The legend of Perseus, Volume 3 (of 3)

Chapter XIX · THE MEDUSA-WITCH IN MÄRCHEN.

Reading edition

The search is not always for a bird. The hero of a Gipsy tale from Transylvania undertakes to deliver the daughter of a good urme from a wicked urme who has carried her off. In the wicked urme’s service he has to perform a number of tasks: among them to find a ring which has been dropped into a fountain and hang it up below a round mirror in the large hall. The water in the fountain is boiling hot; but he plunges without harm, having previously bathed in the milk of the urme’s cow. The real danger was a voice that sounded in his ear as he hung up the ring: “Thou art a handsome youth, a handsome youth. Only look in the glass!” Had he complied with this flattering suggestion he would have been turned into stone. He resisted it, however, to encounter the still more flattering offer from the urme to wed him. It was necessary before doing this that he should cut her up and throw the pieces into a Medean kettle, whence she would issue the most beautiful woman on earth, and they would then live happy and contented together. But he had already seen too much of this lady to trust himself with her; so having obeyed her instructions to cut her up, he threw the pieces into the boiling fountain instead of the kettle, thus destroying her and the enchanted castle with her. The maiden whom he came to free drew from her head some hairs, and letting them fly in the wind, she sang:

“Ye who have been changed to stone,

Beast or human creature’s son,

Hither, hither, every one!”

It is abundantly clear that the European tales I have cited cannot have been derived from this highly moral Játaka, in which nobody is punished, but on the contrary things are made comfortable all round—even for the demon. The story must have been found in a more savage form, and fashioned by the early teachers—perhaps by Gautama himself—into an apologue that would have done no dishonour to a Christian apostle.

Notes in this chapter

Note 1 · At once all the stones which had been men and beasts, but had had the misfortune to look in the magical mirror, returned to their proper for Note 2 · This of course is the ordinary bride-quest of fairy tales. The destined lady is in the power of a magician, who may be her father or merely Note 3 · The incident of the Medusa-witch in the foregoing stories, while in some cases it approaches more closely to the classical saga, lacks the s Note 4 · In Buddhist literature the story takes a much more civilised shape. The Bodisat is the eldest of three brothers, sons of Brahmadatta, king o Note 5 · To examine every kind of enchantment current in märchen would be an endless task. In the classical story, as well as in a large number of mo Note 6 · Lastly, we may notice one of the most interesting “properties” possessed by the Medusa-witch, namely, the hair she gives the hero to bind hi Note 7 · In the glorious mabinogi of Kulhwch and Olwen the hair is put to its more ordinary use. Among the tasks laid upon Kulhwch as a condition pre Note 8 · A different example of the power of a hair is found in the Arabian Nights, where the king’s daughter in defence of the Second Calendar draws Note 9 · The hair, of course, in all these tales, though severed from the person of the magician, is still in invisible union with him, and is the de Note 10 · Belief of a more or less serious character in the power of the witch’s hair is one for which readers who have followed the arguments and ill Note 11 · The Eskimo have a tradition pertinent to our present point. Off the southernmost part of Greenland was an island to which many of the inhabi Note 12 · Allied to the enchanted hair of these tales is the fetter that binds Fenri the wolf. It is spun from the sound of a cat’s footsteps, a woman Note 13 · The story of the Enchanted Cave of Keshcorran is perhaps dangerously near the border line of sagas and märchen. But it is difficult to say t Note 14 · The instrument of enchantment in this Iroquoian tradition is not the magical fetter, but the magical word; whereof we seem to find a reminis