Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 23, 1912.djvu/511

 Correspondence. 487

all folk literature,— themes like the Polyphemos story or the Legend of Perseus. With regard to the two oft-repeated typical examples, the one is not confined in its distribution even to the Mediterranean basin, while on the authenticity of the other grave doubts must be cast.

For the first, the story of The Carpenter, the Tailor, and the Man of God- is said to be a survival of the tale of Pygmalion. Pygmalion made a statue and fell in love with it : the Goddess of Love in pity granted his prayer and gave the statue life, and it became the hero's bride. In the folk-tale, under quite different circumstances, a carpenter makes a statue, a tailor makes it clothes, and the prayer of a Man of God gives it life, and all three wish to marry the girl. The denoue77ient varies according to the setting of the story. When it appears as a sub-story in the tale of The Silent Princess it concludes of course with an unsolved query. When the story is an independent tale, the problem is referred to a judge. He also wants to marry her, and alleges that she is his lost wife, and, while'the parties are disputing, the maiden vanishes back into a tree, the form from which she was created.

It will be seen even from so short a summary that the resem- blance to the story of Pygmalion is slight. It is restricted in reality to the facts, — (i) that a statue comes to life ; and (2) that its maker or makers fall in love with it; and, as regards (2), it should be noted that in the classical story the statue comes to life because of its maker's love. The whole characterisation and moral of the two stories is totally different.

Further, if it is a survival from the story of Pygmalion, it is curious that an ancient Greek story should survive in exactly the same form in the Far as well as in the Near East.^ Turkish,

-Greek versions will be found in Pio, 'SeoeWrjviKo. Uapa/MvOia, p. 93 (Astypalaea), translated in Geldart, Modern Greek Folk Lore, p. 106; Pio, op. cit., p. 231 (Old Syra), translated in Garnett and Stuart-Glennie, Greek Folk Poesy, vol. ii., p. 138; Paton, Folk- Lot e,\o\. xii., p. 317 (Budrum). A version from a Greekophone village in the Taurus will be published in Mr. Dawkins' forthcoming book on the modern Greeks of Cappadocia.

Tiirkische Volksiiidrchen aus Sfa?iilinl, p. 45 ; Oriental in Clouston, Flowers from a Persian Garden, pp. 130-1 ; and Benfey, Panchatantra, vol. i., pp. 489-493.
 * Georgian in M. Wardrop, Georgian Folk Tales, p. 106 ; Turkish in Kiinoz,