of bold these of precious memory found round the brow of his darting champion nor let any pious wellsman be shocked if we venture to assert that Gellert the famous Hound upon whose last resting place the traffic comes as he passes down the lovely veil of Grandland is a mythical dog and never snuff the fresh breeze in the forest of Snowden nor save his master's child from ravening wolf this tool is a plenumival story told with many variations sometimes the full is a wolf, sometimes a bear, sometimes a snake, sometimes the faithful guardian of the child is an otter, a weasel or a dog, a tool came from the east it is found in the Tentra in the Hitubidesia in Bitpast fables in the Arabic original of the seven wise masters that famous collection of stories which illustrate step-dames, Columny and hate and in many medieval versions of those originals then it passes into the Latin Jester Romanonum where as well as in the old angry version published by Sir Patrick Madden it may be read as a service rendered by a faithful against a snake this tool like tells master short is as the lightning which shineth over the whole heaven at once and can be claimed by no one type of the Aryan race to the exclusion of the rest a dog of montages is in light manner mythic though perhaps not so wisely spread it first occurs in France as told of Sibylla 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 Pythas there can be no doubt with regard to the question of the origin of these tales that they were common gem at least to the Aryan tribes before their migration we find those gems developed in the popular traditions of the eastern Aryans and we find them develop 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 the 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 the reader as he looks around the domestic half if he should be so happy as to have one they are like a sisters of one house alike they have what would be called a strong family lightness but besides this lightness 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 grey eyes that black, this may be open and graceful that reserved and close this you may love and that you can take no interest in one may be bashful another winning a third worth knowing that hard to know they are so like and so unlike at first it may be as an old English writer beautifully expressed it their father have with their father have rich 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 lightness 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-witness of some event on the same day and then to have slept and dream 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 internet of the sleeper was higher or lower level of perfection there is indeed greater truth in this lightness that 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 the old beliefs and fears and griefs and glory and pieces them together with something that happened yesterday and then holds up the discarded reflection in all its inconsequence just as has passed before that magic glass as though it were genuine history and better for pure belief and here it may be as well to say that besides that old classical fold of the macular 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 out 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 human a vitae of john of capua which again came from an arabic version of the 8th century which came from a pahivi version made by one basuie at the command of no shivan king of persia in the 6th century which again came from the pancha tentra a Sanskrit original of unknown antiquity this is that famous book of calila and dimna as the persian version is called attributed to 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 octavienus diocritanus doropathus urestus etc plays a most important part in medieval romans this too by a similar process has been traced to india appearing first in europe at the beginning of the 13th century in the latin historian septum septiantum romae by dame jahans monk in the epi of how self here too we have a hebrew and arabic and a persian version which last came aboutly from a Sanskrit original though that original has not yet been discovered from these two sources of fable and tradition 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 hands on what may be called a single thread let us say then that all that can be found in kalina and dimna or the persian version made ad 1494 of hosain weirs called the envari sohali the canopy lights when published in paris by david say of ispan in the year 1644 now contained through 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 centipede as it was called in persia after an apocryphal indian sage came by translation that is say through the cells of brahmins magians and monks and the labors 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 trace and features of old tradition broken bits of fable roots and gems of mighty growth of song and story nay even the very words which exist in western popular literature and which modern philosophy has found obstinately sticking in Sanskrit and of which fresh proves and instances are discovered everyday what are we to say of such a remarkable resemblance as this the noble king 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 Mayasara and here lie our riches this bull 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 Petraca had heard that he asked them why was the good of owing these things then they answered whoever puts on these shoes gets the power to fry whatever is pointed at with this staff rises up at once and whatever food one wishes for in this bull it comes at once so when Petraca had heard that he said why fight about it let this be the price whoever beats the other in a race let him have them all so be it set the two foes and set off running but Petraca put on the shoes at once and threw away with the staff and bow up into the clouds well this is a story neither in the Pantra nor the Hitopadesa the Sanskrit originals of Kalila and Dimna it is not in the director of human detail and has not passed west by that way nor is it in the book of Sindabad and then come west in the history of the seven sages both these paths are stopped it comes from the Katha Saint Segara the sea of streams of story of Samadiva Ratha of Kashmir who in the middle of the 12th century of our era worked up the tales found in an earlier collection called the Rikka Kathna the lengthened story in order to amuse his mistress the queen of Kashmir Samadiva's collection has only been recently known and translated but west the story certainly came long before the extreme northwest we still find it in these Norse tales in the three princesses of white land number 26 well said the man as this is so I will give you a bit of advice hear about Onamur stand three brothers and there they have stood these hundred years fighting about a hat and a pair of boots in if anyone has these three things he can make himself invisible and wish himself anywhere he pleases you can tell them you wish to fly the things and after that you will pass judgment between them whose they shall be yes the king thanked the man and went and did as he told him first all this he said to the brothers why you stand fighting forever 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 clock 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 north tales alone other collections showed how thoroughly at home this story was in the east in the relations of C.D. Kerr a Tata tale a chance son first guest possession of a clock 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 oneself to whatever place one chooses again in a valetian 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 clock by help of which one can wish oneself whichever one preces again in a mongolian tale the chance son comes upon a group of children who fight for who which makes the wearer invisible he is to be judged between them makes them run a race for it but meanwhile push it on and vanishes from their sight a little further on he meets another group who are quarreling for boots the wearer of which can wish himself whichever he preces and gains possession of them in the same way nor in one nor's tale alone but in many we find traces of these three wonderful things all of things like them they are very like the cloth the ram and the stick which the lad got from the instead of his meal very light too the cloth the scissors and the tap which will be found in number 26 the best wish if we drop the number 3 we find the boots again in soria maria castle number 61 leaving the nor's tales we see at once that they are the 7 league boots of jack the giant killer the nipalungan like when sickville finds shibang and nipang the weird ears of the famous horde striving for the possession of that heap of red gold and grooming stories when they beg him to share it for them promising them as his meat balamang best of swords when he shares it when they are discontent and when in the struggle which ensues he gets possession of the tanhut the clock of darkness which gave his wearer the strength of 12 men and enabled him to go where he would be unseen and which was the great prize among the treasures of the dwarfs 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 someone of better weight or strength who ends by making the very prize for which they fight his own and now to return for a moment to kalila and dimna and the 7 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 some nativist 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 is by no means certain even when some western stories or fables is found in these same script originals and the translations that was the only way by which they came to Europe a single question will prove this how did the fables and epilogues which are found in isoac and which are also found in the panchotania and the Hedobitesia come west that they came from the east is certain but by what way certainly not by translation or copying for they had traveled west long before translations were thought of how was it that termistius greek orator of the fourth century 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 panchotania and the Hedobitesia how but along the path of that primitive Aryan migration and by that deep ground tone of tradition by which man speaks to man nation to nation and age to age comparative philosophy has in these last days traveled back listen to the accent spoken and so found 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 philosophy having accomplished a task in proving the affinity of language between Europe and the east and so taken a mighty step to us fixing the first seat of the greatest in which 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 Semitic 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 that throng the earth in the meantime let the testimony of tradition and popular tales be heard which in this case have outstripped comparative philosophy 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 the reader must have faith in the writer and believe the words now written are the results of an inquiry and not as for the inquiry itself in all methodologies and traditions then there are what may be called natural resemblances parallelism suggested to the senses of each race by natural objects and everyday events and these might spring up spontaneously all over the earth as home groans neither derived by imitation from other tribes nor from seeds of common tradition shared from a common stock such resemblances have been well compared by William Grimm to those words which are found in all languages derived from the imitation of natural songs or we may add 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 stem the tradition with a character of its own then arises a 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 these North tails number 23 we are told how it was the bear came to have a stumpy tail and in an African tail we find how it was the hyena became tail-ness and ear-ness now this tail-ness condition both of the bear and the hyena 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 Norsemen and African account of it in the same way that both older to the superior cunning of another animal in Europe the fox bears away the palm for which from all other animals so he it is that persuades the bear in the Norse tails 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 tuck it out in Bornau 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 hyena put it into a hole and said behold two men came out of the forest took the meat into the hole stop I will go into the hole and then thou may stretch out thy tail to me and I will tie the meat to thy tail for thee to draw it out so the weasel went into the hole the hyena stretched its tail out to it but the weasel took the hyena's tail fastened a stick and tied the hyena's tail to the stick and then set to the hyena I have tied the meat to thy tail draw and pull it out the hyena was a fool it did not know the weasel surpassed it in subtly it thought the meat was tied but when it tried to draw out its tail it was fast when the weasel said again to it pull it pulled but could not draw it out so it became vexed and on pulling with force his tail broke the tail being torn out the weasel was no more seen by the hyena the weasel was hidden in the hole with its meat and the hyena saw it not here we have a fact in natural history account for but account for in such a peculiar way as shows that the races among which we are current must have derived them from some common tradition the mold by which the tail is lost is different indeed but the manner in which the common groundwork is suited in one case to the cold of the north and the way in which fish are commonly caught at holes in the ice as they rise to breathe and in the other to Africa and her pitfalls for wild beasts is only another proof of the oldness of the tradition and that it is not merely a copy take another instance everyone knows the story in the Arabian Nights where the man who knows the speech of beasts laughs as something said by an ox to an ass his wife wants to know why he laughs and persists it will cause him his life if he tells her as he doubts what to do he hears the corkset to the house dog our master is not wise I have 50 hands who obey me if he followed my advice he just take a good stick shut up his wife in a room with him and give her a good cuddling the same story is told in Straparola with so many variations as to show it is no copy it is also told in a Serbian popular tale with variations of its own and now here we find it in Bernal as told by Ko there was a servant of God who had one wife and one horse but his wife was one-eyed and they lived in their house now this servant of God understood the language of the beasts of the forest when they spoke of the birds of the air when they talked as they flew by this servant of God understood the city of the hyena when it arose at night in the forest and came to the houses and cried near them so likewise when the horse was hungry and naïd he understood why it naïd and rose up brought the horse grass and then returned and sat down it happened one day that birds had their talk as they were flying by above and the servant of God understood what they talked this caused him to laugh whereupon his wife said to him what does thou hear that thou laughest he replied to his wife I shall not tell thee what I hear and why I laugh the woman said to her husband I know why thou laughest thou laughest at me because I am one-eyed the man then said to his wife I saw that thou was one-eyed before I loved thee and before we married and sat down in our house when the woman heard her husband's word she was quiet but once at night as they were lying on the bed and it was past midnight it happened that a rat played with his wife on the top of the house and that both fell to the ground then the wife of the rat said to her husband thou sport is bad thou says to me that thou was pay but when we came together we fell to the ground so that I broke my back when the servant of God heard the talk of the rat's wife as he was lying on his bed he laughed now as soon as he laughed his wife arose seized him and said to him as she held him fast now this time I will not let thee go out of this house except thou tell me what thou hear is and why thou laugh is the man begged the woman saying let me go but the woman would not listen to her husband's entreaty the husband then tells his wife that he knows the language of beasts and birds and she is content but when he waits in the morning he finds he has lost his wonderful gift and the moral of the tale is added most ungallantly if a man shows and tells his thoughts to a woman God will punish him for it though perhaps it is better for the sake of the gentler sex that the tale should be pointed with unfair moral than that the African story should proceed like all the other variations and save the husband's gift at the cause of the wife's skin take other African instances how is it that the wandering bahunas got the story of the two brothers the grand work of which is the same as the machan daboom and the milk white dew and where the incidents and the and even the words are almost the same how is it that in some of these traits that Bactrian story is embodied those of that earliest of all popular tales recently published from an Egyptian papyrus co-evalued with a boat of the Israelites in Egypt and how is it that that same Egyptian tale has other traits which reminds us of the dun bo in Katie wooden clock west incidents which are the gem of stories long since reduced to writing in north sagas of the 12th and 13th centuries how is it that we still find among the Niglos in the west Indies a rich story of popular tales and the beast epic in full bloom brought with them from Africa to the islands of the west and among those tales and traditions how is it that we find a wishing tree the counterpart of that in a German popular tale and little dirty scrub of a child home his sister despise but who is own brother to boots in the north tales and like him always the troll spoils his substance and saves his sister how is it that we find the good woman who washes the loathsome head rewarded while the bad man who refuses to do that dirty work is punished for his pride the very groundwork nay the very words that we meet in bushy bride another north tale how is it that we find a Mongolian tale which came from India made up of two of our north tales which Peter the Petler and the giant that had no heart in his body how should all these things be and how could they possibly be except on that theory which day by day becomes more and more of a matter of fact this that the whole human race sprung from one stock planted in the east stretched out his bowels and branches laden with the fruit of language and bright with the bloom of song and story by successive offshoots to the utmost parts of the earth end of section 4 recording by Andy Yu Mississauga, Canada