Note 14.1 — Chapter XVI · THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA IN MÄRCHEN.

There is one characteristic, however, which is common to a vast number of variants belonging to almost every type, and which, in the story from the Odenwald, stands out in full relief. If it be not a savage characteristic, at least it is not in accordance with the etiquette of civilisation in the nineteenth century for the hero to persist in such unaccountable modesty, that, having slain the monster and won the princess, he must be pursued like a criminal flying from justice, and compelled to confess and claim his reward. When at last he is made known, and the impostors, whom his want of gallantry and overload of humility had encouraged, if not instigated, are convicted of their fraud, he indulges in a savage revenge. Burning alive, indeed, is in harmony with a certain kind of civilisation, such as that of Saint Dominic or Bloody Mary; and the punishments the peasantry delight to recount in these tales are an index of their culture. The hero is deterred no more than the most bigoted fanatic by any considerations of humanity, or even of kinship. As a single example of the disregard of kinship, take the story of The King of Al-Yaman and his three Sons, found in some versions of the Arabian Nights. There the king’s youngest son, disliked by his father and despised by his two brethren, picks up a string of pearls and emeralds, and is deprived of it by the elder sons, who pretend themselves to have found it. Their father lays upon them the injunction to bring him the wearer. After they have set out, the youngest goes forth too, and delivers a princess from the scourge of her father’s city, a monstrous lion, to which a maiden is offered by lot every year. He refuses in the usual way to return with her, and is only discovered by means of a proclamation requiring all the men in the city to defile before the palace. He is married to her; but, arising before day, while she is still asleep, he exchanges rings with her and writes upon her hand his name, Aláeddín, his parentage and a request, if she love him truly, to come and seek him at his father’s capital of Al-Hind. He departs, and repeats the adventure, slaying this time an elephant. Afterwards he continues his quest, and succeeds in obtaining the enchanting bird Philomelet, the wearer of the necklace, while its mistress, a princess, is sleeping. He writes his name on the palm of her hand also, and a similar request to seek him at home. As he returns his brothers fall in with him, rob him of the bird, and carry it to their father as their own prize. The three princesses, each with her father and an army, go after him and meet together. They of course reject the two elder brothers as impostors, and Aláeddín is at last vindicated. He then, having put his brothers to shame, falls upon them, and with a single blow of his sword despatches them both; nor is it without difficulty that he is restrained from putting his father to death too. He adds to the number of his wives the princess to whom the bird Philomelet belonged, and lives happy ever after.14.1 The vengeance in the Arab tale, reported from a region where no reminiscences of the auto-da-fé linger, shows to advantage in comparison with the cruelties in which the tales of the peasantry of Christian Europe rejoice. And if the hero spare not his own flesh and blood, it must be remembered that he is only the half-brother of the impostors, and that both he and his mother have suffered great personal wrong at their hands and those of his father. In a variant of the story, cited from the same source in a previous chapter, the hero even intercedes with his father for his brothers’ lives.14.2 Happily in western stories he does not always visit their sins on their heads. In the Shetlandic story, originally from Scandinavia, Assipattle is treated with contempt by his six elder brothers. But he had a fast friend in his only sister, who was taken to court to be the king’s daughter’s maid. The Mester Stoorworm, a terrific sea-monster in which we have a reminiscence of the Midgard Snake, threatened the land. By a mighty sorcerer’s counsel, every Saturday seven damsels were bound upon a rock and delivered to him, to glut his maw and save the kingdom. The only way to get rid of the scourge, the sorcerer declared, was to deliver Gemdelovely, the princess, to be devoured. All the champions who volunteered to save her shrank from the task when they beheld the grisly foe. Assipattle alone had the courage to get a boat and go out to meet the worm, whose horrid length stretched half across the world. He allowed himself to be swallowed, boat and all; and once inside the cavernous throat he “waded and ran, and better ran, till he came to the enormous liver of the monster.” Then he cut a hole in it and placed a live peat, which he had brought for the purpose, in the hole and “blew till he thought his lips would crack.” By and bye “the peat began to flame; the flame caught the oil of the liver, and in a minute there was a stately euse. In troth, I think it gave the Stoorworm a hot harskit.” Hurrying into his boat again, Assipattle was spewed out by the monster’s dying spasms, and thrown high and dry on the land. Of course he married the princess; and the vengeance, without which the story would not be complete, fell not on his brothers for their ill treatment of him, but on the sorcerer, who it turned out was the queen’s lover.15.1