Page:The Science of Fairy Tales.djvu/265

 I may be going too far in suggesting that the feats to be performed afford some confirmation of this conclusion; yet it seems to me there is much to be said for such an opinion. The appearance of a god in animal form—even in a loathsome animal form—would not derogate from his essential godhead. Where in these stories the deliverer has to deal with an animal, a kiss is the usual task prescribed. Kissing is a very ancient and well-known act of worship, which survives among us in many a practice of the Roman Catholic Church, as well as in the form of oath taken daily in our law courts; and it may be that the more repulsive the object to be kissed, the greater the merit of kissing it. Again, the lady who required to be followed into the depths of a lake may be matched with the goddess Hertha, whose slaves were drowned in the self-same waters wherein they had washed her; nor does it seem more menial to carry a princess than to wash a goddess. The ceremony of carrying may indeed be the relic of a solemn procession, or of a sacred drama. The words of blessing following on a sneeze need no explanation; and the omission to return at the promised time a borrowed kettle would be more likely to provoke the anger of a god than to retard the deliverance of a mortal. This is implied by the statement that the devil fetched the kettle himself; and we need have little doubt that in an earlier form the story so described it. I am unable to explain the unknown word which would deliver the lady who haunted the bridge at Old Strelitz, unless it be a reminiscence of an incantation.

There remain the demand for an unbaptized child to kiss, the torture to which the heroes of the two Bohemian sagas submit, the requirement in the Pomeranian tale to place seven brothers on the stone haunted by the seven mice, and lastly the personal violence to the damsel involved in striking her with a birch-rod or a bunch of juniper and in beheadal. In all these we probably have