Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 5 1887.djvu/358

350 (Affanasiev), Roumania (Ispirescu 10), cf. Benfey, "Pantchatantra," i. 415-418.) Comparing the fairy-tale with the story or romance, we easily detect the characteristic embellishments which produced that change. The exploits of one friend are now of a different fantastical character. The way how the other learns the fate to which he is doomed is not by means of an angel's voice, but he hears a bird (or something else) predicting it to him, and through a dream the cure is announced to the survivor; for the friend is not leprous, but transformed into stone. Closer inquiry shows further that the parallels in different countries are at variance just in the choice of the exploits or the prophetic bird, viz. the accessorial element is local and national.

Another example is the history of "Rhampsimit's Treasure," told by Herodotus, but unknown in Europe before the thirteenth century, when it became incorporated into the Syntipas, and thence spread over Europe, and became a richly developed fairy-tale. We can here positively ascertain the date of its first mentioning, and pursue it till it became a popular tale.

The whole group of persecuted mothers, whose children were substituted at their birth for animals, and afterwards restored, can easily be connected with the Cresentia, Hildegarde, and Genevefa group, and thus with the miracles of the Holy Virgin.

Another similar group is that where the children are lost immediately after their birth or in their youth; the mother is separated from the father until after manifold adventures they meet marvellously again.

Here we can trace the literary source back so far as to the first century A.C., for the biography of Clement, first (legendary) bishop of Rome and friend of St. Peter, is such a romantic story, preserved in his "Recognitiones," book vii. seq. The same story is afterwards attributed to another saint, Eustache Placidas, and as well in the Orient as in the Occident parallels to it are innumerable.

Comparing now these tales with each other, the same result will always be obtained, viz. that the literature of romance and novel, be it a religious romance or one of chivalry, has passed now-a-days to a great extent into the literature of fairy tales, and that, far from being the basis, the fairy tales are the top of the pyramid formed by the lore