there is no evidence that East borrowed from West, or West from East. Stories must have spread both ways, later, in Alexander's conquest, and with Buddhist wanderers, and in commerce, the Crusades, Arab adaptations done into Latin, into French, and so on, but why should India be the original home of märchen? I have destroyed the theory that the ideas and customs are peculiarly Indian. I have shown that, if Puss in Boots was originally Indian, with a Buddhistic moral, gratitude to animals, that moral does not occur in the Indian form of Puss in Boots.[1] Till M. Cosquin shows that the ancient Greek and Egyptian märchen originated in India, a country unknown to ancient Greece and Egypt, I fear I cannot be converted to his theory of India as the cradle of märchen.
M. Cosquin (International Congress, p. 68) takes a case. A girl is delivered to a dragon, and saved by the hero, who kills the monster. I am supposed to call the sacrifice of a girl to a beast, as an expiation, a "savage idea". Eh bien, I really cannot call it civilised! The west coast of Africa, where sharks do duty for dragons, is the only place where I remember the rite in actual practice. Garcilasso de la Vega mentions a similar custom in Peru. Given the rite, the rescue would be heroic. So far, the idea might be developed among any people who practise the rite. But what follows? The hero falls asleep as he waits for the monster; the girl tends his hair ("catches vermin in it", not a civilised attention, except in the case of Prince Charles in his Highland distresses), twines a ring in the hair, sees the monster approach, drops a hot tear which wakens the hero; the dragon cries, "Hullo, here's a pair of you!" This incident is found in the Greek isle of Syra, in a modern Nubian story, details and all, in Armenia; and the "burning tear" in Wallachian and Swedish.
Do I believe that the details have been independently developed in Syra, Nubia, Armenia?
Certainly I do not believe it. I believe the scene has been invented, as it occurs in this tale, once for all, and diffused in the various ways which I have suggested.
- ↑ Perrault's Tales, Puss in Boots.
