Von Arnim wrote to Wilhelm with quiet satisfaction: “You have collected propitiously, and have sometimes right propitiously helped; which, of course, you don’t let Jacob know.…” Not all the tales had come from such talented heads as that of the story-wife of Niederzwehren. Some had been rather garbled. Many had been relayed by friends, and had lost flavor. A few had been found in fragments, and these had had to be matched. But Wilhelm had kept note of his adjustments; and their end had been, not to embellish, but to bring out the lines of the story which the inferior informant had obscured. Furthermore, throughout the later editions, which appeared from year to year, the work of the careful, loving, improving hand could be increasingly discerned. Wilhelm’s method, as contrasted with the procedures of the Romantics, was inspired by his increasing familiarity with the popular modes of speech. He noted carefully the words that the people preferred to use and their typical manners of descriptive narrative, and then very carefully going over the story-texts, as taken from this or that raconteur, he chiseled away the more abstract, literary, or colorless turns and fitted in such characteristic, rich phrases, as he had gathered from the highways and the byways. Jacob at first demurred. But it was clear that the stories were gaining immensely by the patient devotion of the younger brother; and since Jacob, anyhow, was becoming involved in his grammatical studies, he gradually released to Wilhelm the whole responsibility. Even the first edition of volume two was largely in the hands of Wilhelm; thereafter the work was completely his.
Volume two appeared in January, 1815, the brothers having received assistance from all sides. “The two of us gathered the first volume alone,” Wilhelm wrote to a friend, “quite by ourselves and hence very slowly, over a period of six years; now things are going much better and more rapidly.” The second edition was issued, 1819, improved and considerably enlarged, and with an introduction by Wilhelm, “On the Nature of Folk Tales.” Then, in 1822, appeared a third volume—a work of commentary, compiled partly from the notes of the earlier editions, but containing additional matter, as well as a thoroughgoing comparative-historical study.* The brothers published a selection of fifty favorites in 1825, and in 1837 released a third edition of the two volume original, again amplified and improved. Still further betterments were to be noted in the editions of 1840, 1843, 1850, 1857. Translations in Danish, Swedish, and French came almost immediately; presently in Dutch, English, Italian, Spanish, Czech, Polish, Russian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Finnish, Esthonian, Hebrew, Armenian, and Esperanto. Tales borrowed from the Grimm collection have since been recorded among the natives of Africa, Mexico, and the South Seas.
* Johannes Bolte and Georg Polívka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm, Leipzig, 1912–1932, Vol. IV, pp. 443–444. To the “story-wife of Niederzwehren” we owe nineteen of the finest tales: 6. 9. 22. 29. 34. 58. 59. 61. 63. 71. 76. 89. 94. 98. 100. 102. 106. 108. 111. Some four years after the brothers had come to know her, she abruptly fell into poverty and sickness, and in another few months had died.
* The Wilds were six daughters and one son, the Grimms five sons and one daughter. Frau Wild gave stories 18. 30. Lisette gave variants of 41. 55. 105. Gretchen gave 2. 3. 154., Dortchen 13. 15. 24. 39. 46. 49. 56. 65. 88. 103. 105. parts of 52. 55. 60. and a variant of 34. Die alte Marie herself supplied 11. 26. 31. 44. 50. and a variant of 53.
† Ludwig Hassenpflug later married Lotte Grimm. His sisters, Jeannette and Amalie, gave stories 13. 14. 17. 20. 29. 41. 42. 53. part of 26. and variants of 61. 67. 76.
‡ A family of eight sons and six daughters. Their contributions began only after publication of the first edition of volume one (1812), but in the later editions some of their tales replaced earlier numbers. From their village of Bökendorf, near Brakel, come stories 7. 10. 16. 27. 60. 70. 72. 86. 91. 99. 101. 112. 113. 121. 123. 126. 129. 131. 134. 135. 139. and parts of 52. 97. The von Haxthausens gave also 133. and 143. from Münsterland, as well as some half dozen others from various parts of the country. (Cf. Bolte and Polívka, op. cit., IV, pp. 437 ff.)
* Deeper meaning lies in the fairytale of my childhood than in the truth that is taught by life. (Die Piccolomini, III. 4.)
* Richard Cleasby, An Icelandic-English Dictionary, Oxford, 1874, Introduction, p. lxix.
* This volume underwent revision for its final edition in 1856. It has recently been wholly renovated, and increased to five sturdy volumes, under the editorship of Professors Johannes Bolte and Georg Polívka (cf. op. cit.).
TWO
The Types of Story
THE FIRST effect of the work was a transformation throughout the world of the scholarly attitude toward the productions of the folk. A new humility before the informant becomes everywhere perceptible after the date, 1812. Exactitude, not beautification, becomes thereafter the first requirement, “touching up” the unforgivable sin. Furthermore, the number and competence of the collectors greatly and rapidly increased. Field-workers armed with pad and pencil marched forth to every corner of the earth. Solid volumes today stand ranged along the shelf from Switzerland, Frisia, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and the Faroes, England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, Italy, Corsica, Malta, Portugal and Spain, the Basques, the Rhaeto-Romanic mountaineers, the modern Greeks, Rumanians, Albanians, Slovenes, Serb-Croatians, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Czechs, Slovacs, Serbs and Poles, Great, White and Little Russians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Finns, Lapps and Esthonians, Cheremiss, Mordvinians, Votyaks and Syryenians, Gipsies and Hungarians, Turks, Kasan-Tatars, Chuvash and Bashkirs, Kalmuks, Buryats, Voguls and Ostyaks, Yakuts, Siberian Tatars, the peoples of the Caucasus, the populations of India and Iran, Mesopotamia, Syria, the Arabian desert, Tibet, Turkestan, Java and Sumatra, Borneo, the Celebes, the Philippines, Burma, Siam, Annam, China, Korea and Japan, Australia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia, the continent of Africa, South, Middle and North America. Still unpublished archives accumulate in provincial, national, and international institutes. Where there was a lack, there is now such abundance that the problem is how to deal with it, how to get the mind around it, and what to think.
In this ocean of story, a number of kinds of narrative are encompassed. Many of the collections of so-called primitive materials include Myths; that is to say, religious recitations conceived as symbolic of the play of Eternity in Time. These are rehearsed, not for diversion, but for the spiritual welfare of the individual or community. Legends also appear; i.e. reviews of a traditional history (or of episodes from such a history) so rendered as to permit mythological symbolism to inform human event and circumstance. Whereas myths present in pictorial form cosmogonic and ontological intuitions, legends refer to the more immediate life and setting of the given society.* Something of the religious power of myth may be regarded as effective in legend, in which case, the native narrator must be careful concerning the circumstances of his recitation, lest the power break astray. Myths and legends may furnish entertainment incidentally, but they are essentially tutorial.
Tales, on the other hand, are frankly pastime: fireside tales, winternights’ tales, nursery tales, coffee-house tales, sailor yarns, pilgrimage and caravan tales to pass the endless nights and days. The most ancient written records and the most primitive tribal circles attest alike to man’s hunger for the good story. And every kind of thing has served. Myths and legends of an earlier period, now discredited or no longer understood, their former power broken (yet still potent to charm), have supplied much of the raw material for what now passes simply as Animal Tale, Fairy Tale, and Heroic or Romantic Adventure. The giants, and gnomes of the Germans, the “little people” of the Irish, the dragons, knights, and ladies of Arthurian Romance, were once the gods and demons of the Green Isle and the European continent. Similarly, the divinities of the primitive Arabians appear as Jinn in the story-world of Islam. Tales of such origin are regarded with differing degrees of seriousness by the various people who recount them; and they can be received by the sundry members of the audience, severally, with superstitious awe,
nostalgia for the days of belief, ironic amusement, or simple delight in the marvels of imagination and intricacies of plot. But no matter what the atmosphere of belief, the stories, in so far as they now are “Tales,” are composed primarily for amusement. They are reshaped in terms of dramatic contrast, narrative suspense, repetition,* and resolution.
Certain characteristic opening and closing formulas set apart from the common world the timeless, placeless realm of faërie: “Once upon a time”; “In the days of good King Arthur”; “A thousand years ago tomorrow”; “Long, long ago, when Brahmadatta was the ruler of Benares”—“And so they lived happily ever after”; “That’s all”; “A mouse did run, the story is done”; “So there they remain, happy and contented, while we stand barefoot as packasses and lick our teeth”; “Bo bow bended, my story’s ended; if you don’t like it, you may mend it.” A handsome conclusion is attributed to the Zanzibar Swahili: “If the story was beautiful, the beauty belongs to us all; if it was bad, the fault is mine only, who told it.” †
Prose is the normal vehicle of story, but at critical points little rhymes commonly appear:
Looking-glass, Looking-glass, on the wall,
Who in this land is the fairest of all?
Turn back, turn back, young maiden dear,
’Tis a murderer’s house you enter here.
Peace, peace, my dear little giants,
I have had a thought of ye,
Something I have brought for ye.
Little duck, little duck, dost thou see,
Hänsel and Gretel are waiting for thee?
There’s never a plank, or bridge in sight,
Take us across on thy back so white.
In Arabian tales, and less commonly European, the prose of the text slips momentarily into rhyme: “Thereupon sat a lady bright of blee, with brow beaming brilliantly, the dream of philosophy, whose eyes were fraught with Babel’s gramarye and her eyebrows were arched as for archery”; “They all lived happy and died happy, and never drank out of a dry cappy”; “Now I had an army of a thousand thousand bridles, men of warrior mien with forearms strong and keen, armed with spears and mail-coats sheen and swords that gleam.”
In the lovely French medieval chante-fable, Aucassin et Nicolette, verse passages regularly alternate with prose. In the Bardic Lays that served to entertain the heroes in the mead-hall, in the long Epics woven in later times, and in the Ballads of the folk, narrative goes into verse entirely. The spell of rhythm and rhyme is the spell of “once upon a time.” *
“And as the cup went round merrily, quoth the Porter to the Kalandars: ‘And you, O brothers mine, have ye no story or rare adventure to amuse us withal?’ ”—The empty hour is as gladly filled with a good personal adventure as with a fragment of traditional wonder. Hence, the world of actual life as caught in Anecdote, paced and timed to fix and justify attention, has contributed to the great category of the Tale. The anecdote may range from the ostensibly truthful, or only slightly exaggerated, to the frankly unbelievable. In the latter range it mingles readily with sheer Invention: the Joke, Merry Tale, and Ghost Adventure. Again, it can unite with the mythological stuff of traditional romance, and thus acquire some of the traits of legend.
A distinct and relatively recently developed category is the Fable. The best examples are the Greek and Medieval collections attributed to “Aesop,” and the Oriental of the Brahmins, Buddhists, and Jains. The Fable is didactic. It is not, like Myth, a revelation of transcendental mysteries, but a clever illustration of a political or ethical point. Fables are witty, and not to be believed but understood.*
Under the single heading, Märchen, the Germans popularly comprehend the whole range of the Folk Tale. The Brothers Grimm, therefore, included in their collection folk stories of every available variety. Scholars since their day have analyzed the assortment and classified the tales according to type. The following listing is based on the standard index of story-types, prepared by the Finnish folklorist, Antti Aarne.†
I. Animal Tales: Wild Animals, 2. 23. 38. 73. 74. 132: Wild Animals and Domestic, 5. 27. 48. 75. Man and Wild Animals, 8.72. 157. Domestic Animals, 10. 41. (compare 18.). Birds, 58. 86. 102. 171. Fish, 172. Other Animals and Objects, 105. i. 187.
II. Ordinary Folk Tales: A. Tales of Magic: ‡ Supernatural Adversaries, 4. 5. 12. 15. 26. 42. 44. 46. 51. 56. 60. 66. 79. 81. 82. 85. 91. 99. 101. 106. 111. 113. 120. 121. 133. 181. 186. 191. 193. 197. (compare 163.). Supernatural or Enchanted Husband (Wife) or Other Relatives, 1. 9. 11. (compare 141.) 13. 25. 49. 50. 63. 69. 88. 92. 93. 106. 108. 123. 127. 135. 144. 160. 161. 169. 193. Supernatural Tasks, 24. 29. 100. Supernatural Helpers, 6. 14. 17. 19. 21. 55. 57. 62. 65. 71. 89. 97. 126. 130. 134. 136. Magic Objects, 16. 36. 54. 60. 64. 103. 107. 110. 116. 122. 165. 188. Supernatural Power or Knowledge, 16. 33. 76. 90. 118. 124. 129. 142. 149. Other Tales of the Supernatural, 3. 31. 37. 45. 47. 53. 96.
B. Religious Tales: 28. 35. 81. 87. 92. 125. 145. 147. 167. 178. 194. 195. 206. C. Novelle (Romantic Tales): 22. 40. 52. 67. 94. 112. 114. 115. 152. 179. 198. 199. D. Tales of the Stupid Ogre: 20. 183. 189. (compare 148.).
III. Jokes and Anecdotes: Numskull Stories, 70. 174. Stories about Married Couples, 34. 59. 83. 104. 128. 164. 168. Stories about a Woman (Girl), 34. 139. 155. 156. Stories about a Man (Boy), 61. and 192. (the Clever Man); 7. 20. 59. 70. 98. and 104. (Lucky Accidents); 32. 120. and 143. (the Stupid Man). Tales of Lying, 146. 151. 158. 159. 185.
* In German criticism the terms Sage and Legende are commonly distinguished. Sage designates any little, local story, associated with this or that specific hill or grove, pond or river. By a people inhabiting a spirit-haunted and memory-haunted landscape, the Sage is conceived to be a recitation of fact. The Sage may be developed into the Kunstsage, or “Literary Saga.” Legende, on the other hand, denotes the religious tale associated with some specific shrine or relic. It is a later and more elaborate form than the Sage. The “Children’s Legends” of the Grimm collection bring fairytale motifs to play around elements of Christian belief.—But the term “Legend,” as used above, is more general. It includes both Sage and Legende, but also the materials of Chronicle and Epic.
* Throughout the Old World, repetition is commonly in threes; in America, fours.
† From Bolte and Polívka, op. cit., Vol. IV, p. 34.
* The literary folk tale can be rendered in either verse or prose. In eighteenth century Germany, Johann Musäus (1735–1787) composed in prose, Christoph Wieland (1735–1813) in verse. The huge Hindu collection of the Kathāsaritsāgara, “Ocean of the Streams of Story” (c. 1063–1081), is entirely in verse; the Arabian Thousand Nights and One Night (eleventh to fifteenth centuries) is in prose.
* Some of the Jātakas, or tales of the early lives of the Buddha, are fables that half pretend to be little legends. Buddhist and Jain fables teach religious lore, Aesop and the Brahminical Panchatantra teach the wisdom of life.
† Antti Aarne, Verzeichnis der Märchentypen, Folklore Fellows Communications, Vol. I, No. 3, Helsinki, 1911. Johannes Bolte notes that the following are missing from Aarne’s listing: Animal Tales: 30. 80. 173. 190.—Ordinary Folk Tales: 39. 43. 78. 109. 117. 137. 150. 154. 175. 177. 180. 182. 184. 196. 201–205. 208–210.—Jokes and Anecdotes: 77. 95. 119. 131. 162. 170. 200. (Bolte and Polívka, op. cit., Vol. IV, pp. 467–470).
‡ Albert Wesselski (Versuch einer Theorie des Märchens, 1931, pp. 12, 32, etc.) is of the opinion that the term Märchen should be reserved for this category, II. A.
THREE
The History of the Tales
THE PATTERNS of the folk tale are much the same throughout the world. This circumstance has given rise to a long and intricate learned discussion.* By and large, it is now fairly agreed that the general continuity, and an occasional correspondence to the detail, can be referred to the psychological unity of the human species, but that over this ground a profuse and continuous passing along of tales from mouth to ear—and by book—has been taking place, not for centuries only, but millenniu
ms, and over immense reaches of the globe. Hence the folklore of each area must be studied for its peculiar history. Every story—every motif, in fact—has had its adventurous career.
The Grimm brothers regarded European folklore as the detritus of Old Germanic belief: the myths of ancient time had disintegrated, first into heroic legend and romance, last into these charming treasures of the nursery. But in 1859, the year of Wilhelm’s death, a Sanskrit scholar, Theodor Benfey, demonstrated that a great portion of the lore of Europe had come, through Arabic, Hebrew and Latin translations, directly from India—and this as late as the thirteenth century A.D.† Since Benfey’s time, the evidence for a late, polygenetic development of the folk tale of Christian Europe has become abundant and detailed.
The scholars of the English Anthropological School at the close of the nineteenth century (E. B. Tylor, Andrew Lang, E. S. Hartland, and others), believed that the irrational elements of fairylore were grounded in savage superstition. Totemism, cannibalism, taboo, and the external soul, they discovered on every page. But today it is clear that such irrationalities are as familiar to modern European dream-life as to society on the Congo, and so we are no longer disposed to run a tale back to the paleolithic caves simply because the heroine marries a gazelle or eats her mother. Yet in a few of the stories of the Grimm collection actual vestiges of primitive ways can be identified with reasonable assurance; * and in perhaps half a dozen other signs persist from the barbaric period of the Migrations.†
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