Читать книгу Folklore as an Historical Science - George Laurence Gomme - Страница 10

If the accretion of myth around the lives of great historic personages, and the persistence of tradition in historic localities, may be accepted as one phase of the necessary relationship of tradition to history, we may proceed to inquire how far the unattached traditions, the folk-tales pure and simple, contain or are based upon historic details. These details will not tell us of any one historic personage, or relate to any one historic locality, but will relate to the peoples before personages and localities figured in their history, and will explain facts in culture-history rather than in political history. We shall be approaching the period before written history had begun, and for which, so far as written history is concerned, we are dependent upon foreign or outside authority. I think, perhaps, Dr. Karl Pearson has put the case for this view in the best form. "As we read fairy stories to our children," he says,

"we may study history for ourselves. No longer oppressed with the unreal and the baroque, we may see primitive human customs and the life of primitive man and woman cropping out at almost every sentence of the nursery tale. Written history tells us little of these things, they must be learnt, so to speak, from the mouths of babes. But there they are in the Märchen, as invaluable fossils for those who will stoop to pick them up and study them. Back in the far past we can build up the life of our ancestry—the little kingdom, the queen or her daughter as king maker, the simple life of the royal household, and the humble candidate for the kingship, the priestess with her control of the weather and her power over youth and maid. In the dimmest distance we can see traces of the earlier kindred group marriage, and in the near foreground the beginnings of that fight with patriarchal institutions which led the priestess to be branded by the new Christian civilization as the evil-working witch of the Middle Ages."[53]

I should not have ventured to quote this long passage if my own studies, before Dr. Pearson's book was published in 1897, had not led me to much the same conclusions.[54] But Dr. Pearson assists me in a special way. His methods are scientific. He is not a folklorist because he loves folklore, but because he sees in it the materials for elucidating the early life of man. He is not, so to speak, prejudiced in its favour. He brings to his aid the practical mind of the statistician and the psychologist, and his conclusions may not, therefore, be put on one side as easily as those of myself and other students of folklore.

It is due to the folklorist, however, to say that this aspect of the folk-tale had already been discovered by one of the greatest of the earlier collectors of traditional lore, the late Mr. J. F. Campbell. Thus, writing, in 1860, of his grand collection of "Highland Tales," Mr. Campbell very truly says: "The tales represent the actual everyday life of those who tell them, with great fidelity. They have done the same, in all likelihood, time out of mind, and that which is not true of the present is, in all probability, true of the past; and therefore something may be learned of forgotten ways of life."[55] Readers of Mr. Campbell's books well know how he has traced out from these traditions from the nursery, identical customs with Highland everyday life, and relics also of a long-forgotten past state of things; how he points to the records of the stone age and the iron age in these representatives of the scientific memoirs of the past; how very significantly he answers his own supposition, that if these tales "are dim recollections of savage times and savage people, then other magic gear, the property of giants, fairies, and bogles, should resemble things which are precious now amongst savage or half-civilized tribes, or which really have been prized amongst the old inhabitants of these islands or of other parts of the world."[56]

This is an extremely important conclusion on the relationship of history and tradition, and it will be well to illustrate it by turning to some obvious details of primitive life, which are to be seen with more or less clearness enshrined in the folk-tales which have been preserved in our own country.

In Kennedy's Fireside Stories of Ireland, it is related in one of the tales that there was no window to the mud-wall cabin, and the door was turned to the north;[57] and then, again, we have this picture given to us in another story: on a common that had in the middle of it a rock or great pile of stones overgrown with furze bushes, there was a dwelling-house, and a cow-house, and a goat's-house, and a pigsty all scooped out of the rock; and the cows were going into the byre, and the goats into their house, but the pigs were grunting and bawling before the door.[58] This takes us to the surroundings of the cave-dwelling people.

Then in other places we come across relics of ancient agricultural life preserved in these stories. In the Irish story of "Hairy Rouchy" the heroine is fastened by her wicked sisters in a pound,[59] an incident not mentioned in the parallel Highland tale related by Campbell.[60] Many Irish stories contain details of primitive life that the Scottish variants do not contain. The field that was partly cultivated with corn and partly pasture for the cow,[61] the grassy ridge upon which the princess sat, and the furrows wherein her two brothers were lying,[62] are instances.

A great question arises here. If the Scotch story does not mention the primitive incident mentioned in the Irish story, does it mean that the Irish story has retained for a longer time the details of its primitive original? Or does it mean that it has absorbed more of surrounding Irish life into it than the Scotch story has of surrounding Scottish life?

These details must have a place in the elucidation of Irish folk-tales, because they have a very distinct place indeed in primitive institutions; and it hence becomes a question to folklorists as to how they have entered into, or escaped from, the narrative of traditional story. It appears to me that the appearance or non-appearance of these phases of early life are typical of what has been going on with the plot and structure of folk-tales as long as they have remained the traditional treasures of the people. A story identical in all the main outlines of plot will be varied in matters of detail, according to the people who are using it in their daily routine of story-telling. But this variation is always from the primitive to the cultured, from the simple to the complex. The mud-cabin or cave-dwelling in Irish story would have developed into the palace in stories of a richer country like England; the old woman, young girl, master and servant, would become perhaps the queen, princess, king and vassal; just as in Spanish and Portuguese stories the giant of other European tales is represented by "the Moor." If this process of change is a factor in the life of the folk-tale, it follows that those folk-tales which contain the greatest number of primitive details are the most ancient, and come to us more directly from the prehistoric times which they represent.

We may gather warrant for such a conclusion if we pass from small details to a distinct institution. The institution which stands out most clearly in early history is the tribe, and I will therefore turn to an element of ancient tribal life, and an element which has to do with the practical organisation of that life, namely, the tribal assembly. We find that the folk-tale records under its fairy or non-historic guise many important recollections of the assembly of the tribe. One very natural feature of this assembly in early times was its custom of meeting in the open air—a custom which in later times still obtained, for reasons which were the outcome of the prejudices existing in favour of keeping up old customs. These reasons are recorded in the formula of Anglo-Saxon times, that meetings should not be held in any building, lest magic might have power over the members of the assembly.[63]

Before turning to the tales of our own country, I will first see whether savage and barbaric tales have recorded anything on the subject, for their picture of the tribal assembly, when revealed in the folk-tale, belongs to the period which might have witnessed the making of the story, and which certainly witnessed the tribal organisation of the people as a living institution. Dr. Callaway, in his Nursery Tales and Traditions of the Zulus, relates a story of "the Girl-King." "Where there are many young women," says the story, "they assemble on the river where they live, and appoint a chief over the young women, that no young woman may assume to act for herself. Well, then they assemble and ask each other, 'Which among the damsels is fit to be chief and reign well?' They make many inquiries; one after another is nominated and rejected, until at length they agree together to appoint one, saying, 'Yes, so and so shall reign.'"[64] However far this may be actually separated from the political assembly of the Zulus, there is no doubt we have here a folk-tale adaptation of events which were happening around the relators of the tale. This is all I am anxious to state, indeed. What in the folk-tale was related of the girl-king, was a reflex only of what happened when the political chieftain himself was concerned.

This, perhaps, is still better illustrated if we turn to India. In the story of "How the Three Clever Men outwitted the Demons," told by Miss Frere in her Old Deccan Days, it is related how "a demon was compelled to bring treasure to the pundit's house, and on being asked why he had been so long away, answered, 'All my fellow-demons detained me, and would hardly let me go, they were so angry at my bringing you so much treasury; and though I told them how great and powerful you are, they would not believe me, but will, as soon as I return, judge me in solemn council for serving you.' 'Where is your council held?' asked the pundit. 'Oh! very far, far away,' answered the demon, 'in the depths of the jungle, where our rajah daily holds his court.' The three men, the pundit, the wrestler, and the pearl-shooter, are taken by the demon to witness the trial. … They reached the great jungle where the durbar (council) was to be held, and there he (the demon) placed them on the top of a high tree just over the demon rajah's throne. In a few minutes they heard a rustling noise, and thousands and thousands of demons filled the place, covering the ground as far as the eye could reach, and thronging chiefly round the rajah's throne."[65]

A classical story told by Ælian gives us another interesting example of this feature of early political life. It is said of the Lady Rhodopis, who was alike fair and frail, that of all the beautiful women in Egypt, she was by far the most beautiful; and the story goes that one time when she was bathing, Fortune, which always was a lover of whatever may be the most unlikely and unexpected, bestowed upon her rank and dignity that were alone suitable for her transcendent charms; and this was the way what I am now going to tell came to pass. Rhodopis, before taking a bath, had given her robes in charge to her attendants; but at the same time there was an eagle flying over the bath, and it darted down and flew away with one of her slippers. The eagle flew away, and away, and away, until it got to the city of Memphis, where the Prince Psammetichus was sitting in the open air, and administering justice to those subject to his sway; and as the eagle flew over him it let the slipper fall from its beak, and it fell down into the lap of Psammetichus. The prince looked at the slipper, and the more he looked at it, the more he marvelled at the beauty of the material and the dainty minuteness of its size; and then he cogitated upon the wondrous way in which such a thing was conveyed to him through the air by a bird; and then it was he sent forth a proclamation to all parts of Egypt to try to discover the woman to whom the slipper belonged, and solemnly promised that whoever she might be he would make her his bride.[66]

A very beautiful legend, which has been preserved by the Rev. W. S. Lach-Szyrma,[67] carries into its fairy narrative more of the realities of tribal life. Mr. Lach-Szyrma obtained it from a peasant's chap-book, but it professes to be an ancient Slovac folk-tale:—

"An orphan girl is left with a cruel stepmother, who has a daughter who is bad-tempered and disagreeable, and extremely jealous of her. She becomes the Cinderella of the house, is ill-treated and beaten, but submits patiently. At last the harsh stepmother is urged by her daughter to get rid of her. It is winter, in the month of January; the snow has fallen, and the ground is frozen. The cruel stepmother in this dreadful weather bids the poor girl to go out in the forest, and not to come back till she brings some violets with her. After many entreaties for mercy the orphan is driven out, and goes out in the snow on the hopeless errand. As she enters the forest she sees a little way on in the deep glade, under the leafless trees, a large fire burning. As she draws near she perceives around the fire are twelve stones, and on the stones sit twelve men. The chief of them, sitting on the largest stone, is an old man with a long snowy beard, and a great staff in his hand. As she comes up to the fire the old man asks her what she wants. She respectfully replies by telling them, with many tears, her sad story. The old man comforts her. 'I am January; I cannot give you any violets, but brother March can.' So he turns to a fine young man near him and says, 'Brother March, sit in my place.' Presently the air around grows softer. The snows around the fire melt. The green grass appears, the flower-buds are to be seen. At the orphan girl's feet a bed of violets appear. She stoops and plucks a beautiful bouquet, which she brings home to her astounded stepmother."

STONE MONUMENTS AS MEMORIALS (KASYA)

STONE SEATS AT A KASYA VILLAGE (2 FEET TO 6 FEET IN DIAMETER)

How clearly this is a representation of the tribal assembly worked into the folk-tale, where January and the months are the tribal chiefs, may be illustrated by a comparison with the actual events of Indian tribal life. Within the stockaded village of Supar-Punji, in Bengal, are two or three hundred monuments, large and small, all formed of circular, solid stone slabs, supported by upright stones, set on end, which enclose the space below. On these the villagers sit on occasions of state, each on his own stool, large or small, according to his rank in the commonwealth.[68]

Now evidence such as this, showing how the folk-tale among primitive people gets framed according to the social conditions within which it originates, will help us to realise the peculiar value of similar features which may be found in the folk-tales of our own country. English tales are nearly destitute of such illustrations of primitive tribal life as this. Some of the giant stories of Cornwall, such as that relating to the loose, uncut stones in the district of Lanyon Quoit, on whose tors "they do say the giants sit,"[69] may refer to the tribal assembly place, but it is shorn of all its necessary details, and we do not get many examples even in this shortened form.

Curiously enough, too, we find but little mention in the Scotch tales of the open-air gatherings of the tribe. The following quotation may refer to the custom perhaps, but it is not conclusive: "On the day when O'Donull came out to hold right and justice. … " (there were twelve men with him).[70] Another story is more exact. Mr. Campbell took it down from a fisherman in Barra (ii. 137). The hero-child Conall tends the sheep of a widow with whom he lodged. "To feed these sheep he broke down the dykes which guarded the neighbours' fields. The neighbours made complaint to the king, and asked for justice. The king gave foolish judgment, whereat his neck was turned awry, and the judgment-seat kicked. Conall gave a correct decision and released the king. He did this a second time, and the people said he must have king's blood in him." This allusion to the kicking of the judgment-seat is a very instructive illustration of tribal chieftainship and comes within that branch of the subject with which we are now dealing.

But when we pass from Britain to Ireland, there is at once a great storehouse of examples to be given. In Dr. Joyce's Old Celtic Romances there are some remarkable passages, which give us a good picture of the assemblies of primitive times. These passages, it should be noted, occur quite incidentally during the course of the story—they belong to the same era as the fairy-legend, the giant, and the witch, and taken as types of what was going on everywhere in prehistoric times, they tell us much that is very valuable.

VIEW IN THE KASYA HILLS SHOWING STONE MEMORIALS

A great fair-meeting was held by the King of Ireland, Nuada of the Silver Hand, on the Hill of Usna. Not long had the people been assembled, when they beheld a stately band of warriors, all mounted on white steeds, coming towards them from the east, and at their head rode a young champion, tall and comely. "This young warrior was Luga of the Long Arms. … This troop came forward to where the King of Erin sat surrounded by the Dedannans, and both parties exchanged friendly greetings. A short time after this they saw another company approaching, quite unlike the first, for they were grim and surly-looking; namely, the tax-gatherers of the Fomorians, to the number of nine nines, who were coming to demand their yearly tribute from the men of Erin. When they reached the place where the king sat, the entire assembly—the king himself among the rest—rose up before them." Here, without following the story further, the assembling in arms, the payment of the tributes at the council-hill, the sitting of the king and his assembly, are all significant elements of the primitive assembly. In a later part of the same story we have "the Great Plain of the Assembly" mentioned (p. 48). Another graphic picture is given a little later on, when the warrior Luga, above mentioned, demands justice upon the slayers of his father, at the great council on Tara hill. Luga asked the king that the chain of silence should be shaken; and when it was shaken, when all were listening in silence, he stood up and made his plea, which ended in the eric-fine being imposed upon the three children of Turenn, the accomplishment of which forms the basis of the fairy-tale which follows (p. 54). Then, in another place in the same tale, when the brothers are on their adventurous journey, fulfilling their eric-fine, they come to the house of the King of Sigar; and it "happened that the king was holding a fair-meeting on the broad, level green before the palace."

In another story the hero Maildun asks the island queen how she passes her life, and the reply is, "The good king who formerly ruled over this island was my husband. He died after a long reign, and as he left no son, I now reign, the sole ruler of the island. And every day I go to the Great Plain, to administer justice and to decide causes among my people."

The beginning of another story is—"Once upon a time, a noble, warlike king ruled over Lochlann, whose name was Colga of the Hard Weapons. On a certain occasion, this king held a meeting of his chief people, on the broad, green plain before his palace of Berva. And when they were all gathered together, he spoke to them in a loud, clear voice, from where he sat high on his throne; and he asked them whether they found any fault with the manner in which he ruled them, and whether they knew of anything deserving of blame in him as their sovereign lord and king. They replied, as if with the voice of one man, that they found no fault of any kind."

The last example is also a valuable one. A dispute has occurred respecting the enchanted horse, the Gilla Dacker, and "a meeting was called on the green to hear the award." Speeches are made and the awards are given.[71]

I think it will be admitted that the folk-tales of Britain refer back in such cases to the organisation of the tribe in early times, and the only possible conclusion to be drawn from this fact is that they too belong to early times and that they have brought with them to modern days these valuable fragments of history which are hardly to be discovered in any other historical document.

We have thus shown that the folk-tale contains many fragmentary details of ancient social conditions, and further that it contains more than mere details in the larger place it assigns to important features of tribal institutions. It now remains to see whether apart from incident the very structure and heart of the folk-tale is founded upon conceptions of life. I will take as an example the well-known story of Catskin. This story contains one remarkable feature running through many of the variants, and a second which is found in practically all of them. Both these features are perfectly impossible to modern creative fancy, and I venture to think we shall find their true origin in the actual facts of primitive life, not in the wondrous flight of primitive fancy.

The opening incidents of "Catskin" are thus related:—

"A certain king, having lost his wife, and mourned for her even more than other men do, suddenly determines, by way of relieving his sorrows, to marry his own daughter. The princess obtains a suspension of this odious purpose by requiring from him three beautiful dresses, which take a long time to prepare. These dresses are a robe of the colour of the sky, a robe of the colour of the moon, a third robe of the colour of the sun, the latter being embroidered with the rubies and diamonds of his crown. The three dresses being made and presented to her, the princess is checkmated, and accordingly asks for something even more valuable in its way. The king has an ass that produces gold coins in profusion every day of his life. This ass the princess asked might be sacrificed, in order that she might have his skin. This desire even was granted. The princess, thus defeated altogether, puts on the ass's skin, rubs her face over with soot, and runs away. She takes a situation with a farmer's wife to tend the sheep and turkeys of the farm."

The remainder of the story much resembles Cinderella's famous adventures, and I need not repeat it here. The pith of the story turns upon the fact that a father purposes to marry his own daughter, or, in some versions, his daughter-in-law; and the daughter, naturally, as we say, objecting to this arrangement, runs away, and hence her many adventures. This famous story, told by English nurses to English children, long before literature stepped across the sacred precincts of the nursery, is also told in Ireland and Scotland. It is also current in France, Italy, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, and many other nations; and throughout all these versions, differing, of course, in some matters of detail, the selfsame incident is observable—the father wishing to marry his own daughter, and the daughter running away.[72] This incident, therefore, must be older than the several nations who have preserved it from their common home, where the tale was originally told with a special value that is now lost. It must then belong to primitive man, and not to civilised man, and must be judged by the standard of morals belonging to primitive man. It is not sufficient, or, indeed, in any way to the point, to say that the idea of marrying one's own daughter is horrible and detestable to modern ideas; we must place ourselves in a position to judge of such a state of affairs from an altogether different standpoint. And what do we find in primitive society? We find that women were the property, not the help-mates, of their husbands. And the question hence arises, in what relation did the children stand in respect to their parents? The answer comes from almost all parts of the primitive world that, in certain stages of society, the children were related to their mother only. It is worth while pausing one moment to give evidence upon the fact. Thus McLennan says of the Australians, "it is not in quarrels uncommon to find children of the same father arrayed against one another, or indeed, against their father himself; for by their peculiar law the father can never be a relative of his children."[73] This is not the language, though it is the evidence, of the latest research, and another phase of it is represented by the custom, as among the Ahts of Vancouver Island, that in case of separation while the children are young, the children go always with the mother to their own tribe.[74]

Here we see that the relationship between father and daughter was in no way considered in ancient society of the type to which Australians and Ahts belonged, and it is now one of the accepted facts of anthropology that at certain stages of savage life fatherhood was not recognised. That this non-relationship of the father very often resulted in the further stage of the father marrying his daughter, is exemplified by many examples. The story of Lot and his daughters, for instance, will at once occur to the reader, and upon this Mr. Fenton has some observations, to which I may refer the student who wishes to pursue this curious subject further,[75] while Mr. Frazer, in his recent study of Adonis, has discussed the practice with his usual extent of knowledge.[76] Again, it should be remembered that in our own chronicle histories Vortigern is said to have married his own daughter, though the legend and the supposed consequences of the marriage have been twisted from their original primitive surroundings by the monkish chroniclers, through whom we obtain the story.[77] Turning next to the daughter-in-law, supposing that the difference between "daughter" and "daughter-in-law" (query stepdaughter) in the story variants is a vital difference, and not an accidental difference, there is curious and important evidence from India. The following custom prevails among certain classes of Sudras, particularly the Vella-lahs in Koimbator: "A father marries a grown-up girl eighteen or twenty years old to his son, a boy of seven or eight, after which he publicly lives with his daughter-in-law, until the youth attains his majority, when his wife is made over to him, generally with half a dozen children. These children are taught to address him as their father. In several cases this woman becomes the common wife of the father and son. She pays every respect due to her wedded husband, and takes great care of him from the time of her marriage. The son, in his turn, hastens to celebrate the marriage of his acquired son, with the usual pomps, ceremonies, and tumasha, and keeps the bride for himself as his father had done."[78] But even further than this, ancient Hindu law allowed the father, who had no prospect of having legitimate sons, to "appoint" or nominate a daughter who should bear a son to himself, and not to her own husband.[79] Sir Henry Maine gives the formula for this remarkable appointment, and then goes on to say that some customs akin to the Hindu usage of appointing a daughter appear to have been very widely diffused over the ancient world, and traces of them are found far down in history.[80]

What we have before us, therefore, to guide us in the view we take of the story incident of a father marrying his own daughter, may be summarised as follows:—

1. The father is not related to his daughter, and hence examples occur of fathers marrying daughters.

2. The custom of marrying a daughter-in-law.

3. The custom of nominating a daughter to bear a son.

From any one of these facts of primitive life we arrive at the central incident in the story of Catskin: the father could marry his daughter without specially shocking the society of the primitive world, simply because, according to primitive ideas, father and daughter, as we call her, were not related.

We now arrive at the second incident—the running away of Catskin. This again is a very early form of marriage custom. Women of primitive times often objected to the forced marriages, and they expressed their objection very often by running away. In the instance of Catskin the running away was successful, as we all know; but in most instances the unwilling bride was captured and forced to surrender. Mr. Farrer, in his Primitive Manners and Customs, quite clears the ground for the refutation of an argument that might be applied if we did not know the customs of primitive society. It might be asked, why did Catskin run away if the custom was a usual one? For the same reason, we answer, that the women of savage society often do run away—objection to the marriage.[81]

Thus we have to note that the two principal features of our ordinary Catskin story are explainable by a reference to primitive manners and customs; and it seems to me much easier and much more reasonable to thus explain the origin of the Catskin story, than first of all to create a "lovely myth," as the mythologists would undoubtedly have a right to call it, of the Sun pursuing the Dawn, and then to say that the Catskin story is simply a relation of this myth.

The opening incident of the Catskin story, as thus interpreted, is not an isolated case of the survival of primitive marriage customs in popular stories. If it were so, there would be considerable difficulty in the way of supporting this interpretation. But it is only saying of Catskin what can be said of other stories. "There are traces," says Mr. Campbell, speaking of his Highland stories, "of foreign or forgotten laws and customs. A man buys a wife as he would a cow, and acquires a right to shoot her, which is acknowledged as good law."[82] Yes, this is good savage law and custom there is no doubt, and Lord Avebury and Mr. McLennan have illustrated it by examples. But in the Highland story of the "Battle of the Birds" the wife is sought to be purchased for a hundred pounds (Campbell, i. 36), and in the Irish story of the "Lazy Beauty and her Aunts" we find something like bride-capture and purchase as well.[83] So, again, if we turn to India the same kind of evidence is forthcoming of another part of the primitive ceremony. "Do not think," retorted the Malee in a story collected by Miss Frere, "that I'll make a fool of myself because I'm only a Malee, and believe what you've got to say because you're a great Rajah. If you mean what you say, if you care for my daughter and wish to be married to her, come and be married; but I'll have none of your new-fangled forms and court ceremonies hard to be understood; let the girl be married by her father's hearth, and under her father's roof."[84] And in another story of the "Chundun Rajah" we have "the scattering rice and flowers upon their heads;"[85] the significance of both of which customs are fully known.

These illustrations of the contact, the necessary contact, of tradition and history show that contact to be equally true of the folk-tale as it is of the local or personal legend. They all point to the substratum of fact underlying tradition, to the absorption by tradition of many features of the life by which it is surrounded, or to the absorption by some great historic person or event of the living tradition of his time or place. This contact is a fact equally important to history and to folklore. It cannot be neglected by either. It stands for something in the analysis which every student must give of the material with which he is working, and that something has a value, sometimes great and sometimes small, which must influence the estimate of the material which both history and folklore supply in the unravelling of man's past.

I will now finally give a more complicated example of the folk-tale as illustrative of the connection between history and tradition. Mr. J. F. Campbell printed a tale in the second volume of the Transactions of the Ethnological Society (p. 336), which had been sent to him in Gaelic by John Davan, in December, 1862—that is, after the publication of the fourth volume of his Highland Tales. The tale is only in outline, but in quite sufficient fulness for my present purpose, as follows:—

There was a man at some time or other who was well off, and had many children. When the family grew up the man gave a well-stocked farm to each of his children. When the man was old his wife died, and he divided all that he had amongst his children, and lived with them, turn about, in their houses. The sons and daughters got tired of him and ungrateful, and tried to get rid of him when he came to stay with them. At last an old friend found him sitting tearful by the wayside, and learning the cause of his distress, took him home; there he gave him a bowl of gold and a lesson which the old man learned and acted. When all the ungrateful sons and daughters had gone to a preaching, the old man went to a green knoll where his grandchildren were at play, and pretending to hide, he turned up a flat hearthstone in an old stance,[86] and went out of sight. He spread out his gold on a big stone in the sunlight, and he muttered, "Ye are mouldy, ye are hoary, ye will be better for the sun." The grandchildren came sneaking over the knoll, and when they had seen and heard all that they were intended to see and hear, they came running up with, "Grandfather, what have you got there?" "That which concerns you not; touch it not," said the grandfather; and he swept his gold into a bag and took it home to his old friend. The grandchildren told what they had seen, and henceforth the children strove who should be kindest to the old grandfather. Still acting on the counsel of his sagacious old chum, he got a stout little black chest made, and carried it always with him. When any one questioned him as to its contents, his answer was, "That will be known when the chest is opened." When he died he was buried with great honour and ceremony, and then the chest was opened by the expectant heirs. In it were found broken potsherds and bits of slate, and a long-handled, white wooden mallet with this legend on its head:—