Popular Tales from the Norse by Sir George Webbe Dasent

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POPULAR TALES FROM THE NORSE

By

SIR GEORGE WEBBE DASENT

WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY ON THE ORIGIN AND DIFFUSION OF POPULAR
TALES

Notice to the Second Edition

The first edition of these Tales being exhausted, and a demand having
arisen for a second, the Translator has thought it right to add
thirteen tales, which complete the translation of Asbjoernsen and
Moe's collection, and to strengthen the Introduction by working in
some new matter, and by working out some points which were only
slightly sketched in the first edition.

The favour with which the book was welcomed makes it almost a duty to
say a word here on the many kind and able notices which have been
written upon it. Duties are not always pleasant, but the fulfilment
of this at least gives no pain; because, without one exception, every
criticism which the Translator has seen has shown him that his prayer
for 'gentle' readers has been fully heard. It will be forgiven him,
he hopes, when he says that he has not seen good ground to change or
even to modify any of the opinions as to the origin and diffusion of
popular tales put forth in the first edition. Much indeed has been
said by others _for_ those views; what has been urged _against_
them, with all kindness and good humour, in one or two cases, has
not availed at all to weigh down mature convictions deliberately
expressed after the studies of years, backed as they are by the
researches and support of those who have given their lives to this
branch of knowledge.

And now, before the Translator takes leave of his readers for the
second time, he will follow the lead of the good godmother in one of
these Tales, and forbid all good children to read the two which stand
last in the book. There is this difference between him and the
godmother. She found her foster-daughter out as soon as she came
back. He will never know it, if any bad child has broken his behest.
Still he hopes that all good children who read this book will bear in
mind that there is just as much sin in breaking a commandment even
though it be not found out, and so he bids them good-bye, and feels
sure that no good child will dare to look into those two rooms. If,
after this warning, they peep in, they may perhaps see something
which will shock them.

'Why then print them at all?' some grown reader asks. Because this
volume is meant for you as well as for children, and if you have gone
ever so little into the world with open eyes, you must have seen,
yes, every day, things much more shocking. Because there is nothing
immoral in their spirit. Because they are intrinsically valuable, as
illustrating manners and traditions, and so could not well be left
out. Because they complete the number of the Norse originals, and
leave none untranslated. And last, though not least, because the
Translator hates family versions of anything, 'Family Bibles',
'Family Shakespeares'. Those who, with so large a choice of beauty
before them, would pick out and gloat over this or that coarseness or
freedom of expression, are like those who, in reading the Bible,
should always turn to Leviticus, or those whose Shakespeare would
open of itself at Pericles Prince of Tyre. Such readers the
Translator does not wish to have.

Notice to the First Edition

These translations from the _Norske Folkeeventyr_, collected
with such freshness and faithfulness by MM. Asbjoernsen and Moe, have
been made at various times and at long intervals during the last
fifteen years; a fact which is mentioned only to account for any
variations in style or tone--of which, however, the Translator is
unconscious--that a critical eye may detect in this volume. One of
them, _The Master Thief_, has already appeared in Blackwood's
Magazine for November 1851; from the columns of which periodical it
is now reprinted, by the kind permission of the Proprietors.

The Translator is sorry that he has not been able to comply with the
suggestion of some friends upon whose good-will he sets all store,
who wished him to change and soften some features in these tales,
which they thought likely to shock English feeling. He has, however,
felt it to be out of his power to meet their wishes, for the merit of
an undertaking of this kind rests entirely on its faithfulness and
truth; and the man who, in such a work, wilfully changes or softens,
is as guilty as he 'who puts bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter'.

Of this guilt, at least, the Translator feels himself free; and,
perhaps, if any, who may be inclined to be offended at first, will
take the trouble to read the Introduction which precedes and explains
the Tales, they may find, not only that the softening process would
have spoilt these popular traditions for all except the most childish
readers, but that the things which shocked them at the first blush,
are, after all, not so very shocking.

For the rest, it ill becomes him to speak of the way in which his
work has been done: but if the reader will only bear in mind that
this, too, is an enchanted garden, in which whoever dares to pluck a
flower, does it at the peril of his head; and if he will then read
the book in a merciful and tender spirit, he will prove himself what
the Translator most longs to find, 'a gentle reader', and both will
part on the best terms.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ORIGIN
DIFFUSION
NORSE MYTHOLOGY
NORSE POPULAR TALES
CONCLUSION

TALES

I TRUE AND UNTRUE
II WHY THE SEA IS SALT
III THE OLD DAME AND HER HEN
IV EAST O' THE SUN, AND WEST O' THE MOON
V BOOTS WHO ATE A MATCH WITH THE TROLL
VI HACON GRIZZLEBEARD
VII BOOTS WHO MADE THE PRINCESS SAY, 'THAT'S A STORY'
VIII THE TWELVE WILD DUCKS
IX THE GIANT WHO HAD NO HEART IN HIS BODY
X THE FOX AS HERDSMAN
XI THE MASTERMAID
XII THE CAT ON THE DOVREFELL
XIII PRINCESS ON THE GLASS HILL
XIV THE COCK AND HEN
XV HOW ONE WENT OUT TO WOO
XVI THE MASTER-SMITH
XVII THE TWO STEP-SISTERS
XVIII BUTTERCUP
XIX TAMING THE SHREW
XX SHORTSHANKS
XXI GUDBRAND ON THE HILL-SIDE
XXII THE BLUE BELT
XXIII WHY THE BEAR IS STUMPY-TAILED
XXIV NOT A PIN TO CHOOSE BETWEEN THEM
XXV ONE'S OWN CHILDREN ARE ALWAYS PRETTIEST
XXVI THE THREE PRINCESSES OF WHITELAND
XXVII THE LASSIE AND HER GODMOTHER
XXVIII THE THREE AUNTS
XXIX THE COCK, THE CUCKOO, AND THE BLACK-COCK
XXX RICH PETER THE PEDLAR
XXXI GERTRUDE'S BIRD
XXXII BOOTS AND THE TROLL
XXXIII GOOSEY GRIZZEL
XXXIV THE LAD WHO WENT TO THE NORTH WIND
XXXV THE MASTER THIEF
XXXVI THE BEST WISH
XXXVII THE THREE BILLY-GOATS GRUFF
XXXVIII WELL DONE AND ILL PAID
XXXIX THE HUSBAND WHO WAS TO MIND THE HOUSE
XL DAPPLEGRIM
XLI FARMER WEATHERSKY
XLII LORD PETER
XLIII THE SEVEN FOALS
XLIV THE WIDOW'S SON
XLV BUSHY BRIDE
XLVI BOOTS AND HIS BROTHERS
XLVII BIG PETER AND LITTLE PETER
XLVIII TATTERHOOD
XLIX THE COCK AND HEN THAT WENT TO THE DOVREFELL
L KATIE WOODENCLOAK
LI THUMBIKIN
LII DOLL I' THE GRASS
LIII THE LAD AND THE DELL
LIV THE COCK AND HEN A-NUTTING
LV THE BIG BIRD DAN
LVI SORIA MORIA CASTLE
LVII BRUIN AND REYNARD
LVIII TOM TOTHERHOUSE
LIX LITTLE ANNIE THE GOOSE GIRL

APPENDIX

INTRODUCTION TO APPENDIX

1. WHY THE JACK SPANIARD'S WAIST IS SMALL
2. ANANZI AND THE LION
3. ANANZI AND QUANQUA
4. THE EAR OF CORN AND THE TWELVE MEN
5. THE KING AND THE ANT'S TREE
6. THE LITTLE CHILD AND THE PUMPKIN TREE
7. THE BROTHER AND HIS SISTERS
8. THE GIRL AND THE FISH
9. THE LION, THE GOAT, AND THE BABOON
10. ANANZI AND BABOON
11. THE MAN AND THE DOUKANA TREE
12. NANCY FAIRY
13. THE DANCING GANG

FOOTNOTES TO INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

ORIGIN

The most careless reader can hardly fail to see that many of the
Tales in this volume have the same groundwork as those with which he
has been familiar from his earliest youth. They are Nursery Tales, in
fact, of the days when there were tales in nurseries--old wives'
fables, which have faded away before the light of gas and the power
of steam. It is long, indeed, since English nurses told these tales
to English children by force of memory and word of mouth. In a
written shape, we have long had some of them, at least, in English
versions of the _Contes de ma Mere l' Oye_ of Perrault, and the
_Contes de Fees_ of Madame D'Aulnoy; those tight-laced, high-
heeled tales of the 'teacup times' of Louis XIV and his successors,
in which the popular tale appears to as much disadvantage as an
artless country girl in the stifling atmosphere of a London theatre.
From these foreign sources, after the voice of the English reciter
was hushed--and it was hushed in England more than a century ago--our
great-grandmothers learnt to tell of Cinderella and Beauty and the
Beast, of Little Red Riding-hood and Blue Beard, mingled together in
the _Cabinet des Fees_ with Sinbad the Sailor and Aladdin's
wondrous lamp; for that was an uncritical age, and its spirit
breathed hot and cold, east and west, from all quarters of the globe
at once, confusing the traditions and tales of all times and
countries into one incongruous mass of fable, as much tangled and
knotted as that famous pound of flax which the lassie in one of these
Tales is expected to spin into an even wool within four-and-twenty
hours. No poverty of invention or want of power on the part of
translators could entirely destroy the innate beauty of those popular
traditions; but here, in England at least, they had almost dwindled
out, or at any rate had been lost sight of as home-growths. We had
learnt to buy our own children back, disguised in foreign garb; and
as for their being anything more than the mere pastime of an idle
hour--as to their having any history or science of their own--such an
absurdity was never once thought of. It had, indeed, been remarked,
even in the eighteenth century--that dreary time of indifference and
doubt--that some of the popular traditions of the nations north of
the Alps contained striking resemblances and parallels to stories in
the classical mythology. But those were the days when Greek and Latin
lorded it over the other languages of the earth; and when any such
resemblance or analogy was observed, it was commonly supposed that
that base-born slave, the vulgar tongue, had dared to make a clumsy
copy of something peculiarly belonging to the twin tyrants who ruled
all the dialects of the world with a pedant's rod.

At last, just at the close of that great war which Western Europe
waged against the genius and fortune of the first Napoleon; just as
the eagle--Prometheus and the eagle in one shape--was fast fettered
by sheer force and strength to his rock in the Atlantic, there arose
a man in Central Germany, on the old Thuringian soil, to whom it was
given to assert the dignity of vernacular literature, to throw off
the yoke of classical tyranny, and to claim for all the dialects of
Teutonic speech a right of ancient inheritance and perfect freedom
before unsuspected and unknown. It is almost needless to mention this
honoured name. For the furtherance of the good work which he began
nearly fifty years ago, he still lives and still labours. There is no
spot on which an accent of Teutonic speech is uttered where the name
of Jacob Grimm is not a 'household word'. His General Grammar of all
the Teutonic Dialects from Iceland to England has proved the equality
of these tongues with their ancient classical oppressors. His
Antiquities of Teutonic Law have shown that the codes of the
Lombards, Franks, and Goths were not mere savage, brutal customaries,
based, as had been supposed, on the absence of all law and right. His
numerous treatises on early German authors have shown that the German
poets of the Middle Age, Godfrey of Strasburg, Wolfram von
Eschenbach, Hartman von der Aue, Walter von der Vogelweide, and the
rest, can hold their own against any contemporary writers in other
lands. And lastly, what rather concerns us here, his Teutonic
Mythology, his Reynard the Fox, and the collection of German Popular
Tales, which he and his brother William published, have thrown a
flood of light on the early history of all the branches of our race,
and have raised what had come to be looked on as mere nursery
fictions and old wives' fables--to a study fit for the energies of
grown men, and to all the dignity of a science.

In these pages, where we have to run over a vast tract of space, the
reader who wishes to learn and not to cavil--and for such alone this
introduction is intended--must be content with results rather than
processes and steps. To use a homely likeness, he must be satisfied
with the soup that is set before him, and not desire to see the bones
of the ox out of which it has been boiled. When we say, therefore,
that in these latter days the philology and mythology of the East and
West have met and kissed each other; that they now go hand and hand;
that they lend one another mutual support; that one cannot be
understood without the other,--we look to be believed. We do not
expect to be put to the proof, how the labours of Grimm and his
disciples on this side were first rendered possible by the linguistic
discoveries of Anquetil du Perron and others in India and France, at
the end of the last century; then materially assisted and furthered
by the researches of Sir William Jones, Colebrooke, and others, in
India and England during the early part of this century, and finally
have become identical with those of Wilson, Bopp, Lassen, and Max
Mueller, at the present day. The affinity which exists in a
mythological and philological point of view between the Aryan or
Indo-European languages on the one hand, and the Sanscrit on the
other, is now the first article of a literary creed, and the man who
denies it puts himself as much beyond the pale of argument as he who,
in a religious discussion, should meet a grave divine of the Church
of England with the strict contradictory of her first article, and
loudly declare his conviction, that there was no God. In a general
way, then, we may be permitted to dogmatize, and to lay it down as a
law which is always in force, that the first authentic history of a
nation is the history of its tongue. We can form no notion of the
literature of a country apart from its language, and the
consideration of its language necessarily involves the consideration
of its history. Here is England, for instance, with a language, and
therefore a literature, composed of Celtic, Roman, Saxon, Norse, and
Romance elements. Is not this simple fact suggestive of, nay, does it
not challenge us to, an inquiry into the origin and history of the
races who have passed over our island, and left their mark not only
on the soil, but on our speech? Again, to take a wider view, and to
rise from archaeology to science, what problem has interested the
world in a greater degree than the origin of man, and what toil has
not been spent in tracing all races back to their common stock? The
science of comparative philology--the inquiry, not into one isolated
language--for nowadays it may fairly be said of a man who knows only
one language that he knows none--but into all the languages of one
family, and thus to reduce them to one common centre, from which they
spread like the rays of the sun--if it has not solved, is in a fair
way of solving, this problem. When we have done for the various
members of each family what has been done of late years for the Indo-
European tongues, its solution will be complete. In such an inquiry
the history of a race is, in fact, the history of its language, and
can be nothing else; for we have to deal with times antecedent to all
history, properly so called, and the stream which in later ages may
be divided into many branches, now flows in a single channel.

From the East, then, came our ancestors, in days of immemorial
antiquity, in that gray dawn of time of which all early songs and
lays can tell, but of which it is as impossible as it is useless to
attempt to fix the date. Impossible, because no means exist for
ascertaining it; useless, because it is in reality a matter of utter
indifference, when, as this tell-tale crust of earth informs us, we
have an infinity of ages and periods to fall back on whether this
great movement, this mighty lust to change their seats, seized on the
Aryan race one hundred or one thousand years sooner or later. [1] But
from the East we came, and from that central plain of Asia, now
commonly called Iran. Iran, the habitation of the tillers and
_earers_ [2] of the earth, as opposed to Turan, the abode of
restless horse-riding nomads; of Turks, in short, for in their name
the root survives, and still distinguishes the great Turanian or
Mongolian family, from the Aryan, Iranian, or Indo-European race. It
is scarce worth while to inquire--even if inquiry could lead to any
result--what cause set them in motion from their ancient seats.
Whether impelled by famine or internal strife, starved out like other
nationalities in recent times, or led on by adventurous chiefs, whose
spirit chafed at the narrowness of home, certain it is that they left
that home and began a wandering westwards, which only ceased when it
reached the Atlantic and the Northern Ocean. Nor was the fate of
those they left behind less strange. At some period almost as remote
as, but after, that at which the wanderers for Europe started, the
remaining portion of the stock, or a considerable offshoot from it,
turned their faces east, and passing the Indian Caucasus, poured
through the defiles of Affghanistan, crossed the plain of the Five
Rivers, and descended on the fruitful plains of India. The different
destiny of these stocks has been wonderful indeed. Of those who went
west, we have only to enumerate the names under which they appear in
history--Celts, Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Slavonians--to see and to
know at once that the stream of this migration has borne on its waves
all that has become most precious to man. To use the words of Max
Mueller: 'They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of
history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of
active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected
society and morals, and we learn from their literature and works of
art the elements of science, the laws of art, and the principles of
philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic
and Mongolian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of
history, and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the
world together by the chains of civilization, commerce, and
religion.' We may add, that though by nature tough and enduring, they
have not been obstinate and self-willed; they have been distinguished
from all other nations, and particularly from their elder brothers
whom they left behind, by their common sense, by their power of
adapting themselves to all circumstances, and by making the best of
their position; above all, they have been teachable, ready to receive
impressions from without, and, when received, to develop them. To
show the truth of this, we need only observe, that they adopted
Christianity from another race, the most obstinate and stiff-necked
the world has ever seen, who, trained under the Old Dispensation to
preserve the worship of the one true God, were too proud to accept
the further revelation of God under the New, and, rejecting their
birth-right, suffered their inheritance to pass into other hands.

Such, then, has been the lot of the Western branch, of the younger
brother, who, like the younger brother whom we shall meet so often in
these Popular Tales, went out into the world, with nothing but his
good heart and God's blessing to guide him; and now has come to all
honour and fortune, and to be a king, ruling over the world. He went
out and _did_. Let us see now what became of the elder brother,
who stayed at home some time after his brother went out, and then
only made a short journey. Having driven out the few aboriginal
inhabitants of India with little effort, and following the course of
the great rivers, the Eastern Aryans gradually established themselves
all over the peninsula; and then, in calm possession of a world of
their own, undisturbed by conquest from without, and accepting with
apathy any change of dynasty among their rulers, ignorant of the past
and careless of the future, they sat down once for all and
_thought_--thought not of what they had to do here, that stern
lesson of every-day life which neither men nor nations can escape if
they are to live with their fellows, but how they could abstract
themselves entirely from their present existence, and immerse
themselves wholly in dreamy speculations on the future. Whatever they
may have been during their short migration and subsequent settlement,
it is certain that they appear in the Vedas--perhaps the earliest
collection which the world possesses--as a nation of philosophers.
Well may Professor Mueller compare the Indian mind to a plant reared
in a hot-house, gorgeous in colour, rich in perfume, precocious and
abundant in fruit; it may be all this, 'but will never be like the
oak, growing in wind and weather, striking its roots into real earth,
and stretching its branches into real air, beneath the stars and sun
of Heaven'; and well does he also remark, that a people of this
peculiar stamp was never destined to act a prominent part in the
history of the world; nay, the exhausting atmosphere of
transcendental ideas could not but exercise a detrimental influence
on the active and moral character of the Hindoos. [3]

In this passive, abstract, unprogressive state, they have remained
ever since. Stiffened into castes, and tongue-tied and hand-tied by
absurd rites and ceremonies, they were heard of in dim legends by
Herodotus; they were seen by Alexander when that bold spirit pushed
his phalanx beyond the limits of the known world; they trafficked
with imperial Rome, and the later empire; they were again almost lost
sight of, and became fabulous in the Middle Age; they were
rediscovered by the Portuguese; they have been alternately peaceful
subjects and desperate rebels to us English; but they have been still
the same immovable and unprogressive philosophers, though akin to
Europe all the while; and though the Highlander, who drives his
bayonet through the heart of a high-caste Sepoy mutineer, little
knows that his pale features and sandy hair, and that dusk face with
its raven locks, both come from a common ancestor away in Central
Asia, many, many centuries ago.

But here arises the question, what interest can we, the descendants
of the practical brother, heirs to so much historical renown,
possibly take in the records of a race so historically characterless,
and so sunk in reveries and mysticism? The answer is easy. Those
records are written in a language closely allied to the primaeval
common tongue of those two branches before they parted, and
descending from a period anterior to their separation. It may, or it
may not, be the very tongue itself, but it certainly is not further
removed than a few steps. The speech of the emigrants to the west
rapidly changed with the changing circumstances and various fortune
of each of its waves, and in their intercourse with the aboriginal
population they often adopted foreign elements into their language.
One of these waves, it is probable, passing by way of Persia and Asia
Minor, crossed the Hellespont, and following the coast, threw off a
mighty rill, known in after times as Greeks; while the main stream,
striking through Macedonia, either crossed the Adriatic, or, still
hugging the coast, came down on Italy, to be known as Latins.
Another, passing between the Caspian and the Black Sea, filled the
steppes round the Crimea, and; passing on over the Balkan and the
Carpathians towards the west, became that great Teutonic nationality
which, under various names, but all closely akin, filled, when we
first hear of them in historical times, the space between the Black
Sea and the Baltic, and was then slowly but surely driving before
them the great wave of the Celts which had preceded them in their
wandering, and which had probably followed the same line of march as
the ancestors of the Greeks and Latins. A movement which lasted until
all that was left of Celtic nationality was either absorbed by the
intruders, or forced aside and driven to take refuge in mountain
fastnesses and outlying islands. Besides all these, there was still
another wave, which is supposed to have passed between the Sea of
Aral and the Caspian, and, keeping still further to the north and
east, to have passed between its kindred Teutons and the Mongolian
tribes, and so to have lain in the background until we find them
appearing as Slavonians on the scene of history. Into so many great
stocks did the Western Aryans pass, each possessing strongly-marked
nationalities and languages, and these seemingly so distinct that
each often asserted that the other spoke a barbarous tongue. But, for
all that, each of those tongues bears about with it still, and in
earlier times no doubt bore still more plainly about with it,
infallible evidence of common origin, so that each dialect can be
traced up to that primaeval form of speech still in the main
preserved in the Sanscrit by the Southern Aryan branch, who, careless
of practical life, and immersed in speculation, have clung to their
ancient traditions and tongue with wonderful tenacity. It is this
which has given such value to Sanscrit, a tongue of which it may be
said, that if it had perished the sun would never have risen on the
science of comparative philology. Before the discoveries in Sanscrit
of Sir William Jones, Wilkins, Wilson, and others, the world had
striven to find the common ancestor of European languages, sometimes
in the classical, and sometimes in the Semitic tongues. In the one
case the result was a tyranny of Greek and Latin over the non-
classical tongues, and in the other the most uncritical and
unphilosophical waste of learning. No doubt some striking analogies
exist between the Indo-European family and the Semitic stock, just as
there are remarkable analogies between the Mongolian and Indo-
European families; but the ravings of Vallancy, in his effort to
connect the Erse with Phoenician, are an awful warning of what
unscientific inquiry, based upon casual analogy, may bring itself to
believe, and even to fancy it has proved.

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