Walter William Strickland

“ Those who have walked over a plain or table-land thickly covered with snow on a starry winter’s night, know how intensely the mind is besieged by the idea of fate and fatality. This is the feeling or idea which has dressed the fates in white, with tapers in their hands. Interwoven in these stories to the inmost core is the presence of snow and ice. Carried to a warmer climate they may have melted into Indra myths and the like no Indra myth could ever have frozen into the Norns of Father Know-All. ”

“ Meanwhile, in the castle, the king’s son was in great anxiety. The sun’s beam began to show itself from behind the two mountains and the servants still returned not; and the more fiercely the rays mounted on high, the greater grew his distress. A deadly sweat started to his forehead. Then soon the sun appeared in the east like a thin glowing stripe, and at that moment the doors flew open with a tremendous bang, and on the threshold stood Black-Prince, and, seeing no signs of the queen, chuckled horribly and stepped into the apartment. ”

“ In order to do this, in order to resuscitate the sun, to recover the Sun-horse, what was required was for the vital forces of nature to combat and conquer the long winter frost and lifelessness. And seeing that man was conscious above all things in himself of that general vitality, the notion of the seer or hero who performed the miracle became something more than a mere metaphor, it hovered between allegory and reality, like the faiths, hopes, and superstitions of our own modern religious world. ”

“ The third evening, just at the set of the sun, sped the youngest king on the Sun-horse, sped fast, for he had been delayed somewhat; but as a pool of blood crimsoned the ground before the bridge, he halted, and observing it, exclaimed: It has been some unheard-of criminal who has dared to kill a man in my kingdom.” Scarcely had these words escaped his lips when the seer posted himself before him with drawn sword, vigorously urging him to defend himself for having cast a slur upon the honour of a seer. ”

“ On the top of the pine was a nest of young ravens, and down on the ground were two young ravens piping and lamenting: “Father and mother have flown away and left us to feed ourselves, and we poor fledglings do not yet know how to fly. Oh! help, George, help! fill our maws, for really we are dying of hunger.” George did not reflect long; leapt from his horse and thrust his sword into its side that the young ravens might have something to devour. ”

“ In the palace of the seventh kingdom, then, we are given the indications of the coming thaw—Nature’s great vernal transformation-scene in circum-polar lands; at the bridge, which, as we know from Long, Broad, and and Sharp-Eyes, is the popular, poetical figure for the moment of sunset, we have the actual beginning of the transformation scene. All ardent skaters must be conscious with what anxiety they scan the weather at the moment of sunset, in order to divine whether their divine pastime will yet have a lease of life accorded to it, or is destined to expire with the morrow’s sun. ”

“ Thus the people that walked in darkness saw a great light; thus to the annual winter death of Polar regions, enshrining in its sunless gloom the silver casket of an utterly abandoned sensuality, we owe the beautiful but alas! unproven superstition, that the light of love still gilds the tomb, just as it silvered the long Arctic winter night to our lusty Hungarian ancestors. ”

“ Sharp-Eyes went to fetch it and brought it to the king’s son. It was pure gold.
“Ho! ho! Thou art a lad beyond money’s worth,” said the king’s son. “A fool were he who would not desire to use thy services. But since thou hast such a good sight, please look again and tell me if I have still far to go to the castle of iron, and what is going on there.” “If you had been riding alone there, master,” answered Sharp-Eyes, “perhaps you would not have reached it even by next year; but with us you will get there this very day; for us and no one else they are now preparing supper.” ”

“ In the first place, all the stories are annual myths. In the next place, all are more or less impregnated, so to say, with the elements of frost and cold. And, lastly, in all the stories the hero is not the sun, but the revivifying forces of nature acting upon the surface of our globe, and which bring dead nature
to life again in spring. There is not a vestige of a myth of the dawn. Even in the Vedas it does not seem certain that any of the myths were originally dawn-myths, and a little reflection will show that if they are very primitive they cannot have been. ”

“ The black priest or sorcerer is, in fact, the long black night of the Arctic winter, who, after the three days’ struggle, flies out of the window as a raven; and the dragon is the frost and ice—his agent in keeping nature spell-bound. ”

“ Tell me, then, doggy, to which of us does that dummy maiden belong?’ Doggy was silent; but instead of the dog, the king’s daughter replied: “To whom should she belong but to thee? What is there in a carven dummy without life? What in a tailor-made suit of clothes without speech? Thou gavest her the best gift, life and speech, and therefore she belongs of right to thee.” “Thou hast thyself given judgment about thyself,” said Vanek. ”

“ Probably the host of unhappy scribblers who furnish our half-educated reading public with that feeble literary pabulum, the three-volume novel, which is supposed to give a picture of modern life, is quite unconscious that the optimistic fatality which compels it to marry off its heroes and heroines at the end of the story is due to the permanent disappearance of the sun during some weeks of winter within the Arctic circle, and its re-appearance and subsequent marriage, in spring, with the re-awaking and glittering forces of life and movement that have conjured it back once more. ”

“ The poor young prince, must, willy-nilly, put the leaden dumplings into his pocket. After this he took himself off, and went forward.
On and on he went for three whole days and nights, and the further he went the more he wandered astray in the thick dark mountains. Before him was a desert, behind him a desert; not a single living creature was to be seen. Quite wearied out by the long journey he flung himself on the ground. The sound of the silver sabre spread far and wide. Above him croaked four-and-twenty ravens, scared by the clatter of the sabre, and rising on the wing, flew into the air. ”

“ After supper the sorcerer again brought the queen, peered shrewdly into the eyes of the king’s son, and observed sarcastically: “We shall see who’s master here; whether thou winnest or I!” And so saying, he departed. And so to-day they all took greater pains than ever to prevent themselves from dozing off; they would not even sit down, they would walk up and down the whole night; but it was all in vain, for they were under a spell; one after the other fell asleep as he walked, and the queen escaped as before. ”

“ When the primitive northern folk perceived that the ebb or drain underground of the life-forces in operation upon the surface of the ground, as it intensified, had gradually affected the sky also, and finally pulled the golden apple of the sun underground as well—for with their rude scientific knowledge they naturally inverted cause and effect according to our scientific way of looking at things—they must have turned to the pale image of the sun, the waxing and waning moon, as a pledge that the disappearance of the vital forces of nature was not permanent. ”

“ The fates and Father Know-All are somehow associated as overruling human destinies, but it is the hero who succeeds in carrying off the three golden hairs; it is the hero who removes the spell from the frozen waters of the life-giving well, causes the life-giving apple tree once more to bear fruit, kills the dragon, cures the sick princess, exorcises the black prince, and dethrones the autumn king and takes his place. ”

“ Darkness worse than that of night rolled over the whole region, and nothing could scare it away. Unheard-of terror spread among the subjects, dreadful misery began to weigh them down, for they could neither work at anything nor fashion anything, and such confusion arose among them that everything was turned upside down. And so, to prevent the dissolution of his kingdom and the general ruin, the king set out with all his army to look for the Sun-horse. ”

“ The king’s son recognised her at once, started, and went towards her; but before he could utter a word Black-Prince, the sorcerer, had addressed him as follows: “I know why thou art come; this queen thou wouldst take away from here. Very well. Be it so. Take her if thou canst manage to keep watch over her for three nights so that she does not escape thee. But if she eludes thee, thou shalt be turned to stone, servants and all, like all who have come before thee.” After this he shewed the queen to a chair that she might sit down, and departed. ”

“ When they came there, said the king: “I hear thou art on a message to Grandfather Know-All. We had here an apple tree; it bore apples that made one young again; if any man ate one, though he were on the verge of the grave, he grew young again, and was like a stripling. But now for the last twenty years the apple tree has borne no fruit. Wilt thou promise me to ask Grandfather Know-All if there is any help? I will reward thee royally.” Plavachek promised, and the king graciously let him go forward. ”

“ When we reflect upon this reconstituted Arctic fairy story, we find to our amazement that it lies at the root of the three most celebrated and popular forms of our European literature—the Epic poem, the Greek and modern drama, the latter with its five acts being based upon the analysis of the Greek drama, and the three-volume novel. As to the epic poem, the Iliad and Odyssey are the two perfect types, and conform so completely to the annual solar myth as to have induced competent writers to believe them to be altogether allegorical—myths of the dawn or what not. ”

“ Long, Broad, and Sharp-Eyes.
There was a king and he was now old, and had but one son. Once he called this son to him, and said: “My dear son, thou well knowest that the mature fruit falls to give place to another. My head is also ripening to decay, and perhaps in a short time the sun will no more shine upon it; but kefore thou buriest me, I would gladly see my future daughter, thy bride. Marry thee, my son.” And the king’s son said: “I should gladly have submitted to thy wishes, father, but I have no sweetheart, and know of no one. ”

“ Like the transformation of the pike in the Polish story into an eel in the Venetian one, and of the horse punishment of Slav stories into the punishment of being burnt on a tar barrel in the Venetian ones, the transformation of Capricornus into a basket of flowers is just what we might expect if the story was transplanted from rigorous Central Europe to the lagoons of Venice, and its character of an annual myth became thus obliterated. ”

“ The witch catching up her daughters and flying with them into the air is the evaporation of the snow, which, by cooling the air occasionally at the end of a long spell of winter weather, galvanizes the frost into a last effort, and effects brief temporary arrests of the triumph of returning spring. The apple tree, the well, and the rose tree symbolize three such brief arrests, and the blood of the three queens is the surface-water produced by the melting of the snow in contradistinction to the genuine streams and rivers. ”

“ There was once a region, gloomy and dark as the grave, for in it the divine sun never cast its rays. But there was there a king, and this king had a horse with a sun on its forehead, and this Sun-horse of his he had led through the dark region, from one end to the other, that the people might exist ”

“ But every savage passes through the same stages of infant and youthful life, so that there is no reason why he should be more alarmed than ourselves. If we interrogate our early past by means of memory, we shall find that the things which impressed us were not frequently-recurring events, but those which happened less frequently—a hard winter, a hot summer, an eclipse of the sun, a comet, the rapid shortening of the forest of the growing hayfield from year to year, for example, and others of the like kind. ”

“ In the Hottentot form of the legend, the first Hottentot man throws up his right shoe, and it becomes the sun; he throws up his left, and it becomes the moon. This is the frame of mind one must try to get into to understand these early Slav annual myths. The sun may be, indeed, an essential factor of the problem, but it is always the hero, the latent invincible power of organic life, which is the active agent in so re-adjusting the earthly and the celestial as to ensure the triumph of life over death. ”

“ Christians, therefore, who affirm, by their religious and domestic practices at the end of the year, the historic truth of this Bethlehem fairy story, this last wreckage of the primitive annual-solar myth, act unwisely, for it is never wise to maintain by word or act that something is an historical fact when it is really the remains of a primitive allegory. ”