Part 5

_Blue Beard_ is essentially popular and traditional. The elements are found in countries where Gilles de Retz and Comorre and Sainte Triphime were never known. The leading idea, of curiosity punished, of the box or door which may not be opened, and of the prohibition infringed with evil results, is of world-wide distribution. In many countries this notion inspires the myths of the origin of Death[49]. In German _Maerchen_ there are several parallels, more or less close, to _Blue Beard_ (Grimm 3, 40, 46). In _Our Lady's Child_ (3) the Virgin entrusts a little girl with keys of thirteen doors, of which she may only open twelve. Behind each door she found an apostle, behind the thirteenth the Trinity, in a glory of flame, like Zeus when he consumed Semele. The girl's finger became golden with the light, as Blue Beard's key was dyed with the blood. The child was banished from heaven, and her later adventures are on the lines of the falsely accused wife, like those of the _Belle au Bois Dormant_, with the Virgin for mother-in-law and with a repentance for a moral conclusion. In the _Robber Bridegroom_ there is a girl betrothed to a woman-slayer; she detects and denounces him, pretending, as in the old English tale, she is describing a dream. 'Like the old tale, my Lord, it is not so, nor 'twas not so; but indeed God forbid that it should be so[50].' Except for the 'larder' of the Robber, and of Mr. Fox in the English variant, these stories do not closely resemble _Blue Beard_. In Grimm's _Fitcher's Bird_ (46) the resemblance is closer. A man, apparently a beggar, carries off the eldest of three sisters to a magnificent house, and leaves her with the keys, an egg, and the prohibition to open a certain door. She opens it, finds a block, an axe, a basin of blood, and the egg falling into the blood refuses to be cleansed. The man slays her, her second sister shares her fate, the third leaves the egg behind when she visits the secret room, and miraculously restores her sisters to life by reuniting their limbs. The same idea occurs in the Kaffir tale of the Ox (Callaway, _Nursery Tales of the Zulus_, p. 230). The rest of the story, with the escape from the monster, has no connection with _Blue Beard_, except that the wretch is put to death. Indeed, it would have been highly inconvenient for Blue Beard's surviving bride if the dead ladies had been resuscitated. Her legal position would have been ambiguous, and she could not have inherited the gold coaches and embroidered furniture. Grimm originally published another German form of _Blue Beard_ (62 in first edition), but withdrew it, being of opinion that it might have been derived from Perrault. The story of the Third Calender in the _Arabian Nights_ (Night 66) has nothing in common with Blue Beard but the prohibition to open a door.

In Italy[51] the Devil is the wooer, the closed door opens on hell: the rest, the adventures of three sisters, resembles Grimm's _Fitcher's Bird_, with a touch of humour. The Devil, seeing the resuscitated girls, is daunted by the idea of facing three wives, and decamps. He had no scruple, it will be seen, about marrying his deceased wife's sister. The Russian like the Oriental stories generally make a man indulge the fatal curiosity, and open the forbidden door. Mr. Ralston quotes from Loewe's _Esthnische Maerchen_ (No. 20) a tale almost too closely like Perrault's. There is a sister, and the goose boy takes the _role_ of rescuer. M. de Gubernatis thinks that the key 'is perhaps the Moon!' (_Zoological Mythology_, 1. 168). In the Gaelic version the heroine is cleansed of blood by a grateful Cat, whose services her sisters had neglected (Campbell, _Tales of West Highlands_, No. 41). In the _Katha Sarit Sagara_ (iii. p. 223) a hero, Saktideva, is forbidden to approach a certain palace terrace. He breaks the taboo, and finds three dead maidens in three pavilions. A horse then kicks him into a lake, and, whereas he had been in the Golden City, hard to win, he finds himself at home in Vardhamana. The affair is but an incident in the medley of incidents, some resembling passages in the Odyssey, which make up the story (compare Ralston's note, _Russian Fairy Tales_, p. 99).

From these brief analyses it will be plain that, in point of art, Perrault's tale has a great advantage over its popular rivals. It is at once more sober and more terrible, and (especially when compared with the confusion of incidents in the _Katha Sarit Sagara_) possesses an epical unity of idea and action.

In spite of this artistic character, Perrault's tale is clearly of popular origin, as the existence of variants in the folklore of other countries demonstrates. But the details are so fluctuating, that we need not hope to find in them memories of ancient myth, nor is it safe to follow M. Andre Lefevre, when he thinks that, in the two avenging brothers, he recognises the Vedic Asvins.

[Footnote 48: The passages in the legend of Sainte Triphime are quoted by M. Deulin, _Contes de Ma Mere l'Oye_, p. 178. See also _Annuaire Hist. et Arch. de Bretagne_, Annee 1862. The Saint has a warning vision of the dead wives, but not in consequence of opening a forbidden door.]

[Footnote 49: A partial collection of these will be found in _La Mythologie_, Lang. Paris 1886. Australians, Ningphos, Greeks (Pandora's box), the Montaguais of Labrador (_Relations de la Nouvelle France_, 1634), the Odahwah Indians (Hind's _Explorations in Labrador_, i. 61, note 2), are examples of races which believe death to have come into the world as the punishment of an infringed prohibition of this sort. The deathly swoon of Psyche, in _The Golden Ass_ of Apuleius, when she has opened the pyx of Proserpine, is another instance.]

[Footnote 50: Compare Mrs. Hunt's note to Grimm, i. 389.]

[Footnote 51: Crane, p. 78.]

LE MAISTRE CHAT, OU LE CHAT BOTTE.

_Puss in Boots._

Everybody knows Puss in Boots. He is, as Nodier says, the Figaro of the nursery, as Hop o' My Thumb is the Ulysses, and Blue Beard the Othello; and thus he is of interest to all children, and to all men who remember their childhood. Ulysses himself did not travel farther than the story of the patron of the Marquis de Carabas has wandered, and few things can be more curious than to follow the Master-Cat in his migrations. For many reasons the history of _Puss in Boots_, though it has been rather neglected, throws a good deal of light on that very dark question, the diffusion of popular tales. As soon as we read it in Perrault, we find that Monsieur Perrault was at a loss for a moral to his narrative. In fact, as he tells it, there is _no_ moral to the Master-Cat. Puss is a perfectly unscrupulous adventurer who, for no reason but the fun of the thing, dubs the miller's son marquis, makes a royal marriage for him, by a series of amusing frauds, and finally enriches him with the spoils of a murdered ogre. In the absence of any moral Perrault has to invent one--which does not apply.

'Aux jeunes gens pour l'ordinaire, L'industrie et le savoir-faire Valent mieux que des biens acquis.'

Now the 'young person,' the cat's master, had shown no 'industry' whatever, except in so far as he was a _chevalier d'industrie_, thanks to his cat. These obvious truths pained Mr. George Cruikshank when he tried to illustrate _Puss in Boots_, and found that the romance was quite unfit for the young. 'When I came to look carefully at that story, I felt _compelled_ to rewrite it, and alter the character of it to a certain extent, for, as it stood, the tale was a succession of successful falsehoods--a _clever_ lesson in lying, a system of _imposture_ rewarded by the greatest worldly advantages. A _useful_ lesson, truly, to be impressed upon the minds of children.' So Mr. Cruikshank made the tale didactic, showing how the Marquis de Carabas was the real heir, 'kep' out of his own' by the landgrabbing ogre, and how puss was a gamekeeper metamorphosed into a cat as a punishment for his repining disposition. This performance of Mr. Cruikshank was denounced by Mr. Dickens in _Household Words_ as a 'fraud on the fairies,' and 'the intrusion of a whole hog of unwieldy dimensions into the fairy flower-garden[52].'

The Master-Cat probably never made any child a rogue, but no doubt his conduct was flagrantly immoral. And this brings us to one of the problems of the science of nursery tales. When we find a story told by some peoples _with_ a moral, and by other peoples _without_ a moral, are we to suppose that the tale was originally narrated for the moral's sake, and that the forms in which there is _no_ moral are degenerate and altered versions? For example, the Zulus, the Germans, the French, and the Hindoos have all a nursery tale in which someone, by a series of lucky accidents and exchanges, goes on making good bargains, and rising from poverty to wealth. In French Flanders this is the tale of _Jean Gogue_; in Grimm it is _The Golden Goose_; in Zulu it is part of the adventures of the Hermes of Zulu myth, Uhlakanyana. In two of these the hero possesses some trifling article which is injured, and people give him something better in exchange, till, like Jean Gogue, for example, he marries the king's daughter[53]. Now these tales have no moral. The hero is thought neither better nor worse of because of his series of exchanges. But in modern Hindostan the story _has_ a moral. The rat, whose series of exchanges at last win him a king's daughter, is held up to contempt as a warning to bargain-hunters. He is not happy with his bride, but escapes, leaving his tail, half his hair, and a large piece of his skin behind him, howling with pain, and vowing that 'never, never, never again would he make a bargain[54].' Here then is a tale told with a moral, and _for_ the moral in India, but with no moral in Zululand and France. Are we to suppose that India was the original source of the narrative, that it was a parable invented for the moral's sake, and that it spread, losing its moral (as the rat lost his tail), to Europe and South Africa? Or are we to suppose that originally the narrative was a mere _Schwank_, or popular piece of humour, and that the mild, reflective Hindoo moralised it into a parable or fable? The question may be argued either way; but the school of Benfey and M. Cosquin, holding that almost all our stories were invented in India, should prefer the former alternative.

Now _Puss in Boots_ has this peculiarity, that out of France, or rather out of the region influenced by Perrault's version of the history, a moral usually does inform the legend of the Master-Cat, or master-fox, or master-gazelle, or master-jackal, or master-dog, for each of these animals is the hero in different countries. Possibly, then, the story had originally what it sadly lacks in its best-known shape, a moral; and possibly _Puss in Boots_ was in its primitive shape (like _Toads and Diamonds_) a novel with a purpose. But where was the novel first invented?

We are not likely to discover for certain the cradle of the race of the Master-Cat--the 'cat's cradle' of _Puss in Boots_. But the record of his achievements is so well worth studying, because the possible area from which it may have arisen is comparatively limited.

There are many stories known all the world over, such as the major part of the adventures of _Hop o' My Thumb_, which might have been invented anywhere, and might have been invented by men in a low state of savagery. The central idea in _Hop o' My Thumb_, for example, is the conception of a hero who falls into the hands of cannibals, and by a trick makes the cannibal slay, and sometimes eat, his own kinsfolk, mother, or wife, or child, while the hero escapes. This legend is well known in South Africa, in South Siberia, and in Aberdeenshire; and in Greece it made part of the Minyan legend of Athamas and Ino, murder being substituted for cannibalism. Namaquas, in Southern Africa; Eskimo, in Northern America, and Athenians (as Aeschylus shows in the _Eumenides_, 244), are as familiar as Maoris, or any of us, with the ogre's favourite remark, 'I smell the smell of a mortal man.'

Now it is obvious that these ideas--the trick played by the hero on the cannibal, and the turning of the tables--might occur to the human mind wherever cannibalism was a customary peril: that is, among any low savages. It does not matter whether the cannibal is called a _rakshasa_ in India, or an _ogre_ in France, or a _weendigo_ in Labrador, the notion is the same, and the trick played by the hero is simple and obvious[55]. Therefore _Hop o' My Thumb_ may have been invented anywhere, by any people on a low level of civilisation. But _Puss in Boots_ cannot have been invented by savages of a very backward race or in a really 'primitive' age. The very essence of _Puss in Boots_ is the sudden rise of a man, by aid of a cunning animal, from the depths of poverty to the summit of wealth and rank. Undeniably this rise could only occur where there were great differences of social status, where rank was a recognised institution, and where property had been amassed in considerable quantities by some, while others went bare as lackalls.

These things have been of the very essence of civilisation (the more's the pity), therefore _Puss in Boots_ must have been invented by a more or less civilised mind; it could not have been invented by a man in the condition of the Fuegians or the Digger Indians. Nay, when we consider the stress always and everywhere laid in the story on snobbish pride and on magnificence of attire and equipment, and on retinue, we may conclude that _Puss in Boots_ could hardly have been imagined by men in the middle barbarism; in the state, for example, of Iroquois, or Zulus, or Maoris. Nor are we aware that _Puss in Boots_, in any shape, is found among any of these peoples. Thus the area in which the origin of _Puss in Boots_ has to be looked for is comparatively narrow.

_Puss in Boots_, again, is a story which, in all its wonderfully varying forms, can only, we may assume, have sprung from one single mind. It is extremely difficult to assert with confidence that any plot can only have been invented once for all. Every new successful plot, from _Dr. Jekyl_ to _She_, from _Vice Versa_ to _Dean Maitland_, is at once claimed for half a dozen authors who, unluckily, did not happen to write _She_ or _Dr. Jekyl_. But if there can be any assurance in these matters, we may feel certain that the idea of a story, wherein a young man is brought from poverty to the throne by aid of a match-making and ingenious beast, could only have been invented once for all. In that case _Puss in Boots_ is a story which spread from one centre, and was invented by one man in a fairly civilised society. True, he used certain hereditary and established _formulae_; the notion of a beast that can talk, and surprises nobody (except in the Zanzibar version) by this accomplishment, is a notion derived from the old savage condition of the intellect, in which beasts are on a level with, or superior to, humanity. But we can all use these _formulae_ now that we possess them. Could memory of past literature be wholly wiped out, while civilisation still endured, there would be no talking and friendly beasts in the children's tales of the next generation, unless the children wrote them for themselves. As Sainte-Beuve says, 'On n'inventerait plus aujourd'hui de ces choses, si elles n'avaient ete imaginees des longtemps[56].'

If we are to get any light on the first home of the tale--and we cannot get very much--it will be necessary to examine its different versions. There is an extraordinary amount of variety in the incidents subordinate to the main idea, and occasionally we find a heroine instead of a hero, a Marquise de Carabas, not a marquis. Perhaps the best plan will be to start with the stories near home, and to pursue puss, if possible, to his distant original tree. First, we all know him in English translations, made as early as 1745, if not earlier, of Perrault's _Maitre Chat, ou Chat botte_, published in 1696-7. Here his motives are simple fun and friendliness. His master, who owns no other property, thinks of killing and skinning puss, but the cat prefers first to make acquaintance with the king, by aid of presents of game from an imaginary Marquis de Carabas; then to pretend his master is drowning and has had his clothes stolen (thereby introducing him to the king in a court suit, borrowed from the monarch himself); next to frighten people into saying that the Marquis is their _seigneur_; and, finally, to secure a property for the Marquis by swallowing an ogre, whom he has induced to assume the disguise of a mouse. This last trick is as old as Hesiod[57], where Zeus persuades his wife to become a fly, and swallows her.

The next neighbour of the French _Puss in Boots_ in the north is found in Sweden[58] and in Norway[59]. In the Swedish, a girl owns the cat. They wander to a castle gate, where the cat bids the girl strip and hide in a tree; he then goes to the castle and says that his royal mistress has been attacked by robbers. The people of the palace attire the girl splendidly, the prince loses his heart to her, the queen-mother lays traps for her in vain. Nothing is so fine in the castle as in the girl's chateau of Cattenburg. The prince insists on seeing that palace, the cat frightens the peasants into saying that all the land they pass is the girl's; finally, the cat reaches a troll's house, with pillars of gold. The cat turns himself into a loaf of bread and holds the troll in talk till the sun rises on him and he bursts, as trolls always do if they see the sun. The girl succeeds to the troll's palace, and nothing is said as to what became of the cat.

Here is even less moral than in _Puss in Boots_, for the Marquis of Carabas, as M. Deulin says, merely lets the cat do all the tricks, whereas the Swedish girl is his active accomplice. The change of the cat into bread (which can talk), and the bursting of the ogre at dawn, are very ancient ideas, whether they have been tacked later on to the _conte_ or not. In _Lord Peter_ the heroine gives place to a hero, while the cat drives deer to the palace, saying that they come from Lord Peter. The cat, we are not told how, dresses Lord Peter in splendid attire, kills a troll for him, and then, as in Madame d'Aulnoy's _White Cat_, has its head cut off and becomes a princess. Behold how fancies jump! All the ogre's wealth had been the princess's, before the ogre changed her into a cat, and took her lands. Thus George Cruikshank's moral conclusion is anticipated, while puss acts as a match-maker indeed, but acts for herself. This form of the legend, if not immoral, has no moral, and has been mixed up either with Madame d'Aulnoy's _Chatte Blanche_, or with the popular traditions from which she borrowed.

Moving south, but still keeping near France, we find _Puss in Boots_ in Italy. The tale is told by Straparola[60]. A youngest son owns nothing but a cat which, by presents of game, wins the favour of a king of Bohemia. The drowning trick is then played, and the king gives the cat's master his daughter, with plenty of money. On the bride's journey to her new home, the cat frightens the peasants into saying all the land belongs to his master, for whom he secures the castle of a knight dead without heirs.

Here, once more, there is no moral.

In a popular version from Sicily[61], a fox takes the cat's place, _from motives of gratitude_, because the man found it robbing and did not kill it. The fox then plays the usual trick with the game, and another familiar trick, that of leaving a few coins in a borrowed bushel measure to give the impression that his master does not _count_, but measures out his money. The trick of frightening the peasants follows, and finally, an ogress who owns a castle is thrown down a well by the fox. Then comes in the new feature: the _man is ungrateful and kills the fox_; nevertheless he lives happy ever after.

Now, at last, we have reached the moral. A beggar on horseback will forget his first friend: _a man will be less grateful than a beast_.

This moral declares itself, with a difference (for the ingrate is coerced into decent behaviour), in a popular French version, taken down from oral recitation[62].

Here, then, even among the peasantry of Perrault's own country, and as near France as Sicily, too, we have _Puss in Boots_ with a moral: that of human ingratitude contrasted with the gratitude of a beast. May we conclude, then, that _Puss in Boots_ was originally invented as a kind of parable by which this moral might be inculcated? And, if we may draw that conclusion, where is this particular moral most likely to have been invented, and enforced in an apologue?

As to the first of these two questions, it may be observed that the story with the moral, and with a fox in place of a cat, is found among the Avars, a Mongolian people of Mussulman faith, on the northern slopes of the Caucasus. Here the man is ungrateful, but the fox, as in Sicily, coerces him, in this case by threatening to let out the story of his rise in life[63]. In Russia, too, a fox takes the cat's _role_, and the part of the ogre is entrusted to the Serpent Uhlan, a supernatural snake, who is burned to ashes[64].

It is now plain that the tale with the moral, whether that was the original motive or not, is more common than the tale without the moral. We find the moral among French, Italians, Avars, Russians; among people of Mahommedan, Greek, and Catholic religion. Now M. Emmanuel Cosquin is inclined to believe that the moral--the ingratitude of man contrasted with the gratitude of beasts,--is Buddhistic. If that be so, then India is undeniably the original cradle of _Puss in Boots_. But M. Cosquin has been unable to find any _Puss in Boots_ in India; at least he knew none in 1876, when he wrote on the subject in _Le Francais_ (June 29, 1876). Nor did the learned Benfey, with all his prodigious erudition, know an Indian _Puss in Boots_[65]. Therefore the proof of this theory, that Buddhistic India may be the real cat's cradle, is incomplete; nor does it become more probable when we actually do discover _Puss in Boots_ in India. For in the Indian _Puss in Boots_, just as in Perrault's, _there is no moral at all_, and the notion of gratitude, on either the man's side or the beast's, is not even suggested.