Page:The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Volume 01.djvu/29

 3. THE ELFIN KNIGHT 13

The tasks of discriminating dam and filly This form of story, though it is a secondary

and the root end from the tip end of a stick, one, is yet by no means late, as is shown by

which occur both in the Tibetan tales and the anecdote in Plutarch, Septem Sapientum

the Shukasaptati, are found again, with un- Conviviura (6), itself probably a fragment of

important changes, in the Wallachian popular such a story, in which the king of the yEthiops

story, and the Plungarian, which in general gives a task to Amasis, king of Egypt, with a

resemble the Arabic. Some of those in the stake of many towns and cities. This task is

Arabian tale and in the Life of iEsop are of the favorite one of draining [drinking] all the

the same nature as the wit-trials in the Servian water in the sea, which we have had in the

and Gon-man popular tales, the story in the Servian tale (it also is in the Life of ^^]sop),

Gesta Romanorum, and the German and Eug- and Bins gives the customary advice for deal-

lisli ballads. The wise Heykar, e. g., is re- ing with it.*

quired to sew together a burst mill-stone. He From the number of these wise virgins

hands the king a pebble, requesting him first should not be excluded the king's daughter

to make an awl, a file, and scissors out of that, in the Gesta Romanorum who guesses rightly

The king of Egypt tells iEsop, the king of among the riddles of the three caskets and

Babylon's champion sage, that when his mares marries the emperor's son, though Bassanio

hear the stallions neigh in Babylon, they cast has extinguished her just fame : Madden's

their foal. iEsop's slaves are told to catch a Old English Versions, p. 238, No 66 ; Collier,

cat, and are set to scourging it before the Shakspere's Library, ii, 102. Egyptian public. Great offense is given, on The first three or four stanzas of A-E form

account of the sacred character of the animal, the beginning of ' Lady Isabel and the Elf-

and complaint is made to the king, who sends Knight,' and are especially appropriate to that

for JEsop in a rage. jEsop says his king has ballad, but not to this. The two last stanzas of

suffered an injury from this cat, for the night A, B, make no kind of sense here, and these

before the cat had killed a fine fighting-cock at least, probably the opening verses as well,

of his. "Fie, ^sop !" says the king of Egypt; must belong to some other and lost ballad,

"how could the cat go from Egypt to Babylon An elf setting tasks, or even giving riddles,

in one night ? " " Why not," replies iEsop, is unknown, I believe, in Northern tradition,

" as well as mares in Egypt hear the stallions and in no form of this story, except the Eng-

neigh in Babylon and cast their foal ? " lish, is a preternatural personage of any kind

The tales in the Shukasaptati and in the the hero. Still it is better to urge nothing more

Dsanglun represent the object of the sending than that the elf is an intruder in this par-

of the tasks to be to ascertain whether the ticular ballad, for riddle-craft is practised by

king retains the capable minister through a variety of preternatural beings : notoriously

whom he has acquired supremacy. According by Odin, Thor, the giant Vaf]>ru3nir, and the

to the Arabian tale, and those derived from it, dwarf Alwiss in the Edda, and again by a

ti'ibute is to be paid by the king whose rid- German " berggeist " (Ey, Harzmarchenbuch,

dies are guessed, or by him who fails to guess, p. 64, 'Die verwUnschte Prinzessin '), a Greek

we are apt to think of as peculiarly meiliaaval : What is old- thee word is best and worst:" Kemble, p. 188, No 37; est ■? What is most beautiful, biggest, wisest, strongest 1 etc. Adrian and Kitheus, p. 204, No 43 ; and Bedaj Collectanea, Two of these we have had in Zingerle's story. They are an- p. 326. This is made into a very long story in the Life swered in a commonplace way by the ^thiop, with more re- of iEsop, H. See other examples in Knust, Mittheilungen finement by Thales. Seveusimilarquestlons were propounded aus dem Eskurial, p. 326 f, note b, and Nachtrag, p. 647 ; by David to his sons, to determine who was worthiest to Oesterley's Kirchhof, v, 94, note to 3, 129; and Lands- succeed him, and answered by Solomon, according to an berger. Die Fabeln des Sophos, ex, ff. We may add that Arabian writer of the 14th century : Rosenol, I, 167. Ama- Plutarch's question, Which was first, the bird or the sis also sent a victim to Bias (2), and asked him to cut out egg ? (Qnast. Conviv. 1. 2, q. 3), comes up again in The De- the best and worst of the flesh. Bias cut out the tongue. maundes Joyous, No 41, Kemble's Salomon and Saturn, Here the two anticipate the Anglo-Saxon Salomon and Sat- p. 290.
 * Amasis in return (8) puts some of the questions which urn : " Tell me what is best and worst among men." " I tell