CHAPTER VI
The Supernatural in Folk-Tales
The folk-tale is one of the new fashions in fiction. True, folk-lorehas long constituted an important element of literature, constantlyrecurring in poetry, particularly in the ballad, in the drama, thenovel, and short story. Yet it has been in solution. It has not beenthought important enough to merit consideration for its own sake, buthas been rather apologized for, covered up with other materials, sothat its presence is scarcely recognized. Now, however, as ProfessorKittredge says, folk-lore is no longer on the defensive, which factis evident in fiction as elsewhere. Scholars of our day are eagerlyhunting down the various forms of folk-lore to preserve them inliterature before they vanish completely, and learned societiesare recording with care the myths and legends and superstitions ofpeasants. Many volumes have appeared giving in literary form thefictions of various races and tribes, and comparative folk-lore isfound to be an engrossing science.
The supernatural forms a large element of folk-literature. Thetraditions and stories that come down to us from the childhood ofany race are like the stories that children delight in, tales of themarvelous, of the impossible, of magic and wonder. Folk-literaturerecks little of realism. It revels in the romantic, the mystic. Talesof gods and demi-gods, of giants and demons, of fairy-folk, of animalsendowed with human powers of speech and cunning, of supernatural floraas well as fauna, of ghosts, devils, of saints, and miracles, are theframe-work of such fiction. English literature is especially rich inthese collections, for not only are the sections of English-speakingcountries themselves fortunate fields for supernatural folk-tales,but the English, being a race of colonizers, have gone far in manylands and from the distant corners of the earth have written down thelegends of many tribes and nations. This discussion does not take intoconsideration primarily folk-tales translated from other languages, butdeals only with those appearing in English, though, of course, in manycases, they are transcripts from the spoken dialects of other people.But it is for their appearance as English fiction, not for their valueas folk-lore, that they are taken up here.
Wherever in fiction the life of the peasant class is definitelytreated, there is likely to be found a good deal of folk-lore in theform of superstitions, taboos, racial traditions of the supernatural.This is present to a marked degree in the stories of Sir Walter Scott,and in fact one might write a volume on the supernatural in Scott'swork alone. For example, we have Oriental magic and wonder,[181]supernatural vision,[182] superhuman foreknowledge,[183] unearthly"stirs,"[184] the White Lady of Avenel,[185] the bahrgeist,[186]besides his use of diabolism, witchcraft, and so forth alreadydiscussed. Thomas Hardy's work, relating as it does almost wholly torustic life, is rich in superstitions and traditions of the peasants._The Withered Arm_ gives a gruesome account of a woman's attempt tocure her affliction by touching her arm to the corpse of a man whohas been hanged, the complicating horror being furnished by the factthat the youth is her husband's secret son. He gives a story[187] ofa supernatural coach that heralds certain events in the family life,charms for securing love as for making refractory butter come when thechurn is bewitched, and so forth. Similar elements occur in others ofhis novels and stories. Eden Phillpotts' fiction[188] shows a largeadmixture of the folk-supernaturalism of the Dartmoor peasants, as do_Lorna Doone_, _Wuthering Heights_ and numberless other novels andstories of other sections. There are guild superstitions reflected inthe work of various writers of the sea, as in W. W. Jacobs' stories,for instance, tales of mining life, and so on.
[181] In _The Talisman_.
[182] In _My Aunt Margaret's Mirror_.
[183] In _The Two Drovers_.
[184] In _Woodstock_.
[185] In _The Monastery_.
[186] In _The Betrothed_.
[187] In _Tess_.
[188] _Children of the Mist_, _The Witch_, and others.
American fiction is equally rich in such material. Stories of theSouth, showing life in contact with the negroes, reveal it to a markeddegree, as in the work of Thomas Nelson Page, Joel Chandler Harris,Ruth McEnery Stuart, Will Allen Dromgoole, and others. The Creolesense of the supernatural appears in George W. Cable's novels andstories, the mountain superstitions in those of John Fox, Jr., andCharles Egbert Craddock, those of New England in Mary Wilkins Freeman,Alice Brown, and their followers, the Indian traditions in Helen HuntJackson, J. Fenimore Cooper, the Dutch supernaturalism in WashingtonIrving, who also gives us the legendry of Spain in his tales of theAlhambra. Thomas A. Janvier has recreated antique Mexico for us in hisstories of ghosts and saints, of devils and miracles.
In most fiction that represents truly the life of simple people therewill be found a certain amount of superstition which is inherent inpractically every soul. There is no one of us but has his ideas offate, of luck, of taboo. We are so used to these elements in life thatwe scarcely pay heed to them in fiction, yet a brief glance at bookswill recall their frequent appearance. They color poetry to a markeddegree. In fact, without the sense of the marvelous, the unreal, thewonderful, the magical, what would poetry mean to us? So we shouldfeel a keen loss in our fiction if all the vague elements of thesupernatural were effaced. Absolute realism is the last thing we desire.
Now the folk-tale, told frankly as such, with no apology for itsunreality, no attempt to make of it merely an allegory or vehiclefor teaching moral truth, has taken its place in our literature.The science of ethnology has brought a wider interest in the oralheritage of the past, linking it to our life of the present. And themultiplication of volumes recording stories of symbolic phenomenaof nature, of gods, demi-gods, and heroes, of supernormal animalsand plants, of fairies, banshees, bogles, giants, saints, miracles,and what-not make it possible to compare the widely disseminatedstories, the variants and contrasting types of folk-supernaturalism.But my purpose in this discussion is to show the presence of thefolk-supernaturalism in literature, in prose fiction particularly.There is no science more fascinating than comparative folk-lore and nolanguage affords so many original examples of oral literature as theEnglish. As we study its influence on fiction and poetry, we feel thetruth of what Tylor says[189]:
Little by little, in what seems the most spontaneous fiction, a more comprehensive study of the sources of poetry and romance begins to disclose a cause for each fancy, a story of inherited materials from which each province of the poet's land has been shaped and built over and peopled.
[189] In _Primitive Culture_, vol. i., page 273.
The Celtic Revival, the renascence of wonder in Ireland, has done morethan anything else to awaken modern love for antiquity, to bring overinto literature the legends of gods and men
"Beyond the misty space Of twice a thousand years."
While the movement concerns itself more with poetry and the drama thanwith prose,--Ireland has been likened to "a nest of singing birds,"though the voices of some have been sadly silenced of late--yet fictionhas felt its influence as well. The land of the immortals glooms andgleams again for us in storied vision, and the ancient past yields upto us its magic, its laughter, its tears. These romances are written,not in pedestrian prose as ordinary folk-tales, but with a bardicbeauty that gives to style the lifting wings of verse. Each fact andfigure is expressed in poetic symbols, which Yeats calls "streams ofpassion poured about concrete forms." A sense of ancient, divine powersis in every bush and bog, every lake and valley. Ireland has enricheduniversal fancy and the effect on literature will perhaps never be lost.
* * * * *
One of the most interesting aspects of folk-loristic supernaturalismis that concerned with nature. The primitive mind needs no scientificproof for theories of causation, since, given a belief in gods, it canmanage the rest for itself. With the Celts there is ever a feelingof nature as a mighty personality. Every aspect, every phase of herpower is endowed with life and temperament. Celtic pantheism saw inevery form a spirit, in every spring or cloud
or hill-top, in everybird or blossom some unearthly divinity of being. A primrose is vastlymore than a yellow primrose, but one of "the dear golden folk"; thehawthorn is the barking of hounds, leek is the tear of a fair woman,and so on, which poetic speech bears a likeness to the Icelandic courtpoetry. This figurative sense suggests "an _after-thought_ of the oldnature-worship lingering yet about the fjords and glens where Druidismnever was quite overcome by Christianity." It lends to the Celticfolk-tales their wild, unearthly beauty, their passionate poetry andmystic symbolism akin to the classic mythology and such as we find inno other folk-literature of the present time.
In the stories of Lady Gregory, John Synge, Yeats, Lady Wilde, andvarious other chroniclers of Celtic legendry, we find explanationsof many phenomena, accounts of diverse occurrences. Lady Wilde[190](Speranza) tells of natural appearances, such as a great chasmwhich was opened to swallow a man who incurred the anger of God bychallenging Him to combat for destroying his crops. A supernaturalwhirlwind caught up the blasphemer and hurled him into the chasm thatyawned to receive him. Many of the aspects of nature are attributedto the activities of giants, and later of demons; as the piling up ofcyclopean walls, massive breast-works of earth, or gigantic masses ofrocks said to be the work of playful or irate giants. The titans werefrolicsome and delighted in feats to show off. There is a large bodyof legends of diabolized nature, as the changing of the landscape bydemons, the sulphurizing of springs, and the cursing of localities.
[190] In _Ancient Legends and Superstitions of Ireland_.
Many other aspects of nature are made the basis for supernaturalfolk-tales too numerous to mention. Stories of the enchanted bird,music, and water appear in various forms, and the droll-tellers ofthe Cornish country tell many stories of the weird associated without-of-doors. The Celtic superstitions and tales have lived on throughsuccessive invasions and through many centuries have been told besidethe peat fire. They have been preserved as an oral heritage or else inalmost illegible manuscripts in antique libraries, from which they aretaken to be put into literature by the Celtic patriots of letters. Thesense of terror and of awe, a belief in the darker powers, as well asan all-enveloping feeling of beauty is a heritage of the Celtic mind.It is interesting to note the obstinacy of these pantheistic, druidicstories in the face of Irish Catholicism. In many other bodies offolk-supernaturalism in English we have similar legends of nature, asin the Hawaiian, the Indian, African, Canadian, Mexican stories, andelsewhere. But the material is so voluminous that one can do no morethan suggest the field.
Certain forces of nature are given supernatural power in drama andfiction, as the sea that is an awful, brooding Fate, in Synge'sdrama, or the wind and the flame in Algernon Blackwood's story, _TheRegeneration of Lord Ernie_, or the goblin trees in another of histales, that signify diabolic spirits, or the trees[191] that have astrange, compelling power over men, drawing them, going out bodily tomeet them, luring them to destruction. Blackwood has stressed thisform of supernaturalism to a marked degree. In _Sand_ he shows desertincantations that embody majestic forces, evocations of ancient deitiesthat bring the Sphynx to life, and other sinister powers. He takesthe folk-loristic aspects of nature and makes them live, personifyingthe forces of out-door life as mythology did. The trees, the sand,the fire, the snow, the wind, the stream, the sea are all alive, withpersonality, with emotion, and definite being. His trees are moreawesome than the woods of Dunsinane, for they actually do move upontheir foe. In _The Sea Fit_ he contends that the gods are not dead, butmerely withdrawn, that one true worshiper can call them back to earth,especially the sea-gods. The sea comes in power for the man with theViking soul and takes him to itself. His going is symbolic.
Uttering the singing sound of falling waters, he bent forward, turned. The next instant, curving over like a falling wave he swept along the glistening surface of the sands and was gone. In fluid form, wave-like, his being slipped away into the Being of the Sea.
[191] In _The Man Whom the Trees Loved_.
The uncanny potentialities of fire are revealed[192] where the internalflame breaks out of itself, the inner fire that burns in the heartof the earth and in men's hearts. The artist trying to paint a greatpicture of the Fire-worshiper is consumed by an intense, rapturousfever, and as he dies his face is like a white flame. The snow appearsembodied as a luring woman.[193] She tries to draw a man to hisdeath, with daemonic charm, seen as a lovely woman, but a snow demon.Blackwood shows the curious combination of the soul of a dead womanwith the spirit of a place,[194] where a man is ejected by his ownestate, turned out bodily as well as psychically, because he has becomeout of harmony with the locale. Nature here is sentient, emotional,possessing a child, expressing through her lips and hands a message ofmenace and warning. The moon is given diabolic power in one of BarryPain's stories, and the maelstrom described by Poe has a sinister, morethan human, power. August Stramm, the German dramatist, has given anuncanny force to the moor in one of his plays, making it the principalcharacter as well as the setting for the action. This embodiment ofnature's phases and phenomena as terrible powers goes back to ancientmythology with a revivifying influence.
[192] In _The Heath Fire_.
[193] In _The Glamor of the Snow_.
[194] In _The Temptation of the Clay_.
The supernatural beast-tale has always been a beloved form, AEsop'sfables, the beast-cycles of medievalism, Reynard the Fox, the GermanReinecke Fuchs, all show how fond humanity is of the story that endowsanimals with human powers. Naturally one thinks of Kipling's _JungleTales_ and Joel Chandler Harris' _Uncle Remus_ stories as the bestmodern examples, and these are so well known as to need but mention.Similar beast-cycles are found in the folk-fiction of other countries.Of course, it is understood that the _Uncle Remus_ stories are notnative to America, but were brought from Africa by the slaves andhanded down through generations in the form in which Harris heard themby the cabin firesides in his boyhood. They are not "cooked" or editedany more than he could help, he tells us, but given in the dialecticform in which they came to him. There are various tales similar to thisseries, as Kaffir tales, collected by Theal, Amazonian tortoise mythsbrought together by Charles F. Hart, and _Reynard, the Fox in SouthAfrica_, by W. H. I. Bleek. J. W. Powell in his investigations for theSmithsonian Institute found legends among the Indians that led him tobelieve the _Uncle Remus_ stories were originally learned from the redmen, but Harris thought there was no basis for such theory. _AnansiStories_, by Mary Pamela Milne-Horne, includes animal tales of theAfrican type. Anansi is a mysterious being, a supernatural old man likea Scandinavian troll or English lubber-fiend, who plays tricks likethose of the fox and like the jackal in Hindu stories. He is a spideras well as a man and can assume either shape at will.
In primitive races and in the childhood of peoples there is the sameelement of close association between man and the animals that onefinds in child-life. An animal is often nearer and dearer to a childthan is a human being, as in crude races man is more like the animals,candid, careless, unreflecting. His sensations and emotions are simple,hunger, love, hate, fear. Animals, in turn, are lifted nearer the humanin man's thinking, and are given human attributes in folk-lore whichbridges the gulf that civilization has tended to fix between man andanimals, and gives one more of a sense of the social union that Burnslonged for. There is in these stories of whatever country a naivetereflecting the childhood of the race and of the world, a primitivesimplicity in dealing with the supernatural.
The folk-fiction of each country gives stories of the animals commonto that section. In tropic countries we have stories of supernaturalsnakes, who appear in various forms, as were-snakes, shall we say?by turns reptiles and men, who marry mortal women, or as diaboliccreatures that, like the devil, lose their divinity and become evilpowers. We also see in the tropics elephants, lions, tigers, baboons,gorillas, and so forth, as well as certain insects, while in colderclimes we have the fox, the wolf, the bear, and their confreres. Inisland countries we
find a large element of the supernatural associatedwith fishes and sea-animals. Hawaiian stories recount adventures ofmagic beings born of sharks and women, who are themselves, by turns,human beings living a normal human life, and sharks, devouring menand women. Several of Eugene Field's stories are drawn from Hawaiianfolk-supernaturalism, as _The Eel-king_, and _The Moon Lady_.
The Gaelic stories of Fiona McLeod show the supernatural relationexisting between mortals and seals. The seals may wed human beings andtheir children are beings without souls, who may be either mortal oranimal. The power of enchantment exercised by the creatures of the seamay turn men and women into sea-beasts, forever to lose their souls.This may be compared with _The Pagan Seal-Wife_, by Eugene Field, HansChristian Andersen's sad story of the little mermaid, and _The ForsakenMerman_, by Matthew Arnold. Fiona McLeod tells the story of the DarkNameless One, a nun who became the prey of a seal and was cursed withthe penalty of living under the sea to weave fatal enchantments.The mermaids, the kelpies, the sea-beasts are all half-human, halfsea-beast, and have a fatal power over human souls, drawing them witha strange lure to give up their immortality. The kelpie appears inseveral of Fiona McLeod's stories and in _The Judgment of God_ themaighdeanhmara, a sea-maid, bewitches Murdoch, coming up out of thewater as a seal and turning him into a beast, to live with her forever,a black seal that laughs hideously with the laughter of Murdoch. EdwardSheldon has recently written a play[195] using the mermaid motif, andH. G. Wells employs it as a vehicle for social satire[196] where amermaid comes ashore from The Great Beyond and contrasts mortal lifewith hers. _The Merman and the Seraph_, by William Benjamin Smith, isan unusual combination of unearthly creatures.
[195] _The Mermaid._
[196] In _The Sea Lady_.
In _The Old Men of the Twilight_, W. B. Yeats describes the enchantmentinflicted on the old men of learning, the ancient Druids, who werecursed by being turned into gray herons that must stand in uselessmeditation in pools or flit in solitary flight cross the world, likepassing sighs. Lady Gregory tells of magic by which Lugh of the LongHand puts his soul into the body of a mayfly that drops into thecup that Dechtire drinks from, so that she drinks his soul and mustfollow him to the dwelling-place of the Sidhe, or fairy people. Herfifty maidens must go with her under a like spell that turns them intobirds, that fly in nine flocks, linked together two by two with silverchains, save those that lead who have golden chains. These beautifulbirds live in the enchanted land far away from their loved ones. J. H.Pearce tells a touching story of the Little Crow of Paradise, of thebird that was cursed and sent to hell because it mocked Christ on thecross, but because it had pity on a mortal sufferer in hell and broughtsome cooling drops of water in its bill to cool his parching tongue,it was allowed to fly up and light on the walls of Paradise where itremains forever. Oscar Wilde's story _The Nightingale and the Rose_ issymbolic of tragic genius, of vain sacrifice, where the tender-heartedbird gives his life-blood to stain a white rose red because a carelessgirl has told the poet who loves her that she must wear a red rose tothe ball. But at the last she casts the rose aside and wears the jewelsthat a richer lover has sent, while the nightingale lies dead under therose-tree.
So we see everywhere in folk-fiction the supernatural power given toanimals, which acts as an aid to man, as a shield and protection forhim, or for his undoing. We see human beings turned into beasts as acurse from the gods for sin or as expressing the kinship between manand nature. In the different cycles of beast-tales we find a largeelement of humor, the keener-witted animals possessing a rare sense ofthe comical and relishing a joke on each other as on man. The _UncleRemus_ stories are often laughable in the extreme, and Bre'er Rabbit,who, we might at first thought decide, would be stupid, is no meanwit. We see a tragic symbolism in the stories of unhappy beasts whomust lure mortals to their damnation, yet feel a sense of human sorrowand remorse. In these animal stories we find most of the significantqualities of literature, humor, romance, tragedy, mysticism, andsymbolic poetry, with a deep underlying philosophy of life pervadingthem all.
Lord Dunsany in his modern aspects of mythology, perhaps drawn inpart from classic mythology though perhaps altogether Celtic in itsmaterial, brings together animals to which we are not accustomed. Hehas a story of a centaur, a frolicsome creature two hundred and fiftyyears young, who goes caracoling off the end of the world to find hisbride. Algernon Blackwood tells of a man who remembers having been acentaur and lives in memory-metempsychosis his experiences of thatfar-off time. Dunsany introduces other curious, unfamiliar beasts tous, as the bride whom the man-horse seeks in her temple beside her sadlake-sepulchre, Sombelene, of immortal beauty, whose father was halfcentaur and half god, whose mother the child of a desert lion and thesphinx. There is the high-priest of Maharrion, who is neither bird norcat, but a weird gray beast like both. There is the loathsome dragonwith glittering golden scales that rattles up the London streets andseizes Miss Cubbige from her balcony and carries her off to the eternallands of romance lying far away by the ancient, soundless sea. We mustnot forget the Gladsome Beast, he who dwells underneath fairyland,at the edge of the world, the beast that eats men and destroys thecabbages of the Old Man Who Looks after Fairyland, but is the synonymfor joy. His joyous chuckles never cease till Ackronnion sings of themalignity of time, when the Gladsome Beast weeps great tears into anagate bowl. There are the hippogriffs, dancing and whirling in the farsunlight, coming to earth with whirring flight, bathing in the puredawn, one to be caught with a magic halter, to carry its rider past theUnder Pits to the City of Never. There are the gnoles in their highhouse, whose silence is unearthly "like the touch of a ghoul," overwhich is "a look in the sky that is worse than a spoken doom," thatwatch the mortals through holes in the trunks of trees and bear themaway to their fate. Lord Dunsany looses the reins of his fancy to carryhim into far, ancient lands, to show us the wonders that never were.
Magic forms an alluring element of the supernatural romance, and wefind it manifesting itself in many ways. In the romances of WilliamMorris, prose as well as poetry, we find enchantment recurring againand again, as in _The Water of the Wondrous Isles_, _The Wood beyondthe World_, _The Well at the World's End_, and others. Yeats saidthat Morris's style in these old stories was the most beautiful prosehe had ever read, and that it influenced his own work greatly. He hasunearthly characters, such as the Witch-wife, the Wood-wife, the StonyPeople, and so forth. He shows us the enchanted boat, the SendingBoat, the cage with the golden bars which prison the three maidens,magic runes with mighty power, the Water of Might which gives to theone drinking it supernatural vision and magic power, the changingskin, the Wailing Tower, the Black Valley of the Greyweathers, and soforth. Birdalone's swoon-dream in the White Palace is unearthly, as thewitches' wordless howls. Part of the weirdness of Morris's prose is dueto the antique tone, the forgotten words, the rune-like quality of therhythm.
Yeats tells of magic whereby a woman is gifted with immortal youth andbeauty, so that she may wed the prince of the fairies; of the glamourthat falls on a mortal so that he loses his wits and remains "withhis head on his knees by the fire to the day of his death"; of shadowhares, of fire-tongued hounds that follow the lost soul across theworld, of whistling seals that sink great ships, of bat-like darkerpowers, of the little gray doves of the good.
Dr. Hyde, in his _Paudeen O'Kelly and the Weasel_, speaks of asun-myth, of a haunted forest, of a princess supernaturally beautiful,of the witch who complains to the robber, "Why did you bring away mygold that I was for five hundred years gathering through the hills andhollows of the world?"
Lady Gregory tells of Diarmuid's love-spot, where Youth touched himon the forehead, so that no woman could look upon him without givinghim her love; of Miach who put the eye of a cat in a man's head, withinconvenient results, for
when he wanted to sleep and take his rest, it is then the eye would start at the squeaking of the mice, or the flight of birds, or the movement of the rushes; and when he was wanting to watch an ar
my or a gathering, it is then it was sure to be in a sound sleep.
She shows us Druid rods that change mortals into birds; of Druid miststhat envelop armies and let the ancient heroes win; of Druid sleepthat lasts sometimes for years; of the screaming stone; of kisses thatturn into birds, some of them saying, "Come! Come!" and others "I go!I go!"; of invisible walls that shield one from sight; of magic thatmakes armies from stalks of grass; of wells of healing that cure everywound.
Oscar Wilde, in his fairy stories and symbolic allegories, tells ofmagic, whereby the Happy Prince, high on the pedestal on the square,has a heart of lead because he sees the misery of the people, and sendsa swallow as his messenger to pick out his jeweled eyes and take themto the suffering ones. He speaks of the wonder by which the bodies ofthe mermaid and the fisherman who lost his soul for love of her, whenthey are buried in unconsecrated ground, send forth strange flowersthat are placed on the sacred altar.
The dark enchantment appears in the poetry as often as in the prose,from Coleridge's _Christabel_ to the present. Gordon Bottomley's _TheCrier by Night_ is a story of an evil presence that lurks in a pool,coming out to steal the souls of those it can lure into its waters. Thewoman, desperate from jealousy, who invokes its aid, says:
"For I can use this body worn to a soul To barter with the Crier of hidden things That if he tangle him in his chill hair Then I will follow and follow and follow and follow Past where the ringed stars ebb past the light And turn to water under the dark world!"
The fairy has always been a favorite being with poets, dramatists,and romancers, from Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton to the presenttime. There is no figure more firmly established in folk-literature,none more difficult to dislodge despite their delicacy and etherealqualities than the Little People. The belief in fairies is firmlyestablished in Gaelic-speaking sections and the Celtic peasant would assoon give up his religion as his belief in the Sidhe. W. B. Yeats, in_Celtic Twilight_, tells of an Irish woman of daring unbelief in hell,or in ghosts who, she held, would not be permitted to go trapsin' aboutthe earth at their own free will, but who asserted, "There are fairies,and little leprechauns, and water-horses, and fallen angels." Everybodyamong the peasantry believes in fairies, "for they stand to reason."And there are not wanting others more learned that believe in the smallfolk, as W. Y. E. Wentz, who in his volume _Fairy Faith in CelticCountries_ puts up a loyal argument for the existence of the Sidhe. Hesays:
Fairies exist, because in all essentials they appear to be the same as the intelligent forces now recognized by psychological researchers, be they thus collective units of consciousness like what William James calls soul-stuff or more individual units like veridical apparitions.
If it were left to me, I'd as soon not believe in fairies as have tothink of them as veridical units! Mr. Wentz has never seen any fairieshimself, but he tells a number of stories to substantiate his faith inthem.
The volumes of fairy stories are by no means all for juvenileconsumption, since the modern adult dearly loves the type himself.Many, or most, of the stories of fairies told frankly for children areadaptations or variants of continental folk-legends. The more literaryside of fairy-literature has come from the Celtic lore, for the DimPeople are dearest of all supernatural beings to the Celtic soul. TheIrish, more innately poetic than most races, cling more fondly to thebeings of beauty and gather round them delicate, undying stories. W. B.Yeats, Lady Gregory, Lady Wilde, Oscar Wilde, John Singe, and FionaMcLeod have given in poetry and lyric prose the Celtic fairy-lore, andhave made us know the same wild, sweet thrill that the peasants feel.The poetic thought of the primitive races peoples everything in nature,every bird and blossom and tree, with its own fairy personality.
Thackeray has written a fairy pantomime for great and small children,as he says, in which the adventures of Prince Giglio and Prince Bulboare recounted. Eugene Field has a charming story of the _Fairies ofPesth_, and Charles Kingsley's _Water Babies_ enriched the imaginationof most of us in youthful or adult years with its charming nonsenseof beings possible and impossible. J. M. Barrie in _Peter Pan_ wonthe doubtful world over to a confessed faith in the fairy-folk, fordid we not see the marvels before our eyes? In _The Little WhiteBird_ Barrie tells us how fairies came to be,--that they have theirorigin in the first laugh of the first baby that broke into a millionbits and went skipping about, each one a fairy. He shows us the weefolk in Kensington Gardens, where by the ignorant they are mistakenfor flowers, but children and those with the poet heart can see theflashing faces and green garments of the fairies among the pansy beds.
W. B. Yeats is a favorite with the fairies, for they have given him thedower of magic vision, to glimpse the unseen things, to hear the faint,musical voices of fairy pipes and song. He tells us many stories of theDim People, in his tales and dramas. _The Land of Heart's Desire_,the story of the struggle between the divine and mortal forces and thepowers of the Sidhe to claim the soul of the young wife and of thetriumph of the fairies, by which the girl's body falls lifeless by thehearth while her spirit speeds away to live forever in the land "wherenobody gets old or sorry or poor," has a poignant pathos, a wild,dreamy beauty that touches the heart. Yeats tells of the ImperishableRose of Beauty, of fantastic doings of the fairy-folk who steal mortalsaway, especially new-born babies or new-wed brides, of evil fairies whoslay men in malice, and of the dances by moonlit hillside when mortalsare asleep.
James Stephens in _The Crock of Gold_ mingles delightfully fairy-lorewith other elements of the supernatural, as talking beasts, andinsects, the gods, a leprechaun, and Pan, combining with the drollphilosophy of the bachelor man to make a charming social satire. Theunion of the world of reality with that of the wee people is seenin the sad little story of H. G. Wells, _The Man Who Had Been inFairyland_. A crude, materialistic middle-class Englishman, in lovewith an ordinary young woman, falls asleep on a fairy knoll one nightand is kidnapped by the Dim People who take him to their country, wheretheir queen falls in love with him. She vainly woos him, but he isstolidly true to the thick-ankled girl of the town, until the fairiessend him back in sleep to mortal life. But when he wakes on the knollhe is home-sick for fairyland, he cares no more for the village girlwho seems coarse and repulsive compared with the elfin creature whoselove he might have kept in the land of wonder, so he is wretched,unable to fit again into mortal life and unable to reopen the doorsthat closed inexorably upon him by his wish. This is a modern versionof the motif of the mortal lover and the fairy bride that we findso often in mediaeval ballads and romances, a survival of the Celticwonder-lore. Arthur Lewis in _London Fairy Tales_ writes philosophichuman stories in the guise of fairy tales, attempting frankly to bringthe impossible into contact with daily life. They are weird littlesymbolic stories with an earthly wisdom associated with unearthlybeings. _The Passionate Crime_, by E. Temple Thurston, is a symbolicfairy novel, the fairies being figures of the man's besetting sins,bodiless presences blown on the winds of feeling, as the woman he lovesis lured by the fairy of her own beauty.
Whether fairyland be an actual place or a state of mind, it is aprovince still open to romancers, and folklorists have aroused anew interest in the Little People who may come nearer to us thanbefore. The flood of volumes recounting Celtic folk-tales with theirfairy-lore alone would make a long catalogue, and one can do no morethan suggest the presence of the fairy in English fiction. Andrew Langwas a faithful lover of the Sidhe and made many collections of fairystories, Eden Phillpotts has written much of them, and various writershave opened their magic to us. Some place the land of faerie underthe ground, some in secret caves, some in the mind, and Lord Dunsanysays that the Old Man Who Looks after Fairyland lives in a house whoseparlor windows look away from the world, and "empties his slops sheeron to the Southern Cross."
We find many stories of gods, demigods, and heroes tangled up togetherin folk-tales and in the literature they have influenced. It issometimes difficult to distinguish between them, and again it isinteresting to note how the
hero-myth has been converted into the taleof a god. Celtic romances and folk-supernaturalism give many stories ofgods, demigods, and heroes of superhuman force. It would be interestingif one could trace them to their ultimate sources and discover howmuch they have been suggested or influenced by classical mythology.In _Fiction of the Irish Celts_, by Patrick Kennedy, are numberlessstories of the Fianna Eironn, or Heroes of Ireland, some of whom reallyflourished in the third century and whose adventures were the favoritestories of the kings and chiefs as sung by the ancient bards. Kennedyalso retells many of the Ossianic legends. In _Bardic Stories ofIreland_ he relates the exploits of personages dating back to druidictimes and earlier, who reflect the remote stages of the legendaryhistory of the people, such as the antique King Fergus, who was givensupernatural power by the fairies and slew the sea-monster; Cormac,who did many doughty deeds assisted by the powers of the Immortals,and many others. W. B. Yeats, in his _Stories of Red Ranrahan_, givesus glimpses of an Irish Francois Villon, a man of wandering nature, ofhuman frailties, yet with a divine gift of song.
Lady Gregory tells the wonderful saga of Cuchulain, the hero-god ofIreland, in _Cuchulain of Muirthemne_, which W. B. Yeats calls "perhapsthe best book that has ever come out of Ireland." It was his motherDechtire that drank the soul of Lugh of the Strong Hand, as he flewinto her wine-cup in the form of a Mayfly, so that she was bound byenchantment and carried away with her fifty maidens as a flock oflovely birds. When anger came upon him the hero light would shine abouthis head, he understood all the arts of the druids and had supernaturalbeauty and strength in battle. Cuchulain, the Hound of Ulster, and hisRed Branch have filled the legendry of Ireland with wonder.
Lady Gregory tells of the high king of Ireland who married Etain ofthe Sidhe; of the nine pipers that came out of the hill of the Sidhe,whom to fight with was to fight with a shadow, for they could not bekilled; of Conchobar, the king, that loved Deirdre of the burningbeauty for whom many candles of the Gael were blown out; of Cruachan,who knew druid enchantments greater than the magic of the fairies sothat he was able to fight with the Dim People and overcome them, andto cover the whole province with a deep snow so that they could notfollow him. In _Gods and Fighting Men_ Lady Gregory tells of ancientdivinities that met men as equals. We come to know Oisin, son of Finn,who is king over a divine country; of the Men of Dea who fought againstthe misshapen Fomer. Men are called to the country of Under-Wave wherethe gods promise them all their desires, as the god Medhir tellsQueen Etain that in his country one never grows old, that there is nosorrow, no care among invisible gods. She tells us of Finn, who foughtwith monsters, who killed many great serpents in Loch Cuilinn, andShadow-shapes at Loch Lein, and fought with the three-headed hag, andnine headless bodies that raised harsh screeches. We meet Diarmuid,who married a daughter of King Under-Wave, who raised a house byenchantment, and whom Grania, of the fatal beauty, loved.
Jeremiah Curtin, Aldis Dunbar, and many another writer have told usof the wonderful legends of the Celtic gods and heroes, who somehowseem more human than Arthur and his Table Round or any of the Englishmythical heroes.
It is Lord Dunsany, however, who specializes in gods in recenttimes. He fairly revels in divinities and demons, in idols andout-of-the-world creatures. His dramas of this nature are mentioned inanother connection, as _A Night at an Inn_, where a jade idol slayswith silent horror the men who have stolen his emerald eye; _The Godsof the Mountains_, where seven beggars masquerade as the mountain godscome to life, and some of the people believe but some doubt. But atlast the seven gods from the mountain come down, terrible figures ofgreen stone, and with sinister menace point terrible fingers at thebeggars, who stiffen as on pedestals, draw their feet under them likethe cross-legged posture of the images, and turn to stone, so that thepeople coming say: "They were the true gods. They have turned to stonebecause we doubted them." In _The Gods of Pegana_ are many fantastictales of divinities never heard of before, whom Dunsany calls to lifewith the lavish ease of genius and makes immortal. In _Time and theGods_ we see many gods, with their servant the swart, sinister Timewho serves them, but maliciously. The gods dream marble dreams thathave magic power, for "with domes and pinnacles the dreams arose andstood up proudly between the river and the sky, all shimmering white tothe morning." But Sardathrion, this city of visions, is overthrown byhateful Time, whereat the mighty gods weep grievous tears. He tells usof Slid, a new god that comes striding through the stars, past wherethe ancient divinities are seated on their thrones, as a million wavesmarch behind him; of Inzana, the daughter of all the gods who playswith the sun as her golden ball and weeps when it falls into the sea,so that Umborodom with his thunder hound must seek it again and againfor her. He whispers to us of the prophet who saw the gods one night asthey strode knee-deep in stars, and above them a mighty hand, showinga higher power. The gods are jealous of him that he has seen, so theyrob him of knowledge of the gods, of moon and sky, of butterflies andflowers, and all lovely things. And last they steal his soul away fromhim, from which they make the South Wind, forever to roam the wastespaces of the world, mournful, unremembering.
In _The Book of Wonder_ are still other gods, as Hlo-Hlo, who wearsthe haloes of other gods on golden hooks along his hunting-belt;the Sphinx, who "remembers in her smitten mind at which little boysnow leer, that she once knew well those things at which man standsaghast"; the certain disreputable god who knows nothing of etiquetteand will grant prayers that no respectable god would ever consent tohear; Chu-chu and Sheemish, who become angry with each other and raiserival earthquakes that destroy their temple and them. We are told ofthe Gibbelins that eat men, whose home is beyond the known regions, andwhose treasures many burglars try in vain to steal only to meet deathinstead. Alderic tries a crafty way to evade them but they are waitingfor him. "And without saying a word _or even smiling_ they neatly hanghim on the outer wall,--and the tale is one of those that have not ahappy ending." But enough of gods!--though we should not forget theAztec legend on which Lew Wallace's novel, _The Fair God_, was founded,of the white divinity who was to come and rule the people.
There are many other elements of folkloristic supernaturalism thatcannot be mentioned, as the banshee, the wailful creature that is apresager of death and the loss of the soul; the fetches, ghosts of theliving, whom John and Michael Banim write much about; the pixies, asappearing in such works as S. Baring-Gould's _Eve_, and Stephens's _TheCrock of Gold_; the mountain trolls that play pranks on Ibsen's PeerGynt and Irving's Rip van Winkle; the "worrie-cow" that Scott tellsabout; the saints and miracles that abound in Celtic literature as inthat of any Catholic country, and such as Thomas A. Janvier has toldof so delightfully in his legends of the City of Mexico. The giant hasalmost faded from fiction, since, poor thing, he doesn't fit in wellwith the modern scheme of housing. He came into the Gothic novel fromthe Oriental tale where he had his origin, but now he appears in ourfiction only sporadically, as in Oscar Wilde's _The Selfish Giant_,in a couple of stories by Blackwood, and a few others. We are glad tomeet him occasionally in frank folk-tales since literature at largerepudiates this favorite of our youth. He would not suit well on thestage, for obvious reasons, and realism rejects him.
Lord Dunsany tells of elves and gnomes, of the Moomoo, of the magicsword called Mouse, of the gnoles that caught Tonker, of the ancientThuls, of the window that opened to the magic of the world, and of manyother things which only the very young or the very wise care for.
Arthur Machen deals with strange, sinister aspects of supernaturalismunlike the wholesome folklore that other writers reveal to us. He seemsto take his material chiefly from the Pit, to let loose upon the worlda slimy horde of unnamable spirits of ageless evil. One reads of theWhite People, who are most loathsome fairies under whose influence therocks dance obscene dances in the Witches' Sabbath, and the great whitemoon seems an unclean thing. Images of clay made by human hands cometo diabolic life, and at mystic incantations the nymph Alanna turnsthe pool in the woodland to a pool of fire. In _The Great God Pan_ t
hetimeless menace comes to earth again, corrupting the souls of men andwomen, rendering them unbelievably vile. In _The Red Hand_ he bringstogether ancient runes with magic power, black stones that tell secretsof buried treasure, flinty stone like obsidian ten thousand years oldthat murders a man on a London street, a whorl of figures that tell ofthe black heaven, giving an impression of vast ages of enigmatic power.One feels one should rinse his mind out after reading Arthur Machen'sstories, particularly the collection called _The Three Impostors_.
This discussion has taken more note of the Celtic folk-fiction thanof any other group influence, because more than any other it has leftits imprint on modern literature. There are hundreds of volumes offolk-tales of the supernatural in English, but the Celtic Revival hasmolded its legends into literature that is its own excuse for being.In the work of this school we get a passionate mysticism, a poeticsymbolism that we find scarcely anywhere else in English prose, savein such rhapsodic passages as some of De Quincey's impassioned prose.Melody, which forms so large a part of the effect of supernaturalismin poetry, is here employed to heighten lyric prose. Some of the wildstories are like the croon of the peasant mother by her cradle besidethe peat-fire, some like wild barbaric runes of terrible unguessedimport, some like the battle-cry of hero-gods, some like the keening ofwomen beside their dead. The essential poetry of the Celtic soul poursitself forth in rapturous, wistful music, now like a chant, a hymn, awedding-song, a lament for the lost soul.
In the Celtic folk-tales we get a mixture of romances, of the survivalsof barbaric days, the ancient druid myths, the pagan legends, savagebeliefs overlaid and interwoven with the later Christian traditions.Sometimes the old pagan myths themselves become moral allegories,the legend being used to tell a late-learned moral truth. But, forthe most part, there is no attempt at teaching save that which comesspontaneously, the outburst of passionate, poetic romance, the heritageof a people that love wonder and beauty.
The pagan poetry of the Gaelic race lives on and throbs over again inFiona McLeod's symbolic moralities. The mystical figures of awe andwoe appear from the dim past, a rapturous paganism showing through themedieval religious brooding. Yet they are so symbolic of the spiritthat they are timeless. Coming as they do out of the dim legendarypast, they may reflect the veiled years of the future. They are mysticchronicles of the soul, as in _The Divine Adventure_, where the Bodyand Will alike shrink back from that "silent, sad-eyed foreigner, theSoul."
In the stories of Yeats we get similar effects, the weird power of theold curse-making bards, the gift of second-sight, a spiritual vision,the spiritual sense that hears past the broken discordant sounds themusic of the world, the power to catch the moment "that trembles withthe Song of Immortal Powers." We hear faint whispers, catch fleetingglimpses of the Dim People, see again the druids, the culdees, theancient bards and heroes. We discern in the Celtic literature asadness, dim, unreasoning yet deep, such as we see in the faces ofanimals and little children. We see such symbolism as that of theself-centered lovers who have heart-shaped mirrors instead of hearts,seeing only their own images throughout eternity. We feel the poeticthoughts drifting past us like sweet falling rose-leaves, bright withthe colors of bygone years, like fluttering bird-wings, like happysighs. Yet again they are terrible trumpets blown in the day of doom.We have the modern mysticism and symbolism side by side with the olddruidic mysticism, which seems like dream-stuff with deep spiritualimport. Yeats makes us feel that the old divinities are not dead,but have taken up their abode in the hearts of poets and writers ofromance, and that the land of faery is all about us if we would onlysee. But we lack the poetic vision. He makes us see the actuality ofthought, that thinking has its own vital being and goes out into theworld like a living thing, possessed by some wandering soul. He showsus that thought can create black hounds or silver doves to follow thesoul, bring to life at will a divinity or a demon.
A certain supernatural element of style seems to lend itself to someof the writers of strange fiction. Some of Oscar Wilde's sentencesunfold like wild, exotic flowers, in a perfumed beauty that suggests asubtle poison at the heart. Lord Dunsany writes joyously of fantasticcreatures with a happy grace, sometimes like a lilting laugh, sometimesa lyric rhapsody. His evoked beings are sportive or awesome but neverunclean. Arthur Machen's stories have an effect like a slimy trailof some loathly beast or serpent. William Morris's style is like anold Norse rune, while Algernon Blackwood makes us think of awakened,elemental forces hostile to man. We feel bodiless emotions, feelingsunclothed with flesh, sad formless spirits blown on the winds of theworld. These folk-tales reflect the sweet carelessness of the Irishsoul, the stern sadness of the Scotch, the psychic subtlety of themodern English. And as the study of folk-lore has influenced thefiction of the supernatural, so these published romances have aroused awondering interest in the legendry of the past and made of folk-lore ascience.
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