Rumanian Bird and Beast Stories Rendered into English. Anonymous

collection of tales from the Saxon colony in Transylvania, collected by Haltrich. There is not one single “creation” tale among them. Only two of the Rumanian animal fables find their parallels in that collection. Turning to the Russian tales, notably the great collection of Afanasiev, we shall find a large number of animal tales, including also a number of “creation” tales. In the former the central figures are, as in the South Slavonic, Rumanian, Saxon, etc., the fox, the bear, the wolf, the hedgehog and sometimes domestic animals, the dog, the cock, the hen, the duck, etc. The same can be said also of tales collected from the Lithuanians, Letts and Ruthenians, and to a smaller degree of those from the Poles and Czechs. All, however, have retained definite traces of such animal tales and legends. The animal character has been thoroughly preserved. The fox is generally the “clever” animal, but is, as often as not, outwitted by smaller animals or by man. The general trend of these animal tales is to pit the cunning of the smaller and weaker against that of the more powerful animal and to secure the victory for the former. It is so natural for the people, who live under the despotism of the mighty and powerful, to rejoice in seeing the discomfiture of the great and stupid brought about by the wit and cunning of the small and despised, and answers so aptly to their feelings.

      In these tales, which belong to the group of animal fables, we are in a different atmosphere, far removed from that of the creation legend. We are approaching that phase in the evolution in which the animal stands for a disguised human being, which, in spite of its appellation, speaks and acts entirely in accordance with human ways and notions. These have not yet been found among the Rumanians and those nations whose folk-lore shows close affinity with theirs.

      Having thus far established that these animal tales, fables and creation legends are neither of a local nor an indigenous origin, nor survivals from a remote past, and also that the Rumanian tales do not stand isolated, but form part of a group of tales and legends common to most of the nations surrounding Rumania in a more or less complete degree, it behoves us to endeavour to trace these tales to their probable origin, and also to account for the shape which they have assumed, as shown in the course of this investigation. These tales among the Eastern nations of Europe are so much akin to one another that they must have reached these nations almost simultaneously. All must have stood under the same influence, which must have been powerful and lasting enough to leave such indelible traces in the belief and in the imagination of the people.

      A great difficulty arises, when we attempt to define the influence which brought these stories and fables to the nations of the near East and thence to the West. Some have connected them with the invasion of the Mongols. If similar tales could be found among them, such a date might fit also the introduction of the animal tales into Eastern Europe, especially if they had originally a Buddhist background. Nothing, in fact, could apparently harmonise better with the Buddhist teaching of Metempsychosis and the principle of man’s transformation into beast in order to expiate for sins committed than some of these tales.—Of course, Egyptian influences cannot be overlooked in this connection. I may refer to them later on.—The burden of the majority is indeed that the birds and insects are, in fact, nothing else than human beings transformed into ungainly shapes for some wrong which they have done.

      Many theories have been put forward on the mediation, among them also the theory of transmission by the Gipsies. These came first to Thrace, and lived long enough among the nations of the Balkans, in Rumania and Russia, to have exercised a possible influence upon them. But this theory can be dismissed briefly. The Gipsies are not likely carriers of folk-tales. They came too late, and their march through Europe is nothing if not a long-drawn agony of suspicion, hatred, persecution.

      Some occult practices may have been taken over by some adepts of the lower forms of magic, and possibly Playing Cards, originally an oracle of divining the future, may have been brought by the Gipsies to Europe, but popular tales, though they possess a good number, have certainly not been communicated to Europe by them. They never had the favourable occasion for meeting the people on a footing of equality, or of entering with them into any intimate intercourse.

      The Gipsy of the Rumanian fairy tale is mostly a villain, and is merely the local substitute for the Arab or Negro of the Eastern parallels. In the Rumanian popular jests the Gipsy is always the fool. From such as these the people would have nothing to learn.

      Next the Mongolian theory has long been put forward as a plausible explanation, for it has been believed that Russia formed one of the channels of transmission. This latter assumption, however, rests on a geographical misconception, and also on a want of historical knowledge. Up to comparatively modern times, the whole of the South of Russia was inhabited by Tartars, and the Mongolian influence upon Russia could not pass the border of the so-called White Russia. Nor can a temporary invasion of Europe by the Mongolians, who left ruin and desolation behind them, have been the means by which such tales could be introduced. They are told at the peaceful fireside or in the spinning-rooms, and are not carried by the wings of the arrow sped from the enemy’s bow, nor are they accepted if presented on the point of the sword. They are frightened away by the din of battle. Years must pass ere the blood is staunched, the wounds healed, and only after peaceable concord and social harmony have been established, can a spiritual interchange take place; this was impossible between Russians or Mongols. We must look elsewhere, then, for a possible channel of transmission, always subject to the theory of “migration.”

      Besides, to Kieff, the centre of Russian inspiration, the place hallowed by the minstrels and poets, the Mongols never came. The only influence which prevailed there was that of Byzance, and to that we shall have to look as the channel of transmission and the centre of dissemination of these tales and legends. These had come from Asia, carried on the crest of the wave of that religious movement known as Manichaeism and Bogomilism, and from there they started their triumphant course throughout Europe. They came along with other religious legends, carried by the current of thought which also taught the doctrine of Dualism and Metempsychosis. This is the only possible source for most of the legends and tales found among the Rumanians and Slavs, and, as will be seen, it must have been the primary source for such tales in the West of Europe.

      A dualistic heterodox teaching with such a background reached from the confines of India far into the South of France across central Europe. It was probably the same agency which transformed the life of Buddha into the legends of the saints Barlaam and Josaphat.

      Nor is this the only legend invented, manipulated and circulated by the numerous Gnostic sects. Those who have studied the history of the apocryphal literature are fully aware of the apocryphal Gospels, Acts of the Apostles and of the rest of the apocryphal tales which were already put on the “Index,” in the first centuries of the common era.

      Some of the cosmogonic tales of the dualistic origin of the world, of the influence of the Evil Spirit, of the origin of the Bee, the Glow-worm, the Wolf and others show unmistakably such a Gnostic origin.

      It is therefore not too much to assume that they have been brought to Europe and disseminated by the same agency. These sectaries alone came into direct contact with the masses of the people. They preached their doctrines to the lowly and the poor. They were known themselves as the pure (Cathars) and the poor (Pobres). They alone reached the heart of the people, and were able to influence them to a far higher degree than the murderous Mongols, or other nations that ravaged the country.

      The dualistic tales connected with the story of the Creation are found also among other nations, especially among those in Russia and in the countries which belonged to the ancient Persian Empire. Dähnhardt, who has made the investigation of such legends and tales the object of special study (Natursagen, i.; Berlin 1907), comes to the same conclusion that they rest ultimately on the Iranian dualism of the Avesta. He believes that Zoroastrian teaching has penetrated far into the North and West, and has produced these peculiar dualistic cosmogonic legends.

      The point to bear in mind in this investigation of the origin of the Rumanian tales and legends is not so much to trace the remote possible source of dualism, but the immediate influences which have been brought to bear upon the shape which these legends have taken. This is the salient problem. Dähnhardt, of course, discusses the further development of the dualistic conception, through Manichaeism and Bogomilism, and thus far is helpful in establishing the connection between Iran and Thrace,