Chapter XVI · THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA IN MÄRCHEN.
Reading edition
We have traced the incidents of the Supernatural Birth and the Life-token throughout the world: the two remaining incidents of the Rescue of Andromeda and the Medusa-witch have a more restricted range. For though traditions of a fight with a monster and of human beings turned to stone, the germs of the incidents in question, are almost universal, yet the special forms evolved from these germs in the Perseus saga seem to be confined to the Eastern Continent, save where immigrant peoples have taken them in modern times to the New World and given them in some rare instances currency there among the aboriginal tribes.
The most hardened believer in the possibility of the independent origin of folktales having a similar plot will scarcely refuse to admit that this tale at least must have come to the Sioux from a European source—probably through French trappers or missionaries. It may be true, as the translator tells us, that only two words in it (namely, those for gun and sword) are of foreign origin. This is a fact of no importance against the multifarious coincidences of plot and idea with those of the Old World summarised in the present and previous chapters: it is only an additional testimony to the completeness with which the mind of the barbarous Ponka has absorbed the story. When an alien people thus receives and assimilates a tale, it is because the tale is suited to the alien digestion. The mental growth it indicates is the same on the part of the people giving and the people acquiring it. It satisfies the imaginative instincts of both. But though accepted among the traditions of the Cegiha-speaking tribes, the tale of the Rescue has not received that final seal of adoption which identifies the action, or some of the actors, with the mythical history of the race: it has not attained to the dignity of a saga, such as we are about to examine in the next chapter.
In the Ponka and Omaha variants the black man is burnt in accordance with Christian precedents; and this is one of the notes of their European origin. A Tuscan story, linked to the ancient mythology by the use of what seems to be a veritable tree-spirit who has survived in rustic belief to the present day, confers a very different reward on the impostor. A poor but handsome youth goes to cut wood. To him appears Vira, the forest-sprite, and comforts him. If he will do as she tells him he need not despair of making his fortune. She directs him to a district near Benevento, whose king has a daughter. This damsel has been given to a seven-headed ogre to devour; and the king has offered her in marriage to any one who will slay the ogre and bring him his heads. Signore Slaniani has conquered the monster and put his heads on a wagon to carry them to the king. But the reward is not for him. When the wagon was being loaded Vira secretly took the tongues, and she now gives them to the youth. “Carry these tongues to the king, and say that thou didst slay the ogre, and that thou dost wish for his daughter.” The tale is told with snatches of verse, which are some evidence of its antiquity. The youth readily falls into the plot.
“And thus did Vira;
The youth was clad in splendid attire,
He too was very beautiful,
Boldly he went to the king,
Boldly he claimed to have slain,
Single-handed, the ogre,
And asked for the beautiful princess
As a reward for his valour.
‘It may not be,’ said the king;
‘He who slew the monster
Has brought with him its heads,
No better proof can be found.’
‘A better proof is the tongues,’
Answered the youth, undaunted,
‘And I can show all the seven.’ ”
To the amazement of the true victor, who had never let the heads go out of his sight, the tongues are no longer in them.
“Therefore it came to pass
That the poor youth who was favoured
By the help of the fairy
Carried away the reward.
So it often goes in this world—
He who does the hard work
Often misses his pay,
When some one more favoured by fortune
Steps in and secures the prize.
Higher beings than man
Play with us like toys.
The youth was as nothing in this;
All that he won he owed
A moral amply justified, no doubt, by the Italian peasant’s experience of life.