Fairy Tales, Their Origin and Meaning; With Some Account of Dwellers in FairylandBunce, John Thackray
History
Fairy Tales, Their Origin and Meaning; With Some Account of Dwellers in Fairyland
Bunce, John Thackray
Fairy tales -- History and criticism
Here is clearly a Sun-myth, which is like those of ancient Hindu and
Greek legend: the blue-grey Filly is the Dawn, on which the new day, the
maiden and her lover, speed away. The great Giant, whose breath burns
the maiden's back, is the morning Sun, whose progress is stopped by the
thick shade of the trees. Then he rises higher, and at midday he breaks
through the forest, and soars above the rocky mountains. At evening,
still powerful in speed and heat, he comes to the great lake, plunges
into it, and sets, and those whom he pursues escape. This ending is
repeated in one of the oldest Hindu mythical stories, that of Bheki,
the Frog Princess, who lives with her husband on condition that he never
shows her a drop of water. One day he forgets, and she disappears: that
is, the sun sets or dies on the water--a fanciful idea which takes us
straight as an arrow to Aryan myths.
Now, however, we must complete the Gaelic story, which here becomes like
the Soaring Lark, and the Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and
other Teutonic and Scandinavian tales.
After the Giant's daughter and her husband had got free from the Giant,
she bade him go to his father's house, and tell them about her; but
he was not to suffer anything to kiss him, or he would forget her
altogether. So he told everybody they were not to kiss him, but an old
greyhound leapt up at him, and touched his mouth, and then he forgot all
about the Giant's daughter, just as if she had never lived. Now when the
King's son left her, the poor forgotten wife sat beside a well, and when
night came she climbed into an oak-tree, and slept amongst the branches.
There was a shoemaker who lived near the well, and next day he sent his
wife to fetch water, and as she drew it she saw what she fancied to be
her own reflection in the water, but it was really the likeness of the
maiden in the tree above it. The shoemaker's wife, however, thinking it
was her own, imagined herself to be very handsome, and so she went back
and told the shoemaker that she was too beautiful to be his thrall, or
slave, any longer, and so she went off. The same thing happened to the
shoemaker's daughter; and she went off too. Then the man himself went
to the well, and saw the maiden in the tree, and understood it all, and
asked her to come down and stay at his house, and to be his daughter.
So she went with him. After a while there came three gentlemen from the
King's Court, and each of them wanted to marry her; and she agreed with
each of them privately, on condition that each should give a sum of
money for a wedding gift. Well, they agreed to this, each unknown to the
other; and she married one of them, but when he came and had paid the
money, she gave him a cup of water to hold, and there he had to stand,
all night long, unable to move or to let go the cup of water, and in
the morning he went away ashamed, but said nothing to his friends. Next
night it was the turn of the second; and she told him to see that the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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