Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 9, 1898.djvu/270

244 on the following passage in Madame Darmesteter's Life of Renan (1897, p. 251):—"That night he told us the story of the Babylonian Tobias. Rash and young, this Chaldæan brother of our Tobit, discouraged by the difficult approaches of prosperity, had entered into partnership with a demi-god or Demon, who made all his schemes succeed and pocketed fifty per cent. upon the profits. The remaining fifty sufficed to make Tobias as rich as Oriental fancy can imagine. The young man fell in love, married his bride, and brought her home. On the threshold stood the Demon: 'How about my fifty per cent?' The Venus d'Ille, you see, was not born yesterday. From the dimmest dawn of time sages have taught us not to trust the gods too far."

Unluckily there seems to be no authority whatever for this alleged Chaldæan version, which should obviously come closer to the folk-tale than to the Book of Tobit. At least Professor Sayce whites me:—"The passage in Madame Darmesteter's Life of Renan must be based on an error, for no such story—so far as I know—has ever been found on a cuneiform tablet. It may have originated in a mistranslation of one of the contract tablets; but, if so, the mistranslation must have appeared is some obscure French publication, perhaps a newspaper, which I have not seen."

Alack! and yet our folk-tale remains perhaps the oldest current folk-tale in the world.