Volume II Part 30 (1/2)

(4) Next morning the brothers parley across the stream. The younger first mutilates himself (_Atys_) then says he is going to the vale of the acacia, according to M. Maspero probably a name for the other world.

Meanwhile the younger brother will put his _heart_ in a high acacia tree. If the tree is cut down, the elder brother must search for the _heart_, and place it in a jar of water, when the younger brother will revive. Here we have the idea which recurs in the Samoyed marchen where the men lay aside their hearts, in which are their separable lives. As Mr.

Ralston says,* ”This heart-breaking episode occurs in the tales of many lands”. In the Russian the story is Koschchei the deathless, whose ”death” (or life) lies in an egg, in a duck, on a log, in the ice.** As Mr. Ralston well remarks, a very singular parallel to the revival of the Egyptian brothers heart in water is the Hottentot tale of a girl eaten by a lion. Her heart is extracted from the lion, is placed in a calabash of milk, and the girl comes to life again.***

(5) The younger brother gives the elder a sign magical, whereby he shall know how it fares with the heart. When a cup of beer suddenly grows turbid, then evil has befallen the heart. This is merely one of the old _sympathetic signs_ of story--the opal that darkens; the comb of Lemminkainen in the _Kalewala_ that drops blood when its owner is in danger; the stick that the hero erects as he leaves home, and which will fall when he is imperilled. In Australia the natives practise this magic with a stick, round which they bind the hair of the distant person about whose condition they want to be informed.**** This incident, turning on the belief in _sympathies_, might perhaps be regarded as ”universally human” and capable of being invented anywhere.

* Russian Folk-Tales, 109.

** In Norse, Asbjornsen and Moe, 36; Dasent, 9. Gaelic, Campbell, i. 4, p. 81. Indian, ”Punchkin,” Old Deccan Days, pp. 13-16. Samoyed, Castren, Ethnol. Varies liber die Altaischen Volker., p. 174.

*** Bleek, Reynard the Fox of South Africa, p. 57.

**** Dawson, Australian Aborigines, p. 36, 1881. The stick used is the ”throwing stick” wherewith the spear is hurled,(6) The elder brother goes home and kills his wife.

The G.o.ds pity the younger Bitiou in the Valley of Acacias, and make him a wife.

M. Cosquin has found in France the trait of the blood that boils in the gla.s.s when the person concerned is in danger.

(7) The three Hathors come to her creation, and prophesy for her a violent death. For this incident compare Perrault's _The Sleeping Beauty_ and Maury's work on _Les Fees_. The spiritual midwives and prophetesses at the hour of birth are familiar in _marchen_ as Fairies, and Fates, and Maerae.

(8) The river carries a tress of the hair of Bitiou's wife to the feet of Pharaoh's washermen; the scent perfumes all the king's linen. Pharaoh falls in love with the woman from whose locks this tress has come. For this incident compare _Cinderella_. In Santal and Indian _marchen_ a tress of hair takes the place of the gla.s.s-slipper, and the amorous prince or princess will only marry the person from whose head the lock has come. Here M. Cosquin himself gives Siamese, Mongol, Bengali (Lai Behar Day, p. 86), and other examples of the lock of hair doing duty for the slipper with which the lover is smitten, and by which he recognises his true love.

(9) The wife of Bitiou reveals the secret of his heart. The people of Pharaoh cut down the acacia tree.

(10) His brother reads in the turbid beer the death of Bitiou. He discovers the heart and life in a berry of the acacia.

It is superfluous to give modern parallels to the various transformations of the life of Bitiou. He becomes an Apis bull, and his faithless wife desires his death, and wishes to eat his liver, but his life goes on in other forms. This is merely the familiar situation of the a.s.s in _Peau d'Ane_ (the a.s.s who clearly, before Perrault's time, had been human).

_Demandez lui la peau de ce rare animal!_

In most traditional versions of _Cinderella_ will be found examples of the beast, once human, slain by an enemy, yet potent after death. This beast takes the part given by Perrault to the fairy G.o.dmother. The idea is also familiar in Grimm's _Machandelboom_ (47), and was found by Casalis among the Bechuanas.

(11) The wicked wife obtains the bull Apis's death by virtue of a _hasty oath_ of Pharaoh's (_Jephtha, Herodias_).

(12) The blood of the bull grows into two persea trees.

Here M. Cosquin himself supplies parallels of blood turning into trees from Hesse (Wolf, p. 394) and from Russian. We may add the ancient Lydian myth. When the G.o.ds slew Agdistis, a drop of his blood became an almond tree, the fruit of which made women pregnant.*

* Pausanias, vii. 17.

(13) The persea tree is also cut down by the wicked wife of Bitiou. A chip from its boughs is swallowed by the wicked wife, who conceives, like Margata in the _Kalewala_, and bears a son.

The story of Agdistis, just quoted, is in point, but the topic is of enormous range, and the curious may consult _Le Fils de Vierge_ by M. H.

De Charencey. Compare also Surya Bay in _Old Deccan Days_ (6). The final resurrection of Surya Bay is exactly like that in the Hottentot tale already quoted. Surya is drowned by a jealous rival, becomes a golden flower, is burned, becomes a mango; one of the fruits falls into a calabash of milk, and out of the calabash, like the Hottentot girl, comes Surya!

(14) The son of the persea tree was Bitiou, born of his own faithless wife; and when he grew up he had her put to death.

Even a hasty examination of these incidents from old Egypt proves that before India was heard of in history the people of the Pharaohs possessed a large store of incidents perfectly familiar in modern marchen. Now, if one single Egyptian tale yields this rich supply, it is an obvious presumption that the collection of an Egyptian Grimm might, and probably would, have furnished us with the majority of the situations common in popular tales. M. Cosquin himself remarks that these ideas cannot be invented more than once (I. lxvii.). The other Egyptian contes, as that of _Le Prince Predestine_ (twentieth dynasty), and the noted _Master Thief_ of Herodotus (ii. 121), are merely familiar marchen of the common type, and have numerous well-known a.n.a.logues.

From all these facts M. Cosquin draws no certain conclusions. He asks: Did Egypt borrow these tales from India, or India from Egypt? _And were there Aryans in India in the time of Rameses II.?_