Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/117

Rh CHAP.

regions of the Ganges and the Indus, and the other to the countries watered by the Rhine and the Elbe. Even in those early days the • ^ ' story must have run that a king had seen the likeness of a maiden whose beauty made him faint with love ; that he could not be with- held from seeking her; that his faithful friend went with him and helped him to win his bride ; that certain wise birds predicted that the trusty friend should save his master from three great dangers, but that his mode of rescuing him should seem to show that he loved his master's wife ; that for his self-sacrifice he should be turned into a stone, and should be restored to life only by the agency of an innocent child. That two men in two distant countries knowing nothing of each other could hit upon such a series of incidents as these, none probably will have the hardihood to maintain. Still less can any dream of urging that Hindus and Germans agreed together to adopt each the specific differences of their respective versions. In the German story the prince's passion for the beautiful maiden is caused by the sight of her portrait in a gallery of his father's palace, into which the trusty John had been strictly charged not to let the young man enter.^ Having once seen it, he cannot be withheld from going to seek her, and with his friend he embarks as a merchant in a ship laden with all manner of costly goods which may tempt the maiden's taste or curiosity. The scheme succeeds ; but while the princess is making her purchases the Faithful John orders all sail to be set, and the ship is far at sea when the maiden turns to go home. At once we recognise the form in which Herodotos at the outset of his history has recorded the story of 16, and are tempted to think that Herodotos did not in this instance invent his own rationalistic explanation of a miraculous story, but has adopted a version of the myth current m his own day. The comparative freedom from supernatural incidents would of course determine his choice. The next

' This is substantially the Rabbi- the case before the Rabbis, who decide nical story of " The Broken Oath," the that he must go back ; but on his per- difterence being that the young man is sistent refusal, she beseeches him to already in Fairy Land, and finds in the suffer her to take leave of him and to forbidden chamber, not the picture, but embrace him. " He replied that she the maiden herself. The sequel of this might, and as soon as she embraced story exhibits the maiden as the Fairy him, she drew out his soul, and he Queen, who lays the man under a died." Thus far the story runs like pledge to remain with her. After a that of Fouque's Undine ; but in the while he feels a yearning to return to sequel the insensibility of the Jew to his earthly home. He is suffered to do the ludicrous is shown in the words put so on pledging his word that he will into the mouth of the fairy, who leaves come back. But the pledge redeemed her son Solomon in the keeping of the without murmuring by Thomas of Rabbis, assuring him that he will pass Ercildoune is set at nought by the hero examinations satisfactorily. — Keightley, of this tale, The forsal^en fairy carries Fairy iMylholog)', 505.