The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales (Pantheon Books) - Jacob Grimm [376]
* A second edition, improved and enlarged, appeared in 1849. Translated into German (1852), it came under the eyes of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was inspired to attempt a similar deed in the same meter for the American Indian; result: “The Song of Hiawatha.”
* Kaarle Krohn, Die folkloristische Arbeitsmethode, Instituttet for Semmenlignende Kulturforskning, Oslo, 1926, pp. 13–14.
† Ibid., p. 13.
* Cf. Kaarle Krohn, Bär (Wolf) und Fuchs, Helsingfors, 1888; also, Mann und Fuchs, Helsingfors, 1891.
† Antti Aarne, Verzeichnis der Märchentypen, Folklore Fellows Communications, Vol. I, No. 3, Helsingfors, 1910. This work was re-edited and brought up to date in 1928 by the American folklorist, Stith Thompson (Aarne and Thompson, The Types of the Folk-Tale, FFC., XXV, 74, 1928), and in 1929 by the Russian, N. P. Andrejev (Ukazateli skazochnych syuzhetov po sistem Aarne, 1929). Professor Thompson has since prepared a gigantic index of motifs, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature, Indiana University Studies, Vols. XIX-XXIII, Bloomington, Ind., 1932–1936.
* Walter Anderson, in Lutz Mackensen, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Märchens, Berlin and Leipzig, 1934 ff., Vol. II, article: “Geographisch-historische Methode.”—A good example of such a monograph is the above noticed work of Archer Taylor, The Black Ox, FFC., XXIII, 70.
† Friedrich von der Leyen, op. cit., p. 36.
† P. 846 ff. supra.
FOUR
The Question of Meaning
THE GRIMM BROTHERS, Max Müller, Andrew Lang, and others, have pointed out that folk tales are “monstrous, irrational and unnatural,” both as to the elements of which they are composed, and as to the plots that unify these elements. Since a tale may have a different origin from its elements, two questions propose themselves: What is the origin and meaning of the motifs? What is the origin and meaning of the tales?
a) The Motifs.
Many of the incidents of the merry tales, jokes, yarns, tall stories and anecdotes are simply comical and clever inventions spun from life. These offer no problem.
The “monstrous, irrational and unnatural” incidents, however, are of a kind with those of myth; indeed, they are frequently derived from myth. They must be explained as myth is explained. But then, how is myth explained?
The reply varies according to the authority:
Euhemerus, a Greek writer of the fourth century B.C., noting that Alexander the Great, shortly after his death, was already appearing in legend as a demi-god, propounded the view that the gods are only great mortals, deified. Snorri Sturleson (1179–1241), in the preface to his Prose Edda, explained in the same way the pagan divinities of the Norse. This theory, called “Euhemerism,” has its advocates to this day.
Among the Indo-Germanic philologists in the period of the ascendancy of Max Müller, it was believed that myths were originally sentimental descriptions of nature. Man half consciously read the tragedy of his own life in the birth of the sun, its “kissing of the dew to death,” its culmination, descent, and disappearance into the arms of night. Due to the fact that Indo-European nouns are either masculine or feminine, the descriptions tended to personify their objects. And due to the fact that the language was evolving, the original references of the personifying nouns were presently forgotten, so that the words were finally taken to be personal names.* For example, such a metaphorical name for the sun as Kephalos, the “Head” (of light), presently lost its meaning and was thought to refer to a human youth; and correspondingly, the fading dew, Prokris, bride of the “Head,” became a mortal girl of tragical demise. One more step: the names might become confused with those of actual historical heroes, whereupon the myth would be transformed into a legend.